Yalumba Y Series Vermentino 2011 $12–$15 Originally from Sardinia, the Liguria coast and Corsica, vermentino seems well suited to Australia’s hot, dry conditions. Not that heat was a problem in 2011 when cool weather pushed the harvest out six weeks later than in 2010 at the Reichstein-Trenwith vineyard, Renmark. It’s a comparatively low-alcohol wine at 11.5 per cent and makes a good alternative to sauvignon blanc. The flavours are lemony and savoury and the palate soft, but crisp and dry. Yalumba seem to have the right approach with this fairly neutral variety – protective winemaking to retain freshness and a short period on yeast lees to build palate texture.
Louee Nullo Mountain Rylestone Chardonnay 2011 $25 Louee Nullo Mountain Rylestone Riesling 2011 $25 Mudgee’s David Lowe advocates lower alcohol wines as a responsible step for Australian winemakers. He also recognises the challenges in achieving ripe grape flavours at lower sugar levels (and hence lower alcohol). His Louee Mountain vineyard, at 1100 metres, offers the cool conditions likely to achieve this balance. The very cool 2011 vintage, however, pushes the concept to the limit – and perhaps beyond the threshold of many drinkers. The very austere, 10 per cent alcohol riesling may age well, but challenges the palate right now. Likewise the 11 per cent alcohol chardonnay promises much for the future, as age accentuates its intense grapefruit and white peach varietal flavours and the searing acidity mellows. There’s a parallel between these wines and the long-lived, low-alcohol semillons Lowe mastered during his years in the Hunter Valley.
Punt Road Napoleone Vineyard Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 2010 $22.79–$26 After not producing any wines in the heat and bushfires of 2009, Punt Road makes a classy comeback with this delicious 2010 pinot noir, made by Kate Goodman. She describes 2010 as “one of the dream vintages, certainly the highlight of the last decade”. Sourced from the Napoleone vineyard, the limpid, crimson-rimmed wine seduces with its pure, vibrant red-berry aromas and savoury, spicy background. These characters flow through to a taut, intense palate with fine tannins giving excellent structure. It’s approachable now, but needs four or five years bottle age for pinot’s sweet, velvety mid palate to flourish.
Len Sorbello the day before he died. Photo: Melissa Ablitt
On 9 January, Canberra lost Len Sorbello – a wine-loving bloke, loved and respected across the wine industry and among former public service workmates.
Laughter lightened the farewell service as brother Sam, old wine mate, Lester Jesberg, and elder son, Stephen, recounted a very full, generous life infused with an infectious, passion for wine and food.
Stephen said, “If dad wasn’t eating, he was thinking of eating. If he wasn’t cooking, he was thinking of cooking”. He recalled a monumentally littered kitchen and six o’clock dinners starting at nine.
Brother Sam remembered Len’s early food infatuation, indulged lavishly by a Sicilian mother. Black muscat juice accompanied meals, said, Sam. But this gave way to Barossa Pearl and Ben Ean during Len’s youth in north Queensland.
By the time Sorbello, by now a barrister, met Lester Jesberg in 1976, his wine tastes had moved up a notch. Recalls Jesberg, “Len was a year ahead of me in wine at the time and for a beginner that was a big gap. He was already into the great wines of Europe”.
“It was at a Rothbury Estate ribbon dinner in Canberra”, Jesberg remembers. “I introduced myself to Len and his table and many of those people, including Mike and Maggie Bond, were there the other day [at the funeral]”.
“We just clicked”, says Jesberg – and Sorbello offered to host a tasting for him. “I’ll show you some real wines”, he said, shortly thereafter treating Jesberg to an extraordinary line up of 1970 Bordeaux reds – all the first growths plus Chateau Cheval Blanc. Jesberg joined Sorbello’s tasting group, based initially on the Rothbury Estate ribbon tastings.
This dragged the two into the orbit of Murray Tyrrell, owner of Tyrrell’s Wines, and the legendary Len Evans, driving force behind Rothbury. Over many trips to the Hunter and endless tastings, Sorbello and Jesberg earned their prestigious purple ribbons – Rothbury’s highest accolade.
I met Len Sorbello during this period in the late seventies, for me a period of intense wine exploration with David Farmer of Farmer Brothers. We tasted largely separately from the Sorbello-Jesberg group, but knew them well, tasted together on occasion and sold them heaps of wine.
I recall early on Farmer saying, “Len’s got a great white palate”, something I came to appreciate over the next thirty years as we ate, drank and, eventually, judged together.
What I also saw in Len a great joy in drinking wine. He’d analyse, dissect, and discuss it endlessly, but finally it was a drink to be savoured to the hilt, with food. And that’s what he did.
Bruce Tyrrell, son of the late Murray Tyrrell, met Sorbello and Jesberg in the late seventies. He said, “We’d get on the drink in the Hunter and have a lot of fun”. He recalls the pair impressing Murray with their palates.
The Sorbello-Jesberg group maintained the passion and in 1985 founded “Winewise” magazine. Jesberg became the editor largely, he says, because Sorbello by now was married, had two sons and wanted to give them plenty of time.
Bruce Tyrrell believed that Winewise could become “Australia’s answer to Robert M. Parker [all-powerful American wine critic] if the industry would get behind it”.
Tyrrell said, “These guys were not full-time industry pros, but they had tremendous knowledge, they were completely independent and there was no bullshit in any of them”.
In 1990, the Winewise team, established the Small Vignerons Award, designed especially for boutique wineries unable or unwilling to enter larger shows. It’s now one of Australia’s most prestigious events, attracting our bests show judges and a broad representation from small makers.
Sorbello judged at the awards from the outset, building on an already formidable palate and winning tremendous respect among judges. He held strong views, argued his point but always listened and finally accepted any outcome with good humour.
Sorbello’s wine passion spilled into a successful public service legal career, culminating as head of legal services at Comcare. A colleague, Ken Whitcombe, said Len brought his enthusiasm for wine and food to work – a gusto that meant large wine bills whenever Len organised a staff lunch. This caused some nervousness among less well-paid staff.
“Len was constitutionally incapable of ordering a bottle of wine that cost less than the rest of the meal put together”, says Whitcombe. But Whitcombe also observed in Len a similar gusto for family, friends and career. And he recalls Len hosting a dinner for work colleagues at his own home, cooking “one of the most delightful meals they’d ever had” and digging into his private cellar.
