Yearly Archives: 2011

Canberra vintage begins with an anxious eye on the sky

23 March 2011People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

No vintage is all bad or all good. Even in the current cool, wet, mildew-riddled season endured by Canberra vignerons, bright spots and hope remain among the devastation, albeit with an anxious eye on the weather.

After a decade-long run of hot, early vintages, Canberra looks distinctly cool climate in 2011, with harvest times likely to revert to those experienced in the seventies, eighties and early nineties.

In the Nanima Valley, Murrumbateman, Ken Helm says he escaped the mildew losses and has a good crop on the vines. He expects to begin the riesling harvest in early April, several weeks later than in 2010.

At nearby Jeir Creek, Rob Howell says he harvested pinot and chardonnay for sparkling wine from Hall on 7 March – weeks later than similar material in recent years. Howell says the crop, being processed at his Murrumbateman winery, is for a commemorative bubbly to be released for Canberra’s centenary in 2013.

Kay Howell says the Jeir Creek vineyard remains in good shape, despite some minor fruit loss early in the season. Timely spraying against mildew did the trick, she says, nervously eyeing clouds building up to the east. “But we don’t want any more rain”, she adds.

At Lerida Estate, Lake George, co-owner Anne Caine laughs, “The application of large sums of money saved the day. We have a pretty good crop”.

Caine’s husband Jim Lumbers hopes their luck will hold. He says, “In August we looked at the long range weather forecast and planned for a wet, cool vintage.

We bought a year’s supply of sprays, a hedging bar for our tractor and hired more people. It’ll push our production costs from $800 to $5,000 a tonne”. “We’ve hedged, shoot thinned, fruit thinned and leaf plucked”, says Lumbers – all aimed at exposing fruit to the air and not overburdening the vines’ ripening capacity.

When I spoke to Jim on 14 March he was harvesting pinot noir for rose. He said, “it’s coming in at 10–11 Baume [around 11 per cent alcohol potential] with lovely fresh flavours. We’d normally be picking material like this in the last week of February”.

Like others in the district, Lumbers views botrytis as the main threat. “It’s heart-in-mouth stuff”, he says, grateful that recent rain fell at night. If it comes during the daytime “we’re sunk”, he believes,

But at the moment the vineyard’s looking beautiful as a result of all the work, neatly hedged, green and laden with big, fat bunches. Lumbers reckons the sheer size of bunches and berries could compensate for the fruit thinning they’ve conducted. He adds, “I’ve never seen anything like the merlot. The berries are as big as plums”.

Nick Spencer, winemaker at Eden Road Wines, in the Kamberra complex, describes 2011 as “bizarre – what looked like being a very, very scary vintage because of disease is now shaping up to be possibly stunning if we can avoid botrytis”.

More rain, says Spencer, brings two risks to quality: botrytis and flavour dilution. Botrytis damage, provided it’s not too rampant, can be mitigated by hand sorting fruit in the winery, discarding bunches affected by the disease. But nothing can be done about dilution. He’s hopeful the region may scrape through March without significant rain.

Spencer sees an atypical, but exciting, ripening pattern in Canberra and nearby Tumbarumba this year. “The flavours are ripe, but the sugar’s not there – it’s more like cooler parts of France and Europe”, he says.

Typically in Australia, sugar (and therefore potential alcohol content) develops early. This is one measure of ripeness. But as sugar builds, winemakers sweat on the arrival ripe fruit flavour, accompanied by ripe tannins.

This year, says Spencer, he’s tasted beautifully ripe Tumbarumba chardonnay and intensely floral Canberra riesling with potential alcohol of just 11 per cent. He expected pinot gris to be the first Canberra fruit he’d harvest, just after the Canberra Day long weekend, closely followed by the first of the riesling.

He believers the very ripe 2008 and 2009 vintages tended to blur regional differences, but anticipates in the cooler 2011 season “expressive wines, revealing regionality and site characters”.

Spencer estimates that by December 2010 Canberra district had already lost about 50 per cent of its crop to downy mildew. Subsequent mildew outbreaks and the potential for botrytis to develop could result in total losses of 60–70 per cent across the district.

At Brindabella Hills, Hall, Roger Harris expects a quiet time after processing fruit from his own vineyard. Harris makes wines for many other grape growers in the district. But this year, he says, “My clients don’t have any fruit”, mostly because of downy mildew.

The losses, however, are not uniform across the district. Stories of success and failure in 2011, he believes, had much to do with the timing of flowering, rainfall and spraying.

“Like everyone else in the district”, says Harris, “we seemed to spend most of the year spraying”. And for Brindabella Hills, at least, the spraying proved effective. Harris says he expects a normal yield across the vineyard of 7.5 to 10 tonnes a hectare – with one exception. Cabernet sauvignon, a late flowerer, failed totally last spring, so there’ll be no crop at all.

