The English have probably thrown up more good wine writers than anyone else. Not surprising given that London has for so long been the centre of the world’s wine trade. Thumb through the major English wine publications and you’ll find a level of commentary and judgement we don’t enjoy here. But even so, it’s riveting stuff. And a good deal of it, naturally enough, is pitched at the already well-informed reader.

But every now and then there emerges a wine writer of greater stature. Someone who not only exercises good judgement on the topic, but also has the literary skill to enthuse as well as inform the reader. In Australia, probably only Len Evans ever achieved that. Perhaps there’ll be a few more gems from him in the years ahead!

Some of the most easily digested essays on wine that I’ve read flow from the pen of Gerald Asher. I’m not a regular reader of the American Gourmet magazine, but his wine column illuminated the occasional issues to come my way. Recently a friend handed me a book, Gerald Asher on Wine, a collection of his essays, many adapted from Gourmet articles. I’d read it all before, but what compulsive reading it was after the turgid fare we’re still served up in our glossies.

Asher began his career in the wine trade in London shortly after the second world war, In Asher’s words, “The wine trade was regarded as a convenient refuge for those of good family who were ill equipped for the intellectual challenge of law or medicine, yet insufficiently rich to be placed in private banking in the City. He who had every right to be modest in his expectations was thus kept from the shame of idleness, but, in the process, depressed the expectations of the rest of us. For nearly five years my salary had remained unchanged. Proud of my accomplishments, I asked the managing director if he would review it. He was taken aback. ‘Young man,’ he said, turning me down, “if I were to grant an increase, it would merely encourage you to ask again another time. There’d be no holding you.’”

And there was no holding him. For Gerald Asher it was the spur to setting up in the wine trade on his own. He set about building a prosperous business, quite different from the traditional London wine merchants. Instead of concentrating on the great classic wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, he went in search of the distinctive county wines of France, discovering cheaper wines of high quality.

Thus detached from conventional wisdom, he searched diligently to arrive at his own definitions of which wines represented both quality and value. His judgement must have been good, because the business prospered. Presumably this was the period in which he learned to pen his enthusiasm for the lesser wines of France. How else would sales have been so good.

The experience gained in visiting the cellars of hundreds of producers all over France, combined with his earlier classical training, gave Asher a unique perspective on wine and how it meshed the soils, climate, food, and people of the regions from which they were produced. His independence of experience and thought also led to another breakthrough in business. He began exporting both the lesser and classic wine of France direct to the United States, and not through London as was traditionally the case. No doubt there was much ‘tut-tutting’ amongst the gentlefolk of the trade.

The market there was attractive enough to win him as a permanent resident in 1971, to New York initially, but finally in San Francisco close to California’s wine industry. Trade in the United States he found far removed from the gentlemanly pastime it was in Britain: “I had to supply mug shot, finger prints, and personal history to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whose representative visited friends and acquaintances in the course of their enquires. It was clear that I was to consider myself henceforth a potential criminal, at very least. Indeed, I was soon to realise that the laws relating to the sale of wine – irrational, demeaning, and absurdly varied from state to state– make certain that everyone involved with the wine and spirit trade of this country will at some time, knowingly or unknowingly, commit an offense… “

Undeterred by the bureaucratic monkeys on his back, Asher’s wine knowledge was further enriched by the incredible vigour of the then rapidly expanding Californian wine industry. Working in the trade, and most importantly selling to the public, Asher managed to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground. His essays breathe an enthusiasm for wine.

And though a magazine like American Gourmet is read by the well-healed with an above-the-ordinary-interest in wine, his words are for everyone, not only those versed in wine lore.

If you can find this volume, published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York, 1986, grab it and prepare for a late night. You won’t want to put it down.

For all but the coolest areas vintage 1993 is now crushed and sitting in casks, tanks, or even bottles. Early dire predictions of major shortages proved correct. But the recent burst of warm, sunny weather saved the day in premium areas, ripening to perfection smaller crops of very high quality grapes, both red and white.

Robert Hill-Smith of Barossa-based Yalumba says there couldn’t have been a stronger contrast between grapes harvested from warmer areas early in the season and those coming in from cooler areas during April.

Those early-season grapes rolling in from hot stretches of the Murray River proved a wine maker’s nightmare. Sugar and acid levels were both low (an unusual combination), meaning a tendency towards low-flavour, flabby wines. It took every bit of wine maker ingenuity to bring the wines up to par.

As the ripening season progressed, in many areas there was nail-biting anxiety that grapes, especially red varieties, might not ripen at all. Tahbilk’s Alister Purbrick, for instance, harvested outstanding whites then watched in dismay as a burst of wet weather triggered an outbreak of botrytis cinerea, a form of rot wonderful for some white varieties but devastating to reds.

Then, bingo! The sun shone as it had refused to throughout a patchy spring and summer, the grapes dried out, the rot stopped in its tracks, and over two glorious weeks, sugar levels crept up to a perfect ripeness with beautifully balanced acidity.

The story was similar across much of southern Australia. After months of anxiety, those areas where grapes ripen late, because of location at high altitude or low latitude, finally gathered an even-later-than-normal crop of exceptional quality.

