Yering Station Village Pinot Noir 2011 $21–$25 Yarra Valley, Victoria The Rathbone family produces several pinots from its Yarra Valley vineyards. And as we see often in the wine industry, a company achieving superior quality in its top-shelf wines generally leads the pack in lower priced wine as well. Yering Station’s entry-level Village pinot delivers the thrill of the variety at a fair price. The wine’s pale colour belies its depth of mouth-watering “pinosity” – a combination of detailed varietal flavour, fine supporting tannins and silky texture.
Kate Hill Cabernet Merlot 2010 $24–$30 Coal River and Tamar Valleys, Tasmania At a recent tasting, Kate Hill’s wine sat beside a comparable blend from Bordeaux sub-region, Puisseguin-Saint Emillion. I’d hoped for contrast but also some similarities. Contrast we got; similarities zero. Kate Hill’s vivacious cabernet merlot blend thrilled with its musky perfume and lively palate – based on ripe berry flavours, seasoned with the pleasing leafiness these varieties deliver in cool climates. Fine, soft tannins added to the wine’s drink now charm. It’s an uncomplicated, delicious expression of the cool climate and the two varieties. The French wine, on the other hand, proved a poor representative from a region capable of making charming, elegant reds.
Finca Rosal Old Vines Monastrell 2010 $20 Yecla, Murcia, Spain Thanks to the strong Australian dollar we can enjoy this bright, fresh Spanish wine at a realistic price. It’s made from monastrell, a Spanish red variety known in Australia since the 1830s as mataro and more recently by its French name, mourvedre. The wine is made in the clean, bright, modern style. It’s limpid and vibrantly coloured, featuring sweet, blueberry-like fruit flavours, with earthy and spicy notes, layered with soft, drying tannins.
Yering Station Village Chardonnay 2011 $21–$25 Yarra Valley, Victoria The three beautiful chardonnays reviewed today present shades of the contemporary Australian oak-fermented style. In body, Yering Station sits between the fuller Howard Park wine and the more delicate Galli Estate version. Yering Station (80 per cent barrel fermented) leads with vibrant, citrus and nectarine-like varietal flavour. A subtle funky note and smooth texture (from partial wild-yeast fermentation and maturation in yeast lees) season the fruit with detracting from its vitality.
Galli Estate Camelback Chardonnay 2012 $17–$20 Sunbury, Victoria Galli Estate, the lightest and leanest of the three chardonnays reviewed today, captures the racy, grapefruit-like, just-ripe flavour of cool-grown chardonnay. Although the entire blend was fermented in oak barrels, and 80 per cent of it kept there for maturation on yeast lees, the oak is barely, if at all, detectable. Its use will have added to the texture of the wine, but for the drinker this is all about fine fruit flavour, intensified by brisk acidity.
Howard Park Miamup Chardonnay 2011 $23–$27 Southern Margaret River, Western Australia Howard Park Miamup chardonnay offers a bolder expression of chardonnay than we see in the two expressions reviewed today. The fuller, rounder stone-fruit-like flavour comes bundled with assertive funky notes (injected by the winemaking techniques) and oak flavours. It’s not a return to the fat, oak chardonnays of the past but a bright, fresh, modern approach that’s not afraid to let the winemaking inputs stand equally with the fruit. If you were enjoying a chardonnay dinner, you might begin with Galli Estate and oysters, move on to garfish and Yering Station – and finish on lobster and Howard Park.
Young’s Luxury Double Malt Chocolate Stout 500ml $5.90 There’s chocolate in the brew and it shows up as a dry, bitter note in the finish – like strong high-cocoa chocolate. But more than anything it’s a full-bore stout featuring rich, roasted malt flavour, all-round opulence, smooth texture and assertive hops bitterness. A small glass on a cold night would be perfect.
Gage Roads Abstinence Belgian Dubbel Chocolate Ale 640ml $7.90 Western Australia’s Gage Roads, partly owned by Woolworths, made this Belgian style ale using Belgian yeast strains and Gabriel chocolate from Margaret River. Delicious chocolate flavour, tinged with hops, permeates the lively 7.4 per cent alcohol palate. Alas, the ale lost its head almost instantly.