By 14 March, Harris had already harvested a “good yield of sauvignon blanc of exciting quality”, with modest but normal sugar and higher than normal acidity. He says the high acidity really accentuates the fruit flavour.

Riesling, he says, shows the first signs of botrytis but it’ll be in the winery out of harm’s way by Wednesday 16 March. Samples of juice looked terrific, with acidity even higher than in the sauvignon blanc – a positive for flavour intensity and longevity, even it means reducing acidity in the winery.

This is rare in Australia, but common in parts of New Zealand. Harris says he’s done it only once before, to fruit from a grower in Tumbarumba.

Harris says the tropical rain pattern coming our way threatened outbreaks of botrytis. However, his remaining variety, shiraz, still a few weeks from ripening, offered some resistance to the disease because of its thick skin and loose, open bunches.

Harris expects the vintage to produce exceptional whites, with reds “very cool climate in style”. Like all of Canberra’s vignerons, he’ll be monitoring his vineyard closely and hoping for the best.

Wine review — Philip Shaw, Penfolds, Punt Road and Helm

23 March 2011Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Philip Shaw The Architect Chardonnay 201 $20
Koomooloo vineyard, Orange, New South Wales
It takes just a few sips of “The Architect” to see why Orange and chardonnay intersect. The area’s cooler sites produce pristine, intense varietal flavours. And, as Philip Shaw demonstrates, these flavours can be captured and delivered for our pleasure at a modest price. He sources the wine from “our younger vines, planted in 1995” – a particularly cool, south-facing block. It’s a tingly, fresh white with a delicate core of citrus and nectarine varietal flavour, tightly wound with natural acidity and underpinned by a subtle textural and flavour influence of yeast lees.

Penfolds Bin 311 Chardonnay 2010 $33.99–$39.99
Tumbarumba, New South Wales
In 1982, Ian and Juliet Cowell established vines for sparkling wine in high, cold Tumbarumba. Others followed, and by the late eighties Seppelt was sourcing high quality sparkling material from the area. Adelaide Steamship later blended Seppelt and Penfolds together, giving Penfolds access to Tumbarumba fruit. Subsequently, chardonnay from Tumbarumba became a key player in the “white Grange” project that culminated in the company’s flagship chardonnay, Yattarna. Bin 311, a virtual poor person’s Yattarna, is a spin off of that project – an ultra fine, taut, elegant, utterly delicious, chardonnay.

Penfolds Cellar Reserve Gewurztraminer 2008 $29.99–$33.99
Woodbury Vineyard, Eden Valley, South Australia
The Woodbury vineyard, planted by Tollana in the 1960s, ultimately became part of the conglomerate of assets owned by Foster’s Treasury Wine Estates. One part of the vineyard, prosaically named Bay F1 Block, produces wonderful gewürztraminer – the muscat clone of traminer. Despite having identical DNA they taste totally unalike – traminer being vinous and savoury, and gewürztraminer sensuously muscat like. This dry version, captures the variety’s pure, heady musk and Turkish delight aroma and flavour. While a few months maturation on yeast lees added textural richness to a wine that seems made for Asian food.

Philip Shaw The Idiot Shiraz 2009 $20
Koomooloo vineyard, Orange, New South Wales
In a wine industry first, an idiot won a gold medal and three trophies at this year’s Royal Sydney Wine Show. It wasn’t just any idiot, but a pure, vibrant, peppery, fine-boned, medium-bodied shiraz from Philip Shaw’s Koomooloo vineyard, located 900 metres above sea level at Orange. Shaw, former chief winemaker for Rosemount, planted the vines in 1989 and grafted them to shiraz between 2003 and 2005. “The Idiot”, an appealing drink-now wine, is one of several in Shaw’s character series. Shaw says, “with the lighter, livelier food of today, I believe wine should be a match for that”.

Punt Road Airlie Bank Cabernet Merlot 2008 $18
Yarra Valley, Victoria
Like the two Philip Shaw Orange wines reviewed today, Airlie Bank delivers true regional, varietal character at a realistic price. The Yarra Valley, because of its diverse sites, produces high quality in an unusually wide range of styles. Airlie Bank, for example, combines the ripe, bright cassis-like flavour of cabernet with merlot pluminess. It’s a seamless, medium-bodied combination, leading with vibrant fruit in the aroma and palate, and finishing with the fine but quite firm tannins of the two varieties. It’s made to enjoy young.

