Chris Shanahan: Wine review – Four Winds Vineyard, Collector Wines, Sassafras, Ravensworth

Four Winds Vineyard Canberra District Riesling 2016 $25
Four Winds Vineyard’s Sarah Collingwood, a finalist in the 2016 Women in Wine Awards, was in May selected for Wine Australia’s Future Leaders Program. News of Collingwood’s latest achievement coincided with a glass of Four Winds Riesling 2016 at the Tradies Canberra Wine House. I’d tasted and reviewed the wine last November. But like other Canberra rieslings, six months in bottle lifted it to another level. This is a classy riesling indeed, offering intense but delicate, lemon-like varietal flavours, amplified by fresh, drying acidity.

Collector Canberra District Rose Red City Sangiovese 2013 $32
Another local wine enjoyed at Tradies Canberra Wine House (see wine of the week) was Alex McKay’s sangiovese, grown, he says, “on a range of vineyards across both granite and shaley soil near Murrumbateman”. The wine also contains small amounts of four other Italian varieties, canaiolo nero, mammolo and colorino. McKay’s medium-bodied red separates itself from traditional Australian reds by putting sangiovese’s savoury, tannic character ahead of bright fruit flavour. The delicious fruit flavour remains, seeping its way through the savour and tannin with mouth-watering results.

Sassafras Canberra District Savagnin Ancestral 2016 $25
Sassafras Savagnin Ancestral offers a perky, tart, tasty take on sparkling wine. It’s made in a continuous but pernickety process: fermentation, refrigeration to arrest fermentation, maturation on yeast lees, light filtering into bottle (complete with residual grape sugar and surviving yeast), where fermentation resumes, consuming the sugar and creating the bubbles. The result is a light, fresh, pleasing sparkler with apple-like flavour and tartness – and a fine sediment resulting from the bottle fermentation. Fruit comes from the Quarry Hill Vineyard, Murrumbatemen. Available at sassafraswines.com.au.

Ravensworth Sangiovese 2016 $25
Bryan Martin’s sangiovese provides a tasty contrast to Alex McKay’s Collector reviewed today. McKay’s 2013 emphasises the savoury, tannic face of the variety, while Martin’s 2016, at this stage of its development, shows sangiovese’s gentler, fruitier side. Grape for Ravensworth came from five vineyards spread around Canberra, Hilltops and Gundagai. Gentle processing, including whole-berry ferments, extended skin contact and ageing in older barrels, produced a silk-smooth, medium bodied red with intense sour-cherry-like varietal flavour.