Canberra’s 2009 vintage is underway as I write and will be in full swing when you read this. It’s almost certain to be smaller than the extraordinary 2008 season when, for example, Lerida Estate harvested more than 70 tonnes from a vineyard that ought to yield about 45 tonnes. However, barring adverse weather in the next few weeks, quantities will still be in the normal range.

We won’t know the quality until we begin drinking the wines in a few months. But the fruit that’s been harvested so far appears to be ripe and healthy and reflects the seasonal conditions.

The season started well with mild weather and good spring and early summer rainfall. Then dry conditions set in and temperatures rose, culminating in a couple of severe heat waves that put vines under stress.

But locals makers escaped the extremes experienced by vignerons in Victoria and South Australia, where temperatures soared into the forties and strong winds exacerbated heat stress in the vines.

In Victoria and South Australia many growers reported severe crop losses caused by sunburn to the fruit or leaf loss that left vines unable to ripen their loads.
Canberra’s losses, in general, appear to be more modest although some growers, including Roger and Faye Harris at Brindabella Hills, reported significant reduction in yields caused by hot winds. In general, it seems that growers with adequate water were able to maintain vine health during the heat.

At Hall, the Canberra District’s lowest sub-region (around 550 metres), Dr Roger Harris of Brindabella Hills Winery calls it ‘a funny season’. Rogers says any summer rain came only as thunderstorms distributing moisture unevenly. One storm dumped 50 mm at Murrumbateman, but only 5 mm at Hall.

When I spoke to Roger on 14 March he’d already harvested the early-ripening varieties, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay and expected to start on riesling and shiraz from about 21 March.

He’d also processed fruit from a couple of warmer areas outside of Canberra. These included verdelho, albarino and tempranillo from the Rusty Fig vineyard near Bermagui and shiraz from Tumblong, near Gundagai.

From Murrumbateman Ken Helm rates the 2009 riesling from Al Lustenberger’s as even better than the 2008. He said the green juice had ‘beautiful acid and flavour’. He’d crushed nine tonnes of riesling by Saturday 14 March.

By that time chardonnay had just finished fermenting and sauvignon blanc had begun ticking over. Ken anticipates a smaller vintage than in 2008. He says that Canberra may have been spared the worst of the heat damage because it arrived before veraison (when berries begin to soften and ripen) for most varieties.

At nearby Clonakilla Tim Kirk reports great colour and ripe flavours, but low acidity, in shiraz from the warmer Hilltops region. Because of the heat wave he sees 2009 as ‘more of a red vintage than a white vintage’.

Tim makes a slightly fuller style of riesling than Ken Helm and was leaving his on the vines for another couple of weeks. He expected to harvest viognier from 22 March and shiraz from 25 March. He believed that if the fine, mild weather held for another two weeks a good vintage could become an outstanding one.

Frank Van de Loo of Mount Majura Vineyard was busy pressing chardonnay when I called and had also harvested merlot for rosé and pinot noir for sparkling wine. Other varieties, including riesling and pinot gris needed another week or two of ripening, Frank said.

Unlike many vineyards in the region Mount Majura had set an even larger crop than in the generous 2008 season. If left on the vine this would’ve reduced wine quality, so Frank’s team trimmed it back in January – dropping around 60 per cent of the riesling and graciano on the ground.

During the season Frank’s been working with the Australian Wine Research Institute on rotundone, the compound recently identified as the source of shiraz’s distinctive peppery character. He’s been sending shiraz berries at various stages of ripeness and will later send samples from the fermentation. But that’s a story for another day.

At Lake George Lerida Estate’s Jim Lumbers anticipates an even higher quality vintage than the ‘wonderful’ 2008. He said that after the heatwave ‘ripening slowed delightfully’. He believes that the longer hanging time for the fruit will produce ripe flavours at low sugar (and therefore lower alcohol) levels.

Pinot and chardonnay for sparkling wine and pinot noir for rosé were already fermenting when I spoke to Jim. And he expected to be under way with the main harvest by 21 March.

Up at Lark Hill, our highest vineyard, at 860 metres, vintage was still a week away when I spoke to Chris Carpenter. He said he expected to harvest pinot noir and chardonnay for sparkling wine on 19 and 20 March and for table wine in the first week of April, followed by riesling and grüner veltliner (their first crop of this variety) a week later.

Chris said they’d been short of water during the heatwave but their biodynamic practices, including deep mulching, had kept the vineyards in good health. He expects volumes to be about the same as in 2008.

We’ll have a sniff around the district in a few months to see what’s really in store from vintage 2009.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

At a recent series of pinot noir tastings at Mornington, the opening brackets showed just how variable styles can be. Were these style differences, we were asked, a result of human intervention or attributable to ‘terroir’ – the French the French term, for which there is no English equivalent, meaning roughly ‘the sum of the effects that the local environment has’ on the vine, its fruit and, ultimately, the character of the wine it produces.

