Category Archives: People

The power of a regional specialty

7 October 2007People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

The emergence of shiraz as Canberra’s strongest wine variety is fortuitous for the region’s vignerons. Why? Because it plugs in neatly to a growing global view that Australia is the world’s shiraz specialist. And, arguably, the greater the diversity of styles we deliver the wider the interest that we’ll generate.

Phil Laffer, one of Australia’s most internationally renowned winemakers, puts it succinctly, ‘We’ve adopted shiraz as our own because we’re one of the few countries that makes it really well’.

Shiraz enjoys the added advantage of being mainstream. Australia crushes and drinks more shiraz than it does of any other wine variety, opening a tremendous opportunity for Canberra vignerons.

Clonakilla was the first Canberra winery to succeed with shiraz. But when John Kirk planted it in 1972 it wasn’t the darling grape that it is now. Back then shiraz didn’t rate alongside the so-called ‘noble’ varieties – riesling, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir.

Like other district pioneers Kirk planted a range of varieties and through decades of trial and error learned how each performed. Ultimately, shiraz, blended with viognier, triumphed spectacularly.

But there’s a salient lesson in its slow climb to fame. Just look at this sequence in the Clonakilla shiraz viognier history:

1972 – Dr John Kirk plants shiraz at Clonakilla, Murrumbateman.
Mid 1970s to 1989 – shiraz is blended with cabernet sauvignon.
1986 John Kirk and son Jeremy plant the white variety, viognier.
1990 – Clonakilla’s first straight shiraz wins silver and gold medals and trophies.
1991 – John’s son, Tim, visits legendary Rhône Valley maker, Marcel Guigal, and is ‘transfixed and delighted’ by Guigal’s shiraz–viognier blends from the Côte-Rôtie’s impossibly steep slopes.
1992 – Tim and John add viognier to shiraz for the first time.
1997 – Tim Kirk moves from Melbourne to Canberra and becomes full time winemaker.
1999 – The 1998 vintage receives a 92/100 rating from American critic Robert M. Parker and is nominated as NSW wine of the year.
2001 – Influential UK wine critic, Jancis Robinson, rates Clonakilla as one of her two favourite Aussie shirazes.

The first thing we learn from this is that if a grape variety suits a site it’ll show in the quality of the wine – as it did in that first Clonakilla Shiraz in 1990, almost twenty years after the vines had been planted.

Secondly, we know that if a variety suits one site in a region, then there’s a good chance – climate being the biggest single determinant – that it’ll be generally well suited to the region. And so it’s proven to be.

Even before Hardy’s moved here in the late 1990s they’d been sourcing shiraz for top shelf blends, including the $100 Eileen Hardy. They’d been particularly impressed by fruit from Andrew McEwin’s Murrumbateman vineyard, planted by Ron McKenzie in 1982.

Former Hardy winemaker, Alex McKay, rated this fruit second only to Clonakilla in the district. He also identified several other promising shiraz vineyards.

Clonakilla’s success and the Hardy presence encouraged wider planting of shiraz in the district. And, over time, we’ve seen it dominate the local wine show, taking out top honours every year since 1998, and outnumbering all other varieties in the medal tallies.

The compelling argument for shiraz doesn’t rule out other varieties. Rather, it presents a powerful opportunity for Canberra to cut through in the crowded domestic and global wine markets.

A stunningly good wine like Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier has the potential to stamp a whole district with class. And as local peers emerge over time – and that’s already begun to happen – the reputation can gain depth.

A single, powerful regional specialty makes a dramatic impact on drinkers. Think of Marlborough and Sauvignon Blanc, Coonawarra and cabernet sauvignon or Burgundy and chardonnay and pinot noir.

An important difference between these French and Australasian examples is that in Burgundy, vignerons can’t diversify into other varieties. Their Aussie and Kiwi counterparts can plant what they like where they like.

For Canberra that means we can seize our overwhelmingly obvious shiraz advantage while continuing to work with other promising grapes.

Unquestionably our second major opportunity lies with riesling. It’s one of the great grape varieties. It drinks beautifully when young, but also ages beautifully. And it shows flashes of brilliance across the region. What Canberra hasn’t seen yet, though, is a riesling of a stature to match that of our best shiraz. But that will almost certainly come.

Riesling’s draw back is that despite being talked up for the last thirty years, volumes remain static. This limits opportunities for local makers. But, like shiraz, it has the potential to build our regional identity and reward those who excel at it. Full marks to Ken Helm for his huge efforts with riesling.

Viognier, the white variety now being blended in with shiraz around the district could be our third string, albeit occupying an even smaller niche than riesling. As with shiraz, Clonakilla led the way – and still does. But Hardys made a few crackers in their brief stint in Canberra. And we’ve seen several other lovely examples. It’s clearly suited to the district and has a long-term future here.

The pinot noir story has moved on since first being planted in a cooler Canberra in the seventies. The cutting edge stuff – and that’s what builds regional reputations – now comes from southerly locations including New Zealand, Tasmania, Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland. Show me the great Canberra examples and I’ll change my mind. But, by all means, if makers believe in it and customers like it, persevere.

Cabernet, too, to my palate, is an also ran for Canberra. It has a following and we make decent wine from it, but it’s not in the reputation-building league as far as I can see.

