Australian craft beers continue their expansion as consumption of mainstream beer declines.
In the five years from March 2010 to March 2014, the proportion of Australian adults drinking local craft beer in any four-week period increased from 3.5 per cent to 5.7 per cent, according to Roy Morgan Research. In the same period the proportion of adults drinking local mainstream beer fell from 36.7 per cent to 31.9 per cent.
Hand in hand with the broadening appeal of local craft beer – and surely part of the same phenomenon – is the rise of imported beer. The proportion of people 18 years and over to drink imported beer in a four-week period grew from 14 per cent to 17.3 per cent in the same five-year period.
Driving the change, says Roy Morgan, are “predominantly those under 50, with 25–34 year olds leading the way”.
Soumah Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2013 $33–$35 The Butcher family owns vineyards in the Gruyere-Coldstream sub-region of the Yarra Valley and created the acronym Soumah (south of the Maroondah Highway) as its brand name. Wines released under this label include Savarro (savagnin blanc), pinot noir, pinot grigio and shiraz. Even in the warmer 2013 season Soumah sits at the delicate end of the chardonnay spectrum, weighing in at just 12.7 per cent alcohol. Although delicate and zinging with fresh acidity, the wine offers deep, rich, fine flavours, combining grapefruit- and melon-like varietal flavour with the more exotic characters derived from fermentation with wild yeasts in oak barrels.
Grant Burge Barossa Valley Miamba Shiraz 2012 $19–$28 Revamped packaging gives Grant Burge’s Miamba shiraz a reassuringly smart appearance. And the good looks go all the way through. Burge sources grapes from his Miamba vineyard at the southern, cooler end of the Barossa, near the town of Lyndoch. And while it’s hard to say whether nature or humans shape the wine most, this is clearly an elegant, refined expression of ripe and generous Barossa shiraz. We’d probably rate it 50:50 nature and nurture. Whatever the defining forces, however, this is absolutely delicious drinking and especially good value when on special.
De Bortoli Bella Riva King Valley Sangiovese $16–$19 De Bortoli’s sangiovese comes from their Bella Riva vineyard, planted in Victoria’s King Valley in 1994. It was an exciting time down there as new money flowed to the valley, funding vineyards alongside those of other long-established Italian families – some making the transition from tobacco to grape growing. Twenty years on De Bortoli’s sangiovese vines produce an excellent red, very much in the bright, fresh and fruity modern Australian style. However, the Italian accent comes, not so much from the makers, as from the deep, varietal savouriness washing under the fruit – and, of course, the variety’s signature persistent, tannic grip.
Brokenwood Quail Shiraz 2012 $100 McLaren Vale and Hunter Valley, South Australia and NSW On the back label, winemaker Iain Riggs notes the inspiration of Quail shiraz being the Thomas Hardy “Burgundies” of the 1940s and 1950s. Riggs wasn’t of drinking age back then, but you can be sure he savoured their magnificence decades after vintage. Like those elegant, long-lived old Thomas Hardy wines, Quail combines shiraz from McLaren Vale and the Hunter Valley. Indeed it brings together the best barrels from Brokenwood’s star vineyards: Graveyard in the Hunter and Wade Block 2 in McLaren Vale. The style is elegant, restrained and savoury, with a fine, firm backbone of tannin – a sophisticated, understated wine of great dimension.
Jamiesons Run Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 $9.40–$15 Limestone Coast, South Australia Jamiesons Run began as a Coonawarra brand in the 1980s, but now offers wine from Treasury Wine Estates’ vast vineyard holdings on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. The exact sourcing isn’t revealed for this wine, but prime suspects would include Padthaway, Wrattonbully and Coonawarra. It’s a drink-now style, with the emphasis on blackcurrant and leafy varietal flavour. It’s widely distributed and as a brand the big retailers latch onto, the price varied from $9.40 to $15 at the time of this review. It offers good value at $9.40, but you’ll find better wines at $15.
