On June 29 in Moscow, Penfolds told the world the best seal for wine is glass. They didn’t say it in so many words. But that’s the message dramatically delivered in twelve $168,000 glass ampoules of Penfolds Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004. Yes, just 12 for the whole world.  And the problem for Penfolds will be allocating them, not selling them.

The price tag, quality of product, originality of the idea and launch at Moscow’s Pushkin Restaurant (with a run of legendary old Penfolds reds lavished on the guests) ignited huge global publicity.

Behind the cleverly executed campaign, lies years of thinking by winemaker Peter Gago about the best way to seal wine intended for decades or even centuries of cellaring.

By the 2004 vintage Penfolds had adopted screw caps for all its reds except Grange. And in a 2007 interview, Gago told me why not, “‘With Grange we’re talking about people cellaring it for thirty to fifty years. We’ve had trials for ten years, but we’ve got our fingers crossed that these wines will still be good in four or five decades. It’s the integrity of the seal, not ageing that’s of concern”.

He explained that while we knew screw cap seals kept white wines perfectly for thirty years, the chemistry of red wine is different and we simply don’t know for certain whether the seal will last.

He recalled working with well-known sparkling-wine maker, Ed Carr, at the company’s sparkling cellars. They observed how crown seals on sparkling red wines often deteriorated where those for sparkling whites didn’t.

Gago believed a glass-to-glass seal presented the best solution as there’d be nothing to corrode – no perishable material like cork, the tin or polymer coated material in screw caps or the silicon o-ring of the glass Vino-Lok.

Indeed, Penfolds had already engaged an engineer to develop a prototype – a glass disc held in place with a spring-loaded clamp.

Two years later Gago told me they’d developed a second prototype, “a pseudo screw cap” holding a glass disc in place, and had tested both on the 2006 vintage Grange.  He said he’d like to take it to the next level, but that would require money – an unlikely outcome at the time as parent company Foster’s struggled with its wine division.

During both the 2007 and 2009 interviews, Gago discussed the concept of a “time capsule” – a wine sealed in a continuum of glass, capable of cellaring for centuries. That’s the dream that became a reality in the recently released ampoule.

Gago calls the ampoule project and the earlier glass-to-glass trials “parallel pursuits” – separate but interrelated. He hopes that success of the radical new ampoule might spark enthusiasm for glass seals within in the company. All it needs now is money, and imagination.

It presents a golden opportunity for Penfolds new managing director, Gary Burnand, to make his mark on the company and, indeed, on the entire wine world. The ampoule gave us the first ever perfectly-sealed wine. By supporting Gago’s glass-to-glass concept he could usher in the most radical technological change since the invention of the glass bottle.

Kalimna vineyard, Block 42

In the nineteenth century, this northern Barossa site provided firewood for D.J. Fowler and company. In the 1880s, precise date unknown, George Fowler planted and named the Kalimna vineyard. Penfolds bought it in 1945 and its fruit subsequently starred in many of the company’s greatest reds – including blended wines like Grange and several notable cabernets sourced only from Block 42. These include Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1948, Grange Cabernet Sauvignon 1953 and the first Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon (1964).

Winemaker Peter Gago rates Grange cabernet 1953 slightly ahead of Grange Hermitage 1953, in his view the best Grange ever made.

Gago says the low-yielding Block 42 produces extraordinary wine in some vintages. In the most recent outstanding vintages, 1996 and 2004, Penfolds released cabernet under the Kalimna Block 42 name. The wines tend to fetch $500–$600. The ampoules contain the 2004 vintage. Penfolds believes the venerable old vines on Block 42 to be the oldest continuously producing cabernet sauvignon in the world.

What you get for $168,000

• 750ml of Penfolds Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet 2004 in a glass ampoule, designed and hand-blown by glass artist Nick Mount.
• A grey and ruby coloured glass plumb-bob, designed and hand-blown by Nick Mount. The plumb-bob suspends the ampoule in its Jarrah cabinet.
• Jarrah cabinet designed and made by furniture craftsman, Hendrik Foster.
• Precious metal details designed and made by Hendrik Forster.
• A Penfolds winemaker will travel anywhere in the world to open the wine using one of two purpose made tungsten tipped devices to cut and snap the glass tip of the ampoule.