Ubiquitous chardonnay makes appealing wine across the district. As with pinot noir, however, the best now emerge from much cooler regions and I suspect that it will never be a Canberra hallmark. We could continue to see some exceptions, though, from Lark Hill high up on the Lake George escarpment.

Where I do see wonderful opportunities, though, and potential rewards for growers and drinkers is in largely untested Italian, Spanish and French varieties.

Tim and John Kirk, for example, are about to plant grenache on an elevated, warm site in Murrumbateman; Frank van de Loo makes exciting reds from tempranillo and graciano at Mount Majura (and a lovely white pinot gris); Bryan Martin’s Murrumbateman red sangiovese and white marsanne click the right hyperlinks; and out at Lake George Winery, Alex McKay has an impressive 2007 tempranillo in barrel.

Not everything that’s tried will work. But as the Kirk’s have shown, it’s what we trial today that makes tomorrow’s winners, provided we recognise quality and work hard to perfect and promote it.

Cellist Nathan Waks leads Seppeltsfield buyout investors

5 September 2007Beer review, People, WineChris Shanahan

About a year after putting historic Seppeltsfield on the market, Foster’s last week announced its sale to a group of investors led by little-known Clare Valley based Kilikanoon Wines.

Kilikanoon Managing Director, Nathan Waks, says that the purchase is being executed through The Seppeltsfield Estate Trust. The trust’s owners include Kilikanoon Wines, Janet Holmes a’Court, Greg Paramor and Kilikanoon’s major shareholders, Nathan Waks and Bruce Baudinet.

In a complex deal the Trust will buy the entire property and fortified wine stocks but will lease 108-hectares of vines back to Foster’s and enter into a long-term agreement with Foster’s to manage the fortified stocks.

The 185-hectare property is a treasury of Barossa winemaking history dating to the early 1850s. Visitors to the site drive through an avenue of date palms – established to keep workers employed during the depression – to the complex of cellars, dwellings and National Trust listed Seppelt family homestead.

Five generations of the Seppelt family established this sprawling village before the company floated in 1970 and subsequently passed, intact, through successive ownerships by South Australian Brewing Holdings, Adsteam, Southcorp and Fosters.

Perhaps the most direct links to the past, with continuing relevance to wine today, are the 108-hectares of vines and around nine million litres of fortified wine stored in an estimated thirty thousand barrels – each in need of TLC.

With the market for fortified wine all but dead, the question, until now, was who will take on such a colossal volume of high maintenance wine, even if it is some of the best material in the world?

To Foster’s credit, it steadfastly avoided a carve up of the property or a fire sale of the unique fortified stocks. Those thirty thousand barrels carry wines dating back to 1878 and underpin the magnificent Seppeltsfield fortified range.

But who would be interested in continuing to make these wines, finding a market for them and for looking after a heritage property with a reported $1-million a year maintenance bill?

It was never likely to be a large public company – Foster’s had already admitted that this type of niche operation didn’t fit its global plans. As well, Seppeltsfield held strategic assets that Foster’s needed to access in the future. So the buyer had to have capital, a vision for the property and its fortified wine and a willingness to meet Foster’s needs.

Foster’s wanted continued access to grapes from the Seppeltsfield vineyard – particularly to ‘icon’ quality shiraz – company jargon for material good enough for flagship Penfolds reds, Grange and RWT Shiraz.
Seppeltsfield also holds within its complex soleras (a fractional blending system for ageing fortified wines) material used in Penfolds products, including Grandfather and Great Grandfather ports.

The deal cobbled together by the Kilikanoon team sees the 108-hectare vineyard leased back to Foster’s. Foster’s will maintain the vineyard, keep the grapes that it needs for the Penfolds brand and sell some of the material, including the fortified varieties, touriga and palomino, to the new Seppeltsfield owners.

Foster’s fortified winemaker, James Godfrey, will continue to maintain the soleras and to make fortified wines on site for both Foster’s and Seppeltsfield. And the Kilikanoon press release says that ‘The Seppeltsfield Trust will employ apprentice and junior winemakers to learn the specialist art of fortified winemaking from one of the world’s finest exponents’.

And who are the new owners? Kevin Mitchell founded Kilikanoon Wines in the Clare Valley about ten years ago. In 2000, at Kevin’s request, a group of investors, including Nathan Waks and Bruce Baudinet, became involved and expanded the company’s interest beyond the Clare Valley.

Nathan Waks now heads an export-focused business (‘our exports are bigger than our domestic sales’, says Nathan) with vineyards in Clare, Barossa, McLaren Vale and the Southern Flinders Ranges. It’s a business that’s ‘grown organically and quickly’ says Waks.

With solid financial support Waks plans to ‘bring the village back to life around the Seppeltsfield fortified brand’. He views the fortifieds as a niche product and a good fit with Kilikanoon’s boutique, hand-sell operation.

He believes that Australia can learn to love top-end fortifieds consumed in small quantities with sympathetic food. And he sees tremendous potential in export markets where the wines, with the exception of muscats and tokays from Rutherglen, are virtually unknown.

Although Seppeltsfield remains one of the most visited sites in the Barossa, Waks observes that ‘there’s not much for them to do’ – hence a plan to ‘revive the village in all its facets’.

