In a vintage plagued by mildew and botrytis outbreaks, biodynamic Lark Hill, like several traditionally managed Canberra vineyards, overcame the vine diseases and ultimately harvested good quantities of healthy grapes.

During our post-vintage visit to Lark Hill, David and Sue Carpenter and son Chris seem relaxed, perhaps relieved to have all the good stuff bubbling away in the winery. There’s a fair bit of it, too, says David Carpenter, estimating a yield of about six tonnes a hectare – double 2009’s crop and significantly up on 2010. It’s a wonderful outcome for a vineyard at 860 metres in a cool, wet season.

The fight against disease began early, says David. In winter 2010 Australian grape growers had been warned to expect a cool, wet spring and summer – ideal conditions for mildew – “so we could see it coming”, says David, “and commenced a protective regime”.

That meant spraying before outbreaks of mildew, beginning very early in the season with cupric oxide (permitted in biodynamic farming). “By doing it early we used only a little bit of spray on a small target”, says David. Later in the season sprays included a canola base with tee tree and, after fruiting, copper based spray followed by a biodynamic preparation aimed at building up natural predators.

While spraying can kill mildew spoors, a long-term regime aims at building healthy soils and strong, resistant plants – based on “spraying the vineyard with various preparations and endless involvement with deep composting”.

Even in traditional viticulture “spraying makes up only about 20 per cent of the arsenal against mildew – the rest’s vineyard management”, says David. He’s referring to practices like shoot and leaf thinning and hedging vines to maximise air circulation and allow penetration of sunlight.

The Carpenters say their commitment to biodynamics began at a conference in 2003 at Beechworth. Sue recalls “lots of arms folded tightly across chests”, theirs included, at the beginning, but a rush to sign up towards the end – sparked largely by a visit to Julian Castagna’s magnificent vineyard.

In their current newsletter, the Carpenters write, “from inception, we avoided insecticides and steered a careful path utilising biological controls wherever possible, but it is in the last eight years that we have fully entered the totally biodynamic regime”.

Biodynamics is sort of like organics with the added principles espoused by Rudolph Steiner. This includes the use of seemingly mysterious biodynamic preparations, numbered from 500 to 508, and adherence to the lunar calendar – practices, write the Carpenters, that some “regard with the deepest suspicion”. They add, “we assure you our attire has not progressed to sandals and loin cloths”.

However, a big part of biodynamics, certainly as practised by the Carpenters, appears to be giving tremendous attention to care of the land and vines. Who can argue against composting, deep mulching and keeping potentially hazardous chemicals out of the environment.

The more astrological components of biodynamics, such as planting, harvesting and racking wine by phases of the moon draws derision and satire from some quarters. And there’s much scepticism regarding the 500-series preparations – particularly regarding the legendary the cow horn full of dung – sometimes scoffed at as a belief in channelling cosmic forces.

But even scientists like the Carpenters have to stick with the Steiner precepts to be accredited as biodynamic producers – which they have been from vintage 2008.

They explain, for example, that the cow horn of dung isn’t about channelling cosmic or any other forces. It’s the beginning of breeding program for useful bacteria and fungal spores. It’s the base for the “500” preparation. Each autumn they fill the horns with cow dung, seal them with clay and bury them in shallow pits on beds of compost.

In spring they dig up the horns and use the dung as a starter culture in warm rainwater – adding 50 grams to every 200 litres and aerating it. The theory is that at around body temperature the bacteria and spores breed rapidly. The Carpenters then spray the mix around the vineyard where the microbes fix nitrogen in the soil and spores stimulate growth of fungi that enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the vines.

Whatever we make of the more arcane elements of biodynamics, the Lark Hill vineyard looks a treat and is delivering probably the best wines since the Carpenters began planting it in 1978.

Across the years they’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. As a result, they’ve pared the vineyard back to the proven varieties, riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir. And following a suggestion from Jancis Robinson, a visit to Austria tasting gruner veltliner – and the fortuitous discovery of two vines of the variety in Tasmania – propagated a thousand vines and planted them in 2006.

Gruner veltliner, say the Carpenters gives them a high-quality white that sits in style somewhere between the delicacy of riesling and opulence of chardonnay.

Like all of their table wines, bar riesling, it’s fermented by indigenous yeasts. Unfortunately the sensational 2010 sold out recently. But, says Chris Carpenter, the 2011 (still a lovely, sweet, acidic juice when I visited) will be released around October.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

Pedro ximenez probably isn’t on the radar of most wine drinkers. And where we see the name, it’s probably on the label of a dark, sweet, sherry. But it exists as a delicate, long-lived dry white wine as well. And there’s a dwindling but significant treasure trove of it at Campbells of Rutherglen.

