The release this month of an extraordinary red, Hewitson 1853 Old Garden Barossa Valley Mourvedre 2008 ($69), begs the question, what is mourvedre? There’s not a lot of it grown in Australia – in 2008 just 785 hectares, mostly in the Barossa Valley – yet it’s survived here for almost two hundred years. And even if we’ve not heard of it, we’ve almost certainly enjoyed mourvedre (aka mataro), acknowledged or not in red blends or as an anonymous component in Australian “port”.

Descriptions of mourvedre contradict one another. Can it really be soft and fruity but also tannic and iron-hard; both low in acid with little colour and searingly acidic and opaque? The answer appears to be yes. Consider these contrasting accounts of Spanish and Australian mourvedre/monastrell/mataro from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine and Rolf Binder’s Veritas Winery website.

Jancis Robinson: “The wine produced from monastrell’s small, sweet, thick-skinned berries tends to be heady stuff, high in alcohol, tannins and a somewhat gamey almost animal flavour”.  Rolf Binder: “A mataro berry is about 1.5 times larger than a shiraz berry so bleeding off juice increases the juice to skin ratio” – in short, Binder bleeds juice off to increase extraction of tannin and colour, something his Spanish peers don’t’ need to do.

Robinson also writes that in southern France “mourvedre is considered an improving structural ingredient – a sort of vinous RSJ” – suggesting its firm tannins give the backbone lacking in the companion varieties, shiraz, grenache and cinsault.

Dean Hewitson offers two possible reasons for southern French mourvedre’s comparative toughness. The first, and most likely, he believes, is that varieties are mixed in the vineyard in the Rhone Valley but they ripen at different times. Therefore if a grower harvests a vineyard when the grenache is ripe, the mourvedre will be unripe, with hard tannins.

The second, is that the devastation of European vineyards by phylloxera in the late nineteenth century may have resulted in significant clonal differences between Australia and Europe. Barossa plantings are all pre-phylloxera and may be “clonally softer in tannin”, suggests Hewitson.

Because mourvedre buds and ripens very late, it needs plenty of late season heat. Little wonder, then, that it’s at home in the hot Barossa and Spain, but pushes only into southern France, and even there can struggle to ripen. (Follow a Rolf Binder 100-year-old Barossa bush-vine mourvedre from budburst to harvest to vinification at www.rolfbinder.com/index_alt.php?cmi=6001).

In Australia as in France and Spain, mourvedre plays mainly a support role to other varieties, historically for “port” and increasingly for red table wine. In the mid eighties the so-called Rhone Rangers led the Barossa revival of grenache-shiraz-mourvedre blends. This group, including Charlie Melton, Rocky O’Callaghan and Bob McLean, took the unique beauty of the Barossa’s very old vines to the world.

Mourvedre played a key role in their blends. But they weren’t the first to gain recognition, as Penfolds Shiraz Mataro Bin 2, made from 1960, remained popular until its discontinuation in the seventies. It was resurrected in 1980 and 1981, then discontinued and the remainder shipped to the UK. Production of Bin 2, now labelled as shiraz mourvedre, commenced again in 1990.

In The Rewards of Patience, edition four, 2000, Penfolds claims Bin 2 opened the UK market to Australian wine, “Originally, Bin 2 was a result of experimental work on the medium-bodied, soft-finishing ‘Australian Burgundy’ style, traditionally based on shiraz. The addition of mourvedre may also explain Bin 2’s success with British wine drinkers, as this variety has the effect of moderating the richness of shiraz, making the wine leaner and more European in both style and structure”.

Mourvedre seems set to continue its supporting role to shiraz and grenache. But Hewitson and Binder have both made jaw-dropping straight varietals as thrilling as any red on the market.

However, Dean Hewitson cautions, “It’s a matter of understanding when it’s a blending grape and when it’s not to blend”. He sources mourvedre from a dozen or so vineyards across the Barossa, several of them more than a century old, but still uses it principally as a blender, “to add complexity to Miss Harry [his grenache, shiraz, mourvedre, cinsault blend] and dimension to Ned and Henry’s [shiraz with a splash of mourvedre]”.

He adds that mourvedre’s not as forgiving a variety as shiraz or cabernet and it needs to be from a very special site – typically in sandy soils – to stand on its own.

Hewitson made his first straight varietal in 1998 from eight rows of mourvedre vines, remnants of a larger vineyard planted by Friedrich Koch in 1853, near the North Para River at Roland Flat, Southern Barossa. The vines are direct descendents of the collection brought to Australia by James Busby in1832.

Those remaining vines, he says, witnessed all the fads and fashions of the Australian wine industry, from fortified to table wine, and even contributed fruit to Orlando Carrington Blush bubbly in the eighties.

The mourvedre plantings had been more extensive, but the Koch family replaced them progressively with more fashionable varieties until Hewitson contracted the last eight rows in 1998.

From 1996 Hewitson propagated new vineyards using cuttings from the best of the old vines. These gradually increased the volume of mourvedre available for blending and, after ten years, contributed fruit to a second straight mourvedre, Baby Bush.