Under the Seppelt family the property produced not just wine but vinegar, wine barrels, smoked meats and raspberry cordial. Under the new owners these activities will recommence – and olive oil production could be part of it.

Already under Foster’s the Seppeltsfield fortifieds have a regional focus and the European wine names ‘sherry’ and ‘port’ have been dropped. The fino, amontillado, oloroso and tawny styles all focus on Barossa Valley origins and the tokays and muscats on Rutherglen.

The new owners intend to maintain this regional focus. And, for the most part, wines offered at Seppeltsfield will be estate grown and made. The wine plan includes a recommissioning by next vintage of the historic 1880s gravity-fed winery – sitting unused but in good nick since the 1980s.

And there’ll be music and dancing, too. The press release says, ‘The well-known musical careers of Kilikanoon partners, violinist John Harding and cellist Nathan Waks will ensure that the arts take centre stage in the future with a Seppeltsfield Festival high on the agenda’.

Vineyards underpin McKay’s new Collector label

15 August 2007People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Despite Hardy’s sudden departure from Canberra, its ten-year presence leaves a valuable legacy that’s bound to express itself in unsuspected ways.

Short of a miracle, the legacy probably won’t be the Kamberra or Meeting Place brands – the small volume face of Hardy’s Canberra involvement.

It’s more likely to come from the know-how of the staff that stayed behind – Alex McKay and Nick O’Leary — and the ingenuity of a score or so independent, former Hardy grape growers.

We’ll almost certainly see an increase in the numbers of wine brands, including this month the release of Alex McKay’s Collector label.

In a big statement for Canberra’s acknowledged specialty, McKay offers two gold-medal-winning shirazes from the Murrumbateman area – Collector The Marked Tree Road Shiraz 2005 (about $27) and Collector Reserve Shiraz 2006 (about $45).

This extraordinary debut is to a large extent a Hardy legacy – revealing the depth of Alex’s experience in the district and the quality of the grapes available.

But there’s a fair bit more to the story, much of it predating Hardy and going back to a time when Alex McKay, an undergraduate art history student, was whetting his taste for winemaking at Lake George Vineyard, under Dr Edgar Riek.

As Riek entered his second decade as a grape grower in the early eighties, Ron McKenzie established a vineyard on his property Mamre at Murrumbateman. Over a couple of seasons McKenzie planted a little under four hectares of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz and what he thought was merlot (in fact it was cabernet franc).

In 1999 McKenzie sold the vineyard to Andrew McEwin, owner of the well-regarded Kyeema Estate label, and a buyer of part of McKenzie’s fruit crop since 1987.

McEwin recalls that when bought the vineyard, Hardy’s were already buying fruit from it. He recalls ‘Steve Pannell [chief winemaker] in raptures over the shiraz’ and believes that this may have been a key to their interest in the region.

As Andrew’s Kyeema shiraz from the vineyard was a regular gold-medal winner, Hardy’s excitement really just confirmed how good the fruit was – and put a price on it.

McEwin says that in every year but one Hardy’s paid a quality bonus when wine from the vineyard made the cut for the company’s top-shelf products. He believes that both chardonnay and shiraz reached the flagship ‘Eileen Hardy’ blends on at least one occasion.

Encouraged by the vineyard’s quality, Andrew recently expanded it by about 1.6 hectares – about half of that being struck from cuttings of the existing old shiraz vines and the other half planted to merlot and tempranillo.

At the same time he replaced the cabernet sauvignon with shiraz and retrellised the whole vineyard. What was ‘grow and sprawl’, said Andrew, is now the more controlled, and quality orientated, vertical shoot positioning system.

During the growing season shiraz receives particular attention, including shoot thinning and bunch thinning to control yields and maximise flavour.

Andrew says that as a contract maker for other grape growers he regularly sees what other vineyards produce. This, he says, confirms the quality of his own shiraz.

As winemaker at the large Hardy-owned Kamberra complex, McKay enjoyed even greater exposure to Canberra’s various shiraz vineyards than McEwin. As well, he participated in Hardy’s classification tastings across all varieties at company headquarters in Reynell, South Australia.

Coming from that broad – and very demanding perspective – McKay’s decision to make only shiraz for his new Collector label and to select McEwin’s vineyard as source of the ‘Reserve’ version – could, in a sense, be seen as Hardy’s collective learning on our region.

Talking to Alex McKay it’s clear that he views Clonakilla and McEwin as Canberra’s two best shiraz vineyards. Which just goes to show that even with the same inputs, all vineyards are not equal.

There is something special about the grapes – and hence the wine — from Andrew McEwin’s tiny, quarter-century old vineyard planted on a granitic saddle between two hills near Murrumbateman.

We’ve seen glimpses of it in Andrew’s Kyeema Wines over the years. But the winemaking experience that McKay brings reveals even more. I’ll review the two new Collector wines shortly.

How Sue Hodder’s history lesson improved Wynns’ Coonawarra reds

4 July 2007People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

The old adage that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history is bunk. At Wynns Coonawarra Estate, a close study of historic wines taught Sue Hodder and her winemaking team plenty about Coonawarra wines.

A decade on from two retrospective Wynns shiraz and cabernet tastings — stretching back to the 1950s — Sue’s new-release reds demonstrate that the past can influence current winemaker thinking.

In the tastings – featuring Wynns’ shiraz back to vintage 1953 in 1997 and cabernet sauvignon back to 1954 in 2004 – some of the very old comparatively low-alcohol, low-tannin, low-oak wines surpassed more recent wines, and completely eclipsed those of the late seventies.

The tasting proved the great longevity of Coonawarra reds – like the 1955 Michael Hermitage (shiraz) and 1954 cabernet sauvignon. And it revealed several distinct style eras in the estate’s history.

In simple terms we might see the early fifties to the seventies as straightforward – pick the grapes not too ripe, crush, ferment, press to tank, let the malo-lactic fermentation rip, and then mature the wine in older oak for a while before bottling.

In the late seventies – and we might call this the bean-counter era – fruit ripeness and consequent wine flavour declined as vineyard yields rose. This was in part a company thing (the high yields) and, in part, historical, as several other makers sought to produce ‘elegant’ wines by harvesting unripe grapes. Older drinkers still view the word ‘elegant’ as euphemism for thin and green.

The economic imperative took a different shape in the eighties as minimal pruning and mechanical harvesting reduced costs without sacrificing ripeness. Minimal pruning, in particular, created problems of its own to be addressed more than a decade later.

Although the eighties was a period of growth and rising demand for premium reds, margins were often squeezed in a mainly domestically focused industry. In this period Coonawarra reds tended to become riper and more influenced by maturation in new oak – with mixed success as winemakers learned the ropes.

It was, overall for Coonawarra, a period of great quality improvement. And for Wynns, this included the introduction of a new flagship red in 1982, named after pioneer John Riddoch. Made by John Wade, John Riddoch 1982 is to my taste one of the greatest cabernets yet made in this country.

Meanwhile good old Wynns Black Label cabernet carried on, perhaps a tad riper and a little oakier than in the old days, but, as the retrospective tasting showed, always purely varietal and almost invariably with the stuffing to age for decades.

In the late eighties and nineties the flagship John Riddoch cabernet was always denser, more powerful and oaky than the cheaper Black Label, but not always more revered by consumers.

Similarly, a powerful reserve shiraz resurrected the ‘Michael’ name in 1990, there having been only one vintage – 1955 – in the past. This, too, showed intense fruit and assertive oak.

By the late nineties the Wynns cabernets in particular were showing silkier tannins, without losing varietal flavour and intensity – and Sue and the team had begun rethinking how things ought to be done.
The re-think led to a rejuvenation of the older vines, including the removal of dense clusters of dead wood – a result of twenty years’ minimal pruning.

Launching this year’s releases last week, Sue said that what the tasting of older wines had taught her was that Coonawarra reds don’t have to be big tannic monsters to age well. It was clear that elegant, refined styles, without any new oak, still delivered great drinking pleasure after half a century.

Sue said that she’d also learned that a bit of ‘pepper’ in Coonawarra shiraz was nothing to be afraid of. This simply recognises that Coonawarra is a cool growing region, that cool-grown shiraz has a peppery note and it loses this when over ripe.

During the vineyard renovation and re-thing of winemaking styles, Sue’s team stopped making John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Michael Shiraz altogether for a couple of vintages. Declining sales surely played a part in the decision, but it was a much need breathing space.

While the by-now older John Riddochs and Michaels were ageing well – and some are just glorious – Sue has now demonstrated in the new-release 2004s that the style could be bettered.

The new wines still have exceptional fruit intensity, but oak intrudes less and the true elegance that was apparent in many of the old wines in the retrospective tasting is apparent.

The glory of the old styles, it seems, gave Sue the confidence to make changes for the better.

The 2004 Michael Shiraz, in particular, shows the benefit of the softer touch and rejuvenated vineyards. This wine captures the fragrance, unique berry and pepper character and elegant structure that Coonawarra can deliver – as it did in the original Michael in 1955.

The changes are there but more subtle in recent vintages of the White label Shiraz and Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon and the re-introduced John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon.

Indeed, the estate that made Coonawarra famous is quietly, through quality and value, reasserting its status. See this website on July 16 for reviews of the new releases.

Goodbye Len Evans, the world will miss you

27 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Len Evans, Australia’s greatest wine man died suddenly of a heart attack on August 17th, just two weeks shy of his 76th birthday.

Len crammed a lot into those years – perhaps too much his cardiologist might say. But nothing was ever going to mollify Len’s ebullience, creativity, energy, love of great wine or commitment to the Australian wine industry.

When I look back over thirty years in the wine industry – about the time that’s elapsed since Len’s first heart attack – I cannot recall any other figure of such influence.

And Len’s influence was wide, deep and prolonged stretching from the early 1960s when he wrote his regular Bulletin wine columns right up until his death.

Len could sing, joke, entertain, judge wine, write, play golf like a champion, sculpt, make ceramics, build houses, found restaurants, bottle shops and wineries and perhaps, most importantly of all, see an international future for Australian wine.

He helped popularise wine drinking in the sixties and seventies, showed us the rollicking side of the industry in his Weekend Australian Indulgence column in the late seventies and early eighties, then urged the industry towards ever better quality for the rest of his life.

That urging took many shapes, from hard-hitting public comments to enforcing high judging standards to mentoring hundreds of talented industry people.

