What an awesome sight the Casella family’s Griffith winery is from the air – a glittering expanse of massive stainless steel tanks housing tens of millions of litres of wine destined for the highly successful Yellow Tail label.

It might smack of homogeneity. But in fact the wine inside those tanks represents a vast network of independent grape growers spread across south-eastern Australia – including the slopes of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales.

This is the story of one of those vineyards – just one piece in the giant Casella jigsaw puzzle.

First a little background. Casella makes the fabulously successful Yellowtail brand. In May this year British consultancy, Intangible Business, named it as the most powerful Australian wine brand in the world and number 37 in the top 100 wine and spirit brands globally. And in the Shanken News report of 5 July 2011, Yellowtail topped the list of Australian imports into the USA in 2010 at 8.5 million dozen bottles – four times the volume of second placed Lindemans.

My back-of-the-envelope reckoning puts total production at perhaps 12 million dozen bottles a year – given that Yellowtail sells domestically and Casella exports to around 50 countries.

Ever wondered how many grapes that takes and what area of vines it might require? On the same envelope, with Boorowa viticulturist, Mark Sims, we computed 12 million cases translates to around 160 thousand tonnes of grapes from vines covering between 10 and 11 thousand hectares. Little wonder, then, that the capital investment and risk is so widely dispersed.

Sims says he’s worked as a middle man for Casella for many years, managing vineyards and sourcing up to 20 thousand tonnes of grapes a year along the western slopes of the Great Divide, between Mudgee and Cowra.

About ten years back Sims and a couple of farming mates from Warren and Nyngan thought they’d grow grapes together. After a long search, a very attractive property became available on the Belubula River, Canowindra.

The property, Belubula Farm, had originally produced hay, lucerne and chaff, says Sims. A new owner used it for cattle and changed the name to Pinnaroo.

The little idea became a bigger one requiring more capital, so the original mates “pulled in extra partners, pooled our capital and formed Pinnaroo Partners”, say Sims.

From 2002, they established a 110-hectare vineyard, contracted to Casella and planted 90 per cent to chardonnay and five per cent each to viognier and pinot gris.

Sims says the vineyard runs east to west, peaking at about 400 metres above sea level. The east-west orientation provides under-canopy shade for the berries, says Sims, a veteran of grape growing in this warm area.

Sims manages the vines and the families from Warren (Glen and Narelle Whittaker) and Nyngan (Paul and Jenny Buckley) look after the farm. And the other partners are all regular visitors: Mark Sim’s wife, Luisa, Mark and Cathy Beach of Warren, David Buckley of Newcastle, Peter and Margaret Carnell of Dubbo, Glen and Michelle Hamblin of Nevertire, Chris and Mary Logan of Sydney and Peter and Suzie Sims of Canberra.

But like most contract grape grows, the Pinnaroo partners began to produce a little wine for themselves – selecting small parcels of the best fruit and sending it to winemaker Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

Of course, friends then wanted some, so they created the Pinnaroo brand and sell it through www.pinnaroowines.com.au

Quantities remain small, but these are seriously good wines from an estate that normally slakes the thirst of those mighty Yellowtail tanks in Griffith.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Cowra Viognier 2010 $25
Viognier provides a unique drinking experience. Yalumba pioneered the variety some thirty years ago. But plantings increased during the late nineties, partly to make varietal viognier, partly as a minor component in blends with shiraz.

The early stand-alone versions tend to be picked very ripe, resulting in high-alcohol whites with sometimes over-the-top apricot-like varietal flavour and, a solid bite of tannin and a thick, sometimes oily texture.

These are all natural qualities of the grape. But it’s possible to maintain the varietal characteristics in a much more refined package – demonstrated in this delicious version, made by Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

The Pinnaroo partners hand harvested the grapes at a comparatively low 12.9 per cent alcohol potential – not the 14.5 or 15 per cent often seen from comparable climates.