It seems hard to believe now, but this Spanish white grape once starred in Australia’s wine industry. Brought to Sydney by James Busby in 1832, pedro ximenez spread to our hot, dry growing regions, including Rutherglen, Victoria. A century later it underpinned production of Australian “sherry”, much of it destined for the UK.

Rutherglen became an important production centre, with two of Australia’s largest producers and exporters located there. Winemaker Colin Campbell recalls Seppelt, at Rutherglen, and Lindemans, at nearby Corowa, New South Wales, being “based on sherry soleras”.

But by 1968, when Campbell returned to the family business from winemaking studies at Roseworthy College, fortified wine, including sherry, had begun its long decline, and table consumption was on the rise.

To meet growing demand for dry white wine, Campbell turned to the only two white varieties in the family vineyard – pedro ximenez and trebbiano. Both had been planted for sherry production and their fruit sold to Lindemans.

He says the pedro vines had probably been planted between 1900 and 1908, by his grandfather, David Campbell, son of the property’s founder, John Campbell.

Like other Victorian grape growers, the Campbells lost their original vines to phylloxera – the small but deadly American vine pest that also devastated European vineyards in the late nineteenth century.

To relieve distress among grape growers, says Campbell, the Victorian government despatched Francois de Castella to Europe. There he sourced vines, including pedro, grafted onto phylloxera-resistant rootstock. David Campbell’s new plantings came from de Castella’s material.

Campbell installed refrigeration at the winery and set about making a dry white pedro ximenez. Picked early, with comparatively low sugar and high acidity, the wine began life austere and dry, but developed greater richness and character with bottle age.

However, a run of wine show successes failed to spark interest in the variety. Incredulous winemakers, including Leo Buring’s John Vickery, laughed in wonder but stuck with established table wine varieties.

Vickery, the father of modern Australian riesling – an experienced sherry maker, too, using pedro ximenez in Buring’s popular Florita Flor sherry) – rightly dismissed pedro as a curio.

Campbell says bottled aged pedros invariably spark a similar reaction from drinkers ¬– scepticism before tasting, followed by an incredulous smile. I’ve been there twice. The first time, about eight years ago, on a retail buying trip, we tasted 20 or so vintages. The earlier wines carried “Chablis” labels, in line with generic naming of a past era; but from the late eighties carried the varietal name, pedro ximenez. What surprisingly delicious and delicate old wine they were. More recently, a lovely, fresh, delicate, slightly honeyed 1999 vintage, served at a dinner party, prompted a call to the winery, and this article.

Curio or not, pedro succeeded for Campbell’s from the late sixties until production ceased after the 2007 vintage. Colin Campbell says, “We stopped then because it was a curio and because we only made a small volume, it was difficult to handle”.

He says pedro shoots early, making it prone to damage from spring frosts. And the big berries tend to swell and burst in rain, or rot and fall off. However, pedro vines remain in the vineyard and now contribute to cheaper sweet fortified wines. Campbell says these vines are descendents of those established by his grandfather a century ago – the vineyard having been replanted in the mid 1990s.

While the winery discontinued production after 2007, Campbell expects stock to be available at the cellar door for some years as they’ve always released it as an aged wine. Because it’s so acidic and austere as a young wine, explains Campbell, “it needs at least five to six years to develop bottle age character. And it also needs cork character to age properly”.

But using cork exposes the wine to two risks – cork taint and random oxidation. And oxidation, laments Campbell, takes a massive toll, rendering up to 60 per cent of older pedros unsaleable. He says they destroy bottles that fail pre-release assessment.

Campbell’s dry, white pedro ximenez remains a curio – but a loveable, mellow and drinkable one, at a refreshingly low 11.5 per cent alcohol. Unfortunately, it’s destined for extinction.

But there’s still time to enjoy it. Campbells currently offer at cellar door the 1997 vintage for $35 and the 2004 vintage for $25.90. And all of the vintages from 1998 to 2007 remain in the cellar for future release. It’s history in a bottle.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011
First published 6 April 2011 in The Canberra Times
Published in The Melbourne Age Epicure 26 July 2011

No vintage is all bad or all good. Even in the current cool, wet, mildew-riddled season endured by Canberra vignerons, bright spots and hope remain among the devastation, albeit with an anxious eye on the weather.

After a decade-long run of hot, early vintages, Canberra looks distinctly cool climate in 2011, with harvest times likely to revert to those experienced in the seventies, eighties and early nineties.