The ever-ebullient Len put wine at the centre of a generous life, sharing his knowledge, enthusiasm and precious bottles with work colleagues, family, friends and many contacts in the wine industry. He put wine and food where it belonged – on a shared table with family and friends.
Len Sorbello’s life ended in a tragic irony – he died suddenly while travelling to visit his terminally ill mother in Townsville. The day before he’d held court at Adrienne Jesberg’s 60th birthday celebrations in Sydney with 40 or so old wine friends. “Len loved an audience”, says Lester Jesberg. We’ll all miss you Len.
At a regional shiraz dinner a few years back, Garry Parker told me he approached wine marketing as he did building a career as a barrister from 1963 – on the belief that good performance would attract a following.
And that’s exactly what he’s achieved at Long Rail Gully Wines – a deep respect among his winemaking peers and well-informed consumers, if not yet with the wider acclaim his wines deserve.
With wife Barbara and son Richard, Parker established Long Rail Gully at Murrumbateman in 1998 as a serious business investment, capable of standing in its own right.
Richard Parker managed the venture from the outset. As a science graduate from Sydney University, he’d helped manage the family’s wheat, sheep and canola interest out west. But he recalls resisting a move into vines – concerned about the instability of the market.
However, Hardy’s move into Canberra, with the promise of a fixed-term grape contract, settled the argument and underpinned the family’s new venture in the short term. At the time Richard was half way through an agricultural science degree at Charles Sturt University.
“I was able to flip this into wine science”, he says, recalling how his mates said he’d not have to worry about viticulture as he’d know more about vines than the lecturers by the time he’d finished planting.
The family established the bulk of the 22-hectare vineyard, one of Canberra’s largest, in 1998 and in recent years replaced some of the cabernet sauvignon with pinot gris.
The vineyard now has seven hectares of shiraz, four of riesling, about three hectares each of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot gris and one of pinot noir. These are rounded figures
While the grape contract with Hardy’s underpinned the early years, Long Rail Gully planned its own brand from the outset, making its first wine in 2001, just three years after establishing vines.
The business now has several strands – grape sales to other makers (including Clonakilla, Capital Wines, Eden Road and a couple of Hunter producers), contract winemaking for other grape growers and making the Long Rail Gully Range (current releases reviewed below).
Wine making demands considerable capital investment, so the Parkers now have on site a very large, insulated winery, all the right winemaking gear and even a bottling line (most Canberra producers use a mobile bottling contractor).
The Parkers are about to export to China. Exports will include purpose-made wines, now in barrel, as well as the Long Rail Gully range. Richard says the standard wines are to be cork sealed to meet market demands. But the premium wines will be screw-cap sealed – emphasising the quality benefits of the seal.
Long Rail Gully wines are available at selected outlets and cellar door. See www.longrailgully.com.au for details.
Long Rail Gully Riesling 2011 6-pack $17 ($92 for 6) Pale straw to lemon colour; lime-like varietal aroma with a floral lift; intense lemon and lime varietal flavours on the palate, carried by the delicate, tart acidity of the cool vintage, with a touch of musk in the dry aftertaste. The wine continued to drink well for days after opening, suggesting a long cellaring life. It’s blended from the two clones in the vineyard: Geisenheim, contributing leaner lime and spicy notes; and McWilliams Eden Valley clone, lending lime and musk.
Long Rail Gully Pinot Gris 2011 $ 20 ($110 for 6) Winemaker Richard Parker sees this as his stand-out white of the vintage – not surprising for a variety that thrives in cool ripening conditions. Although it’s only slightly more alcoholic than the riesling (12.1 versus 11.5 per cent) it’s considerably fuller bodied, with a rich, silky texture. This reflects the making technique: a component tank fermented to capture fruit flavour and aromatic high notes; another portion fermented and matured on yeast lees in old oak barrels, to build body and texture. The result is a vibrant, fresh wine, leading with a pear-like varietal aroma and flavour, with layers of succulent stone-fruit flavours adding further interest – all of this embedded in the rich, silky texture.
Long Rail Gully Pinot Noir 2010 $30 ($162 for 6) A cellar door favourite and the priciest wine in the range, Long Rail Gully pinot noir challenges the notion that the variety doesn’t suit Canberra. This is a class act, certainly not reaching the heights of our best shirazes, but delivering the real pinot experience. The initial impacts are of fragrant, vibrant, varietal red berries with a stalky note – probably derived from whole bunches included in the ferment – and a smooth, velvety texture. With aeration, more savoury “umami” flavours arrive – layering the fruit with an earthy, beef-stock note. There’s drinking pleasure galore in this wine. A tasting of the 2005 vintage confirms its keeping ability.
Long Rail Gully Merlot 2005 and 2006 $22 ($119 for 6) Is bottle age part of the marketing plan, we ask Garry and Richard Parker? Alas, no, they say. Merlot doesn’t sell; it seems to be giving way to pinot. But the almost-sold-out 2005, and 2006 that follows, offer delicious drinking – and a great opportunity to experience the extra flavour dimension that comes with bottle age. These are highly aromatic, plummy wines with the deep, sweet, earthy, chocolaty notes of age, a pleasant leafy edge and plush, juicy tannins.
Long Rail Gully Shiraz 2008 and 2009 $24 ($129 for 6) These beautiful wines reveal the great strength of Canberra shiraz, albeit in contrasting styles. The almost-sold-out 2008 reveals a peppery side of shiraz not often seen in Canberra. In this instance we see both white and black pepper, the former normally associated with very cool conditions and sometimes with unripeness.
In Long Rail Gully it’s as if the grapes accumulated sugar (sugar ripeness), while flavour ripeness lagged behind – a common situation in warm Australia. However, ripeness, tinged with white pepper, seems to have just staggered over the line, giving a wine of 14.5 per cent alcohol and distinct, just-ripe white pepper flavour. This is a very pleasing flavour in one of our district’s better shirazes.
The 2009, however, moves another step up the quality ladder. Here, aromatic, floral red-berry varietal flavours stand at the centre – reminiscent of shiraz from France’s tiny Cote-Rotie region. The supple, sweet palate and savoury, spicy background flavours add to this impression. The wine’s delicious to drink now but should cellar well for many years. It’s phenomenally good – and undervalued. But don’t count on that lasting as it’s like to attract attention.
Australia’s craft brewers are at last to have a national body to promote their product, liaise with government and advocate their interests.
Unlike the wine industry with its strong national promotional and representative bodies, craft brewers have been a fragmented lot despite their growing presence in the market.
Brewers behind the new national body (with state chapters) began working on the project in May and in July circulated a draft prospectus to the industry. In November they established Craft Beer Limited and called on brewers to join the association and participate in the election of a board.
The brewers behind the initiative are Brad Rogers and Jamie Cooke (Stone and Wood Brewing, Byron Bay), Brendan Varis (Feral Brewing Company, Swan Valley), Dave Bonighton (Mountain Goat Beer, Richmond Victoria), Miles Hull (Little Creatures, Fremantle), Owen Johnston (Moo Brew, Hobart) and Adam Trippe-Smith and Bruce Peachey (McLaren Vale Beer Company.
The Jimmy Watson trophy is to wine drinkers what the Melbourne Cup is to once a year punters. We’ve all heard of it. There’s a buzz each year as the Melbourne show unveils the latest winner. And for the winner, especially if it’s a little known winery, victory can be a fast track to glory.
This year the coveted crystal and silver jug travelled to Tasmania for the first time, won by Nick Glaetzer for his Mon Pere Shiraz 2010, a blend from the Tamar and Coal River Valleys.
By my reckoning, it’s only the fourth wine in the trophy’s 50-year history to have been the final, bottled product at the time of judging. Until recently the line up was the domain of raw young reds not due for blending, let alone bottling, for many months. I detail below why this was so – and why it made the Jimmy Watson not only Australia’s best-known wine award but also its most reviled by critics, including me.
Even before recent changes to the class rules by the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria, and to the trust deed by the Watson family, bottled exhibits had represented an ever-greater proportion of entries. These had risen to 75–80 per cent of the total by 2009. The shift resulted from a run of earlier vintages, wines spending less time in oak, shifting the judging from July to October, and the show’s decision to admin two-year olds into the ranks.
This year, however, following sustained lobbying from within the industry and columns like this, the rules changed for the better. An RASV press release from June 2011 states, “New in 2011, the Jimmy Watson classes will accept bottled wines onlyand will continue to include one and two-year-old red wines. Wines entered into the Watson classes this year are eligible to be put forward by judges into other red classes, providing the wines with further opportunities to win varietal trophies”.
The latter change benefited Nick Glaetzer’s Mon Pere Shiraz, which went on to win a second trophy as best “Rhone style or shiraz”.
The trophy now rewards wines fundamentally different from those that triumphed in the early years – a shift from rewarding the big, bold and immature to the bright, fruity and approachable. It’s a natural progression. But it’s worth reflecting, too, on the trophy’s origins.
In 1962 Jimmy Watson, wine merchant, died. At his funeral, a hat passed amongst Watson’s loyal followers, raising funds to sponsor an annual “Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy” for the best one-year-old red wine at the Melbourne Wine Show.
There are those who still remember Jimmy with fondness – none more so than his son Alan as he presides, with his son, over the Jimmy Watson Wine Bar founded by his father all those years ago.
But somewhere along the way, the trophy took on a life of its own – a farcical, commercial life far removed from the world Jimmy Watson inhabited during his lifetime.
Alan Watson remembers his father as a wine pioneer – a man who cheerfully weathered the sneers of some fellow Australians for nothing more than encouraging the consumption of table wine with food. In those days wine was just plonk.
Bill Chambers, maker of superb Rutherglen fortifieds and long-term chair of judges at the Melbourne wine show, once told me that he recalled Watson’s Wine bar in the late 1950s. There were bottles everywhere as a leather-apronned Jimmy, a great showman, worked with two rubber tubes to bottle a hogshead of red before lunch – an enviable feat in Chamber’s view, and one Jimmy Watson was proud of.
In those days Bill Chambers worked up in the Clare Valley with the Stanley Wine Company. He remembers Melbourne Wine Merchant, Doug Seabrook, buying hogsheads of raw young Clare Valley reds, many of which he sold to Watson. By all accounts it was these vigorous young reds, and not only those from Clare, that interested him most of all.
In an interview some years back, Alan Watson told me that his father’s business was not originally a watering hole as it is today, but a bottle shop where the owner selected and bottled everything himself. But Watson’s great enthusiasm attracted a ring of disciples. They soon began bringing food to the shop and adopting a liberal interpretation of licensing laws that permitted patrons to taste wine before purchasing.
The clientele, enthralled by Watson, showman and extrovert, came from all walks of life. But with Melbourne University just up the road from Watson’s Lygon Street premises, academics and students swelled his ranks of followers. Eagerly they swallowed his message.
“Dad tried to move the trade into another era”, reminisced Alan Watson. “He wanted wine to be seen as an everyday occurrence, something to be consumed with meals”. He also urged patience, encouraging customers to cellar the immature, purple, one-year-old reds that were the bulk of his trade.
Jimmy Watson was an educator of old and young alike according to Bill Chambers, long-time chair of the Melbourne show. “Students, professors, everyone brought their tucker down the road before heading up to Watson’s to drink wine. But he was a showman and I can’t remember him drinking much himself”.
Watson’s senior disciples, mostly academics and businessmen, gravitated to an upstairs room, eventually dubbed by Watson as “The House of Lords”. It was these most ardent and articulate followers who passed the hat at Jimmy Watson’s funeral, thus perpetuating his name in the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy to be awarded to the robust, year-old reds he so loved.
For the next ten years the Jimmy Watson Trophy – now a household word amongst wine drinkers – remained unknown to wine consumers and of only minor interest to wine companies.
Bill Chambers judged in Melbourne from the early 1960’s. He recalls little fuss over the Watson Trophy until the Berri Co-operative’s success in 1973. Then, recalls Chambers, after an heroic celebration, winemaker Brian Barry boarded the plane carrying the Murray River’s first major trophy.
Perhaps we can link the trophy’s rise to fame more with Wolf Blass’s hat trick. He won it in 1974, 1975 and 1976 for his 1973, 1974 and 1975 vintages of ‘Dry Red Claret’. He renamed the wine Wolf Blass Black Label and used the Jimmy as its launching pad. He even proclaimed the triple victory on the neck label of his sparkling wine at the time.
Increasingly since then, to win the trophy was to harvest a windfall. For the hype surrounding each year’s winner virtually guaranteed a wine’s commercial success.
While no amount of hosing down seemed to quell trade or public clamouring for the winner, the fact remained that for most of the trophy’s history, the winning wine had not been the finished product.
This became the source of sustained and intense criticism, principally from those concerned with the integrity of show results. Awarding medals and trophies to unfinished wine simply magnified the chance of fraud, critics claimed.
Even the most meticulously honest winery blending a “representative” show sample across a range of barrels couldn’t say with certainty that what the judges tasted and what went into bottle were exactly the same.
The recent, welcome changes make this history and favour the continuing success of the fruity, easy drinking styles that’ve won in recent years. These are a long way from the wines that Jimmy Watson hand bottled in Carlton half a century ago.
While we won’t see inky, deep, raw wines like a one-year-old Penfolds Grange or Wolf Blass Black Label win the trophy again (as they have in the past), we can at last be assured that the Jimmy Watson winner we buy is the same wine the wine judges liked.
With production of a mere 3,000 tonnes annually, it’s tempting to dismiss tempranillo (a Spanish red variety) as a footnote to Australia’s 1.5 million tonne wine industry. But as the industry repeatedly demonstrates, big new things, and even niche new things, grow from modest beginnings, often driven by producer enthusiasm.
Great modern examples include the chardonnay boom of the eighties and nineties and the sauvignon blanc flood of the new century.
No one expects tempranillo to overtake shiraz or cabernet, our two most voluminous red varieties — nor, perhaps, even to be the next big thing. But despite its small total production, tempranillo has the attention of 286 wine companies, say the organisers of tempra neo, an annual workshop aimed at understanding and promoting the variety.
Local organiser, Mount Majura’s Frank van de Loo, says the organising group held this year’s workshops in Melbourne, Brisbane, Kingscliff and Canberra. In Canberra the events attracted full houses to both the consumer and trade events, says van de Loo.
Van de Loo, maker of Canberra’s leading tempranillo, initiated the workshop in 2010 with other tempranillo makers – La Linea (Adelaide Hills, South Australia), Tar and Roses (Alpine Valleys and Heathcote, Victoria), Running with Bulls (Barossa Valley and Wrattonbully, South Australia), Gemtree Vineyards (McLaren Vale, South Australia) and Mayford (Porepunkah, Victoria).
At the workshops, the group presented a mixed field of 18 Australian tempranillos, broken into three brackets of six wines. In an accompanying booklet, they wrote, “They have been chose from as wide a range of regions, climates and soils as we can find, to illustrate the regional expression of tempranillo around Australia.
Thanks to Frank van de Loo we reproduced the tasting, bar one wine, at Chateau Shanahan and later conferred with him on his impressions from the workshops. I’ve incorporated his comments into the tasting notes below.
The line up confirms to me the suitability of the variety in many parts of Australia, giving it a versatility, perhaps, comparable with shiraz. It also reveals the “mainstream” and distinctive flavour of the variety, suggesting to me that, over time, it may become a significant contributor here.
Tempranillos from the tempra neo workshops 2011
Running With Bulls Barossa 2010 $19.95 Running With Bulls Wrattonbully 2010 $19.95 These offer a terrific tempranillo starting point and demonstrate that sometimes less is more. The winemaker input, especially in relation to oak maturation, appear minimal, allowing the varietal expression of the two regions full reign. Both offer bright, pure fruit flavours, the Barossa with soft, juicy tannins to match. The Wrattonbully wine (from several hundred kilometres further south) introduces an earthy, savoury flavour element and firmer tannins. Surprisingly, says van de Loo, people tended to favour the Wrattonbully style – by a large margin in Canberra where five out of six buyers of a mixed tempranillo six pack opted for Wrattonbully over Barossa.
Topper’s Mountain New England 2009 $25 Frank van de Loo says many tasters at the workshops, drew comparison between this and his own Mount Majura, mainly through a shared hint of eucalypt and comparable tannin structures. It’s a delicious wine – the more it breathes, the greater the volume of vibrant red berry fruit flavours emerging (with the merest touch of eucalypt). The tannin structure is fine and soft.
Gemtree Vineyards Luna Roja McLaren Vale 2010 $25 Van de Loo says the wine received broad support at the workshops, where tasters described it as “interesting” and “reminiscent of French wine”. The winemakers, including its maker, Mike Brown, however, lamented its “brett” character – a spoilage caused by the unloved brettanomyces yeast. There’s lovely fruit under the brett, but once you’ve learned to identify brett you can’t forgive it.
Oliver’s Taranga Small Batch McLaren Vale 2009 $38 This is a big, round, soft red. But for me the vanilla-like influence of oak, while sweet and pleasant in its own way, overrides the varietal flavour. As the two Running with Bulls wines demonstrate, less intervention is better with new varieties.
Pfeiffer Winemakers Selection Rutherglen 2010 $30 Van de Loo heard many positive comments on the initially shy wine. However, after a few hours’ aeration, delicious red fruit flavours emerged, checked to some extent by fine, firm tannins.
Mayford Alpine Valleys Tempranillo 2010 $35 This was another of the top wines in the line up. It showed class from the moment it splashed into the glass, then held its power and depth for a couple of days afterwards on the tasting bench. It offers a wonderful tension between concentrated, sweet, restrained fruit and firm, fine, savoury tannins.
Sam Miranda King Valley 2009 $30 To my taste, this was a sound but unexciting wine, not pushing many tempranillo buttons.
Capital Wines the Ambassador Canberra District 2010 $27 This old and much loved friend, often enjoyed on its own, looked good among its peers. The keynotes are pure, red fruit aroma and flavour, elegant, cool-climate structure and very fine, pleasantly grippy tannins.
Mount Majura Vineyard Canberra District 2010 $40 One of my top wines of the tasting, Mount Majura showed some similarities to Topper’s Mountain in the workshops (see above). However, to me it’s a more concentrated expression of tempranillo. Its quite firm, tight tannins form a matrix with the deep, sweet underlying fruit.
Glandore Estate TPR Hunter Valley 2008 $35 First sniff – generic, earthy Hunter red aroma pinpoints its origins; then the plummy, juicy fruit flavour kicks in, not as fleshy as shiraz, with a spicy note, a little more oak than I like and a soft, fine finish.
Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes 2010 $15.45 The cheapest wine in the work shop was well received, says Frank van de Loo. It offers pleasant primary fruit and a solid tannin backbone for a medium-bodied, comparatively low-alcohol wine (12.5 per cent).