In Parker’s hands this translated to a full-flavoured, aromatic dry white, displaying clear-cut apricot and ginger varietal character. He matured the wine on yeast lees for 12 month, building a lovely, soft creaminess that sits well with the natural viscosity of the style. It’s a comparatively delicate expression of viognier, with none of the hardness and a very lively, fresh acidity.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Cowra Chardonnay 2009 $25
This is an exciting wine – and far removed from the Cowra chardonnay stereotype. At two years age we might expect a dark-golden, fat-but-fading peachy dry white. Instead we have a lemon-coloured, vibrant barrel-fermented chardonnay displaying great flavour intensity (melon rind and white peach), subtly enhanced by barrel fermentation and maturation on yeast lees. A wonderfully rich but fine texture matches the intense fruit flavour. And the alcohol’s a modest 12.9 per cent.

It’s hard to imagine how a Cowra chardonnay could be any better than this – a great example of very high quality fruit being artfully handled by a skilled winemaker.

Pinnaroo viticulturist, Mark Sims, says it’s made from the best chardonnay block on the 110-hectare vineyard – planted to the Entav 76 clone. Richard Parker made the wine at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Hilltops Shiraz 2008 $25
Like Canberra, the Hilltops region, around Young, New South Wales, makes delicious shiraz, albeit in a generally fleshier style than Canberra’s – but still medium bodied and far removed from, say, the bolder Barossa versions.

As in the other Pinnaroo wines we enjoy the combination of skilful grape growing by Mark Sims and sensitive winemaking by Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully. The grapes seemed to have been picked at just the right point of ripeness – with the varietal, ripe-cherry flavours at full tilt and packed with the vibrancy of fresh berries. This comes through on the highly aromatic, slightly savoury, spicy aroma and on the juicy, fine-boned palate – a kiss of French oak sweetness adding to the pleasure of the shiraz flavour. Grapes come from Mark and Luisa Sim’s Boorowa vineyard.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011
First published 13 July 2011 in The Canberra Times

Visiting Canberra two weeks back, Barossa vigneron Grant Burge rated 2010 his “best white vintage in 10 years”.  Then came the highs and lows of a wet 2011 season, “throwing up all the diseases in one year”, devastating crops in many vineyards, and driving up spraying and vineyard costs across the board.

In his own vineyards – about 400 hectares, mainly in the southern Barossa – Burge sprayed against disease 12 to 16 times, instead of the usual four. And when late-season rain spurred outbreaks of botrytis cinerea, vineyard workers cut out infected berries by hand.

Faced by unrelenting disease pressures, says Burge, “some growers stopped spraying, because they felt uncertain about the final result”. Better to cut their losses early, they reasoned, than to spend more on spraying when there might be no grapes to sell in any event. Some lost their entire crops.

As a winemaker needing every berry, Burge persisted and in the end reaped a good harvest from his own vineyards. In the final ripening period, he says, mild to cool weather settled on the Barossa, bringing healthy fruit to flavour ripeness at unusually low sugar levels. Reds at Burge’s elevated Corryton Park Vineyard, for example, came in at around 12.5 to 13.4 Baume (a measure of sugar), instead of the usual 14 plus.

The low temperatures at ripening produced intense flavours and high natural acidity in the whites, says Burge, and now believes they’ll be even better than the 2010s.

He rates Barossa Valley ahead of the adjoining, cooler Eden Valley in 2011, particularly for cabernet sauvignon. Burge’s Corryton Park vineyard – normally much cooler than the Barossa floor, and more akin to Coonawarra – usually produces his best cabernet.

But in 2011, says Burge, “cabernet sauvignon off the valley floor is the best in 25 years. If fact, I’ve never seen the quality before. I’ve never seen the purple colour on the floor, like at Corryton, but it’s black-purple”.

Overall, says Burge, 2011 wines seem generally leaner, very pure in their fruit expression, less alcoholic and needing time to mature – comments closely paralleling the Canberra 2011 experience.

Burge visited Canberra to promote his flagship Barossa shiraz, Meshach ($155), released, like Grange, at five years. But Burge operates on a large scale for a private Australian producer – and the styles he makes extend far beyond the more expensive reds behind his reputation.

Burge’s 400-plus hectares of vines supply only 60 per cent of company needs. The other 40 per cent comes from about 20 long-term growers, says Burge.