In the Nanima Valley, Murrumbateman, Ken Helm says he escaped the mildew losses and has a good crop on the vines. He expects to begin the riesling harvest in early April, several weeks later than in 2010.

At nearby Jeir Creek, Rob Howell says he harvested pinot and chardonnay for sparkling wine from Hall on 7 March – weeks later than similar material in recent years. Howell says the crop, being processed at his Murrumbateman winery, is for a commemorative bubbly to be released for Canberra’s centenary in 2013.

Kay Howell says the Jeir Creek vineyard remains in good shape, despite some minor fruit loss early in the season. Timely spraying against mildew did the trick, she says, nervously eyeing clouds building up to the east. “But we don’t want any more rain”, she adds.

At Lerida Estate, Lake George, co-owner Anne Caine laughs, “The application of large sums of money saved the day. We have a pretty good crop”.

Caine’s husband Jim Lumbers hopes their luck will hold. He says, “In August we looked at the long range weather forecast and planned for a wet, cool vintage.

We bought a year’s supply of sprays, a hedging bar for our tractor and hired more people. It’ll push our production costs from $800 to $5,000 a tonne”. “We’ve hedged, shoot thinned, fruit thinned and leaf plucked”, says Lumbers – all aimed at exposing fruit to the air and not overburdening the vines’ ripening capacity.

When I spoke to Jim on 14 March he was harvesting pinot noir for rose. He said, “it’s coming in at 10–11 Baume [around 11 per cent alcohol potential] with lovely fresh flavours. We’d normally be picking material like this in the last week of February”.

Like others in the district, Lumbers views botrytis as the main threat. “It’s heart-in-mouth stuff”, he says, grateful that recent rain fell at night. If it comes during the daytime “we’re sunk”, he believes,

But at the moment the vineyard’s looking beautiful as a result of all the work, neatly hedged, green and laden with big, fat bunches. Lumbers reckons the sheer size of bunches and berries could compensate for the fruit thinning they’ve conducted. He adds, “I’ve never seen anything like the merlot. The berries are as big as plums”.

Nick Spencer, winemaker at Eden Road Wines, in the Kamberra complex, describes 2011 as “bizarre – what looked like being a very, very scary vintage because of disease is now shaping up to be possibly stunning if we can avoid botrytis”.

More rain, says Spencer, brings two risks to quality: botrytis and flavour dilution. Botrytis damage, provided it’s not too rampant, can be mitigated by hand sorting fruit in the winery, discarding bunches affected by the disease. But nothing can be done about dilution. He’s hopeful the region may scrape through March without significant rain.

Spencer sees an atypical, but exciting, ripening pattern in Canberra and nearby Tumbarumba this year. “The flavours are ripe, but the sugar’s not there – it’s more like cooler parts of France and Europe”, he says.

Typically in Australia, sugar (and therefore potential alcohol content) develops early. This is one measure of ripeness. But as sugar builds, winemakers sweat on the arrival ripe fruit flavour, accompanied by ripe tannins.

This year, says Spencer, he’s tasted beautifully ripe Tumbarumba chardonnay and intensely floral Canberra riesling with potential alcohol of just 11 per cent. He expected pinot gris to be the first Canberra fruit he’d harvest, just after the Canberra Day long weekend, closely followed by the first of the riesling.

He believers the very ripe 2008 and 2009 vintages tended to blur regional differences, but anticipates in the cooler 2011 season “expressive wines, revealing regionality and site characters”.

Spencer estimates that by December 2010 Canberra district had already lost about 50 per cent of its crop to downy mildew. Subsequent mildew outbreaks and the potential for botrytis to develop could result in total losses of 60–70 per cent across the district.

At Brindabella Hills, Hall, Roger Harris expects a quiet time after processing fruit from his own vineyard. Harris makes wines for many other grape growers in the district. But this year, he says, “My clients don’t have any fruit”, mostly because of downy mildew.

The losses, however, are not uniform across the district. Stories of success and failure in 2011, he believes, had much to do with the timing of flowering, rainfall and spraying.

“Like everyone else in the district”, says Harris, “we seemed to spend most of the year spraying”. And for Brindabella Hills, at least, the spraying proved effective. Harris says he expects a normal yield across the vineyard of 7.5 to 10 tonnes a hectare – with one exception. Cabernet sauvignon, a late flowerer, failed totally last spring, so there’ll be no crop at all.

By 14 March, Harris had already harvested a “good yield of sauvignon blanc of exciting quality”, with modest but normal sugar and higher than normal acidity. He says the high acidity really accentuates the fruit flavour.