Hewitson believes we’ll see more straight mourvedre in the near future. He suspects recent sales of Baby Bush and Old Garden to fellow Barossa makers to be for benchmarking their own products.

We’ll have to wait and see. But even if more flow into the market, it’ll be a tiny volume. Mourvedre accounts for less than one per cent of Australia’s red plantings, and these vines produce only six to seven thousand tonnes of grapes a year.

Production may be small, but it’s a key variety, a great blender, sensational on its own on occasion and now, I’m told, the best grapes fetch very high prices. In the Barossa this means a small army of makers, many of them quite small, hunting down those very special, very old parcels.

Mourvedre will remain a niche variety. But it won’t remain anonymous. Watch for a review of Hewitson Old Garden in my Sunday Top Drops column.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2010

One of Canberra’s oldest vineyards is about to make a comeback under the Little Bridge Wines banner. In December last year Stephen Dowton, one of the Little Bridge partners, bought Brooks Creek Vineyard, at Bywong, from George Brownbill.

The 2.8-hectare vineyard includes a block of mourvedre, and possibly other survivors of the original 4-hectare vineyard planted there in 1973 by Max Blake, a research officer at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. In Wines of the Canberra District, Brian Johnston reports Blake had previously planted a trial block of 100 vines near Bungendore in 1968 — three years before Drs Riek and Kirk established vineyards at Lake George and Murrumbateman in 1971.

I recall tasting wines, including mourvedre, at the vineyard with Blake in the late eighties. At the time the vineyard was known as “Shingle House”.  Later it became “Brooks Creek” and ownership passed to the Brownbill family (probably in 1992, Dowton believes).

The partners intend restoring Brooks Creek vineyard to full production over the next three or four years. It’ll then be the third vineyard contributing fruit to the Little Bridge label. The other two are John Leyshon’s 2-hectare Mallaluka vineyard, at Dog Trap Road, Murrumbateman, and Roland Clark’s 2-hectare Folly Run vineyard at Butmaroo, southeast of Bungendore.

Roland Clark says he and the other three partners – Stephen Dowton, John Jeffrey and John Leyshon – kicked off the Little Bridge venture in 1996. “You could say we were a fishing group – a men’s drinking club that went wrong”. Fourteen years later, they continue to make major decisions over drinks – generally on an annual trip to the Clark family farm near Bega.

In fourteen years they’ve done everything from scratch – establishing vine rootlings, planting vineyards and making and selling wine – even designing the wine label. They grew the original cuttings at a farm, since sold by Stephen Dowton, on Dicks Creek Road, Murrumbateman. Cuttings from these later populated Clark’s Butmaroo vineyard.

Partner John Leyshon makes the red wines at his Mallaluka property Murrumbateman. But the Carpenters make the Little Bridge pinot noir at Lark Hill from grapes grown on Clark’s Folly Run vineyard – one of the highest in the district, at 860 metres above sea level. And the whites are made by Greg Gallagher and Rob Howell at Canberra Winemakers, a contract production facility located at Jeir Creek Wines, Murrumbateman.

The three Little Bridge vineyards, totalling about seven hectares, produce an unusually wide range of varieties for such a small holding – riesling, chardonnay, merlot, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, sangiovese and mourvedre; and a couple of hats full each of gamay, petit verdot and malbec.

Whether the partners maintain the diversity remains to be seen. But at least the minor varieties can be blended with others (for example, mourvedre with shiraz; or malbec with cabernet). As well, we can expect the varieties to perform differently at the three unique sites. Over time this may lead to specialisation, especially as the three vineyards feed into one brand.

But as greater volumes come on stream, Little Bridge will benefit by paying serious attention to wine quality. Very small makers hand selling wine might get away with making middle of the road wines. But to build a reputation and really prosper, mediocrity won’t do. The district’s reputation rests on the outstanding wines, led to date by shiraz and riesling.

The acquisition of Brooks Creek also gives Little Bridge a cellar door – the physical presence it needs to reach the public. The partners say they’re launching Little Bridge at Brooks Creek on mother’s day, Sunday 9 May, with wine, food and music from 12.30pm to 6.00pm.

Here’s a run down on the current Little Bridge offerings:

Little Bridge Canberra District Riesling 2008 $20
A bright, fresh riesling with ripe, citrus-like varietal aroma and flavour. It’s soft and easy drinking, but the flavours are a touch mature for a riesling this young. Drink up.

Little Bridge Canberra District Riesling 2009 $20
A vibrant, floral-scented riesling, quite intensely flavoured but delicate. A significant step up from the 2008

Little Bridge Canberra District Pinot Noir 2009 $26
Made at Lark Hill using fruit from the 860-metre Folly Run vineyard. To my taste it’s the best made of the Little Bridge reds. It smells and tastes of pinot, albeit at the leafier end of the spectrum, and has the texture, too.

Little Bridge Canberra District Sangiovese 2008 $15
Little Bridge Canberra District Shiraz 2008 $20
Little Bridge Canberra District Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $20
I noted blemishes in these three reds that made them unpalatable to me.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2010