He now makes more white wine than red, largely through the success of his $30-a-bottle sparkling wines, sourced from the cool Adelaide Hills (immediately to the south of Eden Valley on the Mount Lofty Ranges).

But Burge’s most intense passion clearly lies in his beloved Barossa reds.  On this trip he’s showing us Meshach 2006 (straight shiraz, mainly from the Filsell vineyard) and Holy Trinity 2008 ($36), a blend of grenache, shiraz and mourvedre.

They’re beautiful examples of their styles – Meshach made since 1988 and Holy Trinity from 1995. While we might call them “traditional” robust, warm-climate styles, they’re both thoroughly modern wines, expressing regional fruit flavours first and foremost, and benefiting from careful fine-tuning over the years.

While the market still loves them, Burge laments a shift away from the style in wine shows. He says the judges are now “all cool-climate orientated. I went to a few shows last year with Craig [winemaker Craig Stansborough] and warm climate wines like McLaren Vale and Barossa couldn’t get a look in. Anything showing American oak got kicked out. But some of the cool shirazes were tried were just green. I understand they need to show a lead for the industry, but they shouldn’t get too far from the public. The judges now have a narrow focus”.

He sees it as a worrying trend that wine judges today tend to award a narrower range of styles now than an older generation did in the past.

Burge offers interesting insights into international markets, too. He exports to 32 countries, sees opportunities for strong brands despite our dollar’s strength. Describing China as “the wild, wild east”, he’s built export volumes of high quality wine there through “individuals all over the place” and expects ultimately to have a central distributor.

He’s neve done much in the United States but plans to attack the market in the near future and sees huge potential there for good wine. Research, however, revealed a widespread perception in America that Australia doesn’t make good quality wine – a stereotype, he believes, created by the success of cheap, fruity wines like Yellowtail.

He’ll therefore emphasise Barossa Valley, not Australia, as Grant Burge wines roll out across America.

Oh, and the wines? See Grant Burge Meshach 2006 and Thorn Vineyard Eden Valley Riesling 2010  in today’s reviews and Holy Trinity 2008 next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

At Chateau Shanahan we’ve experienced cellaring joy and disappointments over the years. But consistent pleasure in older bottles of Majella Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon and The Malleea cabernet shiraz, reminded us of this marvellous winery’s interesting transition from farming to grape growing to winemaking.

When brothers Brian and Anthony Lynn made the first Majella wine in 1991, they’d been growing grapes in Coonawarra for twenty-three years. They’d lived all their lives in the area. They’d grown fat lambs and wool long before vines took root on the family farm in 1968. Yet their first step into winemaking was, perhaps, even more tentative than their first step into grape growing had been two decades earlier.

Then, at least, there was a pre-arranged buyer for the grapes. Eric Brand, a good mate of George Lynn (Brian’s and Anthony’s late father), encouraged the planting of six acres of shiraz and agreed to buy the grapes to help satisfy a winemaking contract with Hardys.

The first Majella wine, a 1991 Coonawarra Shiraz, however, had no guaranteed buyers. If you’d asked Brian or Anthony where the business was headed when the wine was released in 1993, they’d not have foreseen Majella’s complete transition from contract grape grower to leading wine estate in just ten years.

“People ask, were we visionary?” says Brian ‘Prof’ Lynn. “And I say, not really”. But Majella’s huge success wasn’t just blind luck either. It’s a success that grew from strong, deep roots in the Coonawarra landscape and community, fertilised by experience, skill, imagination, good management and – during it’s first decade of winemaking at least – by impeccable timing.

The release of Majella’s 1991 shiraz in 1993 came at the beginning of the unprecedented global red-wine boom. The wine was, and still is, a brilliant drop, beautifully packaged (designed by Barbara Harkness) and realistically priced.

I recall my first taste of it on a wine-buying trip to Coonawarra with David Farmer in September, 1993. At a little cook-your-own steakhouse, Nibs – owned at the time by Bill Brand and ‘Prof’ Lynn – the new Majella label caught our eye amongst all the familiar names on display. Who the hell was this we wondered? Nice label.