Riesling, he says, shows the first signs of botrytis but it’ll be in the winery out of harm’s way by Wednesday 16 March. Samples of juice looked terrific, with acidity even higher than in the sauvignon blanc – a positive for flavour intensity and longevity, even it means reducing acidity in the winery.

This is rare in Australia, but common in parts of New Zealand. Harris says he’s done it only once before, to fruit from a grower in Tumbarumba.

Harris says the tropical rain pattern coming our way threatened outbreaks of botrytis. However, his remaining variety, shiraz, still a few weeks from ripening, offered some resistance to the disease because of its thick skin and loose, open bunches.

Harris expects the vintage to produce exceptional whites, with reds “very cool climate in style”. Like all of Canberra’s vignerons, he’ll be monitoring his vineyard closely and hoping for the best.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

Last November as Canberra’s grape vines burst into life, Peter Wiggs and Peter Howland walked onto the original Lake George vineyard, accompanied by its founder, 90 year-old Dr Edgar Riek. Wiggs and Howland had just bought the vineyard from Theo and Sam Karelas, its owners since 1998.

Riek’s presence was more than symbolic. He planted Cullarin (the property name) in 1971, experimented with dozens of varieties, and devoted thousands of hours to perfecting the vineyard and wines, sold under the Lake George Winery label.

Even when Riek, then 78, sold Cullarin in 1998, it was keep the dream alive for another generation. But he says he’s been disappointed to see the vineyard marking time for most of the last twelve years – except for a welcome but brief period of rejuvenation under Alex McKay and Nick O’Leary, following Hardy’s departure from the district.

That brief period of new planting, grafting and re-trellising saw the vineyard almost double in size, and the introduction of shiraz and tempranillo.

Howland certainly connects Riek’s vision to his own. He views the property as “Edgar’s garden – a library of vines” and describes Riek as “the greatest resource of all. He comes out here every couple of weeks and has so much knowledge”. Riek says it’s wonderful seeing his dream coming back to life again.

Howland says that he and Peter Wiggs began searching for a small, established, cool-climate vineyard some years back. They’d been particularly fascinated by Cote-Rotie style shiraz and short-listed several regions, including Canberra, capable of making the style.

When they discovered Cullarin up for sale, they visited the site, dug around and ultimately bought the property, including about five-hectares of vine and four sheds. The Lake George Winery name, however, remains with Theo and Sam Karelas next door on the former Madew property, which they acquired in 2008.

Howland writes, “I will be viticulturist with responsibility for both the vineyard and winemaking. Our focus is on making high quality shiraz, pinot noir and chardonnay. Production for 2011 will be approximately 800 cases, rising to approximately 1,500 cases for 2013. Our plan is continue the revitalisation of the vineyard that was began by Alex Mackay. We will also be re-establishing the winery and hope to open a cellar door in 2013 (to coincide with release of the 2011 vintage wines).

Howland says he arrived at the vineyard last November, “just after budburst. It was not in great shape at all, then rain brought up all the weeds”.

However, that’s all under control now, he says, and despite the rain and consequent mildew problems in by the district, the vineyard carries a good crop of healthy fruit. The few problems he sees are in dense canopies on an old T-trellis system. Fruit on a more open vertical-shoot-positioning system, established by McKay and O’Leary, seems perfect – confirming a first impression that the whole vineyard should be converted to the system.

Over time, Howland plans to build up good soil nutrition using biodynamic principles – good soil nutrition being key to healthy vines. And healthy vines, of course, produce tasty fruit – the key to good wine.

By the time this year’s crop ripens (it’s now at veraison stage, where red varieties begin to colour and bullet-hard berries soften), one of the sheds will be fitted out as a winery.

Howland sees his coming vintage at Lake George as a time for trial and observation of the vineyard’s pinot noir, shiraz, pinot gris, viognier, cabernet, malbec, chardonnay, tempranillo and mourvedre. Afterwards he can decide what stays, what goes and what gets expanded.

Howland studied oenology at Adelaide University and has made wine in Italy, the Hunter Valley, Western Australia and Argentina. He has an interest in online retailing through Suitcase Wines, offering individual vineyard wines from around the world, and Hidden Talent, devoted to small-batches from boutique winemakers.

Peter Wiggs is a managing partner of Archer Capital, an Australian private equity investment business claiming “the longest track record of any leveraged buyout manager in Australia”.

Archer led the management buyout of Cellarmaster Group from Foster’s in 2007. Cellarmasters is a vertically integrated wine direct marketing group making, packaging, selling and delivering wine direct to its customers in Australia and New Zealand. (Shortly after this article’s publication in the The Canberra Times, Archer announced the sale of Cellarmaster to Woolworths).