I don’t think we solved the riddle of terroir. But we saw that Australia produces very fine pinot in a variety of styles – and that there are certainly observable differences in wines from neighbouring vineyards produced by the same maker, using constant winemaking techniques.

Indeed, the clearest examples of vineyard-derived flavour differences were in the two brackets from France’s Burgundy region.

In the first French bracket, Thierry and Estelle Violet-Guillemard showed us five 2006 vintage wines from their five hectares of vineyards in Pommard, a village just to the south of Beaune.

These were light to medium coloured wines showing subtle but definite variations in aroma, flavour and structure – from the gentle, elegant Pommard 2006 (the basic village classification) through four, more highly-rated individual vineyard wines, La Platiere, Clos de Derriere St-Jean, Pézerolles and the distinctly richer, more supple Les Rugiens.

The distance from vineyard to vineyard is not great (check Pommard on Google Earth to see how small it is) yet Thierry attributed the differences we could smell and taste to ‘terroir’ – a plausible but unprovable hypothesis. The evidence for ‘terroir’ is our ability to sense differences and the very long-term consistency of those differences. What we don’t understand is the why – what is it specifically that makes the wines of one vineyard different from wines from another?

Perhaps the biggest cause, even across comparatively small distances, is temperature variation. We certainly found evidence for this in two brackets of 2006 vintage Mornington Peninsula wines. Wines from cooler sites tended to be paler and more delicate than those from warmer sites.

For whatever reason, it was a delicious progression – all in the comparatively fine, delicate pinot mould. The style bookends in the first bracket were the amazingly fragrant, taut and delicious Main Ridge Estate Half Acre 2006 (from the Red Hill sub-region) and the much deeper, riper, rounder, softer (and still delicious) Kooyong Single Vineyard Ferrous 2006 (from the Tuerong sub-region).

In between, roughly ascending order of body, were Ten Minutes by Tractor McCutcheon Vineyard 2006 (Main Ridge); Port Phillip Estate Morillon 2006 (Red Hill South); Lindenderry 2006 (Red Hill) and Paradigm Hill 2006 (Merricks).

Similarly, the second bracket of Mornington wines offered a lighter-to-darker spectrum – my favourite in the group being the lighter, finer Eldridge Estate 2006 (Red Hill), similar in its fruit flavours to the Main Ridge Estate wine.

But that’s only a personal preference in a thoroughly delicious line up, again the others, in roughly ascending order of body: Morning Sun 2006 (Main Ridge); Montalto 2006 (Red Hill South); Scorpo 2006 (Red Hill South); Hurley Vineyard ‘Harcourt’ 2006 (Balnarring); and Yabby Lake 2006 (Tuerong).

Before we got to the French or Mornington wines, though, we’d tasted those six amazingly varied Aussie pinots mentioned at the beginning. These ranged in style from the light-coloured and fragrant Paringa Estate Reserve Mornington Peninsula 2006 (Red Hill) to the very deep and powerful Coldstream Hills Yarra Valley Reserve 2006.

Again, I preferred the more restrained, pure Paringa style and the utterly contrasting (though still pale coloured) Bass Phillip 21 South Gippsland 2006 – an idiosyncratic drop that divided opinion but, to me, drank like nectar.

The other marvellous wines in this bracket were Kelvedon Estate East Coast Tasmania 2006, Stefano Lubiana Southern Tasmania 2006 and Bindi Block 5 Macedon Ranges 2006.

Other wines tasted with meals during the two-day Mornington event added to the exciting pinot line up. Here are some that appealed: Foxys Hangout Mornington Peninsula Reserve 2007, Merricks Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004, Nazaary Mornington Peninsula 2004, Tucks Ridge Mornington Peninsula 2007, Phaedrus Mornington Peninsula 007, Morning Sun Mornington 2007, Jones Road Mornington Peninsula 2006, Silverwood Mornington Peninsula 2006, Freycinet Bicheno Tasmania 2006, T’Gallant Tribute Mornington Peninsula 2006, Domain Epis Macedon Ranges 2007, Stonier KBS Mornington Peninsula 2006 (stunning!), Wantirna Yarra Valley 2006, Elgee Park Mornington 2006 and Seaforth Mornington Peninsula 2006.

To me the tastings said that after thirty-odd years of serious pinot making Australia has an extraordinary depth and quality emerging from dozens of outstanding makers. International visitors, Jancis Robinson said that our pinots could make a few jaws drop in the UK – a sentiment supported by Burgundian winemaker Frederic Mugnier. He said it was his first visit to Australia and he’d had a pre-conception of our wines being big, dark and alcoholic – but was surprised instead to find wines of such elegance.

Frederic’s wines (from the villages of Nuits-St-Georges and Chambolle-Musigny) were the real showstoppers. But that’s another story. And we’ll revisit ‘terroir’ before too long.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan