When is a wine natural? The concept of “natural” wine stuck its head into our letterbox twice last month. The first, a note from Clare Valley winemaker Jeffrey Grosset, accompanied a sample of the magnificent Grosset Gaia 2009 (five-star review 28 March).

Grosset’s note sparked our curiosity. It read, “The Gaia vineyard is named after James Lovelock’s original book Gaia: a new look at life on Earth. Lovelock proposed the Gaia hypothesis, now Gaia theory, that the Earth is a single organism, reliant on the complexity and diversity of its species to maintain ecological health.

“While there is an international ‘natural’ wine movement, many great winemakers who believe they are already making natural wine have chosen not to jump on the ‘natural’ bandwagon. Jeffrey Grosset remains a firm believer in being guided by the producer’s name, rather than by a loosely defined term.

“For decades now, every Grosset wine has been made with such precision and attention to detail, that the need for fining has been avoided and the wine’s integrity maintained. So in the absence of any chemical additives or finings, is it possible to refer to Grosset wines as anything but natural?”

The second arrival in our letterbox – Alice Feiring’s new book, Naked wine: letting grapes do what comes naturally – plunged directly into the natural wine movement, the object of Grosset’s comments.

Feiring traces the rise of today’s natural wine movement to Jules Chauvet, French scientist, his assistant, Jacques Neauport, and a winemaker in the Beaujolais village of Morgon, Marcel Lapierre.

“In 1978”, writes Feiring, “Marcel Lapierre came to terms with the reality that he couldn’t stand to drink his own wine”. Independently of Lapierre, Chauvet had noted with despair the degradation of Beaujolais wines.

In a 1984 interview with American writer Kermit Lynch, reports Feiring, Chauvet recounted the unwelcome transformation of Beaujolais, between the late 1940s and mid 1970s, from fruity low-alcohol red, to hollow, alcoholic wine – often over-sulphured and smelling of banana, courtesy of “the industrial yeast 71B”.

Excessive yields made the wines ever more insipid and over use of chemicals in vineyards resulted in degraded soils, devoid of life and nutrients, Chauvet told Lynch. Ultimately, writes Feiring, “The region, capable of such greatness, became the vinous equivalent of candy corn, consumed only once a year [thanks to the rise of Beaujolais nouveau]”.

Lapierre, and a few other Morgon producers influenced by him, altered their grape growing and winemaking practices. Lynch imported the wines to the United States and began the difficult task of selling these wines, made without the addition of sugar (to boost alcohol content), sulphur or yeast.

Forty years on, the natural wine movement enjoys a global following – with dedicated wine bars in some countries. But as far as I can ascertain, there’s no formal definition of “natural wine”. At the core lies a notion we can all relate to – that wine should be a clean, wholesome product from sustainable vineyards. At a practical level, for the naturalists, this means adding and taking away as little possible from wine – no or low sulphur additions, no additions of cultured yeast, sugar, acid, tannin or yeast nutrients, no use of fining agents and no filtration.

But the proponents seem to share plenty of common ground with winemakers not sailing under the “natural” banner. And this brings us back to Jeffrey Grosset.

He says, “I was at a restaurant and their list had a whole section on natural wines. I was shocked and asked where are we? It’s a shame the naturals feel they have to put a wedge between themselves and other winemakers. It’s flawed logic to think that to show that I’m better I must show that others are wrong”.

He sees flawed logic, too, in insisting on wild yeast ferments and avoiding sulphur additions. The latter, he likens to throwing away personal hygiene – opening the door to oxidation in delicate juice like riesling and microbial spoilage in finished wine.

Grosset sees the term “natural yeast” as a misnomer, believing that yeast populations in wineries, and perhaps in the vineyard, as most likely including strains previously introduced. “Wild yeast” is therefore a better descriptor.

He says that if you’ve gone to the trouble to choose the right vineyard sites, use organic practices, balance every vine and get every bunch, every berry ripe and eliminate damaged fruit, “then using wild yeast doesn’t align with all this control. The results might be great or not so great”. He prefers to use a range of known yeasts in every ferment, emulating successful wild-yeast ferments.

“Every bunch is precious and we make the best wine we can. We can’t leave it to fate”, he concludes.

Grosset speaks only for himself. But hundreds of Australian winemakers have been striving for decades to create healthy soils in their vineyards, gradually bringing their fruit to perfection and adding, or taking away, only what they need to make natural wines. They’ve simply not jumped on the “natural” bandwagon.

And as Feiring points out in her book, so-called “natural” winemakers embrace a spectrum of views. These range from strict no-sulphur regimes, to a minimum intervention approach strikingly similar to what Grosset and many other Australian makers employ.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 4 April 2012  in The Canberra Times

Eileen Hardy shiraz and Eileen Hardy chardonnay date from 1970 and 1986 respectively. The wines released under the labels since then mirror Australia’s winemaking history. And, like time capsules, each vintage reveals something of the winemaking and viticulture of its time. Collectively they carry a rich history.

Eileen Hardy Shiraz 1970 reflected the red wine boom of the time, the dominance of warm South Australian regions in this phenomenon and the unquestioned status of shiraz in McLaren Vale – home of the then family-owned Thomas Hardy and Sons. Eileen Hardy shiraz later wandered from its origins, parallel to similar moves across the industry, only to return to its McLaren Vale roots years later.

Sixteen years after the first Eileen shiraz, as white wine boomed, Eileen Hardy chardonnay arrived – based on grapes from Padthaway, South Australia. Over time grape sourcing followed quality southwards – settling principally in the Yarra Valley and Tasmania by the turn of the century.

During the journey, the style changed dramatically – from the big, fat, oaky, buttery style of the eighties (based on warm-climate fruit) to the more fine-boned, intense, Burgundy-like versions we enjoy today.

While Australians embraced chardonnay en masse in the eighties, popular discovery of pinot noir remained decades away. But in recent times it’s become the fastest growing red variety (driven largely by New Zealand wines) – and even now that’s off a very small base.

Once a footnote in Australian red-wine sales figures, pinot accounted for six per cent by value of retail red wine sales in the year to September 2011, according to Nielsen data.

Vintage Cellars liquor executive, Grant Ramage, says the figures also reveal pinot as “the fastest growing of the major varieties” at 21 per cent for the year, compared to nine per cent for shiraz (which accounts for 26 per cent of red wine sales) and five per cent for cabernet sauvignon.

The figures also reveal that we pay more, on average, for pinot than for shiraz or red in general – $17.50 retail a bottle for pinot, $12.50 for shiraz and $8.49 for red wine overall.

Where interest in chardonnay grew on a wide popular front, driven by cheaper wines from high-yielding, warm-climate vineyards, pinot started at the top, made in tiny quantities by dedicated producers in cool regions.

Hardy’s move into serious pinot noir began with its acquisition of Yarra Burn winery and vineyards, in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, a couple of decades back.

Then in the nineties, the search for high quality pinot and chardonnay for sparkling wine led Hardys to Tasmania. But they quickly embraced table wine, too. By the turn of the century, grape sourcing for Eileen Hardy chardonnay had shifted mainly to Tasmania and the Yarra Valley.

From 2002 their Bay of Fires winery at Pipers River processed all of the company’s Tasmanian fruit – for both table and sparkling wines. By 2009, under Fran Austin, Bay of Fires Pinot Noir had emerged as one of the state’s finest.

By this time, Hardy’s also held two held two vintages of its new Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir in its cellars. They’ve since been released quietly into the market – wines of exceptional quality, yet little known outside the wine industry.

The first release, from the hot 2008 vintage, comes from two mature vineyards in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley and the Yarra Burn vineyard in the upper Yarra Valley. It’s a full-bodied pinot noir, reflecting the hot season.

The currently available 2009 vintage ($85 at cellar door), and the not-yet-released 2010, are both 100 per cent Tasmanian, says chief winemaker Paul Lapsley.

“But it’s not always a lay down misere for Tasmania”, he says. It can be a blend or a single vineyard”. He explains that in 2009 the blend appeared likely to included fruit from Yarra Burn. But February bushfires, and subsequent smoke taint ruled out this possibility.

Fortunately a single parcel for fruit from the Tollpuddle vineyard, in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley, rose to the occasion. Lapsley says they made the 2009 from a half-hectare section on the middle slopes of the 2.5-hectare vineyard. It’s a finer, more elegant style than the 2009, reflecting benign growing conditions.

The 2010 also appeared set to be a Tasmania-Yarra blend. But untimely heavy rain in the upper Yarra led to flavour dilution – ruling the fruit out of contention for the flagship blend.

In the end, says Lapsley, the wine includes material from on Coal River vineyard and Derwent Estate, at Granton, on the Derwent River.

Lapsley says the greatest sites in Tasmania at present tend to in the Coal River Valley and at Derwent Estate, but may expand to the East Coast as vineyards there mature as “the textural component is lacking at present.

There’ll be no 2011 Eileen Hardy Pinot Noir and the 2012 remains in the future – although Tasmania appears particularly attractive several weeks out from vintage, says Lapsley.

Looking further ahead Lapsley sees continuing “synergies between Tasmania and the upper Yarra. But we won’t stop looking in Mornington, Gippsland and Beechworth. If it fits the bill, we’ll use it”.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 21 January 2012 in The Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald

Is Ken Helm pushing it up hill? Or does cabernet really have a future in Canberra? I mean not just as a nice wine – but in the sense, as Helm sees it, that it might snap at the heals of our regional top dog, shiraz?

Releasing his 2009 vintage recently, Helm wrote, “Cabernet sauvignon in the Canberra District has suffered from a myth that it is too cold to ripen” – then lists a string of accolades, some more credible than others, stretching back to 1983.

Helm cabernet’s run of gold medals and trophies at the Cowra, Sydney, Hobart and Cool Climate wine shows began in1983 but ended in 1998 – about the time as shiraz stuck its head up (though, this is probably a coincidence).

Thereafter, the third-party praise on Helm’s list comes mainly through individual critics, including Australia’s James Halliday and Nick Stock and America’s Robert M. Parker. But the praise peaks with Halliday’s 94/100 for Helm Premium Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 (the score subsequently declined to 89 for the 2006 vintage).

Putting this in perspective, Halliday gave higher scores to several Canberra shirazes from the 2008 vintage. These included 95, 96, and 97 for three different Clonakilla wines, 96 for Collector Reserve, 95s for Lerida Estate, Capital Hill Kyeema Vineyard Reserve and Collector Marked Tree, and 94 for Nick O’Leary 2008.

And if we look to the regional show, we see little support for cabernet. Between 1997 and 2011 the trophy for champion wine of show was awarded to a Canberra shiraz on 10 occasions. Indeed, in 14 years, only two non-shiraz wines won the prize – a chardonnay from Orange in 1997 and Helm Premium Riesling 2008 in 2009 (shared with a shiraz from Hilltops). Cabernet simply hasn’t had a look in at the top level.

After judging a couple of lacklustre cabernet classes in the 2011 show, the judges, led by sommelier Ben Edwards, commented, “Obviously cabernet and family represents significant viticultural challenges in the region, so sensitive management of tannin/extraction is paramount. The top wines showed this”.

They’re basically saying it’s difficult to ripen cabernet in Canberra, but the top wines show that it’s possible. That cabernet requires more heat than shiraz to ripen isn’t in dispute.

In Wine, Terroir and Climate Change, John Gladstones classifies the world’s best-known wine grape varieties into maturity groups, based on degree days (a measure of total heat received during the growing season).

Gladstones derives his classification from a number of studies published between 1857 and 1997. At 1,260 degree days, shiraz sits one classification below cabernet, which requires 1,380 degree days to ripen. However, much of Canberra achieves more than 1,380 degree days in a season.

But total heat doesn’t tell the full story. The day-night temperature range also affects grape development and flavour. And when we look at great cabernet regions and great shiraz regions we see a marked contrast. This might explain why cabernet so demonstrably underperforms shiraz in Canberra.

Bordeaux, the home of cabernet, sits on the Dordogne estuary. It’s a true maritime climate – just like those of Margaret River and Coonawarra, Australia’s leading cabernet regions. The diurnal temperature ranges in theses areas, during the ripening period, is comparatively low.

Shiraz, on the other hand, reaches its peak (in the old world) in the northern Rhone Valley’s continental climate, where the diurnal temperature range is comparatively wide – like Canberra’s.

Gladstones believes that “relatively constant, intermediate temperatures during ripening specifically favour the biochemical processes of colour/flavour/aroma development of the berries”. He concludes that “the narrower the range of variation about a given mean or average ripening temperature, the greater the great flavour, aroma and pigmentation will be at a given time of ripening”.

That view intersects nicely with the great wines of Bordeaux, Margaret River and Coonawarra – and points towards the difficulty of getting cabernet just right in Canberra’s continental client. (But it also sits at odds with the outstanding shirazes we make!).

My own experience from years of wine show judging, private tastings and social drinking is that Canberra’s best shirazes rate with the best in Australia. Our cabernets, on the other hand, simply don’t compare, to date, with the country’s best. As well, our average shiraz tastes better than our average cabernet.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make cabernet or, like Ken Helm, tackle the obstacles and shoot for the stars. The woods would be awfully quiet if the only birds that sang were those that sang best.

The fact is that Canberra makes many decent cabernets. And our region – ranging from 500 metres above sea level to almost 900 metres – offers a wide climatic range for anyone willing to experiment with cabernet or any other variety in the future.

Remember, too, that other revered shiraz regions – including the Barossa, McLaren Vale and the Clare Valley – make very good cabernet and have done so successfully for 150 years.

These will never be great regional specialties. But, like Canberra cabernet, they enjoy a following, they offer a different flavour and structure from shiraz and they’re here to stay.

While the odds appear stacked against Helm, he’s made notable progress in recent years, both viticulturally with grower Al Lustenberger and fine-tuning in the winery, particularly in regard to oak maturation.

There’s always an exception to a rule. And if anyone can be the exception, it’s Helm. People once pooh-poohed the idea of cabernet in Tasmania. But then along came Peter Althaus and Domaine A’s extraordinary wines. Perhaps Canberra can have a Domaine B.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 29 February 2012 in The Canberra Times

These days Canberra and shiraz is a no-brainer for aspiring vignerons. It’s our most successful grape variety thanks, initially, to Clonakilla, but now thoroughly bedded down across the district.

But when Greg and Libby Gallagher planted shiraz at Murrumbateman in 1995, Canberra’s reputation for fine wine was a fraction of what it is now – and shiraz had barely emerged as a contender for top spot.

Clonakilla founder, Dr John Kirk, included shiraz among the many varieties he planted in the early 1970s. But until 1990 it joined cabernet sauvignon in the blending vat. That impressive first vintage won two gold medals and two trophies – guaranteeing shiraz a solo role in future Clonakilla vintages. Well, almost.

Four years earlier, Kirk and his son Jeremy had planted viognier – a Rhone Valley white variety. They believed it suited the climate and would a point of difference in the market.

Then, in 1991 while the second Clonakilla shiraz lay in barrel, Melbourne-based Tim Kirk, having completed his Diploma of Education, headed off to France where I’d organised an appointment for him with Marcel Guigal, one of the Rhone’s great winemakers.

There he tasted Guigal’s stunning single vineyard Cote-Roties (blends of shiraz and viognier): the 1988 vintages of La Mouline and La Landonne from barrel and the 1987 La Turque from bottle.

Tim described the meeting and tasting as a “transforming moment”. “Transfixed and delighted” by the perfume and sheer dimension of Guigal’s wines, he decided, “I’ve got to get this shiraz-viognier thing going back home”.

From the 1992 vintage Tim and John Kirk included viognier in the blend in varying proportions: starting at one per cent each in 1992 and 1993, rising to four per cent in 1994, peaking at ten per cent in 1995 and 1996, then falling back to smaller percentages thereafter.

Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier’s reputation grew rapidly, and by early in the new century had won acclaim from leading international critics, including the USA’s Robert M. Parker and UK’s Jancis Robinson. But when the Gallaghers planted shiraz in 1995, the Kirks had barely begun the shiraz viognier journey. Indeed, it would be another two years before Tim Kirk from Melbourne to Canberra to run Clonakilla full time.

The Kirks came to shiraz through trial and error. But the Victorian based Gallaghers put Canberra and shiraz together “after doing climatic data searches for about two years, looking for the best area to grow shiraz”, says their website.

They purchased land at Murrumbateman and in 1995, with Greg still making wine for Taltarni in central Victoria, established a vineyard overlooking the Murrumbidgee Valley and Brindabellas. They believed this site would produce the elegant, multi-layered shiraz they had in mind.

As the vines grew, Greg continued with Taltarni until 1998, then from 1999 to 2004 trained young winemakers at Charles Sturt University, Wagga. During this period he also established Canberra Winemakers, in partnership with Rob and Kay Howell of Jeir Creek. The business continues to make wine at Jeir Creek for growers in and around Canberra.

As their vineyard matured, the Gallaghers launched their own label, making the wines at Jeir Creek. They established a cellar door at the vineyard, on Dog Trap Road, and offered their own delicious cheeses, made on site by Libby (a skill she learned at Charles Sturt Uni).

Greg’s expertise with sparkling wine, developed at Taltarni, opened a unique opportunity, first for Canberra Winemakers, then for the Gallaghers. Initially, Canberra Winemakers prepared base wines for others to turn into bubblies. But Gallagher, seeing the opportunity to complete the process, established a sparkling cellar adjacent to his cellar door.

The cellar, with two computerised gyro palates and bottling line, allows Gallagher to clarify bottles of sparkling wine following secondary fermentation, top them up and seal the bottles for market.

The Gallaghers currently offers two bottle-fermented sparklers under their own label – Duet Pinot Noir Chardonnay NV (pinot from Mount Majura Vineyard, chardonnay from Gallagher vineyard) and Blanc de Blanc 2007 (all from Gallagher vineyard).

These are both fine, delicate wines – the sort you can make only if all the bits line up: vineyard management, harvest timing, fruit handling, winemaking, maturation and finishing off. Clearly, it’s a valuable skill for Canberra to have. But it’s not the cutting edge stuff we see from much cooler areas like Tasmania. So, good as they are, bubblies won’t put Canberra on the wine map. That role remains principally with shiraz – which is were this story started.

The Gallaghers came to Canberra for shiraz and, indeed, it became the district hero. And just four years after establishing their shiraz vines – they finished planting on their 16^th wedding anniversary – Greg made the first wine from them.

1999 was the year BRL Hardy trucked grapes from South Australia to help Canberra vignerons wiped out by the October 1998 frost. A mass of cold air had moved up from Antarctica on a wide front, nipping vines in the bud across Victoria, South Australia and southern New South Wales.

The Gallaghers lost all but three tonnes of their anticipated 20 tonne shiraz crop. But in a recent ten-year retrospective of Gallagher shirazes, the 1999 drank beautifully – to my tasted the best of the older wines, and on a par with the vibrant 2006, my pick of the younger vintages.

The 1999 stood out for its amazingly youthful colour, round, juicy, mellow, maturing fruit flavours and soft tannins – probably very much the style the Gallaghers hoped for when they came to Canberra.

The browning 2000 vintage hadn’t held up nearly so well. But the 2001, while mature, still showed maturing plummy, spicy varietal flavours, in a slightly leaner style than the 1999.

The 2002 looked good, 2003 combined both prune-like over-ripe flavours and a touch of greenness, and the 2005 seemed a touch tart in the finish. The 2004 failed to please. But the 2006, 2007 and 2008 all looked good in their own ways.

While neither completely young, nor mature, the 2006 showed a tremendous vitality and intensity of dark berry and spice flavours with a supple mid palate and lovely soft tannins.

While 2007 lacked the intensity and weight of the 2006, it remains vibrant and fresh with a delicious interplay between the fruit and spicy oak. The current release 2008 seems fuller and riper again even than the 2006 ­– a big wine in the medium-bodied Canberra style.

The 1999 and later vintages, especially 2006, show that the Gallaghers backed the right variety in shiraz and when they get it right, it’s of a very high calibre. They didn’t plant our other district specialty, riesling. But Greg makes a brilliant riesling using fruit from the Four Winds Vineyard (see a full review next week).

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 22 February 2012 in The Canberra Times

This is the story of the little winery that weathered the storm of the great, shrinking, Hardy empire – and emerged as one of Australia’s leading producers of chardonnay and pinots noir and gris.

Bay of Fires, at Pipers River Tasmania, grew out of BRL Hardy’s quest for great sparkling wine. Sparkling specialist, Ed Carr, searched all the likely cool growing sites in south-eastern Australia – including nearby Tumbarumba, the Adelaide Hills, the coldest reaches of the Yarra Valley and further south, in Tasmania.