Helm Premium Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $52
Murrumbateman, Canberra District, New South Wales
Long-term collaboration between winemaker Ken Helm and neighbouring grape grower, Al Lustenberger, ultimately produced outstanding riesling. A similar collaboration on cabernet sauvignon, however, hasn’t scaled the same heights – despite significant quality shifts in recent years. The 2008 is probably the best yet, built on sumptuous, ripe varietal fruit, boosted by the obvious but not too intrusive flavour of Missouri oak. Helm says he and daughter Stephanie “have been working hard to balance the oak and fruit” and from 2009 have been trialling French oak alongside the American. This is good wine, though I baulk at the price when classics like Majella Coonawarra are available at $33.

Wine review — Helm, All Saints and Punt Road

20 March 2011Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Helm Canberra District Cabernet Shiraz 2008 $35
Ken Helm says he’s back to where he started in 1979 with this charming blend of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz. Back then, says Ken, it was a blend of necessity – the only red grapes available for his first vintage. This time around it’s an intentional blend, sourced from mature vines on Virginia Rawling’s neighbouring vineyard. It’s a soft, easy drinking elegant red built on vibrant, fresh, berry fruit flavours. Cabernet provides a fine backbone of tannin and shiraz gently fleshes out the mid palate. There’s oak in the equation, too, but playing an appropriate support role to the fruit.

All Saints Rutherglen Shiraz 2009 $25
St Leonards Vineyard Cabernet Franc 2010 $26
Some years back Peter Brown of Brown Brothers, Milawa, bought the historic All Saints winery. Following his death, his children carry on the venture, making bright modern wines, some new, some traditional. Their shiraz is a modern take on an old local classic. It’s particularly fragrant, with attractive sweet, fruity high notes that carry through to a bright, fresh, full-flavoured palate. A load of firm tannin then asserts itself, in a reassuring Rutherglen kind of way. The cabernet franc, on the other hand, is medium bodied, featuring herbal and savoury flavours with a gently tannic finish.

Punt Road Yarra Valley Airlie Bank

Chardonnay 2009 $18
Pinot Noir 2009 $18

I was at a pinot noir conference on the Mornington Peninsula in February 2009 when the Yarra winemakers dashed home to fight bushfires engulfing their vineyards. It’s a wonder after the intense heatwave, culminating the fire, that the Yarra makers produced any wine at all, let alone as appealing as these two, made by Kate Goodman. The chardonnay is at the taut, lemony end of the varietal spectrum, with a delicious acidic, leesy bite. The light bodied pinot noir delivers savoury varietal flavour, a smooth texture and lean, tannic bite. These are understated wines that grow on you.

Wine review — Stella Bella, Tamar Ridge, Printhie, All Saints and Paxton

16 March 2011Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Stella Bella Cabernet Merlot 2008 $25–$33
Margaret River, Western Australia
Stella Bella; stellar quality, too, doing what Margaret River does best: combining the Bordeaux varieties cabernet sauvignon and merlot in a powerful but elegant potentially very long-lived red. The 2008, made by Stuart Pym from vineyards near the town and further north at Cowaramup, is sensational – an extraordinarily sweet perfumed, seductive cabernet. Though the aroma borders on floral, with the intensity of violets, the deep, sweet fruit comes in a tight, firm matrix of tannin – cabernet’s indelible thumbprint. You can pay a lot more for cabernet of this calibre.

Tamar Ridge Devil’s Corner Pinot Grigio 2010 $18.95
Tamar Valley and East Coast, Tasmania
In August 2010 Brown Brothers of Milawa, Victoria, bought Tamar Ridge Estates from Gunns Limited. The move, says Ross Brown, fitted a company strategy to mitigate the effects of global warming by sourcing grapes from cooler areas. And cool it is, demonstrated by the pristine, pear-like varietal flavour and spritely acidity of Devil’s Corner 2010. Pinot gris simply doesn’t deliver this purity and racy freshness in warmer areas. It’s a wine to enjoy right now; trade up to the 2011 this time next year.

Printhie Chardonnay 2010 $16.15–$18
Orange, New South Wales
Really good, regional wine needn’t cost the earth. There’s proof in Printhie’s 2010 chardonnay, sourced by winemaker Drew Tuckwell from five vineyards located between 650 and 1060 metres above sea level. The high altitude and consequent cool conditions suit early-ripening chardonnay, concentrating the varietal flavour and retaining acidity. The wine’s tight acid backbone lends vitality to its intense melon and citrus varietal flavour – a full bodied but elegant style to enjoy young.

Tamar Ridge Devil’s Corner Pinot Noir 2010 $18.95
Tamar Valley and East Coast, Tasmania
Brown Brothers purchase of Tamar Ridge from Gunns Limited also gave it entrée to the pinot noir market, the fastest growing red wine style, says Brown. The variety makes up 30 per cent of Tamar’s harvest. Devil’s Corner, the cheapest of Tamar’s three pinots, rates among the best sub-$20 versions on the market. It presents the variety’s high-toned fragrance, delicacy, silkiness and elegant, fine-boned structure – but not the too-simple, confection-like fruit of many budget pinots. Yes, it’s at the lighter end of the pinot spectrum. But that just means good early drinking: now to 2013.