Sanguine Estate Heathcote 2009 $30 Sanguine, another star of the line up, flourished for several days on the tasting bench. It offers big volumes of alluring fruity, savoury, spicy aromas, backed by juicy fruit depth on the palate and solid, chewy but elegant tannins.
Tar and Roses Alpine Valleys and Heathcote 2010 $24 Like a nut, there’s sweetness inside this wine, but you have to work at it to find the kernel. A few hours after splashing and pouring, the fruit peeped through the tight mesh of tannin. Finally, one of the better wines in the tasting, just a little off the pace of the top few (Mayford, Sanguine and Mount Majura).
La Linea Adelaide Hills 2010 $27 La Linea split the room, says van de Loo, as people drifted towards or away from its pretty, fruity aroma and flavour. It certainly stands out from all the other wines because of that. Partners David LeMire and Peter Leske attribute the extraordinary (and lovely) fragrance to their coolest vineyard, Llangibby.
Stella Bella Margaret River 2009 $30 We tried to like this but found the fruit not quite up to the 14 per cent alcohol. The lack of fruit flavour, too, allowed the spicy oak flavour to come through. It’s a clean, well-made wine and pleasant enough but to our taste needs more fruit intensity.
Bunkers The Box Margaret River 2009 $20 Another pleasant, fault free wine but lacking fruit intensity and varietal definition.
Ernie Loosen, Dr Loosen Wines, Bernkastel, 7 September 2011. Photo Jill Shanahan
We always want what we don’t have and value the scarcest things most of all. Australian winemakers value acidity – tasting berries anxiously as an ascendant sun pushes sugar levels ever higher as acid levels decline.
In the Mosel, it’s the opposite. There the winemakers value sugar, something Australia produces in abundance. At 50 degrees north only vines on the steepest south, southeast and southwest slopes, like giant solar panels, collect sufficient heat to ripen grapes fully. Acid levels remain high til the end and Germany’s quality system even grades wine according to the sugar content of the grapes.
English writer, Hugh Johnson, likened the impossibly steep slopes to toast held to the fire – though at this latitude the sun’s oblique autumn angle ensures a very slow roast, ensuring the intense but delicate flavours of the area’s unique riesling.
On the right slopes, proven over two millennia, the grapes do, indeed, achieve full sugar and flavour ripeness and retain high acidity. And because of the high humidity, botrytis cinerea flourishes, dehydrating the berries and further concentrating sugar and acidity.
However, not all of the riesling succumbs to botrytis, widening the options available to winemakers – from fresh, fruity dry wines unaffected by botrytis, through delicate, semi-sweet styles, to profound, sticky wonders made only of rotten, shrivelled berries (beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese).
After enjoying his wines at a stall in Bernkastel, we visit Heiko Fass, a small maker based at Neumagen-Dhron. A graduate of Geisenheim wine university, Fass took over the old family business from his father and brothers.
He operates the compact cellar single handed, receiving small batches of hand-harvested grapes – picked by the same Polish family that’ve worked for his family for 50 years.
Everything in the steep vineyards is done by hand, he says, meaning Mosel can only ever be about quality, not quantity.
In the cellar we see similarities with mainstream Australian riesling making, but also some notable differences. Like leading Australian makers, Fass transports small batches of grapes quickly to the cellar, separates the juice into free-run and pressings components, settles the juice and ferments it at controlled temperatures in stainless steel tanks, keeping the various components separate until final blending.
A crucial difference, however, is maturing batches of the higher quality rieslings in “fuder”, old oak barrels of about 1,000-litre capacity, used widely in Mosel. Fass also uses a couple of larger 1,800-litre and 2,000-litre oak vessels. He says his father made some of the fuder, including a couple bearing 1965 and 1969 date stamps.
These old vessels allow micro-oxidation, mellowing the wine, muting some of the aromatics and adding texture, without injecting woody flavours.
Upstairs in the living room, overlooking the Mosel, we taste a range of Fass dry, semi-sweet and sweet rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, near Dhron (hence “Dhroner Hofberger” or Dhroner Roterd” on the labels).
What makes riesling sweet or dry? In short, the winemaker – if she wants dry, she ferments all the sugar; if she wants semi-sweet or sweet, she refrigerates the wine, the yeasts quit fermenting and she then filters the yeasts out, just to be sure. So, the sweeter the wine, the lower the alcohol; the drier the wine, the higher the alcohol – all relative, of course, to the amount of sugar in the juice originally.
In the case of the Fass rieslings, the driest wine at an undetectable 3.5 grams of sugar per litre, contained 12.5 per cent alcohol; the half-dry version had 16.8 grams and 11.5 per cent of sugar and alcohol respectively; and the kabinett, spaetlese and auslese at 7–8 per cent alcohol, contained between 48 and 220 grams per litre of sugar.
But because of the high acidity, the 48 grams-of-sugar kabinett remained delicate, clean and refreshing – definitely a three-glass wine; and the truly sticky sweet auslese, though luscious, remained light, buoyant and completely not cloying.
After the tasting we stop in Piesport to see the remains of an old Roman winery – a reminder of the area’s extraordinary winemaking history
If you’re visiting the Mosel, Heiko will gladly show you the cellar and wines by appointment. The visitor centre in Bernkastel has contact details for all Mosel producers.
A short walk out of Bernkastel, we join half a dozen young members of the Oxford University Wine Club for a “tasting and light supper afterwards” at Dr Loosen – one of the Mosel’s most visible, best and outspoken producers. Our host is owner, Ernst (Ernie) Loosen.
Loosen starts with a map of the middle Mosel’s vineyards, compiled in 1868 by the Prussian tax authorities. He says it still holds and became his basis for defining vineyard quality ever since he took over the family business from his father in 1988.
Loosen produces about 40 Mosel wines and takes us through a representative dozen. As we progress he explains, with exasperation, Germany’s confusing wine labelling laws, commenting, “We Germans really hate our customers. We want to make it as difficult as possible”.
Rather than a confusing matrix of regulations for Germany’s different regions, Loosen favours a system that ranks vineyards by their quality, then allows winemakers to choose how they make the wine and whether it’s sweet or dry or in between.
Loosen owns parts of some of the Mosel’s greatest vineyards, including Sonnenuhr, opposite the village of Wehlen; Wurzgarten, just downstream of Urzig; Pralat and Treppchen, opposite the village of Erden; and Lay, adjacent to Bernkastel.