Penfolds produced 12 sets of ampoules for the world market. One remains in the company’s museum cellar at Magill, Adelaide. One is to appear at an event in Singapore next year, but exactly how isn’t clear. The remaining ten are up for grabs as I write. Penfolds also produced and is retaining in its Magill cellar an additional stand-alone ampoule of Kalimna Block 42 2004, without the plumb-bob, precious metal trappings or timber case.

Penfolds Managing Director, Gary Burnand, says retailers and private collectors around the world want the ampoules. Allocating them could take all the diplomacy in the world.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 18 July 2012 in The Canberra Times

An old wine-drinking mate, Mike Bond, recently told me about a stash of glorious old rieslings on sale at Richmond Grove. The Barossa winery makes some of Australia’s finest rieslings – much loved at Chateau Shanahan as they’re comparatively cheap and drink beautifully for many years. We’re currently enjoying Richmond Grove Watervale rieslings 1999 and 2002, purchased at less than $10 a bottle on release.

Richmond Grove’s website currently offers Watervale rieslings from1996 to 2011 (only the 2001 is missing), Barossa riesling 2000 and Eden Valley riesling 2002. It’s a distinguished line up and a rare opportunity to buy perfectly cellared white direct from the maker.

Though Richmond Grove made its first rieslings only in 1994, their pedigree stretches back to the earliest days of fine riesling production in Australia. The rieslings flow from the distinct winemaking traditions of Orlando and Leo Buring – represented by winemakers John Vickery, Phil Laffer and Bernard Hickin.

But the story goes back even further to Ray Kidd, former head of Lindemans, Leo Buring (1876–1961), Buring’s Chateau Leonay winery, on the outskirts of Tanunda in the Barossa Valley, and the Florita vineyard, located at Watervale in the southern Clare Valley.

In the 1940s wine merchant Leo Buring purchased the Florita site at Watervale, towards the southern end of South Australia’s Clare Valley. He planted the sherry varieties, pedro ximenez and palomino, and, believes winemaker John Vickery, a little crouchen (known then as Clare riesling), trebbiano and shiraz – but not riesling.

After graduating from Roseworthy wine college, Vickery joined the ageing Leo Buring as winemaker at Chateau Leonay. He made both table and fortified wines and recalls “a terrific flor sherry solera” Buring had established using flor yeast cultures pirated from Spain’s Xerez region.

Buring sold the wine, grown on the Florita vineyard, under the Leo Buring Florita Fino label – probably the first wine to bear the vineyard name.

Buring died in 1961 and in 1962 Lindemans purchased the Buring business, retaining John Vickery as winemaker.

By now table wine consumption in Australia was on the move, sparked by a string of so-called “pearl” style light, sparkling table wines, including Orlando Barossa Pearl and Leo Buring Rhinegold, and the arrival of crisp, fruity whites, also pioneered by Colin Gramp at Orlando in the fifties.

To take on Orlando in the booming riesling market, Lindeman head, Ray Kidd, replanted the 32-hectare Florita vineyard almost entirely to riesling – leaving about one hectare of crouchen as the only other variety.

By the 1963 vintage, with new protective winemaking equipment in place at Leonay, Vickery was poised to make the great Leo Buring rieslings – many from the Florita vineyard – that earned 50 trophies and 400 gold medals by 1997. Under Kidd, Lindemans re-released many of these as magnificent aged wines in the late seventies and early eighties.

In 1986, Philip Morris trimmed Lindemans down for sale, selling the prized Florita vineyard to the Barry family. Vickery and winemaking boss, Phil Laffer, later parted with Lindemans following its acquisition by Southcorp.

Laffer joined Orlando as head winemaker. Orlando purchased Chateau Leonay, made it the headquarters of Richmond Grove (formerly of the Hunter Valley) and installed Vickery as winemaker.

From 1994 Vickery returned to riesling making, sourcing fruit for Richmond Grove Watervale from his much-loved Florita vineyard. The wheel had turned full circle. He also produced a Barossa riesling, a blend of material from the Eden Valley (part of the Barossa zone) and Jacob’s Creek, on the southern Barossa Valley floor.