For example, we could credit some of the recent advances in white winemaking with Len’s constant urging a decade earlier. At a NSW Wine Press Club lunch following the Sydney Show in 1995, Len observed, not for the first time, “The reds emerging are far better than the whites”, Then slipped into a joke, “A fellow said to his mate, ‘I bought a new kind of hearing aid.’ ‘What type is it?’ his mate asked. ‘5.30 he answered’”.

When the laughing stopped Len suggested perhaps Australian wine makers had bought the wrong kind of hearing aid — because they were not hearing the message that our whites were not as good as our reds.

Perhaps the key to Len’s wide influence lies not so much in his public pronouncements but more in his ability to connect with so many people at all levels. He had an extraordinary ability to remember names and positions of people with whom he came into contact.

For young people, it was always flattering and memorable to be publicly greeted by someone of Len’s charisma. But it could also be intimidating, because Len loved to call upon new contacts to stand up and speak, totally unprepared, sometimes in front of hundreds of people.

A constant theme for Len, publicly and privately, was the need for Australia’s wine industry to be outward looking and built on quality. ‘Complacency is our enemy’, he once said, ‘And if we’re not complacent we’ll be a great wine producing nation. If we’re going to get there, our wines will have to keep getting better. We should make the best $10, the best $20 wine and so on – but we’ll have a fight on the $200 ones’.

This theme of quality and internationalism drove the establishment of the Len Evan’s Tutorial – a weeklong intensive seminar held each year for young, accomplished wine people seeking entree into Australia’s show system.

Len believed passionately in shows as a force for good. And he saw the need to bring forward a new generation of wine show judges with an appreciation of international benchmarks.

Len is gone. But the show will go on.

Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 1996 $180-$240
In today’s salute to Len Evans it seems fitting to include two contrasting luxury Champagnes from the great 1996 vintage. The all-chardonnay Taittinger Comtes de Champagne – sourced from top-ranking vineyards in the Champagne district’s Côtes des Blancs sub region – has Champagne’s elusive combination of intensity and delicacy. Without pinot noir in the blend the colour is a deceptively pale lemon, belying its ten years’ age. But that prolonged bottle ageing prior to release added a subtle patina of aromas, flavours and textures that simply enhances the wine’s extraordinary vivacity and freshness. This is about as good as aperitif style Champagne gets.

Veuve Clicquot La Grand Dame Champagne 1996 $220 o $260
Veuve Clicquot’s luxury Champagne is a more traditional blend of two-thirds pinot noir and one-third chardonnay. The high pinot content gives the blend its deeper colour and assertive backbone but this is mollified by the more delicate chardonnay. La Grande Dame’s great flavour intensity comes from the quality of the grapes – all sourced from top-ranked vineyards: Verzenay, Verzy, Ambonnay and Bouzy for the pinot noir; and Avize, Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger for the chardonnay. While power with elegance is always the keynote of La Grande Dame, the 1996 seems particularly elegant though, from experience, the assertive pinot character tends to grow with bottle age.

Tyrrell’s Reserve Belford Hunter Valley Semillon 1999 $29
The Elliott family planted the Belford vineyard in the Hunter in 1933 and a fourth generation still controls it. However, Tyrrell’s lease and manage the vineyard which is source of some their best semillon. Typically these are very pale, minerally and delicate as young wines, gradually taking on a fuller, honeyed character with bottle age. Fortunately, Tyrrell’s hold small volumes back for later release, giving the majority of drinkers without cellars a chance to taste the glories of aged semillon. The 1999 is a lovely drop that’s just beginning to show some of the classic maturation characters while retaining great freshness. Cellar door phone 02 4993 7000.

Why the 2003 rieslings are so good

24 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Shortly after keying last week’s column on the glories of the 2003 rieslings, I received a note from Petaluma’s Brian Croser. Like the other makers referred to in the column, Brian expressed excitement at the quality but, at the same time, was aware of what scepticism might attach to claims of two consecutive vintages of a lifetime in 2002 and 2003.

Writes Croser, “I know you are looking sceptically at these words and are probably thinking ‘good spin’ to follow the unfollowable, the wonderful 2002 vintage”.

As usual, Croser’s press release carried more meat than most. His analysis of ‘heat summation’ (a measure of solar heat available to vines during the growing season) for the past three vintages sheds considerable light on vintage 2002 and 2003 quality.

“The heat summation from October 2002 to the end of January 2003 was just short of a record set in 2001”, he writes. Now, as riesling gives its best aromatics and flavours under comparatively cool ripening conditions, we immediately begin to wonder what’s so good about such a hot vintage.

Croser continues, “Then the autumn arrived, a full five to six weeks early. February and March were cooler than average and March and April were significantly cooler than the same months in 2002 which was the coolest summer on record. This early heat blast up to veraison [when grapes begin to change colour and soften], followed by chilly ripening and fruit flavour development phase, has sculpted an unusual and enchanting wine”.

He concludes, “The table actually proves there is very little difference between the long term average heat summation and vintages 2002 and 2003 for the February to April critical ripening phase”.

Now, heat summation is measured as ‘the number of degrees Celsius by which the average mean temperature for the period exceeds 10, multiplied by the number of days in the period’.

Croser’s figures for Petaluma’s Hanlin Hill vineyard in the Clare Valley reveal heat summation for October to February for 2001, 2002, 2003 and the long-term average as 2074, 1569, 1924 and 1773 respectively. Clearly, 2001 and 2003 were hot and 2002 cool.

But the figures for the February to April ripening period – 805, 746, 755 and 759 – show a still hot 2001 vintage with 2002 and 2003 slightly cooler than but very close to the long-term average.

Heat summation for October to January show where the real blast of summer lay for 2001 and 2003 and just how unusually cool was vintage 2002. The figures are: 1269, 823, 1169 and 1014 for 2001, 2002, 2003 and the long term average respectively.

While these exact figures apply only to one vineyard, the general trend, I believe, may be extrapolated across the Clare and Eden Valleys. They tend to support the view that wines from the cooler 2002 vintage tend to be a little more restrained in the fruit department and possess more assertive acidity. This suggests good cellaring potential

In contrast, the 2003s seem to offer more up front aromas and fruitiness than the 2002s did at the same age. This, too, is consistent with early heat followed by cool ripening. However, the wines have reasonable structure, too. So there are bound to be some long living examples amongst the 2003s, too, even if the general trend is to early drinking pleasure.

The figures also tell us a little of why these two legendary riesling areas are not so hospitable to chardonnay. Chardonnay, like riesling, develops its most intense flavours under comparatively cool ripening conditions. However, it ripens earlier than riesling and in Clare and Eden that means before the onset of suitably cool autumn weather. Both regions make workmanlike chardonnays, but you’ll look long and hard to find anything in the league of riesling.

And what of the so-called ‘riesling renaissance’ still being talked up in the press? From what I can see, there’s no such thing. In the bumper 2002 harvest, Australia’s total harvest was just 28756 tonnes compared to chardonnay’s 252166. By 2005 the tonnages for each variety are tipped to reach 302000 and 36000 respectively.

Clearly, riesling is and is likely to remain a niche variety. But that’s very good news for those tuned into it because it will continue to deliver more quality and flavour for your dollar than any variety, white or red.

Annie’s Lane Clare Valley Riesling 2003, $14 to $18
This is just one of many absolutely delicious, early-release 2003 rieslings beginning to hit the market. As a major, widely distributed product (it’s part of the Beringer Blass group), Annie’s Lane is frequently discount fodder. Hence, the wide gap between ‘normal’ retail and ‘special’ pricing. I saw this in a line up of 12 other 2003’s and liked its rich musky/floral aroma and similarly generous, very fresh and zesty dry palate. The screw-cap seal guarantees pristine, fruity freshness now and should protect the wine for many years if you prefer the rich, honeyed flavours that come with age.

How Peter Lehmann kept the Barossa flame burning

6 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

The story of how Peter Lehmann rescued grape growers abandoned by Dalgety — then owners of Saltram Winery — in 1979 is well known. Perhaps less well appreciated is that in doing so, Lehmann probably spared a century-old winemaking tradition from extinction.

Lehmann had been winemaker at Saltram since 1959. He’d taken the reins from Bryan Dolan when Dolan moved to sister company Stonyfell, replacing Jack Kilgour who’d been making Stonyfell wines since 1932.

Dolan, in turn, had spent his first four years at Saltram working alongside Fred Ludlow before taking over in 1949. And Fred had been there since 1893, making wine for the last fifteen years of his remarkable sixty-year service.

In his time under Dolan, Lehmann continued the tradition of making sturdy, long-lived reds, introduced the flagship ‘Mamre Brook’ red, sourced from a vineyard of that name, and introduced the use of new oak for red wine maturation in 1973.

So, in 1979 when Lehmann walked – with the stranded Barossa growers and offsider, Andrew Wigan – he effectively transplanted the Saltram winemaking culture to his new venture, Masterson Barossa Vignerons. Saltram subsequently fell into a deep hole for fifteen years.

The winemaking achievements of the old Saltram culture can’t be underestimated. In a tasting marking Saltram’s 140th anniversary in 1999 — attended by Bryan and Nigel Dolan and Peter Lehmann – reds from the Ludlow through to Lehmann eras, spanning the years 1946 to 1979, drank remarkably well.

Underlining the significance of Lehmann’s exit in 1979 was the poor showing of the Saltram 1980s reds. (Happily, under successive ownerships of Rothbury Estate and Mildara Blass, Nigel Dolan put Saltram back on track in the mid nineties).

As Saltram lost the plot, Lehmann, even under enormous financial constraints, kept the Barossa red-tradition alive, starting with the 1980 vintage.

Winemaker Andrew Wigan recalls, “The winery was still being built around us. The Italian concreters went crazy every time fresh juice was spilt onto the setting concrete. Cellar hands and winemakers alike had to jump from tank to tank because we did not have scaffolds or catwalks”.

Even without the benefit of oak maturation – a great builder of complexity and stability in red wine – that inaugural 1980 shiraz (sold at $25 a dozen in 1982) still opened beautifully at a tasting held by Wigan in Sydney a few weeks back.

Like the Saltram tasting held seven years earlier, Wigan’s 25-vintage tasting proved two things. First that good quality, ripe Barossa fruit in the right hands makes delicious, long-lived wine. And second, that this need not cost a fortune.

Most of the Lehmann wines in the tasting were holding up well, the highlights, for me being the 1980, 1985, 1986,1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2004. That’s a lot of highlights, but it shows how reliable Barossa shiraz can be.