Brian Walsh, Yalumba’s chief wine maker, told me over a few glasses in the Barossa last Tuesday, to expect some exceptional wines from the 1993 vintage. It seems reds generally and riesling and chardonnay amongst whites were outstanding. Robert Hill-Smith claims “quality is as good as we’ve ever seen.”

Up in the Adelaide Hills, Brian Croser seems even more exuberant, claiming 1993 as the best vintage in his twenty-four years’ winemaking. He made similar claims about the 1990 vintage. Given Brian’s sober approach to things, perhaps there really is something to crow about in 1993. Certainly a 1993 cabernet component of Yalumba Signature Reserve looked, smelled and tasted unusually rich and powerful.

Robert Hill-Smith estimates the shortfall in requirements of major companies at around 60,000 tonnes. That shortage is forcing a scramble for bulk wine. This, on top of high vineyard management costs imposed by a disease-prone season, is pushing up production costs. Already bigger companies are looking to recoup these through higher wholesale prices.

Sauvignon blanc seems to be in particularly short supply, especially with New Zealand makers here scouring the bulk wine market hoping to make up for their own disastrously small vintage.

The other notable shortage… being felt even before this year’s reduced yields… is of top-quality red wines. In recent times we’ve seen popular reds simply not lasting the full year on retail shelves… Penfolds recently released 1990 reds, for example, are likely to be gone by September, even with trade allocations split over April and July.

With Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignons the shortage is perennial. It would be hard to name one that’s available year round. And from better-known small makers like

Hollicks, Bowen Estate and Leconfield, a vintage sell-out within a few months of release is the rule rather than the exception.

If the estimate of a 60,000 tonne grape shortfall is true, then it seems logical to anticipate higher wine prices. That conclusion is supported by quite solid wholesale price rises already effective.

But in the past price rises have always been followed by price collapses as consumers simply refused to pay more or switched to up-and-coming brands that were cheaper. The domestic market is weak enough already with total wine consumption falling within a clear pattern of declining alcohol intake.

Consumers, naturally enough, resist price rises. And in the past they have always thumbed their noses at wine producers attempting any such thing. But things are a little different this time.

Retailer margins are at an all-time low and simply cannot be further compressed. Thus, any wholesale increases will flow instantly to the consumer. As well, exports are booming, providing an outlet if domestic sales fall.

But on the other side of the coin, production is poised to rocket in coming years. With the price per litre of wine exports falling, and a possibility that French and Italian producers may flex their muscle against the cheeky Australians, the current upward pressure on wine prices may prove very short lived.

Yalumba held its annual museum tasting in Sydney last Monday. For the seventeenth consecutive year, proprietor Robert Hill-Smith laid on for members of the trade and press thirty-eight venerable vintages from his wine museum in the Barossa Valley.

The tasting showed that some humble Australian wines scrub up extraordinarily well with prolonged cellaring. It also showed that with one grape variety, shiraz, we are as good as anyone in the world.

But with sweet whites, sparkling wines, fortifieds, pinot noir, cabernet, and chardonnay we’ve still a long way to go to equal the best European wines on which ours are modeled. Above all it was great pleasure to drink such well-cellared classics, especially with Sydney Harbour as a backdrop.

Yalumba’s 1986 ‘D’, the third of its line and disgorged only last month, smelled and tasted fresh but was simply outclassed by the incredibly powerful but fine Bollinger ‘Vieilles Vignes ‘(old vines) Champagne 1982 and the aged but mouthwateringly-fresh Veuve Clicquot Champagne 1962, a perfect example of aged Champagne.

Bollinger ‘old vines’ is something of a curio being 100 per cent pinot noir from quite old pre-phylloxera vines surviving in the courtyard of the winery in Ay and another small plot at nearby Bouzy.

The brilliant Veuve Clicquot, a more traditional blend of two thirds pinot noir (62 per cent) and pinot meunier (5 per cent) with one third chardonnay, came from some of the greatest vineyards of the Champagne district and owed at least some of its freshness to being cellared in magnums.

In a mixed group of whites, Rothbury Estate’s Shareholders Reserve Semillon 1976 showed a delicious depth of distinctive, aged regional flavours.. Given its modest price, it more than held its own against an oak-matured semillon-sauvignon blanc blend from Chateau Laville Haut Brion from Graves and the beautifully structured Jean-Pierre Perrin Rousanne Vielles Vignes 1988.

Four sweet whites were all from Sauternes or Barsac in France. Of these, Chateau d’Yquem 1983 dominated, in the words of Len Evans “it epitomises the ultimate character of Sauternes.”

Amongst four chardonnays a French wine, Bienvenues Batard-Montrachet (Domaine Leflaive) 1983, like the Chateau d’Yquem in the Sauternes class, was a perfect wine, in this case a textbook white Burgundy of the rare kind that inspired Australian wine makers to make chardonnay in the first place.

But both Tyrrells Vat 47 Chardonnay 1987 and Leeuwin Estate Chardonnay 1985 paled next to M. Leflaive’s wine, but were excellent, nevertheless. Tyrrells was one of those big, rich, round, old-fashioned Hunter styles, while the Leeuwin showed a greater sophistication with the added complexity of flavour added by malolactic fermentation.

Similarly amongst the pinot noirs, a very good Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir Reserve 1988 (Caneros and Napa Valley, USA) looked pretty good on its own. But a Romanee Conti (Domaine de la Romanee Conti) 1985 showed such brooding power and depth, there could be no doubting Burgundy is not yet under threat from the new world.

In two separate groupings we tasted three shiraz and grenache based Rhone Valley reds and six shiraz and cabernet based Australian reds.

Here there was no French domination. Its top wine, Cote Rotie La Turque (Guigal) 1988 while enormously concentrated, and seen as one of the Rhone’s top wines, may be on a par with our own Grange Hermitage, but is not to my taste any better.

Amongst the older Australian reds, Grange 1955 was still a delight to drink though it hasn’t the power and intensity I recall from several tastings in the late seventies and early eighties; Maurice O’Shea’s Mount Pleasant Claret Henry II 1945 still showed some richness of a hot Hunter vintage; a 1919 Reynella Claret tasted ‘chocolaty’ (Evans thought it was perhaps from ageing in old port barrels); and a 1919 Barossa Valley Claret was fragile, delicate and still drinkable.

Bordeaux, and therefore cabernet, was represented by three vintages of Chateau Margaux, 1982, 1966, and 1995. Lovely as it was to drink the old wines, 1982 showed all the inimitable perfume, supple sweetness, enormous depth and firm drying astringency of a First Growth Claret. Perfection.

From a group of fortifieds there was simple pleasure in a 1926 Yalumba Tokay; more complexity and richness in a 1922 Yalumba Port; sublime satisfaction in Warre’s Vintage Port 1945 (one of Portugal’s greatest vintages); glorious drinking in a Stonyfell Vintage Port 1945, made by Jack Kilgour; and ethereal richness and an overwhelming feeling of timelessness in Cossart and Gordon’s Bual Centenary Madeira 1845.

In summing up the wines over lunch Len Evans remarked on the need to have fun even with profound wines like these. We did.

Tour a wine-producing area and the landscape, history, people, and food etch themselves on your mind. The result is an emotional and intellectual entanglement where the wine, wherever encountered thereafter, triggers memories of its origins.

Thus, knowing a wine is not only in the drinking, but in familiarity with the soil, history and landscape behind it. Sharing these often strong emotional attachments over a meal and a few good bottles might be easy with friends, especially amongst the vineyards. But to convey the feelings to a wide audience requires artistry of a very high order.

It takes not only a good artist, but one immersed in wine, wine lore, and complex landscapes, histories, and personalities. This is where British illustrator, Ralph Steadman, appears on stage with a dazzling book, The Grapes of Ralph (Random House, London 1992. RRP $49.90).

Buy it and hang onto your sides. You could split laughing. Open a second bottle and it gets even better.

Steadman doesn’t pretend to be a wine expert but, rather, an explorer and observer. Throughout the book words and pictures mingle in a flow of fact and fantasy at times difficult to separate. As the sub-title tells us this is wine according to Ralph Steadman.

He approaches wine as a drinker:

“ I tried desperately to savour the first tasted on my tongue, but thirst got the better of me and I gulped a mouthful which burst inside me like a warm sensuous bomb. I followed it with a piece of black bread and thought only of France and the sheer joy of booze at the right moment.”

But he’s not just any boozer as we see from this colourful tasting note on Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet 1982 tasted on its home turf, Coonawarra:

“A massive body-it swells to Gargantuan proportions-the primal savage emerges-thunder in the brain. Time opens its doors and you come face to face with immortality.”

In 223 pages, Steadman dazzles us with impressions of Bulgaria, France, Germany, Portugal, Lanzarote, Italy, Australia, California, Peru, and Chile, dropping in four amusing interludes on various aspects of wine en route.

I counted 264 illustrations, ranging from tiny line sketches to double-page full-colour landscapes. These embrace wine, vines, grapes, wine tastings, mythology, wineries, other buildings, landscapes, and some of the most wonderful character portraits imaginable.

Colour sketches breath life into leading Italian wine makers robed in medieval, renaissance, and papal costumes (eg: a Florentine Angelo Gaja, “the Lorenzo de Medici of Italian wines”). And there’s brilliance in ‘Leonardo da Steadman’ (I think that’s what it says. It’s written backwards) technical drawings of wine paraphernalia, circa 1490.

Throughout the book Steadman’s characters strongly portray national identities without being mere stereotypes. And the landscapes radiate almost as much warmth as the people. Those I’ve traveled through live again under Steadman’s pen and brush. I particularly love his portrayal of Carema in Northern Italy, and Saumur in France’s Loire Valley.

His sketches of Australia I first saw in a wine catalogue produced by Oddbins, the giant English wine merchants. As I understand it they sent him on his one visit here to focus on Penfold’s winemaking facilities in Coonawarra and the Barossa Valley (where I’ve seen a barrel-end decorated in chalk by Steadman on that visit).

Despite the narrow brand focus, he devotes 28 pages to Australia, an exotic landscape that seems to have fired his imagination… and not just for the wine.

The opening double-page painting shows a vast blue-grey, red-streaked landscape with Ayer’s Rock and the Olgas thrusting through. Six pages dominated by Aboriginal themes follow, one with the caption: Homage to Australian Wine inspired by Aboriginal art–the only true culture to emerge from the Australian continent in the last 40,000 years.

We also get glimpses of animated wine bottles, one in Ned Kelly helmet a-la Sydney Nolan, dancing on a vast plain; ‘Kangarouge at Play’; and vignettes of imaginary wine figures, including ‘Barossa Pearl’. She ran a soup kitchen while her preacher husband traveled the outback warning against the evils of abstinence.

Steadman recognises the genius of Max Schubert “… With a touch of madness common to all genius, he created a classic upon which the whole Australian industry measures its quality. He quotes Max at length, and tops it all of with a beautiful portrait alongside his creation, Grange Hermitage.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Just go and buy the book for its 264 pictures. These 750 words can never convey just how funny and moving it is.

Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 1980’s label explains how the grapes were “Hand picked by experienced girls”. But were the girls as experienced as Sydney Hamilton? He was eighty-two when he made the wine, one of his first reds from a 30 hectare Coonawarra vineyard he’d established, virtually single handed, six years earlier. And though Syd was new to Coonawarra, he’d been making wine since 1917, longer, presumably, than the experienced girls had been picking grapes.

Old Syd (and the experienced girls) made a good job of that 1980, by the way. Chardonnay Lodge, the motel sitting smack in the middle of Coonawarra’s terra rossa soil, had, until the Canberra Times wine buying team arrived, a little cache in its restaurant. We could not resist. It turned out to be glorious drinking, a wonderful salute to the memory of Syd (he died at 89 in 1987) and a great accompaniment for Yoey’s vintage cheese from nearby Mount Gambier. (Why do wines always taste best close to the winery and with food from the same region?).

That wine tells us a lot about Coonawarra and why the 1991 Leconfield Cabernet was included in the boutique dozens currently being offered by The Canberra Times. The 1980 demonstrates the richness, power, and longevity of Coonawarra cabernet from a good maker in a good year. Here was a wine made from very young vines by a very old man (and experienced girls) emerging triumphantly from the cellar thirteen years later.

Leconfield was not the only good red from Coonawarra in 1980, a year hailed widely at the time as the best ever. It turned out the best was yet to come. But in my mind I see 1980 as a milestone vintage, a turning point from an era when Coonawarra demonstrated only an occasionally realised potential, to a decade of turning out countless very good reds and more than its share of truly great ones.

Drive up and down the main road now and you can enjoy good reds along the whole fifteen-kilometre stretch of Coonawarra. In our search for the boutique dozens, we tasted superb reds from Bowen Estate, Hollicks, Balnaves, Parker Estate, Penley Estate, and Zema Estate. (In the latter there’s a wonderful story for another day… how little Dometrio Zema plucked one of Coonawarra’s plum sites from under the noses of the big companies).

Any one of these, indeed others as well, might have been selected. But our affection for old Syd Hamilton, subsequent drinking of several bottles of Leconfield 1991 cabernet, and successful negotiations with Syd’s nephew, Dr Richard Hamilton (he bought the estate from his uncle in 1981), all helped swing our decision to Leconfield.

Sydney was a direct descendent of another Richard Hamilton. He established South Australia’s first vineyard and winery, Hamilton Ewell, near Adelaide in 1837 and it was here that Syd worked as wine maker from 1917 to 1955.

With fellow wine maker, Russian-born but Geisenheim-trained Count Von Seeck, Syd pioneered the use of mechanical refrigeration in the 1930’s. It was unheard of and widely poo-poohed at the time. But it led to the making of clean, fresh, delicate whites. Older readers will fondly remember Hamilton’s Ewell Moselle and Springton Rhine Riesling, wines imitated by so many others.

In March, I wandered through Leconfield vineyard with wine maker Ralph Fowler. He pointed out the vines planted by Sydney Hamilton. These original plantings were cuttings from Hamilton’s Springton vineyard in the Eden Valley. Located on the best terra rossa soil, they are low yielding and still provide Ralph with his very best fruit despite considerably expanded plantings since Syd’s days.

The winery, too, is a great memorial to Sydney Hamilton. Even before being extended recently, it was a substantial two-storey-high building, made from Mount Gambier limestone. Old Syd dug the footings himself!

If Syd’s spirit lives on in the vineyards, winery and wines of Leconfield, in my mind I recall an assertive but polite old man, burning with energy and enthusiasm for his wines. I met him just once here in Canberra in about 1979, making him 81 at the time. He’d driven across the Hay plain with a boot load of samples and was doing the rounds of the trade.

Wine quality and enthusiasm were a winning combination. Syd whipped up considerable support on that whirlwind visit at a time when the trade was much less wine-orientated than it is today.

Sydney Hamilton established Leconfield in his old age. His goal was to make a classic Australian cabernet using Bordeaux as a model. He chose the right area and successfully laid the foundations for the goal to be achieved.

Rothbury Estate sits in the Lower Hunter Valley, a dominant landmark, not just for elegant design but for the vision and public profile of its well known, even rollicking driving force, Len Evans.

Len seems to combine a romantic view and love of wine with hard-nosed, pragmatic entrepreneurial skills. As a founding father of Rothbury, Len watched his baby crawl, totter, stumble, walk and grow. From being a Lower-Hunter specialist in 1968 Rothbury became a non-listed public company in 1974, shifted its focus from the Hunter to Cowra in purchasing a large chardonnay vineyard there in 1981 and, after a public float last year, became the centrepiece of an operation including Baileys and St Hubert’s wineries in Victoria.

Prior to the float, St Hubert’s and Bailey’s belonged to the Goodman Fielder Wattie Group. When Rothbury purchased these two wineries, GFW Ingredients, a subsidiary of Goodman Fielder Wattie, acquired 19.7 per cent of the new company, making it the largest shareholder. Len Evans remains the second biggest holder with a 15 per cent stake, and another founding father, Daniel Chen, is the third biggest with 11.3 per cent.

From Rothbury’s 11 founding investors in 1968, Len Evans assumed the role of marketing director, while Murray Tyrell looked after the vineyards. About 340 hectares, all in the lower Hunter and mainly reds, were planted. Wines were made by Gerry Sissingh but only those passing muster with the selection panel – Len Evans, Rudy Komon, Gerry Sissingh, and Murray Tyrell – were sold under the Rothbury label.

Rothbury’s initial production was predominantly red, a direction dictated by a short boom in red-wine drinking in the late sixties. But the quality of reds just didn’t match that of the whites in those early days, and consumer preferences moved quickly to whites.

Acquiring an established vineyard at Cowra in 1981 was a controversial board decision, perhaps the most significant it ever made. It allowed Rothbury to meet an exploding demand for good-quality but inexpensive chardonnays.

It turned out that the wine buying public was little interested in the lower Hunter’s great specialties, shiraz and semillon, varieties making up the majority of Rothbury’s Hunter plantings. Len Evans can take the credit for seeing this demand and persuading the board to grab Cowra.

The Cowra vineyard was established by Tony Grey in 1972. It proved an ideal location. By the Lachlan River in central Western N.S.W. in a benign climate with plenty of water, it quickly and efficiently produced biggish crops of high-quality grapes. Evans recognised the quality early.

He was instrumental in sourcing Cowra grapes for Petaluma Chardonnay from the first vintage in 1977 until the vineyard’s acquisition by Rothbury in 1981. At the time of the purchase, Cowra was planted to a number of varieties including 12 hectares of chardonnay.

In that year Rothbury made just 1,000 cases of its first Cowra chardonnay. Production increased steadily as more chardonnay went in and other varieties were pulled out. Forty two thousand cases were made in 1990, and 1993 looks like being the first year of full production with an estimated 60,000 cases bubbling and glooping away in the fermenters in the Hunter winery. Terrific stuff it is, too.

Rothbury’s production turned even more to whites, and better earnings, with the acquisition in 1988 of Denman Estate’s vineyards in the upper Hunter.

Rothbury’s Hunter plantings are now down to just 63 hectares producing around 500 tonnes in good years. That’s only 10 per cent of the group’s total crush. But in a good vintage Rothbury’s semillon and shiraz from these vineyards can be sensational.

1991 was just such a vintage and both the red and the white make up part of a mixed dozen the Canberra Times will be offering readers next week. These are brilliant Hunter specialties that blossom with cellaring.

Len Evans tells me that with Baileys and St Huberts thrown in, Rothbury produces around 300, 000 cases annually. The plan is to push production up to 500,000 cases over the next few years. To achieve this the group needs to either plant more vineyard or acquire other established producers.

Len sees the Cowra Vineyard as one of the best in the world because it so reliably and efficiently produces such wonderful chardonnay. What the group needs now is a red equivalent. There are parallels to be found in the big soft reds of Baileys at Glenrowan. Perhaps they’ll plant more there. But my mouth waters more when I think of McLaren Vale shiraz. Let’s hope Len looks there, too.

It may seem hard to believe, but one of Australia’s most respected reds internationally did not see light of day until 1982. Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon was made in that year by John Wade but not released until 1985, shortly after Penfolds acquired Wynns from Allied Vintners.

Australian consumers recognised Riddoch’s superior qualities snapping up that first vintage within weeks of its release. The instant success was all the more striking considering its price of around $13 to $14 a bottle. That may seem quite modest for a top flight Coonawarra today, but in 1985 there were few other wines fetching that sort of money.

Sheer quality fanned the wine drinker’s enthusiasm for John Riddoch. Here, after almost a century of grape growing in Coonawarra, strutted the great cabernet everyone knew the area was capable of making. Successive vintages added to the wine’s prestige and led within a couple of vintages to an international awe of its impressive power and depth of colour, aroma, and flavour.

1983 was a rotten year for Coonawarra and there was no John Riddoch produced. 1984, generally regarded as a year of lighter and fruitier reds than usual, produced a surprisingly robust wine still with years of cellar life ahead. 1985 was a solid wine, too, but eclipsed by the amazing richness of the 1986. That was a wonderful vintage… the first for wine maker Peter Douglas. He says he still can’t believe his own good luck.

Cool vintage conditions in 1987 produced a John Riddoch less voluptuous than either the 1986 before it or the 1988 afterwards. Despite having less ripe aromas and flavours the 1987 won international acclaim, as did the 1988. 1989 was another hard year and no John Riddoch was made.

Since the release of the first vintage in 1985, John Riddoch has been a top auction performer. In a classification of Australian wines based on long-term prices, auctioneers Langton’s last year rated John Riddoch amongst a small group of reds consistently out-priced only by Grange Hermitage.

The others in this elite group are Henschke’s Hill of Grace, Mount Mary Cabernets, Penfold’s Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707, Petaluma Coonawarra, and Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine No.1. Of these, in my view, only Bin 707 approaches John Riddoch in quality. None equals its growing international status.

That status is about to be boosted by the release this week of the 1990 vintage. It was a brilliant year across South Eastern Australia and especially in Coonawarra. But nothing from the vintage released to date approaches John Riddoch. Quite simply, it’s one of the greatest reds ever made in Australia.

It’s unlikely other Coonawarra makers will scale the same heights as John Riddoch. Even given equal wine making skills, the resources at Wynns’ disposal may prove unbeatable. They not only own the oldest vines in Coonawarra but the most as well, with a good part of their holdings on the plum ‘terra rossa’ soil in the northern part of the region.

Crushing around 15,000 tonnes of grapes annually, Peter Douglas carefully fractionates the various batches of reds coming into the winery. With individual fermenting tanks holding just 20 tonnes apiece, he and the other wine makers classify batches according to quality. The best cabernets are earmarked for John Riddoch and Penfolds bin 707.

Those selected for Bin 707 finish their ferments in new American oak before being pumped into tanks for trucking to the Barossa for extended oak maturation and, finally, blending with components from other regions.

John Riddoch components are fermented completely dry in tanks before going into new French oak casks for two years or more of maturation in the huge insulated cask sheds behind the famous triple-gabled winery.

Under Penfolds end use evaluation scheme, records are kept of which wine every batch of grapes goes into. Thus, the group has a clear picture of the styles of wine produced by thousands of plots and sub plots across southern Australia.

From this data, Peter Douglas says that the backbone of John Riddoch stems consistently from certain plots scattered around Coonawarra. What the sites have in common is old vines, low yields, and very thin ‘terra rossa’ soil over limestone.

The fact that 1990 John Riddoch will be more talked about than consumed (production was small and the price is around $30 a bottle) does not matter. It will become a legend both here and overseas. In the process it will become a flagship for all Australian wines, drawing attention far out of proportion to its tiny production. As Len Evans said to me in the Hunter last week, American and English wine writers soon grow bored with Bin 65 Chardonnay. They want excitement, and they’re about to get it.

When that happens, I can easily see John Riddoch becoming international currency like Grange. And with that will come a much higher price tag.

A cold, wet growing season couldn’t have come at a worse time for Australian and New Zealand wine makers. With buoyant demand, especially from export markets, they need more grapes and stable prices. Instead they face shortages, higher grape prices, and increased vineyard costs. If they pass these on to consumers, sales will slip. If they don’t, shareholder returns will be even more miserable than they are now.

Ivan Selak’s Auckland based winery sources most of its grapes these days from a joint-venture vineyard and contract growers in Marlborough at the top of the south island. As vintage approaches, he tells me all major growing areas face heavy cloud cover, the prospect of more rain… and hence more outbreaks of mould diseases.

For the New Zealanders it’s the second small vintage in a row. Ivan tells me the shortage has pushed up spot prices for Marlborough sauvignon blanc (the country’s biggest performing wine grape) from around $NZ850 to $NZ1,200 a tonnes. And very ordinary-quality Muller Thurgau, a German hybrid thriving in New Zealand’s cool climate, now fetches $NZ495 a tonnes. Those prices convert to $NZ20 and $NZ8 a dozen bottles respectively for grapes alone.

Peter Barry reports big crop losses for the Clare Valley, an hour’s drive north of Adelaide. Downy mildew is the main culprit. To make matters worse, growers report infestations of brown moth… a pest usually associated with flowering time and not known in Clare this close to vintage. The sprayers are out in force again, pushing up costs on an already expensive vintage.

The great Riverland, cradle of our mass-produced wines for home and abroad, experienced the coldest, wettest vintage on record. As a result of early-season mildew crops are estimate to be down by about 15 per cent. But it seems not all is bad news there. Large companies, presumably because they have leverage over growers, say they will not be paying inflated prices for grapes. To do so would disrupt price-sensitive exports.

Alister Purbrick of Chateau Tahbilk says Victoria’s Goulburn Valley is disease-free and crops will be about normal. However, like every other region, vintage is two to three weeks late. This presents no problems with white wines… in fact, enhances the quality as fruit flavour is more intense with higher than normal acid levels. But the lateness augurs badly for reds which have difficulty ripening, especially if vintage is wet.

