The sheer quality, value and long cellaring ability of Australia’s 2007 rieslings presents a great buying opportunity for drinkers. But before presenting several gems from recent tastings, it’s interesting to reflect on this noble variety’s undeserved niche status.

It’s a darling variety amongst winemakers and the converted. It attracts critical attention completely out of proportion to its overall popularity — and dramatically out of whack with its production figures.

Measured by hectares-in-the-ground against other varieties, riesling missed the boom that so dramatically changed Australia’s vinous landscape in the decade from the mid nineties.

And my, how that export-driven landscape changed in ten years. In 1996 sultana, the plainest of all wine grapes, was our most widely planted variety at 15,195 hectares. It left chardonnay and shiraz vying for second place on 13,713 hectares and 13,410 hectares respectively – with riesling well behind on 3,423 hectares.

By 2006 sultana was out of the race and shiraz had taken the crown as our most planted variety. The area planted to shiraz had grown by 207 per cent to 41,115 hectares – eclipsing even chardonnay’s dramatic 127 per cent surge to 31,219 hectares. Riesling, meanwhile, grew by a paltry 29 per cent to 4,400 hectares while Australia’s total vineyard plantings swelled 91 per cent from 88,474 to 168,971 hectares.

But the riesling fixation only grew – attracting almost as much attention, as far as I can gauge, as our number one variety, shiraz.

The riesling buzz, I believe, rests on its sublime quality, extraordinary cellaring ability and its suitability to Australian conditions. It’s been here since the first half of the nineteenth and survived for many reasons, including good luck, but perhaps mostly because winemakers loved it and wouldn’t let go.

In 2006, wine industry veteran, Phil Laffer, wrote in The View From Our Place, ‘We were lucky as an industry that we didn’t lose all those riesling vineyards when the chardonnay boom began in the 1980s. Private growers pulled out nearly all of their riesling – they just couldn’t get the price for their fruit. But proprietary winemakers such as Orlando, Lindemans, Leo Burings, Hardys, Yalumba and Penfolds in particular, hung on to their riesling vines.

‘We are as a company, and as an industry, surrounded by remarkably good riesling vineyards. And in Australia we have a history of making very good, long-lived riesling. With the superb fruit that we have, that’s just a case of being very careful all the way from the vine through to the bottle.’

While Laffer rightly ties riesling’s survival and reputation to its Barossa-Clare-Eden Valley heartland, the variety now makes its mark across Australia in a diversity of styles, reflecting the climates and sites where it’s grown.

Within riesling’s generally floral/aromatic theme, these variations can be subtle or dramatic – and can be appreciated in the terrific 2007s now coming into the market.

I’ve reviewed several of these, mostly from Canberra, in recent Sunday Times’ columns. But two weeks back, with the help of an enthusiastic wine mate, I judged twelve 2007s, including some of Australia’s most respected labels.

Now, judging young rieslings is difficult. You only have to look at wine show results to see that judges struggle with the new releases while generally nailing it with older wines. Why is this?
I think it gets back to the delicacy and subtlety of young riesling. The more of them you line up, the harder it is to differentiate one from the other. From my observation, in big shows, like Canberra’s recent Riesling Challenge, the simpler, fruitier wines tend to outscore more subtle and restrained, but ultimately better, wines.

In this year’s Challenge, for example, the delicious Leo Buring Clare Valley Riesling 2007 scored 55.5 points out of 60 where it’s more expensive and, to my palate, far superior cellar mate, Leonay Eden Valley Riesling 2007 scored just 45.5. There were other similar examples from Tasmania and Western Australia where cheaper, commercial wines outscored more expensive, premium cellar mates.

Given the numbers of wines (135 in this instance), their delicacy, and the time taken to judge – an average of two minutes per wine from my wine show experience – it’s not surprising that we see such anomalies, even from the most experienced palates.

In our little Chateau Shanahan tasting, therefore, we took our time – about an hour and a half to taste twelve wines. We sniffed, tasted and spat for first impressions. Then, wine-by-wine enjoyed a little sip – because it’s really only in the drinking that you can see all a wine has to offer.

And what we found, amongst the delicacy, were lovely style differences ranging from the ultra finesse of Tasmania’s Bay of Fires to the very rich, but still delicate, Petaluma Hanlin Hill Clare Valley.

These contrasting styles were, in a sense, our bookends – representing the opposing ends of the style spectrum – with the other wines falling somewhere between.

I’ll be reviewing the wines in my Sunday column in coming weeks, but one, in particular stood out – Bay of Fires Tasmania Riesling 2007 ($30).

It stood out because it was so different from the other wines – a difference created largely by Tasmania’s climate.

As part of the Hardy Wine Company Group, Bay of Fires sources fruit widely within Tasmania. And winemaker Fran Austin says fruit for the 2007 came from a single block within contractor vineyard at Rokeby, a particularly cool site, near Hobart,

Fran believes that the very cool growing conditions concentrate riesling’s aromatic intensity. This, in combination with high natural acidity and modest alcohol content, gives the wine a tremendously appealing aroma and the most delicate, yet delicious flavour imaginable.