Vickery’s early work with Lindemans and Leo Buring shaped modern Australian riesling making. But he had more to give. In 1997 he hosted riesling tastings that hastened the biggest revolution ever in Australian winemaking – the adoption of screw caps.

In separate events for the trade and wine media, Vickery presented decades of glorious old rieslings he’d created. But cork had taken its toll, Vickery noted, tainting wine with the musty flavours of trichloroanisole or failing as a barrier against air. Vickery told us he’d opened up to six bottles of some older wines to find one good one. He urged the industry to return to the screw cap.

Following the tastings, Richmond Grove agreed to supply Coles-owned Vintage Cellars 1,000 dozen each of Watervale and Barossa riesling from the coming 1998 vintage under screw caps.  The two companies shared the risk of re-introducing a time-proven seal that had, however, been completely rejected by consumers twenty years earlier. (At the time, I headed Coles Myer Liquor Group’s tasting panel and marketing communications and creative department).

But this time drinkers believed the winemakers. Vintage Cellars sold its stock quickly. And Richmond Grove found itself overwhelmed with demand from other retailers. Two vintages later, a group of Clare riesling makers, including Richmond Grove, launched a screw-cap campaign. And now more than 80 per cent of wine sold in Australia wears the cap.

Some of the older rieslings offered by Richmond Grove predate the screw cap. But winemaker Bernard Hickin says they eliminate low-fill cork stock. And, in any event, there’s plenty of screw-cap sealed stock to chose from, including those magnificent 1999 and 2002 Watervales. Hickin says they cellar the wine in excellent conditions, always under 18 degrees, but generally around 15 to 16 degrees. This is a unique buying opportunity.

Sequel
John Vickery retired and still lives in the Barossa Valley. Phil Laffer, now in his early seventies, plays an international winemaking role for Pernod Ricard, Richmond Grove’s parent company. Bernard Hickin took over from Laffer, heading Pernod Richard’s Australian winemaking (Jacob’s Creek and Richmond Grove included). Rebecca Richardson replaced Hickin as group white wine maker. And Don “Mr Aromatics” Young took charge of the group’s aromatic white wines, including Richmond Grove riesling.

Richmond Grove sourced riesling grapes from the Barry family’s Florita Vineyard from 1994 to 1998 inclusive, then moved onto to other contract growers in this prime Clare Valley sub-region. Barossa Riesling proved difficult to sell. Richmond Grove discontinued its production after the 2000 vintage – this magnificent wine was still available at cellar door when I wrote this article.

Why drink old riesling
We drink aged riesling for the same reason we drink young riesling – it’s delicious, and interesting. Over time the colour changes from a pale lemon colour through pale and then deep gold – often green tinted. As young wines they offer pure, shimmering lemon or lime-like fruitiness and racy acidity, in some cases quite austere. As the colour deepens slowly with age, the aroma takes on a honeyed or toasty character, adding complexity to the still-intact varietal fruit. The palate becomes more mellow and richer, reflecting the aroma. It’s a thrilling combination of age with freshness, reliably captured under screw cap, less reliably with cork.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 27 June 2012 in The Canberra Times

President of the NSW Wine Industry Association and vice president of the Winemakers Federation of Australia, David Lowe, sees a well-funded anti-alcohol lobby shifting its focus from beer and spirits to wine. The wine industry needs to respond, he believes. And one response should be to produce wines with less alcohol.

He says, “The push for low alcohol wine is consuming me at present”. And he’s covering the mission personally on two fronts: in a collaborative, so-called ‘Chablis’ project, working with other Mudgee producers on lower alcohol, leaner chardonnay styles; and in his Tinja red and white, which are also preservative-free.

Lowe’s contribution to the Chablis project is a chardonnay from his Nullo Mountain vineyard, located 1,100 metres above sea level at nearby Rylstone. The very cool conditions here favour the accumulation of flavour at comparatively low sugar (and hence alcohol) levels. Sold under Lowe’s Louee Nullo Mount label, the 2011 (a particularly cold year) pushes the concept to the limit – and perhaps beyond the threshold of many drinkers. The searing acidity of the 11 per cent alcohol wine accentuates the intense grapefruit varietal flavour – but also marks it as a wine for future drinking, most likely an outstanding one.