Tahbilk Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2013 $25–$28 Tahbilk vineyards, Nagambie Lakes, Victoria In recent years, Alister Purbrick established grenache and mourvedre vines on his family’s magnificent property, Tahbilk. These two varieties now join Tahbilk’s long-established shiraz in the classic three-variety Rhone Valley blend – grenache-shiraz-mourvedre. Grenache leads with its musky, fruity fragrance. But shiraz and mourvedre temper the grenache fruitiness with spice and refined, savoury tannins on a medium bodied, smooth, understated palate. This is very much in the traditional Tahbilk mould, albeit with the new (for them) flavours of grenache and shiraz.
Four Winds Vineyard Riesling 2014 $22 Four Winds vineyard, Murrumbateman, Canberra District, NSW Whether or not Canberra’s 2014 rieslings live up to the 2012s and 2013s remains to be seen. But they are very good indeed. Several, including Four Winds, would be extremely unlucky not to win gold medals at coming wine shows. The wine is impressively aromatic and purely varietal. The intensity of its flavour belies the mere 11.2 per cent alcohol. However, there’s a sting in the tail: while high acidity accentuates the flavour it also lends some austerity to the palate. This is quite in character for Canberra riesling and is easily resolved by giving the wine another 6–12 months in bottle.
Kangarilla Road Montepulciano 2012 $25 McLaren Vale, South Australia Italy’s montepulciano grape makes strong, savoury, satisfying reds, notably in Abruzzi – a beautiful region between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic sea. The variety delivers its savoury character in McLaren Vale, too, prompting winemaker Kevin O’Brien to write of Italian red varieties in general, “the unique structural fruit tannins and sweet fruit compounds react perfectly with the palate to produce new flavour complexes to savour”. O’Brien’s purple-rimmed montepulciano captures exactly that aspect of montepulciano – the sweet fruit flavour, cut through with savoury flavours and rustic tannins.
Montevecchio Bianco 2012 $20–$23 Chalmers vineyard, Heathcote, Victoria Fruit for Montevecchio Bianco comes from the Chalmers family’s 20-hectare vineyard on the eastern slopes of the Mount Camel Range, Heathcote, Victoria. The vineyard hosts more than 10 Italian grape varieties. For the family’s white blend, winemaker Sandro Mosele (of Kooyong Estate) co-fermented vermentino, fiano and a small amount of moscato giallo. The result is a bright, fresh wine with aromas and flavours reminiscent of citrus and melon rind. The palate is thoroughly Italian in style with its lean, acidic thrust and savouriness.
Blue Moon Brewing Co Belgian White 330ml $3.99 Coca-Cola Amatil imports Blue Moon from Coors Brewing Company, a division of Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company. The pale lemon colour, cloudy appearance and sturdy white head are all consistent with the Belgian wheat style. It is, perhaps a little rounder and less refeshing acidic than Hoegaarden (the original), with a more obvious orange flavour.
Popular Clare Valley winemaker, Pikes, expects to open a brewery alongside its wine cellars in December.
Alister Pike, son of found founder Andrew Pike, says the family expects to complete the new building on schedule and already has most of the brewing equipment warehoused in Victoria.
A recently hired brewer, due to join Pikes in October, will have three existing recipes at hand when he starts. Pikes currently offers contract-brewed ale, stout and pilsener under the Pikes Oakbank label – launched by brothers Andrew and Neil in 1996.
Alister Pike says the beer is to be rebadged as “Pikes Beer Company” and the word “Oakbank” is to be removed. Oakbank is the name of a town in the Adelaide Hills where a Pike ancestor settled in the nineteenth century.
Pikes Beer Company will join two other brewers in the Clare Valley: Clare Valley Brewing Company and Knappstein, belonging to Lion.
Pikes Beer Company Sparkling Ale 330ml $4.25 In 1996 winemaking brothers Neil and Andrew Pike introduced contract-made beer under their label. Their Sparkling Ale is made by Hargreaves Hill Brewing Co, Victoria. The ale is a full-bodied, malty and fruity style. A big but not overwhelming dollop of hops offsets the malt sweetness and provides a lingering, bitter finish.
The mighty Kimberley: the dirt Gibb River Road (blue) and sealed Great Northern Highway (1).Source: Google Maps.
For a long time my wife Jill and I had wanted to visit Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region – and in July this year we did.
We flew out of a frosty Canberra morning and arrived in Darwin’s friendly dry-season heat at lunchtime. We collected our Apollo four-wheel-drive camper, stocked up on food and wine at the nearest Woolies store, then camped the night in a Stuart Highway trailer park ready to begin our journey south to Katherine, then west to Kununurra, Western Australia, the following morning.
Darwin, Northern Territory, to Kununurra, Western Australia. Source: Google Maps.
Having enjoyed the independence of a Northern Territory trip in a similar vehicle two years ago, we had opted to drive and camp through the Kimberley, too. We initially held some misgivings about the Gibb River Road and the infamous Kalumburu and Mitchell Falls roads.
But our misgivings faded after talking to a workmate David Evans-Smith. He’d driven and camped through the area with his family a few years earlier. He assured me even the rough Mitchell Falls road, “isn’t technically difficult”. And so it proved – though the road takes a mighty toll on vehicles, as we found out first hand.
A driving tour of the Kimberley normally takes in the roughly 1,000km from Broome in the west, via Derby, to Kununurra in the east. Two roads traverse the region east-west: the sealed Great Northern Hightway (Highway 1) and, to its north, the mainly dirt Gibb River Road.
The sealed Great Northern Highway (Highway 1) trends east and slightly south from Broome before cutting north to Wyndham, with an east-bound turn-off to the Victoria Highway (now Highway 1) to Kununurra. The total distance is 1043 kilometres.
The Gibb River Road (to the north of the Great Northern Highway) begins at Derby (220km west of Broome, sealed road) and joins the Victoria Highway 45km west of Kununurra. The total Broome-Kununurra distance by this route is 917km, but about 550km of it is dirt. It’s a stony but fairly good road, with bone-shaking corrugations in sections (depending on where the grader happens to be).
A comprehensive four-wheel-drive road tour of the Kimberley logically begins and ends in Broome – driving along the Gibb River Road in one direction and the Great Northern Highway in the other.
The Gibb River Road provides access to spectacular gorges along the entire route as well as to the Mitchell Falls and Kulumburu, on the coast. The Great Northern Highway, on the other hand, passes the access road to one of the Kimberley’s most spectacular attractions, the Bungle Bungle Ranges, part of Purnululu National Park.
We originally planned to explore the Kimberley on this circuit. However, we changed our minds when Apollo offered a substantially lower hire rate for picking up our vehicle in Darwin and leaving it in Broome.
The 900km Darwin-Kununurra drive is actually 100km shorter than the Broome-Kununurra drive. However, coming into the Kimberley from the Kununurra end, meant a return 700-km drive from Kununurra to the Bungles and back again before we could head west on the Gibb River Road.
And what a lovely, scenic drive it was – uncrowded and easy on the 250km sealed Great Northern Highway road south to the Bungles turn-off, then rough as guts on the 53km access road. For two nights we enjoyed the serenity of Walardi campground in the south of the park.
Piccaninny Creek, Bungle Bungle Ranges, Purnululu National Park. Photo Chris Shanahan
During the days we drove to the walks – Piccaninny Creek and Cathedral Gorge in the south and Echidna Chasm in the north; and enjoyed a chopper ride over the unique sandstone domes of the south. We needed another night and day, really, but we cut and ran back to Kununurra. The 700km Kununurra-Bungles-Kununurra drive included about 200km of dirt driving to access the park and drive around within it.
Bungle Bungles sandstone domes from the air. Photo Jill Shanahan
There’s plenty to see around Kununurra, the centre of the massive Ord River scheme. We took time to boat the 50km from the town’s diversion dam up Lake Kununurra to the wall of the Argyle Dam, holding back about 1000 square kilometres of water.
Water from the lake drives a hydro electricity plant and, with Lake Kununurra, irrigates about 150 square kilometres of farmland on the Ord flood plains. These are awesome to view. And we found one farmer, Spike Dessert, distilling outstanding rum and whiskey from the local sugar cane and corn (see Kimberley bookends below).
Ord River flood plain, watered by the vast Argyle Dam. Photo Chris Shanahan
From Kununurra, we headed west to the Gibb River Road. By this time we’d already driven about 300km of dirt, crossed many streams and learned to hate unrelenting corrugations, like those of the Bungles’ access road.
Ever-changing landscapes, dust and corrugations lay ahead and by now we felt some excitement about the coming climb up to the Mitchell Falls. Because of its remoteness and ability to break cars, the falls remain forbidden territory for many hire vehicles, which now cross the Gibb River Road in good numbers.
Before we left Canberra we sought Apollo’s permission to drive to the falls, and they obliged. However, we stayed overnight at El Questro station, the nearest gorge county to Kununurra. Here we explored Emma Gorge and relaxed in the Zebedee Hot Springs, before fleeing the large crowds.
Emma Gorge, Gibb River Road, near El Questro Station. Photo Chris Shanahan.Pentecost River crossing, looking east to the Cockburn Ranges. Perhaps the most photographed point of the Gibb River Road. This is just a little to the west of El Questro Station. Photo Chris Shanahan.
After a peaceful overnight at Ellenbrae Station the following day, we headed further west before turning north, about 300km from Kununurra, onto the Kulumburu Road for the 250km drive up to Mitchell Falls.
Ancient boab tree, Ellenbrae Station, Gibb River Road, Western Australia. Photo Chris Shanahan.
We rested, showered, enjoyed a cold one and camped overnight at the very hospitable Drysdale Station, about 60km north of the Gibb River Road. Early next morning we bounced north on the Kalumburu Road’s endless corrugations. About 105km later we turned left onto the Mitchell Plateau Road. After about eight, narrow, rocky kilometres (second gear territory), we crossed the pristine King Edward River and followed a wider but terribly corrugated road through the marvellous livistona palms.
King Edward River crossing Mitchell Falls Road. Photo Jill Shanahan.
About 40km short of the falls, we offered help to a carload of American scientists. They waved us on. But 200 metres later our car died and the Americans came to our aid. A bracket securing our battery had broken free from one of its moorings to fuse itself onto the positive terminal. The short circuit drained the battery, fatally as it turned out.
A few metres of nylon rope re-anchored the battery, thanks to the American scientists. Six people pushed the vehicle to a successful clutch start, and a tense hour and a half drive to the campground followed, with a near-dead battery. Warning lights flared intermittently on the dash, but thankfully these turned out to be a false – a result of the battery damage.
Despite the best efforts over the next few days of park ranger, John Hayward, the battery not only failed to recharge, but exploded, spewing acid, when we attached jumper leads. However, Hayward manufactured a new battery support bracket from a tent peg, which we stowed optimistically for the time we’d find a new battery.
We ditched the dead battery and after creating a circuit without it, unsuccessfully attempted a clutch start sans battery.
By this time, Nathan, a RAAF aeronautic electrician camped nearby, had joined the rescue effort. He established a trickle of electricity from the fridge battery to the Toyota’s computer, just enough to switch on the dash lights. The diesel clutch started instantly at the next effort, allowing us to drive the 190km back to Drysdale station, with no battery and hoping we wouldn’t stall on the way. We didn’t.
Our three nights at Mitchell Falls proved a highlight as we walked all over this beautiful, remote region. With other campers, we attended John Hayward’s night time presentation on the area during the wet season, ancient rock-art sites in the vicinity and his notable work with academics from the universities of New England and Wollongong.
Hayward discovers new sites during his wet-season explorations, then works with the university teams and local Indigenous people on excavations and attempts to determine the age of rock art.
Mitchell Falls in the dry season. Photo David Evans-SmithMitchell Falls in the wet season. Photo Mitchell River National Park Ranger, John Hayward.
After our four and half hour, battery-free drive from the falls, we installed a new battery and rested overnight at Drysdale Station. Next day we moved on to the beautiful, serene campground of Charnley River Station, 42km north of the Gibb. We explored the property’s gorges for two days and listened to the dingo chorus at night.
We moved westward again, then headed south from the Gibb River Road to Tunnel Creek – scrambling through a 750-metre, watery tunnel through a craggy limestone reef, dating from the Devonian period. We spent our last night on the Gibb River road at Windjana Gorge, another limestone formation of the Devonian era, a short but corrugated drive north of Tunnel Creek.
Windjana Gorge, western Gibb River Road. Photo Jill Shanahan.
From there we headed to Broome, via Derby, taking in the local sights, riding a hovercraft to the famed dinosaur footprints and visiting brewer Marcus Muller at Matso’s brewery (see inset).
Town Beach, Roebuck Bay, Broome. Photo Chris Shanahan.
We spent just 24 days on the road from Darwin to Broome, travelling about 4,000 kilometres – about 2,000 of it on dirt. Our sturdy Toyota Hilux, or Hilux Hilton, proved to be the ultimate downsizing exercise – moving from a five-bedroom Canberra home to a mobile bedsitter.
For three weeks we slept comfortably and ate and drank well from a 32-litre fridge – where two 500-litre behemoths seem often not big enough for our extended family.
We met so many people all ages from all over the world. But we particularly enjoyed our encounters with young Australian families, travelling the country and taking their kids out of school for three, six and even nine months.
Our only regret: not allowing more time. There was so much we didn’t see on the Gibb River Road. Nor did we travel north from Broome to Cape Leveque, as we’d originally hoped, or south to Fitzroy Crossing, or Wolf Creek crater.
We concluded that any able bodied person can do this trip. You need a four-wheel drive, principally for its high clearance and sturdy suspension. But you don’t need any particular driving experience. The car does all the hard work. However, if you do venture to more remote places, a severe breakdown could become extremely time consuming and very expense.
Our travel guides were few but excellent: Birgit Bradtke’s comprehensive Destination Kimberley and Hema Maps’ The Kimberley Atlas and Guide. Both are available online.
Kimberley bookends
We book-ended our east-to-west Kimberley drive with visits to Kununurra distillery, the Hoochery, and Broome landmark, Matson’s Brewery.
Spike Dessert: distilling Ord River rum and whiskey. Photo: Chris Shanahan 9 July 2014
Hoochery owner, Spike Dessert, moved to the Ord River area from the USA in 1972, bought land in 1985 and cultivated seed crops from 1986. Thirteen years later, inspired by South Australian cellar door winery operations, Dessert established a distillery and cellar door facility. The complex, which also serves food and caters for functions, soon became one of Kununurra’s major tourist attractions.
“I liked the cellar door concept”, says Dessert, “but obviously you couldn’t make wine at Kununurra”. Instead, he built his own still, based on research of USA hill distillers, to make rum and whiskey from local sugar cane and corn.
About 1,000 kilometres to the west, in Broome, Martin and Kim Pierson-Jones’s Matso’s Brewery, offers ocean views, decent food and beers made for the tropics. Matso’s hugely popular ginger beer (in fact, a blend of wine, ginger essence and water) joins a quirky drinks list that includes mango, chilli and lychee beers. However, brewer Marcus Muller makes several delicious, traditional lagers and ales in addition to these sweeter tropical thirst quenchers.
Matso’s brewer, Marcus Muller. Photo Chris Shanahan
Our vehicle
Our ‘Hilux Hilton’ camped at Ellenbrae Station, Gibb River Road. Photo Chris Shanahan.
You can tour the Kimberley in complete luxury, flying in from Broome or Kununurra or from a cruise ship on the coast. Accommodation ranges from luxury lodges to basic bush camping, sometimes with showers, always with composting toilets. Where there are no showers, croc-free fresh-water swimming holes do the job.
We took the fly-in, self-drive approach and selected our Apollo Adventure Camper after considering the many other four-wheel drive options. We simply liked what it offered for two people: a sturdy turbo-diesel Toyota Hilux ute with a camping unit on the back.
The camper, with its pop-top, comprised a comfy, large double bed, a 32-litre fridge with its own battery, crockery, cutlery, sink, 60-litre water storage and ample cupboard space for clothing and food storage.
A panel with a two-burner gas cooker folded down from the outside. This and a couple of outdoor chairs and a fold-up table, allowed us to cook and eat outside – which is extremely pleasant during the tropical dry season. The inside we used only for storage, changing, sleeping and night time reading.
Sutton Forest Three Daughters Reserve Southern Highlands Pinot Noir 2010 $35 Next to MacDonald’s, Sutton Forest, Nick and Santina Lo Rosso offer a warm smile, good coffee and Italian cakes. They also offer their own wine. But many Hume Highway motorists want nothing more than the Lo Rosso’s hospitality and coffee, served by the open fire or in the peaceful gardens. A recent coffee stop put us in such a good mood, we bought a bottle of their reserve pinot noir, which we polished off with great delight a week later. This is medium bodied pinot, leaning to the earthy, savoury, firm-but-fine style. It’s available at cellar door or suttonforestwines.com.au
Jamiesons Run Limestone Coast Chardonnay 2013 $9.40–$15 Jamiesons Run began as a Coonawarra brand in the 1980s, but now offers wine from Treasury Wine Estates’ vast vineyard holdings on the Limestone Coast. Grapes for this appealing wine came from Padthaway (about an hours’ drive north of Coonawarra) and Robe (about an hour west of Coonawarra). Robe’s also an important cray-fishing port – and there could be nothing more pleasant than sitting on the beach washing down fresh cray with this delicious local wine. It’s medium bodied and richly textured with mouthwatering nectarine-like varietal flavour and zesty, fresh acidity. The very wide disparity in retail pricing suggests a brand still struggling for identity after almost thirty years.
Montevecchio Rosso Heathcote 2012 $20–$23 Fruit for this blend comes from the Chalmers family’s 20-hectare vineyard on the eastern slopes of the Mount Camel Range, Heathcote, Victoria. The vineyard hosts 10 Italian grape varieties. Four of those – negramaro, nero d’Avola, lagrein and sagrantino – go into this blend, made for the Chalmers by Sandro Mosele at Kooyong Estate, Mornington Peninsula. What an exotic and loveable wine it is: highly aromatic, combining ripe, sweet, plummy fruit with gamey, earthy notes. The palate zigs away from the sweetness and opulence suggested by the aroma. Instead the wine’s intensely savoury, tannic and pleasantly tart.
Gallagher Shiraz 2012 $30 Murrumbateman, Canberra District, NSW “After doing climatic data searches for about two years, looking for the best area to grow shiraz”, says Greg Gallagher, he and wife Libby Gallagher planted the variety at Murrumbateman in 1995. While neighbouring Clonakilla enjoyed success with shiraz from 1990, and shiraz-viognier from 1992, the variety remained far from the local hero it is today. But the Gallaghers backed the right variety, and their percipience delivers yet another outstanding Canberra shiraz. Their highly aromatic 2012 vintage combines bright red-fruit characters deliciously with intense spice and pepper of the cool season. The palate is supple and sweet, with very fine tannins providing structure and a long finish. The wine won a gold medal in the 2013 Canberra Regional Wine Show.
Sandalford Chardonnay 2014 $16–$20 Margaret River, Western Australia Make no bones about it, chardonnay fermented and matured in oak barrels runs rings around unoaked versions. However, unoaked chardonnays cost less to produce and perhaps take the style closer to sauvignon blanc, Australia’s favourite white tipple. Sandalford’s unoaked wine edges in that direction, with its focus on fruit flavour and comparatively high acidity. Even the undoubted peach-like varietal flavour doesn’t distract from the sauv blanc similarities – raising the question of where this style fits. There is no doubting the wine’s high technical quality.
Printhie Mountain Range Merlot 2013 $18.05–$20 Orange, NSW Is any other grape variety as revered or reviled as merlot? Its generally unquestioned merit in blends with cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc fails to carry through to the variety on its own. Wines labelled merlot can be light and soft, dark and firm, or somewhere in between – or even sweet. Different clones vary and, of course, the vine responds to climatic variation, viticultural practice, ripeness at harvest and winemaking approaches. In the cool heights of Orange, Printhie prefers early ripening clones, tightly managed yields, ripe fruit and a combination of new and older French oak for maturation. The bright and plummy aroma leads to a medium-bodied palate with plummy fruit and a quite firm, fine backbone of tannin.
Ten Minutes by Tractor 10X Chardonnay 2013 $30 Osborn, Judd and McCutcheon vineyards, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Ten Minutes by Tractor offers several more expensive, single-vineyard chardonnays, but the entry level 10X offers most of the features found in the premium wines. This is opulent, finely balanced chardonnay of a very high order. It was barrel fermented, using ambient yeast, it underwent partial malolactic fermentation as was then aged in barrel for eight months, with regular lees stirring. These techniques added greatly to the wine’s texture and highlight the great beauty of chardonnay’s flavour – in this instance in the cool climate spectrum, reminiscent of melon and white peach with a squeeze of grapefruit.
Nick O’Leary White Rocks Riesling 2013 $37 Westering vineyard, Lake George, Canberra District, NSW Canberra winemaker Nick O’Leary sources grapes for White Rocks from one of Canberra’s oldest vineyards. In 1973, two years after Dr Edgar Riek planted the first vines at Lake George, Captain Geoff Hood established Westering Vineyard next door. Hood’s dry-grown old riesling vines continue to thrive under Karelas family ownership, producing tiny crops of powerfully flavoured grapes. O’Leary says, “It’s a great vineyard”, and adds “the vines have huge trunks on them”. From these venerable old vines O’Leary made an extraordinarily concentrated riesling – a wine of great power but also of finesse and delicacy.
Nick O’Leary Shiraz 2012 $32 Malakoff vineyard, Pyrenees, Victoria After hail ravaged the local 2012 grape crop, Nick O’Leary wondered how to fill the expensive oak barrels lying in wait for vintage. He looked to Victoria’s Pyrenees region, an area he says, “Is under-rated and makes meatier wines with darker fruit” than Canberra shiraz. O’Leary sourced fruit from Malakoff Estate and made a superb complement to his Canberra wine. The medium bodied, plummy palate shows the intense spice of the cool season and a notable stalky character, derived from O’Leary’s inclusion of whole bunches in the ferment (60 per cent of the total). The combination of fruit, spice, stalk, supple texture and fine tannins provides irresistible drinking. O’Leary made follow-up vintages in 2013 and 2014.
Stone and Wood Cloud Catcher Ale 500ml $9–$12 Byron Bay brewer Stone and Wood released Cloud Catcher to mark the opening if its new Murwillumbah brewery. A pale-golden coloured ale, Cloud Catcher offers a rich, full, malty flavour, seasoned with exhilarating citrusy hops flavours. The hops also contribute an intense, lingering bitterness.
4 Pines Brewing Company Imperial India Brown Ale 500ml $10 Definitely a winter brew this one –dark and malty, with an alcohol content of eight per cent. This boosts the body and flavour, loading the palate with strong chocolate and roasted coffee bean flavours. The alcohol also contributes a warmth, while a massive load of hops delivers an extraordinarily bitter finish.
If you brew beer outside Canberra but offer it through your own Canberra hotel, does that make you a local craft brewer – or an honorary one at least?
If its does, then Sydney’s Jerry Schwarz deserves a place of honour alongside Canberra’s home-grown craft brewers, the Wig and Pen, Zierholz and the BentSpoke.
Schwartz owns the Mercure, Braddon, and with little fanfare offers draft and packaged beer from the two breweries he owns – the Schwartz Brewery Hotel in Surry Hills, Sydney, and the Lovedale Brewery at the Crowne Plaza in the lower Hunter Valley.
The Mercure currently offers on tap Paddo Pale, Newtown Bitter, Darlo Dark and Sydney Cider from the Surry Hills brewery and Lovedale Lager from the Hunter.
The same brews are also available in 1.89-litre refillable, take-away “growlers”. And the bottle shop carries a smaller range of 330ml bottles from Schwartz’s two breweries.
