Two weeks ago a dozen independent Cowra winemakers visited Canberra. Their story is a microcosm of the shrinking act now underway in Australia as big makers pull the pin on grape contracts, export and local prices decline, and domestic tastes shift dramatically away from chardonnay to sauvignon blanc.

Cowra, the group told me, had already dropped wine grape production from about 25 thousand tonnes a year to 12 thousand tonnes. And the figure seems headed for further decline as big companies that used to queue up for Cowra chardonnay disappear over the horizon.

One of the region’s biggest holdings, a 400-hectare vineyard owned by Australian Vintage Limited, reportedly sold recently for just $1.5 million, about its land value according to the visiting winemakers – suggesting anything but a grapey future for the block.

The site, developed in the nineties for Orlando-Wyndham by Brian Sainty, traded originally under Orlando’s Richmond Grove brand before passing to McGuigan Simeon Wines Ltd. McGuigan Simeon, in turn, changed its name to Australian Vintage Ltd in January 2008.

But Cowra’s first vineyards had been established by Tony Gray in 1972. The area’s grape-growing potential had been identified by John Stanford acting for a group of investors. Gray acquired land and planted 36 hectares according to Stanford’s plan when the original investor group went broke.

It proved an ideal location. By the Lachlan River in central Western N.S.W. in a benign climate with plenty of water, it quickly and efficiently produced biggish crops of high-quality grapes.

Len Evans and Brian Croser recognised the quality early. Thus, Gray’s Cowra vineyard provided fruit for Croser’s first Petaluma chardonnay in 1977. At the time Croser was lecturing at Riverina College of Advanced Education (now Charles Sturt University), Wagga, where he made the wine.

In 1981 Evans, by now a partner in Petaluma as well as head of Rothbury Estate, in a controversial boardroom decision, acquired the Cowra vineyard for Rothbury. Some say this decision saved Rothbury’s bacon by severing it from a reliance on unpopular Hunter Valley reds and allowing it to meet an exploding demand for chardonnay at a modest price.

As an indicator of the scale of Rothbury’s Cowra investment, the vineyard produced 1,000 cases of chardonnay in 1981, 42,000 in 1990, and about 60,000 in 1993. The rapid growth in production reflected grafting over of the other varieties to chardonnay rather than expanded plantings.

The action at Cowra did not stop with Rothbury. Gray’s Cowra Vineyards Pty Ltd (CVPL) went on to plant a further 73 hectares of vines adjacent to Rothbury’s Holdings, with another 10 established by CVPL’s vineyard manager, Greg Johnston. That’s how Cowra found broad acres of grape vines nestling up to its suburbs.

This cluster of vineyards almost in the town was joined later by a 29-hectare planting about 20 kilometres downstream on the Lachlan’s beautiful plains. David and Elizabeth O’Dea established the vineyard on their 364-hectare ‘Windowrie’ hoping for better returns than those generated by breeding Simmental cattle and wheat farming. The O’Dea’s later extended their plantings and remain one of the area’s biggest independent growers. They now have a winery on site, The Mill restaurant in Cowra. And their son Jason was one of the 12 independent makers in Canberra two weeks back.

But Cowra can thank Brian McGuigan for its biggest vineyard. While head of Wyndham Estate, Brian foresaw sales outstripping grape supply. With viticulturist, Brian Sainty, he identified Cowra as a potential low-cost source of grapes for making soft, fruity, easy-drinking wines.

A small-investor scheme designed to fund the development failed to get the tax office nod and, as well, became caught up in the collapse of Wyndham’s parent company. Wyndham was acquired by Orlando and the merged Wyndham-Orlando Group decided to proceed with the Cowra development. Thus, Brian Sainty’s ambitious plans bore fruit.

In a development Sainty claimed was unprecedented in Australia, 222 hectares were planted on 56 blocks to 11 grape varieties in one year, 1989, complete with a computerised irrigation system that allowed tailored watering control for each block.