But in warmer regions like Mudgee, unripe flavours present perhaps an even bigger challenge to would-be makers of low alcohol wine. In warm areas ripeness tends to lag well behind sugar levels. And the winemaking challenges compound when, like Lowe’s, the wines are also preservative-free.

Lowe launched his first preservative-free wine, a merlot, five years ago under the Tinja label – named for his Mudgee vineyard, some 700 metres lower than the Nullo Mountain site.

The push into lower alcohol, preservative-free wine puts Lowe’s wines in a tiny, developing niche market.

Increasingly sensitive to sulphur himself, Lowe says sulphur-free wines appeal to people with a sulphur allergy, people with bronchial problems, some people recovering from surgery and to a new breed of younger people “who think they’re being poisoned by preservatives”.

He believes these young people appreciate “innovation and new things. They’re fascinated that a wine can be preservative-free, low in alcohol and still taste decent”.

But he cautions us to note the difference between “no added preservatives” and “preservative free” messages on labels. The difference is that sulphur occurs naturally and can be present even if a winemaker adds none. “Preservative-free” wine means literally no sulphur – and that requires fine attention to detail, like selecting fermentation yeasts that doesn’t produce sulphur.

Happily, picking grapes earlier to produce less alcohol provides some of the extra protection a no-sulphur wine requires. “A low pH means less microbial problems”, say Lowe. “But picking early also introduces green-spectrum flavours”.

To mask the green flavours in the white wines, Lowe says he “squeezes pretty hard on the skins, and includes the pressings”. This lifts the pH slightly, softening the palate, but it boosts colour and flavour, adds texture to the wine and the phenolics are a natural anti-oxidant.

For both reds and whites, oxygen is the enemy. Handling then requires vigilance at every stage. Lowe sees high quality fruit as the first line of defence – small, thick-skinned berries, hand picked and transported intact to the winery – resistant to breakage and invasion by microbes and air.

From fermentation until 24 hours before bottling, the wines must remain saturated with carbon dioxide, with zero exposure to air. “Bottling is the hardest bit”, says Lowe, calculating the ultimate bottling temperature and what pressure the screw cap can stand. “It’s tricky physics”, he explains, wandering off into Henry’s law (William Henry, 1803), dealing with pressure, gas and solubility of gas in liquid.

The subject’s too arcane even for a modern wine back label. But Henry’s law helped Lowe solve a tricky conundrum in a production chain that had to remain oxygen free.

And after five vintages, we see a really appealing 12.5 per cent alcohol Lowe Tinja Organic Preservative-free Merlot 2012. The first preservative-free white also appeals. It’s a blend of verdelho and chardonnay, from a Rylstone vineyard at 650 metres, weighing in at just 10 per cent alcohol.

The protective winemaking technique, says Lowe, means they can never be complex wines. But by they’re vibrant, fresh, clean and a pleasure to drink. And he’s promised himself to bring the alcohol levels down by about one percentage point each year – aiming to get the white down to seven or eight per cent.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 13 June 2012 in The Canberra Times and in the online editions of The Melbourne Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, WA Today and Brisbane Times

The Shoalhaven Coast wine region website lists 15 wineries. They stretch about 130 kilometres by road, from Yarrawa Estate, Kangaroo Valley, in the north, to Bawley Estate, at Bawley Point, to the south.

That’s a reasonably big stretch of coastal land, covering almost a degree of latitude (34˚37’ to 35˚31 south, says Google Earth). But as winemaking regions go, it’s small, totalling, by my estimate, around 70–80 hectares of vines.

With temperature the main driving force behind the physical development of vines and grape ripening, the local climate, aided at the margins by human intervention, decides what varieties succeed and fail.

At first glance, Shoalhaven’s latitude (about three degrees north of Coonawarra, for example) might suggest a home for reds like cabernet sauvignon and shiraz. But in fact, the region’s significantly cooler than Coonawarra during the ripening season. As a result whites, in general, fare better than reds, which struggle in most seasons.

Coolangatta Estate’s Greg Bishop sees parallels between Shoalhaven and the lower Hunter Valley, to the north. Shoalhaven’s grapes ripen about three weeks later than the Hunter’s, but humidity and summer rainfall present almost identical challenges in the vineyard.