All of those places produced pinot noir and chardonnay, and even small amounts of pinot meunier, suited to delicate, flavoursome sparkling wines. But nothing equalled the fruit from Tasmania.

This was a period of great expansion for BRL Hardy, buoyed by booming exports, and, for a time, a shortage of suitable grapes. During the boom, the price of wine assets ballooned, peaking in 2003 when Constellation Brands USA bought publicly listed Hardys for $1.9 billion.

As wine assets deflated later in the decade, Constellation offloaded assets, including the historic Leasingham Winery and several vineyards in the Clare Valley and the massive Stonehaven winery on the Limestone Coast. Finally, in February 2011 it sold an 80 per cent stake in the business to Champ Private Equity for $290 million – crystallising a massive loss on its original investment.

Winemaker Fran Austin and the crew at Bay of Fires (founded 2002) kept their heads down during the crisis. They retained their 22-hectare vineyard adjacent to the winery. And under Ed Carr’s supervision they continued making table and sparkling wine components from across Tasmania.

The network of Tasmanian vineyards established by Carr, originally for sparkling wine, had pretty quickly contributed to the company’s best multi-region table wines – notably Hardy’s flagship white, Eileen Hardy Chardonnay. That Tasmania  contributed the major component to one of Australia’s finest whites remained virtually unknown.

The Bay of Fires label, however, provided a face for the Tasmanian wines. And the release of the magnificent 2009 pinot noir, a trophy winner at Canberra’s 2010 National Wine Show of Australia, left no doubt about where the state’s strength lay.

By this time, little known even in the trade, the company had developed a flagship pinot noir under the Eileen Hardy label – made at Bay of Fires but transferred to headquarters in Reynella, South Australia. It was lost in the turmoil of Constellation’s final years. But we’ll see it before too long.

Fran Austin recently left Bay of Fires, handing the winemaking over to Peter Dredge and his assistant, Karl Schultz. They work closely with Ed Carr and Carr’s boss, Paul Lapsley, chief winemaker for the Accolade group.

Accolade’s presence in Tasmania – driven by a wide search for Australia’s best chardonnay and pinot noir (whether for table or sparkling wine) – lends practical support to the contentious argument that high latitude, near sea level, delivers better wine quality than high altitude. Dr John Gladstone reaches a similar conclusion in Wine, Terroir and Climate Change (Wakefield Press, South Australia, 2011).

Whatever the merits of the argument, the current Bay of Fires wines reveal just how at home chardonnay and pinots noir and gris are in a variety of sites around Tasmania. They also reveal an emerging mastery of winemaking that brings out the best in these varieties. That these remain largely undiscovered wines is reflected in the comparatively modest prices for wines of this calibre.

Bay of Fires Pinot Gris 2011 $24.69–$36.50
Fruit source: Lower Derwent 40 per cent; Coal River Valley 39 per cent; Upper Derwent 21 per cent.
This is the best Australian pinot gris I’ve tasted – lively and fresh with intense pear-like varietal aroma and flavour, backed by a rich, silky texture. Winemaker Peter Dredge attributes the rich texture to a component of the wine undergoing wild-yeast ferment in older oak barrels.

Bay of Fires Chardonnay 2009 $29.95–$40.50
Fruit source: Pipers River 31 per cent; East Coast 29 per cent; Coal River Valley 40 per cent.
The age reflects slow sales rather than a marketing plan. But it’s a plus in this sensational wine. Succulent, racy, lemony acidity pulls the many flavour components together in this full-bodied, taut, deeply layered, richly textured, barrel-fermented dry white wine. Should develop well for many more years.

Bay of Fires Pinot Noir 2010 $29.45–$42.99
Fruit source: Derwent Valley 55 per cent; East Coast 30 per cent; Coal River Valley 15 per cent.
This fairly deeply coloured pinot reveals quite a lot of the pinot flavour and aroma spectrum. A light, “stalky” overlay suggests whole bunches, including stems, in the ferment. Behind that comes aromatic waves of varietal fruit characters, ranging from strawberry to plum – adding up to what can only be called “pinosity”. The rich, supple, elegant, tightly structured palate reflects the aroma.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012
First published 15 February 2012 in The Canberra Times