The general theme is one of ripe fruit and soft but abundant tannins, albeit with considerable vintage variation, and a tendency towards riper, rounder, juicier fruit flavours in recent vintages.

It’s worth remembering, too, that Lehmann kept ripe, full Barossa shiraz going during the dark years of the early eighties as other warm-climate growers experimented — and failed — with leaner, earlier picked styles.

Lehmann’s success was no accident. And the good news is that he’s still going and that the glorious 2004 reviewed last week can still be had for as little as $14 a bottle – a modest price indeed for a red of this provenance.

94-year-old Ray Beckwith wins O’Shea Award

23 July 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Seventy-one years ago Australian scientist, Ray Beckwith, joined Penfolds Wines. A little over a year later, with the blessing of Leslie Penfold-Hyland, he purchased the company’s first pH meter.

Shortly thereafter he found a cure for ‘sweet wine disease’, a malady destroying about thirty per cent of Australia’s fortified wine — the industry’s then major export earner.

Ninety-four year old Beckwith recalled in Sydney last week, ‘there was at the time a code of silence amongst wine companies’ that discouraged a co-operative approach to solving industry-wide problems – and probably accounts for why Leslie Penfold-Hyland head hunted him from rival winemaker, Thomas Hardy.

It was a good call by Penfold-Hyland. The talented young Beckwith found a means of defeating lacto bacillus, the organism identified by fellow scientist, John Fornachon, as cause of the foul tasting ‘sweet wine disease’.

Prior to Beckwith’s breakthrough, Penfold-Hyland’s struggle against wine infection had not always been scientific.

In an interview in February 1992, Grange creator, Max Schubert (an employee at Penfolds from 1932 and still a junior when Beckwith arrived) recalled, “A tremendous number of experiments with Leslie Penfold-Hyland… for instance, he’d be out somewhere shooting quail or something. He’d come across a different type of soil and he’d pick up a handful, put it in a paper bag… he’d say try that in the wine. So I’d mix it with gelatine or charcoal and he’d use the soil or clay to take it down the bottom… to get rid of the terrible flavour…”

In the same interview Schubert said, “we started to get on top of this when Ray Beckwith… introduced pH to the company and, of course, from that time onwards we were able to control these bacteria… I think Ray Beckwith has never got the credit he should have for the work he did regarding pH”.

Suspecting that “pH may be a useful tool in the control of bacterial growth”, Beckwith tested his theories in September 1936 using Adelaide University’s pH meter – even after “Professor McBeth had drunk my samples”.

Enlightened by Fornachon’s work and equipped with a pH meter at Penfolds from January, 1937, Beckwith, with encouragement from fellow scientist and friend, Allan Hickinbotham, determined that the maximum pH in fortified wine should be 3.8 (the lower the reading the more protective the environment).

And to reduce pH he introduced the practice of adding tartaric acid – a natural component in grape juice. This was the key to defeating lacto bacillus and sweet wine disease. Losses after that were nil.

It was a profound insight and one that continues to benefit winemakers around the world. But it was just one of several major innovations that’ve made Beckwith prominent in the global wine science world.

Broader recognition finally arrived on Friday, July 14th, 2006 when Beckwith accepted McWilliams’ Maurice O’Shea Award in front of six hundred industry peers at Darling Harbour Sydney.

Recounting an amazing 75-year association with the industry, Ray commented, “Winemaking is a special partnership between science and art. Science imparts the understanding and body, while art imparts the style and soul. I am proud to be part of an industry that gets both the science and art so profoundly right, and I feel genuinely honoured that my role within it has been recognised… I like to think my generation created an infrastructure for succeeding generations, something to build on. I will continue to take great delight and pride in watching the Australian wine industry continue its pioneering work”.

Winewise small vignerons awards

16 July 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

For many small winemakers Canberra’s Winewise Small Vignerons Awards is the most important Australian wine show, overshadowing the usually prestigious and larger – but to them irrelevant – Sydney, Adelaide and National Wine Shows.

So how did this little home grown show assume such importance?

What began for Lester Jesberg (then a tax office official) and others as a hobby in the sixties and seventies became a small business in 1985 with the establishment of ‘Winewise’ magazine – a by-subscription, no advertising publication providing impartial wine reviews.

Twenty-one years later ‘Winewise’ remains a niche publication highly respected within the wine industry and by Australia’s keenest wine enthusiasts.

Each year Lester and his team taste thousands of wines and review each fearlessly, under ‘outstanding’, ‘highly recommended’, ‘recommended’, ‘agreeable’, ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ categories.

The disciplined, masked tasting approach sustained over two decades gives the results a high degree of credibility across a vast range of Australian and imported wine.

Somewhere along the line this led to the creation of the Winewise Small Vignerons Awards – a forum for small makers not well serviced by the larger wine shows.

Like the magazine, the Small Vignerons Awards developed high credibility and this year attracted a reported 1350 wines from 450 exhibitors.

And because it’s such a well-run event appealing to key small producers, it also attracts high quality judges to complement Winewise’s own panellists – Lester Jesberg, Phil Trickett, Andrew McEwin and Len Sorbello.

Several features lift the SVA above so many other shows: outstanding judges; small classes, often broken into regional groupings so that like is judged with like; comparatively low numbers of wines to be tasted per judge per day; the use of good quality glassware; and serving wine at a consistent, moderate temperature.