Canberra’s Wig and Pen Brewery has been selected to brew beer for the presentation dinner following this year’s Australian International Beer Awards. The Wig earned this precious gig through its performance at last year’s awards.
The awards, conducted annually by the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) and the University of Ballarat, enjoys a strong reputation globally.
This year’s event has attracted a record 1,480 entries from 270 brewers in 35 countries. The 12 per cent increase includes greater entry numbers from Australia, New Zealand Brazil, Japan and the United States.
The RASV is also behind the Royal Melbourne Wine Show. And the University of Ballarat became involved because of its courses in brewing and malting. Chief judge of the event this year will be Brad Rogers, brewer and partner at Stone and Wood brewery, Byron Bay.
Peter Lehmann H and V Adelaide Hills Pinot Gris 2012 $22 Minor mutations of the pinot vine explain how we can enjoy white (pinot blanc), pink-grey (pinot gris) and red (pinot noir) wine from a single vine variety. All three deliver their best flavours in cool climates. For Peter Barossa-based Lehmann wines, that means sourcing fruit from a couple of cooler, high-altitude vineyards in the Adelaide Hills. Though there’s none of the pink-grey colour we often see in pinot gris, the wine shows the variety’s silky texture, enhanced by fermentation of a portion in oak barrels. The flavour is delicate – a little like fresh pear – leaving the focus on texture and racy freshness.
Quilty Silken Thread Mudgee Petit Verdot 2011 $22 The late-ripening Bordeaux variety petit verdot gives colour and complexity to blends with cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot. However, recent genetic research, writes Jancis Robinson, puts it in a separate vine family, including little known varieties, ardonnet, gros verdot and petit verdot faux. Like the Bordelaise, Australian wine makers tend to blend petit verdot away. But Des Quilty and others let petit verdot standalone. At a recent tasting of lesser-known varieties, Quilty’s version appealed to a range of first-time petit verdot tasters. Not as deep as some I’ve tasted, perhaps because of the cool vintage, it delivered ripe, juicy flavour on a pleasingly elegant palate.
Toppers Mountain New England Gewurztraminer 2012 $35 In Wine Grapes: A complete guide to 1368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours, Jancis Robinson describes gewürztraminer as “one of the most headily and distinctively aromatic varietals of all with strong lychee flavours and high alcohol levels”. She says the latest genetic research classifies the variety as “an aromatic mutation of savagnin rose” that probably occurred in Germany’s Rheingau region. Toppers Mountain’s version, from the cool New England region, NSW, resembles more the plush, highly aromatic, almost viscous versions from Alsace, France. A little bit goes a long way. But I can imagine this with pork sausage, pate, or, alternatively, with the spicy tang of Thai food.
Venerable survivor -- mourvedre vine, planted 1853, Roland Flat, Barossa Valley
The release of the 2011 Penfolds Shiraz Mourvedre Bin 2, an old label from the 1960s resurrected in the 1990s, and a “march mataro madness” campaign by Barossa wine merchant David Farmer, begs the question of what this great old variety really is. 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 since the 1830s. 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.
Barossa vigneron 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 plot of ripe grenache, the mourvedre mixed in it with it 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.
But then as we digest that, Penfolds notes, based on Barossa fruit, seem more consistent with Robinson’s, “Mourvedre is dark in colour, smells of Provençal herbs and spices and has plenty of tannin stuffing. This is a wine varietal greatly valued by Penfolds winemakers for its blending attributes; toning down the exuberant qualities of shiraz, while adding overall complexity and palate grip”.
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.
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, Chris Ringland and Rolf Binder, took the unique beauty of the Barossa’s very old vines to the world.
Mourvedre played a key role in the 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. Penfolds resurrected it in 1980 and 1981, then discontinued it, shipping the remainder 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. He believes the vines to be 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.
On glug.com.au, David Farmer notes the long history of the variety in the Barossa Valley and warm inland regions. He warns of the marketing danger of using two names for the one variety, especially given the difficulty of pronouncing “mourvedre” and the much longer usage of “mataro” in Australia.