In McLaren Vale, Geoff Merrill, of Mount Hurtle Winery, estimates the area’s crops to be down by 15 to 20 per cent. Again downy and powdery mildew were the culprits. Vintage is late there, too. But as it’s warmer than the Goulburn Valley, we’ll see not only good whites from the 1993 vintage but reasonable reds, too.

From the Hunter Valley, Trevor Drayton tells me it ‘s the latest vintage in his fifteen odd years winemaking. But the old-timers tell him things are just back to normal. While Trevor puzzles over that one, he’s happy to report a big vintage for the area, about fifty per cent up on last year’s disaster.

The Barossa Valley is so big and varied it’s hard to put figures on the vintage before the grapes are in and counted. Robert Hill-Smith of Yalumba says poor fruit set and mildew mean an overall crop decrease of perhaps 15 per cent on an average vintage. And he says that down south in Coonawarra the loss might be 30 per cent. His company, for example, was counting on 750 tonnes from Coonawarra and now expects only 268.

Taking a broader view, Robert says ABARE reported a grape crush in 1992 of 611,000 tonnes. That made 397 million litres of wine against sales for the year of 393 million. ABARE estimates this year’s crop at 580,000 tonnes. But Robert Hill-Smith takes a more pessimistic view, predicting 540,000 tonnes. By his reckoning Australia will make 50 million litres less than it needs for the year.

He believes the shortage, combined with a currency rebound, price increases, and a strong fight back by European wine makers (genuine Chablis can now be bought in England for as low as five pounds, compared with four pounds fifty for Yalumba Oxford Landing Chardonnay), will slow the rate of export growth.

For once, Australian wine consumers face the prospect of higher prices and a shortage of wine. Already the Penfold Wine Group has announced price rises on some bottled wines. It may be wise to salt away a few extra cases of your favourites over the next few months.

Enjoying aged wine is one of the great pleasures of drinking. How to achieve the right ageing conditions and wonderful – as well as peculiar – mature wines encountered in the past month. After all, finding wines that have aged well is as good a form guide you’ll get as to what to lay down now for the future.

Peter Lehmann was a brave man to make Zugspitz Flaxman’s Vale Apfelwein in 1966. There were plenty of grapes, so why make wine from apples? Braver still, I thought, to cellar it for 27 years, and generous to a fault to present me with a bottle on a trip to the Barossa in January. It turned out to be a great leveler. A few expert palates here in Canberra correctly put an age on the masked bottle, but no one sniffed out the apples. It showed two things about cellaring: it’s a myth that only reds keep for very long periods; and the older dry whites grow, the more the aromas and flavours of age take over from individual grape and regional characters.

Despite this, one old red tasted in Victoria demonstrated that age can hone up flavours peculiar to a particular grape variety, as well as adding a smooth, silky texture. When Viv Thompson took a 1975 Pinot Meunier from the underground cellar of Best’s Great Western Winery, I really did not expect much. I was wrong. Here was a wine that started life as a lightish, delicate, fragrant dry red. It disappeared quickly over lunch, the lush, gamey flavour, and silky delicacy being irresistible. You can buy the current vintage from Viv for around $10. And there’s no reason why, if well cellared, it won’t turn out as well as the 1975.

At the other end of the scale, Birks Wendouree Bin W16 Clare Valley Claret 1961 was, at birth, one of those great blockbusters we see at times from Clare: impenetrably purple; pungently sweet and ripe in aroma; mouth puckeringly firm with tannin and loaded with ripe fruit flavour. Thirty-two years on with Peter and Mark Barry it was a glorious pot pourri of rich, sweet, fruity and decaying flavours. It was an absolute joy to drink… and probably sold for the equivalent of less than $10 in its day. Again, there’s no shortage of good, solid Clare reds to pop in the cellar today, although it will be hard to find one quite of this genre,

Although we can say, in general, Australian chardonnays don’t cellar well, there are exceptions, those from both Seppelts and Best’s at Great Western being good examples. I recently tasted a 1984 Best’s at a dinner party in the home of Ross and Lorraine Hanna of Macgregor and again on my visit to Best’s. Age confers on this wine a new dimension of rich, smooth aromas and flavours. What a great but simple pleasure it is to drink it. All the Hanna’s had done was buy a case at cellar door and stick it under the house for a few years.

In Sydney earlier this week, Don Lewis, Mitchelton’s wine maker, presided over a tasting of his Rhine Rieslings, vintages 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992. Some years back I reported on a similar tasting and the conclusion now is the same as then. All vintages are alive and well, with, to my taste, the 1980 and 1992 being great highlights. Vertical tastings like this are interesting but, of course, not as much fun as drinking the wines over a meal with friends. But the tasting proves the quality of the line and underscores Mitchelton Rhine Riesling (around or under $10) as a totally safe buy for the cellar.

If drinking aged wine can be enjoyed on a modest budget by doing the cellaring yourself, there are also sublime drinking experiences for those prepared to pay someone else to do the cellaring.