We start with the two dry rieslings, relative newcomers to the portfolio and labelled simply Blue Slate and Red Slate, reflecting the different soils of the vineyards they come from.
But the delicate, sweeter, low alcohol wines from the great vineyards take centre stage. In the warm, sunny sitting room, we linger longer than we ought on the magnificent Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2010. Then with increasing pleasure we move through the sweeties, culminating in the profound Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel 2010 and Bernkastler Lay Riesling Eiswein 2008.
The tasting over, Loosen kicks off the “light supper” with a fresh, taut, bone-dry and delicate sparkling wine, based on a 1990 riesling auslese from the nearby Himmelreich vineyard at Graach.
The tasting finished at around six and we leave the light supper, Loosen and the Oxford mob at around two in the morning. By now we’ve sleuthed our collective our way through 18 mature mystery wines from Switzerland, the USA, South Africa, France, Germany and Australia ¬– the latter represented by the still excellent Coldstream Hills Reserve Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 1992.
The German wines came at the very end, with Loosen’s comment, “Now we will drink ourselves sober on Mosel”. The first, a still lively but mature Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1969, made by his grandfather, could’ve been 20-30 year old we thought, not 42. And the second, introduced as “a refresher”, had been put aside and never sold because of its searing acidity at the time. This was, indeed, a vibrant refresher. We guessed its age as three or four years. In fact, it was an Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1983.
While this demonstrates the staying power of Mosel in a good cellar, the main game for visitors to the region and shoppers in Australia will remain recent vintages. Current selections in Australia go back to 2004, and there are still some of the excellent 2007s around if you look hard.
MOSELIMPORTERS
This is not a comprehensive list but should, however, lead you to some terrific Mosel rieslings.
Dr Loosen – www.drloosen.de
Imported by Cellarhand, Melbourne (www.cellarhand.com.au). Woolworths, through Dan Murphy, has an exclusive on Dr Loosen Blue Slate Riesling Trocken (dry). We tried and liked the 2010 vintage at Loosen’s cellars, Bernkastel.
Weingut Staffelter Hof
Imported by Canberra’s Lester and Adrienne Jesberg on indent. Winemaker Jan Klein (“one of a young brigade achieving great things”, writes Jesberg) sources fruit from the Letterlay and Steffensberg vineyard. Join the mailing list to hear of future indents by writing to Adrienne at adrjes@bigpond.net.au
Fritz Haag, A. J. Adam, Reinhold Haart, Knebel, Schloss Lieser, Willi Schaefer and Schmitges
Imported by Eurocentric Wines, Sydney (www.eurocentricwine.com.au). The website links to the producer sites.
J. J. Prum
Imported by Bibendum Wine Company, Melbourne (www.bibendum.com.au).
Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt
Imported by Domaine Wine Shippers, Melbourne (www.domainewineshippers.com.au).
Egon Muller
Imported by Negociants Australia (www.necociantsaustralia.com)
Middle Mosel with Kues to the left, Bernkastel on the right. Photo: Copyright Jill Shanahan, August 2011
We’re a die-hard lot us riesling lovers, clinging to a great variety that appeals to few. We talk it up. We pore over the results of Canberra’s annual International Riesling Challenge. We admire Frankland Estate’s International Riesling Tasting. Then Coles liquor executive, Grant Ramage, reveals the sorry truth, “Riesling’s just not going anywhere. Nielsen data says sales are down nine per cent year-on-year to the end of August”.
In more gloomy riesling reality, the press release accompanying today’s wine of the week crows, “Sales of pinot gris/grigio have now overtaken riesling in this country”. Depressing news about a variety that more often than not produces ordinary wine.
We’re fishing for good riesling news, high on the variety after eight days in the central Mosel, Germany’s riesling heartland – source of the world’s most delicate, most profound rieslings.
We’ve carried these aromas and flavours in our head for over thirty years – memories born in the late seventies from tasting wines from the great 1976 vintage. What unforgettable wines they were, even if we knew little of the regions or names at the times.
The wines did the talking – gently fragrant kabinett and spaetlese rieslings, poised softly, ethereally on the palate, delivering intense flavours and a unique, perfect, thrilling balance between sweetness and dazzling, fresh acidity. Even the profound, sweet ausleses, beerenausleses and trockenbeerenausleses sat delicately on the palate, never cloying, never too sweet, but filling the room with their fragrance.
You can’t forget wines like that, and we didn’t. Though the selection included wines from the Rhine River, a few Mosel wines in particular etched their peculiar names in our minds – Bernkasteler Doctor, Wehlener Sonnenuhr and Graacher Himmelreich.
We were new in the trade at the time, but studied the vineyard maps, gained a basic understanding, and over the decades, enjoyed other vintages without ever losing the thrill of first discovery. These were great and unique wines.
But even then, long before the chardonnay or sauvignon blanc ages, selling German riesling in Australia proved difficult. It took years for Farmer Bros to move the 400 cases of 1976 it’d imported. David and Richard Farmer and staff probably drank more than they sold (I’m still grateful).
And nothing’s changed, says Grant Ramage, quoting the Nielsen year-to-August figures again. Sales of all German wines increased by 2.5 per cent in value but declined in volume, accounting for just one thousandth of wine sales in Australia.
Even in Germany, it’s not easy to find these home grown glories. In east and west Germany, in the weeks before arriving in the Mosel, we search supermarket shelves in vain. We find long lines of bland wines, German and imported, mostly priced between two and four euros.
At a tasting with renowned Mosel producer Dr Loosen, a German-based, English wine distributor confirms what we’ve feared. He tells us, “The Germans have no appreciation of what they’ve got. That’s why Ernie [Loosen] exports 70 per cent of his wine to America”.
But if sales of German riesling disperse in little wisps to admirers around the world, here in the central Mosel, up and downstream of Bernkastel, riesling rules, accounting for 60 per cent of the area’s 9,000 hectares of vines.
We didn’t come here for the other 40 per cent. However, because we’re there and we can, we taste a few examples of muller-thurgau (rivaner), elbling, pinot noir (spatburgunder), dornfelder and pinot blanc. But they’re not wines you’d travel 20,000 kilometres to taste.
We didn’t come to try the increasingly popular dry (trocken) rieslings either. But we do and conclude that the classic, delicate, semi-sweet versions – with their unique balance of acidity and sugar – remain the region’s great specialty.