All Saints Durif $25
Rutherglen, Victoria
Durif, also known as petite syrah, is an accidental cross of shiraz and peloursin, first identified by Francois Durif at Montpellier, France, in 1880 and brought to Australia by Francois de Castella in 1908. It thrived in Rutherglen’s hot climate and became the region’s signature red variety, tending to a porty ripeness and burly tannic structure. Where some might politely be called “rustic”, All Saints’ highly polished version packs the variety’s aromatic, very ripe, plummy flavours into a supple, smooth palate, albeit underpinned with a truckload of tannin.

Paxton Quandong Farm Vineyard Shiraz 2009 $30
McLaren Vale, South Australia
David Paxton established vineyards in McLaren Vale in 1979 and in recent years used Quandong Farm vineyard “as the test-bed for the Paxton biodynamic programme that focuses on soil health, bio-diversity and non-chemical weed control”. His son Michael makes shiraz from the vineyard, using wild yeast and extended maceration on skins. He matures it in mainly older French oak barrels and bottles it without fining or filtering. The result is a limpid and lovely McLaren Vale red of a modest 13.5 per cent alcohol. It’s rich and pure, with gentle but abundant tannins and an appealing earthy, savoury undertone.

Beer review — Southern Tier and Weihenstephaner

16 March 2011Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Southern Tier Phin and Matt’s Extraordinary Ale 355ml $6.75
Hats off to Phin and Matt, whoever they are, for making a complex, fairly alcoholic ale (5.6 per cent) that’s subtle and inviting. The aroma’s all warm, generous malt with a hint of hops. The generous malt continues on a silky, deep palate, dried out by beautifully balanced, clean hops bitterness

Weihenstephaner Tradition Bayrisch Dunkel 500ml $4.77
This is a dark version of the Bayrisch mild, helles (pale) style reviewed last week. A luxuriant pale brown head caps the deep, burnished-mahogany liquid underneath. It’s a mild, gently hopped brew accented with the chocolate-like flavours and lingering bitterness of roasted, malted barley.

Toasting beer chemistry

16 March 2011BeerChris Shanahan

It’s the international year of chemistry, said the brewers’ press release. So I asked Bill Taylor, Lion Nathan head brewer, for one really big thing this means for all of us.

“The major breakthrough, something all brewers work with every day”, said Taylor, “is the understanding of naturally occurring enzymes”.

Since ancient times, Taylor explained, brewers knew that varying temperatures of barley-malt solution (the mash) produced beers of different flavour, alcohol content and body (residual carbohydrates).

But they didn’t understand the mechanism. The discovery of a spectrum of enzymes (many of them similar to those in our saliva) and their sensitivity to temperature finally gave brewers greater control of their craft.

Just as our saliva breaks down starch in bread, different enzymes break down starch in the mash to a range of sugars.

By turning enzymes on or off with temperature, brewers control the level of fermentable sugars, ultimately determining the alcohol level, body and complexity of flavours in a beer.

They’ve Bin everywhere — Penfolds releases new reds

16 March 2011People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Price seems always at the heart of any new release of Penfolds much-loved, highly traded bin number wines. Fierce retail battles became part of the landscape from the late seventies, following the collapse of retail price maintenance.

In recent years, however, a reticence to be first to cut means a little retail shadow boxing precedes the first real punch being landed – usually a king hit of margin numbing power.

This year for example, Kemenys, a large Sydney independent, and 1^st Choice, owned by Coles, swung the first air punches. Both promised not to be beaten; but neither revealed their prices. Then Dan Murphy, the Woolworths-owned industry giant, burst out of its corner, smashing prices to around cost – forcing the “We won’t be beaten” retailers to follow.

This all happened about two weeks ago (from day of publication), so prices will have moved on, as liquor specials normally run for one week. But competitive pressure remains hot, increasing the likelihood of retailers taking out the Penfolds bins a few more times yet.

The extreme price variability of Penfolds reds isn’t unique. Any wine capable of driving retail traffic can be sucked into the weekly discounting cycle. But Penfolds stands alone in its appeal to collectors and the volume of older vintages moving through the secondary market.

Indeed Penfolds reds underpin traditional auctions. But if auction volumes are large, they remain a buyers market. Recent prices suggest that collectors simply have to buy at peak discount if they want their collections to even hold value.

The accompanying table compares retail prices for the new releases and the most recent auction prices for the previous vintage, released a year ago.