Lindemans, as far as I know, remains the only company cellaring wines, on a large scale, for re-release. In the Hunter last week I was fortunate to enjoy with a meal a glass each of the legendary Hunter River Chablis Bin 3875 1970 and Hunter River Burgundy Bin 6600 1983, both being released (around $70 and $30 respectively) as part of the company’s 150th anniversary. These are supreme examples of regional specialties having been cellared impeccably.

The point with these, indeed of all the wines mentioned here, is that they could have been bought comparatively cheaply when young. They were good wines then, but age has increased the drinking pleasure.

Dr Henry John Lindeman and James Busby were great shapers of Australian wine making. Their achievements last century still survive in our modern industry. Busby provided Australia’s vine nursery, while Lindeman founded a winemaking dynasty that survived as a family company for 110 years before going public in 1953. This year it celebrates 150 years since Dr Lindeman planted grapes in the Hunter Valley.

By the time Lindeman established vines at ‘Cawarra’ on the Paterson River at Gresford in 1843, winemaking was well established in the district. James Halliday in The Hunter Valley (McGraw-Hill, Victoria, 1979) reports that by 1832, 9.5 acres of vines were listed. By around 1840 this had grown to 200, and by 1850 to 500 acres. Interest in winemaking was strong enough for a viticultural society to have been formed in 1847.

Much of the spread of viticulture had been made possible by James Busby. He took up a 2000-acre grant, ‘Kirkton’, between Singleton and Branxton in May, 1825. Apparently he left this in the care of his brother-in-law, William Kelman, and headed off to Europe in 1831, returning in 1832 with a collection of over 400 vines. These were propagated at Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, and distributed through NSW from there. Kelman bought the ’Kirkton’ vineyard which passed to Lindemans in 1914, becoming immortalised in the ‘Kirkton’ Chablis label.

It’s not known for certain who planted the first vines in the Hunter. But it seems to have been around 1830 and was either at ‘Kirkton’ or George Wyndham’s ‘Dalwood’.

What wine drinkers today think of as the lower Hunter centres on Pokolbin, near Cessnock. Plantings of those early pioneers tended to be a little further north and east of where the best sites are now located. Dr Lindeman’s ‘Cawarra’, for instance, is a solid hour’s drive north of Cessnock. How much greater the distance must have seemed in the days of dirt tracks and horse-drawn vehicles.

Vine planting at Cessnock, according to Halliday, commenced around 1860. Many no longer exist. But of the survivors (remember most were and still are mixed farms, so founding dates do not necessarily equal vine-planting date), Tyrrells was founded in 1858, Draytons in 1860, Ben Ean in 1870, McWilliams in 1893, and Tullochs in 1893.

The northern and eastern lower-Hunter vineyards may have disappeared. But the wine experts of last century praised the same Hunter grape varieties we do in 1993. By 1844, James King’s ‘Shepherd’s Riesling’ (semillon in modern parlance) was winning praise. In 1845 William Kelman’s red hermitage was written up, along with his white pinot. I wonder if that was the Hunter’s first chardonnay? Verdelho was also by then well proven.

The delicacy of the area’s wines, and the same propensity for long cellaring we know today show in a comment that ‘Dalwood’s’ 1836 vintage was drinking well in 1849… a remark telling us as much of the area’s winemaking skills as it does of grape quality.

Visiting the area last week for a Lindeman 150th anniversary celebration, I asked several winemakers what they saw as the area’s best varieties. Semillon, shiraz and verdelho were top of the list, just as they were one hundred and thirty years ago. And all agreed on chardonnay, not widely planted, if at all, last century. These were the unanimous choices of Jay Tulloch, Patrick Auld, Karl Stockhausen, Trevor Drayton, and Bruce Tyrell. Tasting experience confirms their views.

Until 1912, when it bought the Ben Ean winery at Pokolbin, Lindemans made wines at ‘Cawarra’. The first cellars were destroyed by fire to be replaced by a stone building, completed in 1853. It still stands intact, with much of the original tin roofing in place.

Next to it stands Dr Lindeman’s rather grand house, still occupied not just by his original furniture, but by his descendants, Tim and Helen Capp.

By the time Dr Lindeman died in 1881 (you can see his grave at St Ann’s Anglican Church, Gresford), his company had been exporting wine for 23 years and had set up headquarters, including bottling and storage facilities, in Sydney. By then, Cawarra wines had won some recognition abroad and, of course, became a household word in Australia during the present century. (Unfortunately, like ‘Moyston’, and ‘Kirkton’, the name was corrupted during the wine boom years of the 1970’s and 80’s).

The very energetic Dr Lindeman laid the foundation for the unique Hunter wine styles still made today. As well, he left an energetic and prosperous company that, in the 112 years since his death, has acquired Leo Burring Wines (1962), a big swathe of Coonawarra (including Rouge Homme, 1965), and led the way into Padthaway (1968).

Lindeman went public in 1953, was acquired by Phillip Morris in 1972, by Penfolds in 1990 and South Australian Brewing Holdings in the same year. It’s one part of a big company, but the regional integrity of the various bits, including the Hunter tradition founded by Dr Lindeman still underpin the whole operation.