While the results of any show is just an expression of opinion, good outcomes are more likely where judges are not fatigued, where there’s time to carefully re-assess all gold medal candidates and where only outstanding wines move forward for the trophy taste offs.

What you can be sure of with the SVA is that the trophy winners are excellent wines. What you cannot be sure of is that they are necessarily the styles that each and every person likes.

For that fact is that everyone is genetically programmed and otherwise conditioned to perceive smells and tastes differently. With that caveat there’s a feast of good drinking in this year’s hard-won trophy line up below.

Best riesling: Delatite Alpine Valleys Victoria 2005. Contact www.delatitewinery.com.au. Phone 03 5775 2922.

Best semillon: Saddler’s Creek Hunter Valley Classic 1999. Contact www.saddlerscreekwines.com.au. Phone 02 4991 1770.

Best dry white blend: Lenton Brae Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc 2005. Contact www.lentonbrae.com. Phone 08 9755 6255

Best pinot noir: Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004. Contact, www.paringaestate.com.au. Phone 03 5989 2669.

Best shiraz: Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004. Contact: www.paringaestate.com.au. Phone 03 5989 2669.

Best cabernet sauvignon: Koppamurra Limestone Coast 2002. Contact: www.koppamurra.com. Phone 08 8357 9533.

Best other varietal red: Burge Family Barossa Valley Garnacha 2003. Contact: Phone 08 8524 4644.

Best dry red blend: Windance Margaret River Cabernet Merlot 2004. Contact: www.windance.com.au. Phone 08 9755 2293.

Best fortified wine: Stanton & Killeen Rutherglen Grand Muscat. Contact www.stantonandkilleenwines.com.au. Phone 02 6032 9457.

Best exhibitor: Capercaillie Wines Hunter Valley for achieving greatest total score for three wines entered in three different classes. Contact: www.capercailliewine.com.au. Phone 02 4990 2904.

Brian Walsh, Octavius and the case for diverse shiraz styles

25 June 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Judged by share of media voice, Australia’s fragrant, refined, cool-climate shiraz styles have the upper hand over the sturdy, ripe warm-climate styles.

Steadfastly, however, Australia’s wine investors and consumers continue to back the robust, ‘old fashioned’ warm-climate shirazes. Some might say that this is just the old guard doggedly sticking to the past, forever blind to the enlightenment.

Others, more reasonably, might say that, well, if winemakers grow shiraz in cool places like Canberra or Great Western or Mount Barker, the wines aren’t going to taste like those made in the warmer Clare, Barossa or McLaren Vale.

These reasonable people might also add that the longer history and greater production volumes in the warm areas probably explains, at least in part, why these robust reds still overwhelmingly dominate the secondary market (judged by Langton’s Classification, based on auction volumes and prices).

Yet another explanation might be that the majority of people simply favour big, ripe, warm shiraz flavours over the fragrant, savoury, refined styles from cooler areas.

Or perhaps, as a note from Yalumba Winemaker, Brian Walsh suggests, this is not a popularity competition at all. Brian writes, “What is important though is that we acknowledge that shiraz has many great manifestations in this country and the debate should be less about cool climate verus warm/hot climate and more about celebrating the differences between the styles, while interpreting and being true to the appropriate style for one’s region…”

Brian’s long, thoughtful note arrived with a sample bottle of Yalumba The Octavius 2002 (reviewed below) – an idiosyncratic wine that in 1988 marked Barossa-based Yalumba’s return to making solid reds after having lost direction for most of the eighties.

Octavius’s evolution — from a dense, overwhelmingly oaky style (hence the industry nickname ‘Oaktavius’) to the rich, ripe harmonious regional style of today – parallels the finessing of so many other warm climate Australian flagships.

Like Octavius, Peter Lehmann Stonewell, Grant Burge Meshach, Hardys Eileen Hardy and Tim Adams Aberfeldy – to name just a few – modified viticulture, winemaking and oak maturation over the past decade to produce increasingly graceful, harmonious styles – without losing the regional thumbprint.

While this finessing has been far from universal, it reflects a restlessness amongst our best and most influential winemakers. This is fuelled by both self-criticism and wider debate amongst winemakers and critics and often fanned by our wine show system.

Within this style debate, makers from our cooler areas have unquestionably helped to raise the bar. Wines of the calibre of Canberra’s Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier and Seppelt St Peters Shiraz are their own best argument for seamless, delicious, near perfection.

The best warm-climate shiraz makers acknowledge these – as they do the best of France’s Rhone Valley styles and see some attributes of these wines – if not the cool-grown fruit flavours – as desirable in their own wines.

But just as some cool-climate shiraz suffers from being too lean or just plain unripe, warm climate shiraz can move beyond plummy ripe fruit flavours to cloying porty or raisened flavours. And both, of course, can suffer from poor winemaking, particularly in the use of inappropriate oak.

As consumers, we’re fortunate to have such a spectrum of outstanding shiraz styles available in Australia. We’ve taken ownership of this French variety. And whether it’s a peppery Craiglee Sunbury, an earthy Brokenwood Graveyard Hunter, a fragrant, silky Clonakilla Canberra or a powerful, graceful Octavius Barossa, the drinking pleasure is immense.