The just released Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz 2009, for example, has a recommended retail price of $33.99 but sold at $18.45 shortly after release. At about the same time, the 2008 vintage fetched a hammer price of $20 at Langton’s auctions – translating to about $18 net for the seller (after an estimated 10 per cent commission to the auctioneer) and a net price to the buyer of $23, after adding Langton’s 15 per cent buyer’s premium and GST.

In this example the seller received 45 cents a bottle less than the rock bottom discounted retail price of the new release; and the buyer paid $4.55 more – but still $10.99 below the recommended price. And the auctioneer clipped the ticket on both sides.

Whatever we make of the price disparities, not everyone piles into the specials and much of the new release will trickle through retail stores at or around the recommended price.

Winemaker Peter Gago says prices of the bin wines are now underpinned by very strong overseas demand. “We can’t keep up with it”, he says, “especially Bin 389 and Bin 407”.

Interest is “enormous” in Europe and America, Thailand loves Bin 2 Shiraz Mataro (little known in Australia) and China can’t get enough – literally. Gago says people are “buying in California and Europe and on-selling to China” outside official distribution channels.

Still, there’s ample to satisfy demand in Australia and the wines are very, very good – even those from the 2008 vintage, perhaps the hottest and most difficult ever in South Australia.

Gago describes 2008 as “a vintage of two parts – pertaining to the profound differences of fruit before and after the extreme SA heatwave of March 3–16”. In the unprecedented heatwave the temperature exceeded 38 degrees for 12 days and 35 degrees for the balance.

We’ve heard lots of talk about pre- and post-heat 2008 vintage – including stories of wine fermenting out to a port-like 18 per cent alcohol. Unlikely as it seems, though, we’ve yet to find a post-heat winemaker.

Before talking to Gago, though, we popped the wines on the tasting bench, sipping them over three or four days. The 2008s in the line up passed the taste test with honours, with no sign of the porty flavours or hard tannins expected of a very hot vintage. After that, knowing whether they were pre- or post-heat seemed academic. But we asked Peter Gago.

He says he harvested Magill Estate from February 6, a month before the heatwave commenced, and had 90–95 per cent of Barossa material in the winery by the time the heat arrived on 3 March. Quite a lot of grapes from later-ripening cooler areas like Coonawarra arrived after the heat – but the heat in those areas proved less damaging.

We can assume much of the cabernet in Bin 389 and Bin 407 to be in this category, though neither shows any ill effects.

Bin 23 Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2010 $32–$39.99
Bin 23 is an unlikely star of this year’s line up. It’s the least traded of the bin wines – just one sale we could trace in Langton’s records and no sign of retailer discounting in our Google search, with the exception of Glengarry of Auckland. It’s fully priced at the recommended price but if you can persuade a retailer to around $30, you’re on the money. Penfolds early pinots tended to be big and burley without what pinotphiles call “pinosity”. The 2010 is simply lovely – a fragrant, silky, complex pinot with the Penfolds structural stamp.

Bin 138 Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2009 $17.55–$29.99
GSM stands for good stuff, mate or grenache shiraz mataro, in this instance led by 2009’s pure fruitiness. Grenache leads the charge here with its high-toned, musky, fruity perfume – characters that comes through in the smooth, fruity palate. Shiraz adds body and depth, while mourvedre injects spiciness and firm structural tannins. The juicy fruitiness makes Bin 138 a good drink now but it also cellars well. But try before you buy, as grenache’s distinct flavour doesn’t appeal to everyone.

Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz 2009 $18.45–$33.99
Young Bin 128 often proves tricky in masked tastings. The elegant structure and firm tannins sets our thoughts down the cabernet track. But ultimately the ripe berry flavours and spiciness at the core point back to cool-climate shiraz, albeit in a particularly tannic Penfolds mould. We prefer Bin 128 with five to ten years bottle age.

Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2008 $18.45–$33.99
Though priced the same as Bin 128, Bin 28 tends to appeal more widely and outperform Bin 128 at auction. It was originally sourced from Penfolds Kalimna vineyard in the northern Barossa then decades back became a multi-region, warm-climate blend, with a significant Barossa component. It’s bold and tannic But the abundant, soft tannins form a deep, complex matrix with the wine’s sweet, ripe fruit – reminiscent of very ripe black cherries. It’s ripe but not over-ripe; tannic but not hard; and built to cellar, though it’s appealing now, too.

Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $33.65–$54.99
Bin 407 is a straight cabernet sourced principally from the Limestone Coast region, stretching from Padthaway to Coonawarra. In the 2008 vintage it’s built on very ripe cabernet flavours towards the cassis end of the variety’s spectrum. Over a few days’ tasting this sweet, purely varietal fruit flavour gradually seeped through the tight, fine cocoon of oak and fruit tannin. Despite the wine’s strength and backbone, it’s elegantly structured — a character that sure to be revealed after cellaring over the next five to ten years.

Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz 2008 $47.90–$64.99
The new Bin 150 acknowledges the unique quality of shiraz grown around gently undulating Marananga, Gnadenfrei, Stonewell and Seppeltsfield on the Barossa’s western rim. Penfolds winemakers revere the area. Peter Gago says the new wine, matured in a combination of new and old French and American oak, comes from several vineyards around Marananga. It’s a big, buoyant wine, flouncing with fruit and oak, the aroma and palate boosted by volatile acidity (winemaker jargon for vinegar). It’s present in all wines in trace amounts, though not normally detectable. A tiny increment in volatile acidity, as Bin 150 illustrates, adds a thrilling dimension to the oak-fruit interplay. Grange creator, Max Schubert, enshrined the practice in Penfolds red wine making, though his successors appear to have backed off (until now).

Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 2008 $37.45–$64.99
Bin 389 was originally an extension of the Grange style — big, bold, tannic and matured in American oak — but using cabernet, rather than shiraz as the leading variety. Over the decades fruit sourcing for the cabernet component shifted decisively to the cool southeast and now includes Bordertown, Wrattonbully, Padthaway and Coonawarra. Shiraz continues to come from warm areas. In 2008 we see Bin 389 at its biggest and boldest – led by intense, firm cabernet; filled out by shiraz and flaunting the influence of American oak. These all come through, though, as a single unified flavour, albeit idiosyncratic, in a wine of great power. Bin 389 is best after extended cellaring – ten years and more.

Wine	Recommended retail $	Best advertised $	Auction seller’s net price $ ²	Auction buyer’s net price $³
Penfolds Bin 23 Pinot Noir	39.99	24.65 ¹	22.50	28.75
Penfolds Bin 138 Barossa Valley Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre	29.99	17.55	18.90	24.15
Penfolds Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiriaz	33.99	18.45	18.00	23.00
Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna South Australia Shiraz	33.99	18.45	18.90	24.15
Penfolds Bin 407 South Australia Cabernet Sauvignon	54.99	33.65	23.40	29.90
Penfolds Bin 150 Marananga Barossa Valley Shiraz	64.99	47.90	No sale	No sale
Penfolds Bin 389 South Australia Cabernet Shiraz	64.99	37.45	32.40	41.40

Glengarry wines, Auckland. Price in Australian dollars. All other prices Dan Murphys.
Last sale of previous vintage, Langton’s Auctions, assumed 10% auctioneer’s commission.
Last sale of previous vintage, Langton’s auctions, including auctioneer’s premium and GST.

Wine review — Pizzini, Waipara Hills and Paxton

13 March 2011Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Pizzini King Valley Verduzzo 2010 $20–$22
Verduzzo, a native of north eastern Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giula region, thrives on the Pizzini family’s vineyards on the river flats of Victoria’s King Valley. It makes full-bodied dry white (although there’s a sweet version, too), with an aroma and taste reminiscent of melon rind and lemon. The fresh, full palate finishes with a pleasant, tart bite, setting it apart from mainstream varieties. It’s fermented mainly in stainless steel tanks at low temperature to capture fresh fruity flavours. But a small component fermented in oak barrels adds subtle complexity and rich texture.

Waipara Hills Equinox Pinot Noir 2009 $27–$30
New Zealand’s Waipara region sits between Christchurch and Marlborough in northern Canterbury. Clearly its long, cool, dry ripening season suits pinot noir. Equinox is a pale to medium in colour, with a bright, youthful crimson hue at the rim. It’s highly aromatic, featuring much of the pinot spectrum: spice, musk, red berries and earthiness. These characters come through, too, on a very fine and elegant, tasty palate. High acidity joins with fine tannins to give structure and a racy, freshness. It’s a wine to enjoy over the next two or three years but seems to lack the length or depth to develop over the long term.

Paxton AAA McLaren Vale Shiraz Grenache 2009 $20–$23
This is an irresistibly slurpable, gentle wine built on vibrant fruit flavours and proven symbiosis of the shiraz-grenache blend. It’s generously flavoured and ripe, as you’d expect from warm McLaren Vale. But there’s nothing heavy, hot or overly tannic about it as we sometimes see from these warmer areas. David Paxton writes that it’s a blend of five parcels of shiraz with three of grenache – ultimately in a ratio of two-thirds shiraz to one-third grenache. The grenache tempers the shiraz, adding fragrant high notes and an attractive spiciness to the fuller earthy, savoury shiraz character.

How Winewise beat National Wine Show to the punch

9 March 2011People, WineChris Shanahan

Over the last few decades the boasting theme of Australian wine show organisers changed fundamentally. “My show’s bigger than yours” gave way to “mine’s better than yours”. Canberra’s National Show, held each November, boasted longest and strongest across those decades. It billed itself as the grand final – the last major show of the year, with entries to many classes restricted to medal winners from other shows.