“It’s a hard place to grow grapes”, says Bishop. But constant vineyard work generally overcomes the disease pressure created by moisture. “In the early days, Dr Richard Smart helped us, especially with canopy management”, he says. Open canopies maximise air circulation, helping the vines and fruit to dry out – aided by daily sea breezes. They also help sprays penetrate the vines.

The right spray regime, says Bishop, protects against mildew and botrytis cinerea. And tilling v-shape furrows between vine rows diverts water quickly away from the vineyard, further reducing disease pressures.

Bishop’s vigilance makes Coolangatta Estate the region’s dominant producer in quality and quantity – and the only one to date to stand up in any company, among those I’ve tasted. It’s also a consistent winner of trophies (130 to date) and medals at Australia’s top wine shows.

At the 2011 Canberra Regional Wine Show, for example, Coolangatta entered 13 wines and won nine medals, including golds for its 2009 tempranillo (reviewed today) and 2006 semillon.

Bishop rates semillon as best of the estate’s varieties by a wide margin. And given its outstanding show success, he wonders why it’s not more widely grown in the region.

I’ve tasted many vintages of these semillons over the last decade in wine shows and at the dinner table. They’re lovely, low in alcohol, capable of prolonged ageing and very similar in style to those from the Hunter – that is, austere and lemony when young and developing mellow, honeyed flavours with age.

To some extent, the style’s driven by the Hunter connection – as Tyrrell’s, Australia’s semillon masters, makes all of the Coolangatta wines. But Tyrrell’s are merely custodians of the fruit – the source of the wine flavour. Clearly, what Coolangatta grows is very good.

However, the more widely adopted verdelho “comes in every year”, says Bishop. Indeed, Coolangatta Estate 2011 ($22) and Cambewarra Estate’s 2010 ($23), tasted for this article, offer pleasant drinking – with Coolangatta comfortably ahead.

Chardonnay also performs well and a couple in our tasting looked OK – Silos Estate Wild Ferment 2010, reviewed today, and Cambewarra Estate Unwooded Chardonnay 2010 ($24).  Neither of these, however, matches the ones I’ve tried from Coolangatta Estate.

Coolangatta recently planted what it believed to be the Spanish white variety, albarino. But the variety (misidentified across Australia and, in fact, savagnin) performed consistently well in its first four vintages, 2009 to 2012. Bishop sees a good future for the variety in Shoalhaven.

Judges at the 2010 Canberra regional show, support Bishop’s view. They wrote that Coolangatta Estate Savagnin 2010, “had lovely bright fruit with depth of flavour and should be received with some excitement in the region”.

While reds in general struggle to ripen, a few varieties get there and newcomer tempranillo looks exciting. The Coolangatta 2009 reviewed today drinks beautifully – and deserves the gold medals and trophies won in the Canberra and Kiama regional wine shows. Bishop said he planted it because as an early ripener it stood a chance in the cool region.

Coolangatta and other producers in the area grow another early ripening red, chambourcin. This French-American hybrid has the advantage of being resistant to fungal disease; and the disadvantage of making plain wine, in my experience. However, consumers love it both as a red and rosé, says Bishop, partly perhaps because of its novelty.

Bishop also favours tannat, a tannic red variety, for its ability to ripen quickly and fully and, because of its loose bunches and thick skins, resistance to fungal disease. He says, “it has a lot of potential, and Tyrrell’s love it”. The current release Coolangatta 2009 has three gold, eight silver and seven bronze medals to its credit.

Although Coolangatta Estate planted vines in 1988 and Silos Estate three years before that, the Shoalhaven Coast lacks the maturity of a region like Canberra. Canberra’s maturity arrived over the last decade as all the threads spun over forty years finally came together – throwing up shiraz and riesling as regional specialties and achieving a critical mass of high quality vignerons.

Shoalhaven straddles the important Princes Highway tourist route and, at the moment, its tiny, fledgling wine industry seems more plugged into tourism than wine, per se. That’s a good start. But it’ll only be taken seriously as a wine region as the number of really high quality producers, like Coolangatta Estate, grows.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 30 May 2012 in The Canberra Times