Our visit coincides with the middle Mosel wine festival, so we taste dozens of wines simply by wandering from marquee to marqee strung along a riverfront road at Bernkastel. It’s an annual event, held each September shortly before vintage, and worth attending.
There we savour old friends, like J. J. Prum’s exquisite Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2007 at three euros a glass or 17 euros a bottle – amazingly modest prices for a wine of this stature.
We enjoy unfamiliar wines, too, and stop to chat with young winemaker Heiko Fass. Later we drive up to his underground cellars, built by his father in 1969, at Neumagen-Dhron. There we learn more about Fass rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, Dhron – and his recent access, through his wife’s family, to the great Goldtropfchen vineyard at Piesport, around the next bend of the Mosel, down stream.
Over the next days we drive upstream to the old Roman provincial capital, Trier, and downstream to Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine. Our constant travelling companion, Hugh Johnson’s wonderful World Atlas of Wine, with its detailed contour maps, allows us to identify the great vineyards on the Mosel’s impossibly steep south, south east and south west facing slopes.
Our other constant companion is a desire to drink those beautiful rieslings, which we do in buckets. What we’re not expecting, though, is to taste, alongside those rieslings, an eclectic and great range of perfectly cellared whites and reds from Switzerland, Loire Valley, Washington State, Corton-Charlemagne, South Africa, Aix-en-Provence, Yarra Valley, Volnay, Charmes-Chambertin, Pomerol and St Estephe.
But we did. And that’s part of the continuing Mosel story next week.
Early in August, Lark Hill Winery bought an established 3.6-hectare vineyard at Murrumbateman. The purchase coincided with the release of Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 and Viognier 2011 (top drops today), both sourced from the vineyard.
Chris Carpenter commented, “We purchased the vineyard in order to secure our long-term supplies of these varieties, and have renamed it ‘Dark Horse Vineyard’. We will be converting this vineyard to biodynamic and organic farming this year”.
Carpenter says the vineyard comprises about 1.2 hectares each of shiraz and sangiovese, about 0.8 hectares of viognier, 0.4 hectares of marsanne and a small patch of roussanne (part of the Rhone Valley white family, along with marsanne and viognier).
The purchase increases the Carpenter’s vineyard holdings to about 10 hectares – the balancing being on their original vineyard, planted in 1978, on the Lake George escarpment, overlooking Bungendore. At 860 metres it’s Canberra’s highest, coolest vineyard.
Over the years David and Sue Carpenter pared back varieties that didn’t work on this cool site. As a result they now focus on the proven winners – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir and, from 2006, Austria’s specialty white variety, gruner veltliner. By this time their son, Chris, had joined the business and shiraz had entrenched itself as Canberra’s standout variety.
The site being too cold for shiraz, the Carpenters sourced material from lower, warmer Murrumbateman for several years before taking the plunge and buying their own vineyard this month.
The vineyard was one of two blocks in the Ravensworth operation, associated with Bryan and Jocelyn Martin and other business associates over the years.
Martin says the Ravensworth name belonged originally to Brendan Ryan and an American partner.
Later, Michael Kirk, brother of Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk, bought Brendan Ryan’s section of the vineyard and converted Ravensworth from a partnership to a company, with Kirk and the Martins as shareholders. Kirk leased his section of the vineyard to the Martins.
In this month’s transactions, the Carpenters bought Kirk’s section of the vineyard and the Martins bought Kirk out of Ravensworth, to be become sole owners of the name as well as the other section of vineyard.
Martin says he planted the vineyards and knows every vine by name. But he’s relieved to be managing only one vineyard from now on. While the Carpenters vineyard includes the marsanne vines behind Ravensworth’s highly regarded dry white, Chris Carpenter says they will sell the fruit to Martin.
The Carpenters intend to convert the Murrumbatemen vineyard to certified biodynamic – an expensive process, expected to take about five years.
Chris Carpenter says they made no shiraz from the vineyard this year but expect to produce a shiraz viognier under the Dark Horse label in 2012. Lark Hill produced sangiovese from the site in 2007 and 2009 ¬ – the latter, still being offered at cellar door.
The Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 reviewed below came from the vineyard but had been bottled and labelled before the purchase, so doesn’t have the Dark Horse name on the label.
Lark Hill Canberra District Shiraz Viognier 2010 $40 Grown at Murrumbateman and made at Lark Hill, this wine combines shiraz and the white variety viognier (six per cent of the blend) fermented together. It’s a highly fragrant combination, inspired by the wines of Cote-Rotie in France’s northern Rhone Valley. In the 2010 vintage the floral, spicy and peppery aromas and flavours come with a marked savoury streak and quite firm tannins. That’s firm in a slinky, elegant, medium-bodied context. It builds in interest over time – always a good sign.
QR codes – smarties are onto them
Lark Hill introduced QR codes to their back labels with the release of their 2011 vintage whites – riesling, gruner veltliner and viognier.
QR stands for “quick response” code and refers to a little, square white-on-black pattern, readable by special scanners or smart phones. They’ve been a big deal in Japan for yonks and now seem certain to spread in Australia with the rapid uptake of smart phones – including Apple’s iPhone and other brands, such as Samsung Galaxy, using Google’s Android operating system.
Free scanning apps for the phones read QR codes, which can be encoded with a variety of data, including a link to a website. This is what the Carpenters use in their codes.
Chris Carpenter writes, “I believe we are the first Canberra wine to use QRs. Our aim is to provide what amounts to after-sales support for people – so if a bottle is picked up in a bottle shop, restaurant or similar, anyone with a smart phone can find out more about the wine including its RRP, reviews and our tasting notes.
We will be keeping these links as permanent pages on our website and continuing to add reviews and tasting notes as the wines age – so the QR codes should be useful even if somebody picks up a bottle in their cellar in 10 years (or 20!)”.
Using Bakodo (a free app) we zapped the Lark Hill codes on the Chateau Shanahan iPhone – and bingo, strait through to the detail on the website.
If you have a smart phone try scanning the QR code on Lark Hill Gruner Veltliner back label, pictured.
Lark Hill -- first Canberra winery to adopt a QR code
Wynns Coonawarra Estate winemaker Sarah Pidgeon flashed through Canberra recently, judging at the Winewise Small Vignerons Awards, but taking time out to show-off her new releases – some of the best drinking and most cellarable reds in the country.