Then a few years back various wine industry players began criticising the national. Its tough entry standards, designed to filter out all but the best wines, had become too restrictive, they said. In particular, minimum quantity requirements, and a reluctance to recognise the growing importance of regional wine shows, left large swathes of small makers out of contention.

Over time, the absence of so many top players across all classes sapped the show’s credibility – especially its “grand final” claim.

But the show organisers listened to the criticism and in 2010 introduced a raft of changes. By then, however, they’d been usurped by Canberra’s Winewise magazine. Building on the credibility of the long-established Winewise Small Vignerons Awards, Winewise conducted its own grand in February 2010.

Proprietor Lester Jesberg, prompted in part by the National Wine Show’s shortcomings, had plans for the first Winewise Championship well under way by October 2009 – a year ahead of the National’s changes. As we drove from Melbourne airport to judge at the 2009 Macedon Regional Wine Show, Jesberg provided details.

His idea was to hold a ‘best of the best’ competition, inviting gold medallists from Australia’s national and regional wine shows – a position not all that far from the National’s revised stance.

Then, recognising that many of our best producers don’t enter wine shows, Winewise extended the invitation to wines that had succeeded in its own regular masked tastings – conducted to wine show standards.

At www.winewise.com.au, Jesberg comments on this year’s championship, “While the National Show has now revised its eligibility criteria to recognize the Winewise Small Vigneron Awards and selected Regional Shows, many smaller producers still find the criteria hard to meet and confine their wines to the regional shows, thus missing out on valuable benchmarking across the national spectrum. This competition brings all the wines together for the benefit of both winemakers and consumers.”

The list of medallion winners (the best wine from each category) is truly impressive. It includes wines from Australia’s largest and smallest producers and, with only a few outriders, the varieties match known regional specialties.

The outriders were a merlot from Mudgee (Charnwood Estate 2009), a Barossa tempranillo (Running with Bulls 2009) and a Goulburn River mourvedre (Terra Felix E’vette’s Block 2009). But these results are nevertheless credible, and simply confirm that masked tastings strip away our prejudices.

While the full list of results won’t be revealed until April, a sneak preview shows that it’s peppered with wonderful wines. However, like the National’s catalogue, big gaps remain despite efforts to rope in all the champs. So many wonderful wines are simply not there.

Len Sorbello of Winewise admits, “not all invitees entered their wines”. That could be for a number of reasons, but most likely because many of our very best small producers see no benefit in entering wine shows.

The best of these are their own fiercest critics. They constantly benchmark their own wines against the best from around the world and remain forever restless. They’re harsh and honest in their own appraisals and always see room to improve their wines through fine-tuning in the vineyard and winery.

These makers need neither the marketing benefit of awards nor the benchmarking provided by judges. They’ll never enter shows no matter how nicely they’re asked. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It simply means that grand final wine shows or championships, by whatever name, can’t really be called the ‘best of the best’. ‘Best of the best wines entered in shows’ would be more accurate. And that will always include plenty of top names.

That doesn’t diminish the value of the National or Winewise Championship or any other well-run show or competition. They remain a major force for good. They highlight outstanding wines to consumers, relegate poor quality products and promote discussion among winemakers. And many makers attend exhibitor tastings, looking long and hard at winning wines for clues about how to improve their own products.

And the honours list from the 2011 Winewise Championship, judged in February, offers some magnificent drinking. The full list of results will be published in the April edition of Winewise.

The 2011 medallion winners

Chardonnay: 2009 Penfolds Reserve Bin 09A Chardonnay (Adelaide Hills)

Riesling: 2005 St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling (Eden Valley)

Sauvignon blanc: 2010 Wicks Estate Sauvignon Blanc (Adelaide Hills)

Semillon: 2006 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon (Hunter Valley)

Pinot gris: 2010 Nepenthe Altitude Pinot Gris (Adelaide Hills)

Viognier: 2009 Yalumba Eden Valley Viognier (Eden Valley)

Other dry white: 2006 Tahbilk Marsanne (Goulburn Valley)

Sweet white: 2009 Yalumba FSW8B Botrytis Viognier (Wrattonbully)

Sparkling wine: 2000 Freycinet Radenti Sparkling (Tasmania)

Pinot noir: 2008 Paringa Estate, Estate Pinot Noir (Mornington Peninsula)

Cabernet sauvignon: 2008 Fuddling Cup Cabernet Sauvignon (Geographe WA)

Bordeaux blend: 2009 Catching Thieves Cabernet Merlot (Margaret River)

Merlot: 2009 Charnwood Estate Merlot (Mudgee)