Between 1972 and 1993, Cowra’s area under vines grew from nil to 343.6 hectares. The majority of other growers now in Cowra arrived through the mid and late nineties.

Because most of Cowra’s production headed off to multi-region blends, the area attracted little consumer recognition – a fate shared by South Australia’s Langhorne Creek, Padthaway and Wrattonbully regions.

Despite a lack of wider recognition, smaller players had been chipping away for years, building their regional brands. But this side play has suddenly become the main game – hence the swathe already cut through production. And given likely permanent water shortages along the Lachlan, the days of mass production are unlikely to return.

The twelve independent growers recognise this. We’ll look at their wines and plans next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

In his great book, The story of wine, Hugh Johnson wrote of wine’s unique ability to banish care. Across the ages many of our greatest writers, scientists, historians and philosophers felt strongly enough about wine to record their thoughts for posterity.

Today’s column is a little tribute to these writers, featuring snippets from across more than two millennia of wine commentary.

Tasting notes
“See how it puns and quibbles in the glass”.
George Farquhar, Love and a bottle, 1698. (Evidence that sparkling wine existed in the seventeenth century).

“From the wine steward she ordered a bottle of Roederer’s Cristal. Even for those who dislike champagne, myself among them, there are two champagnes one can’t refuse: Dom Perignon and the even superior Cristal, which is bottled in a natural-colored glass that displays its pale blaze, a chilled fire of such prickly dryness that, swallowed, seems not to have been swallowed at all, but instead to have turned to vapors on the tongue and burned there to one damp sweet ash”.
Truman Capote, Answered prayers, unfinished novel contracted in 1966.

“It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife”.
Aldous Huxley.

“… Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and, heralded by the remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous, and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.”
Charles Dickens, Bleak house.

“Did they shoot the horse?”
Anon.

“It tastes like it’s been drunk before”.
Anonymous.

“I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough”.
Gordon Shanahan.

Anecdotes
“Here is a story about two Australian swagmen who used to meet for a chat under the shade of a well placed tree. By Jacob’s Creek, I shouldn’t wonder. One day, Barry, the first, turned up with a bottle. He took a long swig, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and passed the bottle to his mate Kevin, who did the same. ‘Whad’ya think of it?’ said Barry.

‘Jes right’, said Kev.

‘Whad’ya mean, jes right?’

‘Well. If it’d been any better you wouldn’a giv’n it to me, and if it’d bin any wuss, I couldn’a drunk it.’

The art of wine selection in a nutshell.”
Hugh Johnson, Wine: a life uncorked, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2005.

“In the wilds of Afghanistan I lost my corkscrew and for days was forced to live on nothing but food and water”.

“Some weasel left the cork out of my lunch”.
W.C. Fields

“On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a [glass], and said that it was sixteen years old. ‘It is very small for its age’, said Gnathaena”.
Athenaeus, circa A.D.200, The Deipnosophists.

“An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured on his lips to revive him. ‘Pauillac, 1873’, he murmured and died.”
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 – 1914, The devil’s dictionary, 1911.

Wine qualities and philosophy

“My wines are sexy; they make weak men strong and strong women weak”.
Wolf Blass, 1974.

“Life is too short to drink bad wine”.
Anonymous, but popularised in Australia by Len Evans.

“A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows”.
George Bernard Shaw.

“I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.”
Lilly Bollinger, Manager, Bollinger Champagne, 1941–1971.

“Wine is sunlight, held together by water”.
Galileo Gallilei.

“Give me a bowl of wine, In this I bury all unkindness.”

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

“You haven’t drunk too much wine if you can still lie on the floor without holding on”.
Dean Martin.

“Both to the rich and poor, wine is the happy antidote for sorrow”.
Euripides.

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading”.
Henry Youngman.

“I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret”.
John Cleese (Basil Fawlty), Fawlty Towers.

“There are no standards of taste in wine… Each man’s own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard”.
Mark Twain.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009