Pidgeon works alongside chief winemaker, Sue Hodder. And together, since 2001, they’ve collaborated closely with Coonawarra vineyard manager Allen Jenkins, polishing the wines of Coonawarra’s best-known and biggest brand to a dazzling sheen.
They started with a makeover of the vineyards, then in time for the 2008 vintage, commissioned a new small-batch winery. The latter finally allowed separate harvesting and processing of small batches of grapes from the potentially thousands of sections of what is now Treasury Wine Estates’ 900-odd hectares in Coonawarra.
Those vast holding service Penfolds, Lindemans and Rosemount, as well as Wynns – so the benefits of segmenting the crop potentially flows through to those brands, too.
But for Treasury Wine Estates (formerly Foster’s), Wynns remains the main game in Coonawarra, with its big volume white label shiraz and black label cabernet, icon wines, Michael shiraz and John Riddoch cabernet, and a growing range of specialty, sometimes one-off reds, showcasing various sections of the vineyard.
Harold Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2001 was the first of these one-off specialties. It’s followed this year by a 2009 cabernet sauvignon from the Davis vineyard and new releases of shiraz and a cabernet shiraz blend from vineyards sprinkled along V and A Lane – Coonawarra’s traditional north-south dividing line.
Wynns’ eight new-release reds come from the 2008, 2009 and 2010 vintages – all good years in Coonawarra. It is, quite simply, a stunning line up, ranging from the charming, easy-drinking white label shiraz 2010 (with proven long-term cellaring ability) to the profound Michael Shiraz 2008 and John Riddoch 2008.
I review each of the wines below, based on a tasting with Sarah Pidgeon. The price range for any individual wine can be very wide. The lower prices are a combination of estimates, based on discounting of the previous vintages, or actual advertised prices of the new releases. The higher prices are Treasury Wine Estates’ recommended retail prices.
Given intense retail interest, especially in the white label shiraz and black label cabernet, we’re almost certain to see intermittent discount wars – so it pays to shop around. For example, the 2009 vintage of the shiraz recently specialled at $8.75 a bottle – an absurdly low price for a wine with proven capacity to cellar for decades.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz 2010 $8.75–$23 Sarah Pidgeon says, “I was pleased to be there for 2010, it was such a wonderful vintage”. She describes it as an “even” year, without the temperature spikes of 2008 and 2009, with warm temperatures at flowering and veraison (when the berries change colour and begin to soften) and more moderate temperatures during the ripening period.
The wine’s probably a touch better even than the very good 2008 and 2009 vintages. And it continues in the same bright, pure and fruity style – a result of the vineyard overhaul, harvesting times and tweaking in the cellar, especially in regard to oak maturation.
Pidgeon says only about 10 per cent of the barrels are new, with the remainder two to three years old, and roughly one fifth of the wine not oaked at all – to provide “freshness and purity”.
And that’s what the wine has – a heady, floral aroma and freshness and purity of Coonawarra red berry flavours with a delicious, deep, silky texture. It’s medium bodied, seductively fruity and easy to drink now. But it has the substance to age gracefully for many years.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate V and A Lane Shiraz 2009 $40–$50 This is a selection of more powerful shiraz from vineyards along the east-west running V and A Lane. Here we see the benefit of the new small-batch winery, says Pidgeon. It enabled progressive harvesting and fermentation of fruit and consequent maturation in a range of different types of oak barrels. This gave the winemakers greater blending options.
The wine’s dense, crimson-rimmed colour points to its power and ripeness – a deeper, denser more brooding wine than the white label shiraz. It still has vibrancy and freshness, but spicy oak flavours and tannins weave through the fruit. But despite its greater dimension, the wine retains signature Coonawarra elegance.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate Michael Shiraz 2008 $69.35–$90 Pidgeon says the winemaking and grape growing teams think long and hard about what goes into Michael. It has to be “the best, perfect and the pinnacle” she says. It’s based on a couple of key vineyards on the eastern side of the Riddoch Highway, near the winery and “others we keep our eye on”, she says.
It’s an extraordinary wine – somewhat less chunky than the ones made in the nineties, more refined, but still deep and powerful. It’s aromatic and based on deep, sweet, blueberry-like fruit flavours, mingled with beautiful, cedary oak – a wine of rare dimension needing time to evolve. While the tannins are strong, they’re integrated with the fruit flavours, fine-grained and soft.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate V and A Lane Cabernet Shiraz 2009 $38–$50 Like the shiraz from V and A Lane, this wine presents a strong face of Coonawarra – a blend of many parts, including components matured in a range of oak from different areas and coopers. The oak gives a cedary note, but the cabernet drives the wine with its blackcurrant flavour and strong, fine, elegant structure – fleshed out subtly by the shiraz. This is another strong but elegant red.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate “The Siding” Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $10.95–$23 Introduced to the range from the 2009 vintage, “The Siding” is an aromatic cabernet made specifically for early drinking. It captures a spectrum Coonawarra cabernet flavours from red-berry to cassis and even a slight touch of leafiness. Like the white label shiraz, some components see no oak and provide a purity and freshness that puts fruit to the fore. It’s very Coonawarra, very cabernet and very drinkable – right now.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $25–$35 Black Label is deeper coloured than “The Sidings”, but still limpid. It presents a deeper side of cabernet, including black-olive and cassis-like flavours, bound up in sweet, spicy oak. It’s a buoyant, balanced cabernet – generous but elegant, with fine, firm tannins. It remains one of Australia’s best value, long-term cellaring wines. It’s probably better now than it’s ever been. Watch for the discounting as occasionally dips below $20.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate “Davis” Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $40–$50 The Davis vineyard, located just south of the winery, was planted to cabernet sauvignon in 1957. In 2008 wine from the vineyard “stood up as different”, says Pidgeon, so they kept it aside for individual bottling. This is an opulent and powerful cabernet, combining black olive and cassis varietal flavours with a particularly juicy, ripe, supple mid palate and powerful but soft tannins – opulence and elegance combined. An outstanding and potentially long-lived wine.
Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $69.35–$90 Sarah Pidgeon says the flagship cabernet comes from a diversity of vineyards sprinkled around Coonawarra, principally in the north, but can include southern vineyards in warmer years. Since John Riddoch’s reintroduction under Hodder and Pidgeon, the style has retained its power and intensity but become softer. The current release is densely coloured with a brilliant crimson rim – a deep and brooding wine in which the cabernet fruit and oak really sing in harmony. This is a great cabernet.