Nice wine, too – a classy drop, packed with Coonawarra’s unique ripe-berry flavour. Whether it was our huge grins or the label that prompted Patricia Lynn (Prof’s and Anthony’s mum) to approach us, I’ll never know, because we never met again. She died a few years after our visit.

But this former mayor of Penola (the little town at Coonawarra’s southern tip) turned on the warmth and charm for her Canberra visitors with tales of wartime Canberra. “I was the minutes secretary to the Minister’s secretary’, she told us of her job with the Minister for Supply. She knew ‘Chif’ and Nugget Coombs and that “after the bombing of Leeds, that Lithgow was the only remaining .303 manufacturing plant in the allied group”.

And she told us of Majella. In the post war years she met and married George Lynn, moved to the Coonawarra area where they produced wool on a property just to the south of Penola. One night Patricia told George she wanted to name the property ‘Majellan’ – after St Gerard Majellan, the catholic patron saint of mothers. She’d lost her first child and wanted another.

George’s response was pragmatic. ‘Majellan’ was too long to stamp on a wool bale. End of conversation – although a memorable night in other ways, recalled Patricia. Next morning, George offered a solution. Drop the “n”. And so Majella was born as a wool farm. In 1960 it became a fat lamb farm, too, when George bought his uncle Frank’s block in the heart of Coonawarra. In 1968 Majella became a vineyard. And in 1991, a wine name.

The Lynn family’s move into grape growing, recalls Prof, followed a high school geography project on Coonawarra viticulture. With luminaries such as Bill and Jock Redman, Eric Brand and Phil Laffer advising him, the young Prof’s interest shifted from the theoretical to the practical.

With advice and encouragement from Eric Brand of Laira vineyards, Prof and his dad planted six acres of shiraz in 1968. The propagated the vines from cuttings taken, on Bill Redman’s advice, from Arthur Hoffman’s ‘North Block’ (now Redmans). Prof remembers Bill Redman saying, “I’ll take you to Hoffman’s, because they’re the best shiraz in Coonawarra”.

Similarly, when the Lynns decided to add cabernet sauvignon to the mix old Jock Redman of Wynns advised them to take cuttings from vines he’d marked with white paint. These, he said, produced the best wine.

With a steady contract to supply grapes to Eric Brand, the Lynns were happy with those early grape-growing years. But in 1974 George became ill. By the time he died in 1976, the Brand contract had ended and nobody wanted Coonawarra shiraz – only cabernet, which made up only one third of the Majella plantings.

“If we didn’t have wool, we would’ve gone broke”, says Prof. Business improved in the early eighties when Majella began selling grapes to Wynns – an arrangement that lasted until vintage 2001. And it was grapes that saved the Lynns in the wool crash of the late eighties and early nineties. “We would’ve gone broke without grapes, then”, laughs Prof.

So, by the time Majella made its first wine in 1991, it had served a long, tough apprenticeship learning how to grow high-quality wine grapes good enough to sell even in tough times.

Mature red vines on a good Coonawarra plot, and the ability to produce top grapes, says Prof, is the family’s biggest asset – entrusted, in the early days, to his old mates, the Brands and their talented winemaker, Bruce Gregory.

Then in 1999 Gregory joined the Lynn family full time at Majella’s new winery, next to the cellar door, opened in 1996.

Following its complete transition to winemaking a decade ago, Majella cemented its reputation as one of the region’s great winemakers. The wines all bear the regional style stamp.

Not surprisingly cabernet sauvignon ($33), Coonawarra’s great specialty, now sparks more interest than the shiraz ($30) that blazed the way for the label from the 1991 vintage. And the $75 long-lived flagship, The Malleea, a cabernet shiraz blend, hits profound heights. The same blend, in the $18 The Musician label , provides drink-now pleasure without diminishing the Coonawarra signature.

As the world’s wealthiest people pay ever greater prices for Bordeaux’s cabernet-based reds, we can get on quietly drinking estate-made Majella, and other Coonawarra and Margaret River reds, of comparable quality, at a fraction of the price.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011