And for once a professional judge’s palate aligned with those of consumers – and that’s not all that common. After the tasting, I put the top four wines to a table of people aged 21 to 56. All five preferred the Tassie riesling but couldn’t share our excitement over the benchmark Grosset, Mount Horrocks and Henschke wines.

Perhaps that says something about why riesling doesn’t cut the mustard with all drinkers. It also says that rieslings from really cool climates, like Tassie’s, might have what it takes to lure more drinkers into the fold.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

Sauvignon Blanc. Kath and Kym once called it sauvignon plonk. Others call it cat’s pee. Over a glass or two, a vet I know enquired if the horse had been shot. Wine man, the late Len Evans listed it with goat’s cheese amongst his pet hates. And England’s wine luminary, Jancis Robinson, once wrote that its ranking amongst the world’s nine ‘classic’ varieties came only because of its ‘divine combination with semillon in parts of Bordeaux’.

While wine show judges almost invariably find sauvignon classes disappointing, populated by weedy, tart wines, sprinkled with one or two juicy highlights. Despite all the sauvignon put downs, Aussie drinkers love the variety – notably as a straight varietal from Marlborough, New Zealand or, from Margaret River, Western Australia, blended with semillon.

Twenty-one years ago, Jancis Robinson wrote “Sauvignon blanc produces wines for our times: white, dry, refreshingly zesty, aggressively recognisable and ready to drink almost before the presses have been hosed down after the vintage”. Her words seem even more on the money now than they did in 1986.
And the word from retailers and producers is that sauvignon blanc and blends are the fastest growing segment in the domestic wine market. And, for example, when I left Vintage Cellars a few years back, sauvignon blanc already accounted for one sixth of wine sales at a time when the variety accounted for only one twenty fifth of Australia’s grape crush.

This suggests a dash into sauvignon blanc by Australia’s keenest wine drinkers. The sustained growth in sauvignon blanc demand shows up, too, at the nation’s grape crushers. In 2002 we crushed 28, 567 tonnes of it. In the small 2003 vintage the figure fell to 21,028 tonnes before doubling to 42,504 tonnes in 2006 and slipping marginally in the drought-affected 2007 vintage to 39,463 tonnes. This growth suggests many hectares of plantings coming on stream to meet rising demand.

So why the rise in popularity of sauvignon blanc? I suspect it’s the exciting quality of straight varietals from Marlborough and blends from Western Australia delivering what Jancis described 20 years ago, “dry, refreshingly zesty, aggressively recognisable and ready to drink almost before the presses have been hosed down”.

It’s not that chardonnay’s in decline. Far from it. Rather, sauvignon blanc has found its niche as a fruity, zesty undemanding white well suited to our warm climate and casual dining habits – capturing what might have been riesling’s role.

Twenty years ago when the Aussie dollar was stronger, the most loved sauvignons were those imported from Pouilly and Sancerre at the eastern end of France’s Loire Valley. Magically fruity with a minerally, bone-dry finish, they reigned until international demand and a weakening dollar pushed them out of reach of most Australians.

Domestic sauvignons, at the time, came from mainly warm areas and were often made in the oak matured ‘fume blanc’ style pioneered by Robert Mondavi in California. These attracted momentary attention but were by and large over oaked and lacking varietal flavour.

By the mid eighties Australians had begun to enjoy the first in-your-face Marlborough sauvignon blancs. These offered pungent, capsicum-like aromas and flavours in tandem with high natural acidity – the product of Marlborough’s very cool climate, a pre condition for good sauvignon.

Twenty years on and Marlborough’s the world capital of sauvignon, having spread from a few vineyards at the southern cooler side of the Wairau valley to the warmer northern side and to the even cooler Awatere Valley, over the Wither Hills to the south.

The resulting diversity of sites, viticultural practice and winemaking preferences means a great diversity of Marlborough styles today. In general that means zesty, fresh, well-defined varietal flavours. But the varietal spectrum varies from the riper citrus and tropical fruit character of warmer sites to the old in-your-face capsicum-like ones.

Australian sauvignon blanc hasn’t found its Marlborough yet. But it has found a comfortable home in the Adelaide Hills. Like Marlborough the Adelaide Hills region is far from homogenous climatically. But selected sites do bring home the bacon, like the pace-setting Shaw and Smith.

And at Margaret River in the west, where sauvignon blanc seldom makes it on its own, semillon steps in to fatten out the mid palate and add a lovely citrus note without detracting from the racy freshness of sauvignon blanc.

These range from ever-popular ‘classic dry white’ styles like those from Evans & Tate and Vasse Felix at modest prices to the seamless glory of Cullens and Cape Mentelle partly oak fermented sauvignon blanc and semillon blends.

With a few exceptions like Cullens and Cape Mentelle wine, though, these are wines to chill, quaff and enjoy by the bucketful. Then back up for the new vintage as soon it hits the shelves.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007