Classic red blend: 2008 Lindemans Limestone Ridge (Coonawarra)

Shiraz: 2009 Shaw and Smith Shiraz (Adelaide Hills)

Tempranillo: 2009 Running With Bulls Tempranillo (Barossa Valley)

Other red blend: 2009 Gilligan Shiraz Grenache/Mourvèdre (McLaren Vale)

Other red varietal: 2009 Terra Felix E’vette’s Block Mourvedre (Goulburn Valley)

Wine review — St Hugo, Grossett, McWilliams Mount Pleasant, Chapel Hill, Quinta das Stencostas and Bremerton

9 March 2011Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Jacob’s Creek St Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 $33–$50
Coonawarra, South Australia

Cabernet sauvignon has been called the king of grapes; but never the queen. Anthropomorphically speaking, it’s a commanding, manly variety, personified by St Hugo – a solid, square-jawed, broad-shouldered, unapologetic Don Draper of a red, bristling with five-o’clock-shadow tannins. Like Draper, though, it charms with a combination of power, elegance and sweet complexity, underlying a tough, inscrutable surface. Our sample drank well for a week after opening – its deep, sweet, ripe varietal fruit flavour gradually welling up through the firm tannins.

Jeffrey Grosset Gaia 2008 $60
Clare Valley, South Australia

Cabernet sauvignon reveals a feminine side in mixed company – usually its companions from France’s Bordeaux region, cabernet franc and merlot. In Jeffrey Grosset’s Gaia these varieties boost the perfume, create a unique but cabernet-based flavour and mollify the still significant tannins. Where brooding St Hugo leads with tannin and slowly reveals fruit, Gaia dazzles with fruit then follows with deep, velvety tannins. Grosset’s winemaking signature – shimmering, pristine, varietal fruitiness –probably stems from his mastery of riesling, a wine that relies on fruit alone. He transposes that effectively into this generous, graceful, oak-matured, potentially long-lived red.

McWilliams Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Semillon 2010 $11.99–$17.99
Hunter Valley, New South Wales

These days the word “semillon” unaccompanied by “sauvignon blanc” is the wine marketer’s kiss of death. Yet this unloved (on its own) variety performs beautifully in parts of Australia and in the Hunter makes unique, lemony, tart, low-alcohol dry whites capable of prolonged ageing. They’re written about a lot, but remain a niche variety largely, I believe, because of the idiosyncratic, love-it or hate-it flavour. Fortunately for true believers, anti-fashion comes at a discount. So, Elizabeth, one of the oldest and biggest selling of the style is often slashed to around $12. It’s simply delicious in that unique, lemony, tart, bone-dry way.

Chapel Hill Il Vescovo Savagnin 2010 $16–$20
Kangarilla, McLaren Vale, South Australia

Last decade Australian vignerons planted the Spanish white variety albarino, then found that it was actually savagnin, a non-musk clone of traminer. By whatever name, it’s thriving in a variety of sites with makers largely settling on “savagnin” rather than its other synonyms. Chapel Hill’s savagnin grows at Kangarilla, one of McLaren Vale’s cooler, elevated sites, towards the southern boundary of the Adelaide Hills. The flavour’s unique – combining stone fruit, citrus and savouriness in a full, but subtle way. Contact with the skin after crushing and maturation on spent yeast cells added texture and a pleasant tannic tweak to the finish.

Quinta das Setencostas Branco 2009 $10.49–$14.99
Alenquer, Portugal

Until recently we’d not have found this on an Australian retail shelf. But the strong dollar combined with the growing confidence and international knowledge of our big retailers sees them scouring the world for profitable direct imports – like this tasty Portuguese white imported by Coles for its 1^st Choice and Vintage Cellars stores. It’s from the Alenquer region, not a household name in Australia, and a blend of ferneo pires, arinto, chardonnay, rabo de ovelha and vital. It’s a medium bodied, bone-dry style with what we might call vinous rather than varietal flavours against a leesy background, with quirky, dry savoury finish. It’s fully priced at $14.99 but very good value during periodic discounts to $10.49.

Bremerton Coulthard Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $19–$22
Langhorne Creek, South Australia

Langhorne Creek, one of Australia’s biggest and most important winegrowing regions, produces rich, full-flavoured reds economically. Its varietally pure, sumptuous reds, particularly cabernet sauvignon, earned the area’s reputation as Australia’s mid palate – and drove large scale planting there in the 1990s. While the multi-region blends have a role, it’s far more interesting, I believe, to enjoy Langhorne Creek on its own. In this lovely red, winemaker Rebecca Wilson captures the full, ripe flavour of cabernet from her family’s vineyard. It has the region’s thumbprint slurpy, juicy fruit flavours and abundant but velvet tannins.