He writes, “To persist with the term mourvedre risks failure as no one is confident in pronouncing it. At Glug we will stick to Mataro as it is a tough, honest sounding and avoids a name which is far too French for our taste. The Barossa Valley Wine Show and Penfolds should do likewise. To get the Australian red wine drinker interested in this wonderful variety will require serious effort and using dual names is a disaster”.
Farmer notes that of the 43 straight or blended mataros listed on Dan Murphy’s website, 20 use “mataro”, 22 use “mourvedre” and one uses the Spanish, “monastrell”. Clearly, winemakers remain split on which name to use, though I suspect the pendulum has swung to “mourvedre”, especially among the young.
In Wine grapes: A complete guide to 1368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours (2012), Jancis Robinson lists the variety as “monastrell” and says the evidence points to it being of Spanish origin, with the first known mention of it in the 1380s. She says the variety probably found its way to southern France in the sixteenth century.
Call it what we will, mourvedre remains an important niche variety. Farmer observes from the hot Barossa, as wine writers lean increasingly towards cool-climate wines, “our job is to make customers aware of long established varieties like mataro, grenache and carignan and the flavours they develop in a warm climate”.
Printhie MCC Shiraz 2011 $36 Printhie Phalaris vineyard, Orange, NSW Some time back, vignerons in Orange, NSW, nominated sauvignon blanc as their hero variety. But Printhie’s Dave Swift puts shiraz and chardonnay at the top of the regional pile. He writes, “These are the varieties that are proving to be the region’s best performers”. Shiraz performs best in Printhie’s lower (620 metres), warmer sites while chardonnay shines at a significantly cooler 900 metres. The two wines reviewed today support Swift’s claim brilliantly. Either could’ve been wine of the week. The deeply coloured shiraz offers the intense spice and pepper, medium body and fine tannins typical of cool-grown shiraz. It holds a couple of trophies and gold medals, including one from the very competitive Royal Sydney Wine Show 2013.
Printhie MCC Chardonnay 2011 $36 Orange, NSW Every now and then Orange throws up an elegant chardonnay of great purity and beauty. I recall several under Murray Smith’s Canobolas Smith label, and an absolutely beautiful Rosemount Estate 1994, made by Philip Shaw, a wine that went on winning show medals for many years. Printhie’s 2011, made by Drew Tuckwell, joins this elite group. It no doubt enjoyed all the tricks winemakers throw at chardonnay. But an intense citrus- melon-like varietal character remains at the centre, completely subsuming the winemaker inputs into the rich texture and complex flavours. This is a classy chardonnay and probably good for five or six years in the cellar.
Brokenwood Semillon 2012 $25 Lower Hunter (Pokolbin and Broke-Fordwich) and Upper Hunter, NSW Brokenwood’s new release semillon draws fruit from its home base in Pokolbin, the adjoining Broke valley and vineyards further up the Hunter Valley. It weighs in at just 10.5 per cent alcohol, contains an undetectable 4.8 grams per litre of residual grape sugar and acidity of 6.9 grams a litre. That combination gives a light, gentle, crisp, dry white featuring the distinctive citrus and lemongrass-like aromas and flavours of early picked semillon. It’s a delicate, aperitif style with the ability to develop rich, honeyed flavours with bottle age.
Xanadu Next of Kin Shiraz 2011 $18 Margaret River, Western Australia Xanadu is the Margaret River arm of the Rathbone Group, comprising, as well, Yering Station (Yarra Valley), Mount Langi Ghiran (Grampians) and Parker Estate (Coonawarra). Xanadu’s Next of Kin range offers really good, drink-now regional wines at prices well below the premium offerings. The shiraz, though 14.5 per cent alcohol, seems more medium than full-bodied. Vibrant berry flavours drive the wine, but these are satisfying layered with spicy and savoury notes and soft, easy tannins.
Kate Hill Riesling 2012 $28 Tasmania Kate Hill sources fruit from growers in Tasmania’s Derwent, Coal River and Huon Valleys and makes wine in her Huonville winery, a converted 100-year-old apple cool store. Her delicate, dry riesling (11.8 per cent alcohol) is far removed in style from the ones we know from warm mainland sites like Clare Valley, Eden Valley and Canberra. It’s more akin to the German style in flavour, though somewhat fuller and firmer. This and a few others I’ve tasted make it easy to imagine Tasmania as Australia’s riesling capital in the years ahead.
Kate Hill Pinot Noir 2010 $36 Coal River Valley and Derwent Valley, Tasmania Australia’s pinot scene grows more exciting and varied every day, with Tasmania steadily moving from potential to achievement. Kate Hill’s sits in the latter category ¬¬– a richly textured, medium-bodied style of modest alcohol (13 per cent). It features ripe, cherry-like varietal character, a subtle, stalky note and a finely structured palate with quite firm tannins. We see this positive character quite often in Burgundy but not so much in Australia’s generally softer styles. This is a brand to watch. Hill says she’ll be planting one to two hectares of pinot noir this spring and opening a cellar door in 2014. See katehillwines.com.au for stockists.
Robinsons Old Tom Strong Ale with Ginger 330ml $5.85 The back label says this is a blend of respected UK brands, Old Tom Strong Ale and Fentiman’s Ginger Beer. The luxurious, six-per-cent alcohol, deep mahogany ale leads with a seductive earthy, spicy, gingery aroma. The generous, warm, piquant, gingery palate matches the aroma precisely.
Moon Dog Love Tap Double Lager 330ml $5.32 From Abbotsford, Victoria, Moon Dog Double Lager combines four malts (pilsner, carared, carapils and chocolate) with three hops varieties (galaxy, motueka and tettenang). This produces a deep-golden colour, a rich, sweet, malty palate, balanced by layers of bitterness and citrus-like flavours from the hops.
A former Foster’s brewer and beer-judging colleague of mine, Dermot O’Donnell, recently defended locally brewed Guinness. James Davidson wrote in Australian Brews News two days before St Patrick’s Day, “the money you spend on such a pint [Australian brewed Guinness] and the beverage you subsequently consume may actually be more distant to Ireland than the foam shamrock hat on your head that you purchased from a two dollar shop”.
O’Donnell’s response traced the modern history of Guinness, including the development in Ireland of a vital flavouring component, called Guinness flavour extract. “This is the X factor in Guinness which gives it is unique character”, he wrote – adding that Guinness therefore has the unique taste of Ireland no matter where it’s brewed in the world.
O’Donnell called for a fair go for Guinness and “us Irish who love the black stuff on Paddy’s Day”.
Bibliotheque Classical Literature McLaren Vale Grenache Shiraz 2011 $16 Sydney-based wine wholesaler Single Vineyard Sellers supplements its range of small-maker offerings with its own labels – “Highgate” for the on-premise trade and “Bibliotheque” for retailers. Smart independent retailers see a competitive advantage in Bibliotheque as they know the big boys don’t stock it and therefore can’t undercut them. The Classical Literature blend from McLaren offers attractive, easy drinking at a fair price. It’s a medium bodied, drink-now red, led by the fragrance and soft fruitiness of grenache, with the mid palate filled out by spicy, savoury shiraz.
Mr Riggs Montepulciano d’Adelaide Hills 2011 $27 Italy’s montepulciano grape (unrelated to the Tuscan town of the same name) is best known in the Abruzzi region, on the Adriatic coast. In the rolling hills leading up to the Apennines, it produces, at its best, dark, ripe, full-bodied, tannic, savoury reds. Leading producers, like Dino Illuminati (imported by Woolworths), bring out the best in the variety. Winemaker Ben Riggs sources his grapes from a warm site between Kersbrook and Williamstown in the Adelaide Hills. In the cold, wet 2011 vintage, Mr Riggs seems a little skinnier than usual, the delicious fruit fighting to push through the earthy, savouriness and firm tannins.
Houghton Western Australia Red Classic Cabernet Shiraz Merlot 2011 $10 Houghton’s popular, keenly priced red earned a gold medal in the 2012 National Wine Show of Australia. The makers entered it in the classes for commercial, large-volume wines – meaning it didn’t need an award from another show to qualify for entry. The wine’s floral and musky fragrance gives it instant appeal – an appeal backed by the bright, fruity palate. Fresh acidity and fine tannins give life and structure to the medium-bodied palate. It’ll never be better to drink than it is right now. Houghton, an old Western Australian brand, is now part of Accolade Wines, formerly Constellation Wines Australia and before that BRL Hardy.
Schloss Vollrads Auslese Riesling 2009 $38–$40 375ml Oestrich-Winkel, Rheingau, Germany It’s three and a half years old, but young, fresh, vibrant and almost certainly good for another ten years. But why wait? At a recent masked tasting we honed in on the style and origin of the wine with ease, so clear is its identity. The pale lemon colour, low alcohol (7.5 per cent), delicate perfume and sharply detailed fruit flavour appealed from the first sip – its fairly high sugar content is in complete harmony with the fruit and fine, intense backbone of acidity. This is a fine Rhein River specialty at a fair price. It’s imported by Woolworths-owned Dan Murphy’s.
Shaw and Smith Shiraz 2010 $37–$45 Adelaide Hills, South Australia At the recent Winewise Championship I was very much taken by Shaw and Smith’s 2009 Shiraz. However, I rate the 2010 a notch higher. It sits at the more powerful end of the house style. It’s medium bodied and elegantly structured, as you’d expect in the cool growing climate; but the deep, intense-crimson colour, opulent, seductive aroma and palate-saturating fruit flavours, cut with very good oak, probably outweigh any they’ve made in the past. Winemakers Martin Shaw and Darryl Catlin say the fruit comes from “low yielding vines at Balhannah, the central Adelaide Hills, and Macclesfield, the warmer and drier sub-region to the south”.
Red Knot by Shingleback Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2012 $10.40–$15 McLaren Vale, South Australia The Davey family’s Red Knot range delivers some of the best value for money drinking in the market. Red drinkers twigged to this a few years back, and retailers responded by including the wines among their regular discounts. The wines easily deserve $15 a bottle. But they’re bargains when the price drops closer to $10 – as they were when I wrote this review. The 2012 blend leads with the lovely musk-like fragrance of grenache, supported on the soft and juicy palate by the richness of shiraz and spiciness of mourvedre.
Petaluma White Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $22–$24 Coonawarra, South Australia Petaluma’s new white label cabernet provides aromatic, soft, drink-now pleasure. It’s an elegant style, built on Coonawarra’s unique ripe-berry flavours, backed by a pleasant, dusty/woody sweetness, derived from maturation in French oak barrels.
Canard-Duchene Brut Rose Champagne $80 Champagne, France Canard-Duchene was founded in 1868 by Victor Canard and Leonie Duchene. It was associated for a time with the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Group before being acquired by the Thienot group in 2003. I enjoyed the wines on a number of occasions in the early 1980s but hadn’t seen it since until its distributor, Red and White, provided bottles for review. The house style tends to be generous and fruity but very delicate. In the rose – a blend of pinot noir (45 per cent, 10 per cent of it red wine), pinot meunier (30 per cent) and chardonnay (25 per cent) – sweet, aromatic strawberry/raspberry flavours from the two pinots dominate a round, soft, delicately off-dry palate.
Gaelic Cemetery Vineyard Reserve Riesling 2012 $35 Gaelic Cemetery vineyard, Clare Valley, South Australia The more floral rieslings don’t do it with oysters for me. The tangy, briny aftertaste tends to overwhelm the delicate fruitiness of these wines. On the other hand, steely, firm, minerally, bone-dry whites can accentuate oyster flavours. Neil Pike’s intense, steely riesling fits that description and combined deliciously with fresh-shucked Narooma oysters. Pike makes the wine from fruit grown on Grant Arnold’s Gaelic Cemetery vineyard. It’s a complete contrast to the softer, more floral version reviewed last week. Pike explains the extra backbone in the reserve version, saying it was “handpicked, whole bunch pressed and fermented with partial solids”.