With Howland’s expertise in vineyard and winery and Wigg’s money and background in business management, Edgar Riek’s vision may finally be realised.

Sadly, the wines won’t appear under the Cullarin or Lake George Winery brands. But whatever name Howland and Wiggs select, the wines will be entirely from the original vineyard. This is terrific news. Edgar Riek is still smiling.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

In July 2009 wine retailer Jim Murphy and Canberra lawyer Michael Phelps bought the Schobers vineyard – one of three prime Clare Valley sites offered by Constellation Wines Australia in a mass clearance of its Australian wine assets.

In October 2008 Constellation had announced the coming sale of three large wineries – Langton in Western Australia, Stonehaven on South Australia’s Limestone Coast and Leasingham in the Clare Valley. Also on offer were 1,322 hectares of vineyard in South Australia, including Schobers, and 169 hectares in Western Australia. The company had already sold its Kamberra Wine Tourism complex and 85-hectare Holt vineyard to Canberra’s Elvin Group.

With a glut of vineyards on the market at the time and buyers nervous, prices fell. Murphy won’t reveal what he paid for Schobers vineyard, but said, “It was a good price, below replacement cost”.

“I always loved the area”, he said, “and all the great Leasingham bin wines. I first visited there in 1970 with Max Schubert [creator of Penfolds Grange]. Max bought wine from Mick Knappstein [Leasingham winemaker] for Grange. Max was fascinated with the area and always needed Clare grapes for Grange, Bin 707 and Bin 389. He thought the wines were very elegant”.

Then in 2009 Murphy took a call from Peter Dawson, Constellation’s former chief winemaker, urging him to buy the Schobers vineyard.

As winemaker for Australia’s second largest producer and exporter, Dawson knew intimately the quality potential of hundreds of vineyards in every important wine-growing region in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.

Dawson rated Schobers among the top 20 red vineyards in Australia, recalls Clare Valley winemaker David O’Leary (uncle of Canberra’s Nick O’Leary). He’d received the same excited phone call from Dawson, but not having the money to buy it, joined Dawson in urging Murphy to do so.

Murphy didn’t need much persuasion and over lunch with Michael Phelps found a partner. “We bought it in July”, says Murphy, “and by August we were busy pruning. We’d hired a full time manager, Allen Weedon, and he got contractors in to work it. It had been let go under Constellation”.

The quick restoration paid off and in 2010 Murphy and Phelps sent 200-tonnes of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon to the nearby O’Leary Walker winery for processing. O’Leary describes the wines as “concentrated and powerful”.

Processing the fruit seemed like working with an old friend again, says O’Leary, as he’d made reds from Schobers vineyard in the early nineties at Hardy’s Tintara winery, McLaren Vale. Hardys had acquired Leasingham from H.J. Heinz in 1988 (Constellation Brands USA bought Hardys in 2003). From 1991 to 1994, O’Leary recalls, he made components of the powerful Leasingham Classic Clare reds and sparkling shiraz at Tintara. Chris Proud, and later Richard Rower, produced other components at Leasingham. All used grapes from Schobers.

H.J. Heinz planted the vineyard in 1976–77 at the height of a red wine boom. In unique wine industry fashion this was just in time for a cask-led white wine boom. Hardys expanded Schobers in 1996 to feed the next boom – seemingly insatiable global demand for Australian wine.

While the export boom persisted for another decade, it was, unfortunately, based mainly on cheaper, blended wine with the appellation “South Eastern Australia” or “Australia”. Despite some efforts our major exporters made few inroads with our fabulous regional wines and the world remains largely ignorant of their existence.

As a consequence, much of the vineyard expansion in high-quality, low-yielding areas like Clare (and Canberra) meant grape production cost beyond the level required for export wines. This realisation began mid decade of the new century but became bitter reality as our currency strengthened and the global financial crisis arrived.

Constellation headed for the exit – but not before Leasingham attempted to showcase the glory of Schobers vineyard.

Jim Murphy currently offers Leasingham Schobers Vineyard Shiraz 2005 and Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, made initially by Kerri Thompson and completed by Simon Osicka after Thompson left Leasingham in late 2006.

Thompson (now with her own Clare Valley winery, KT and the Falcon) says, “We focused on the Schobers and Provis vineyards and Schobers, being dry grown, was prone to inconsistent crop levels. But when it hit its straps it was bloody good”.

Indeed, recalls Thompson, Schobers 1994 shiraz proved bloody good enough to win the Jimmy Watson Trophy in 1995 under Leasingham’s Classic Clare label. But the style evolved considerably in the following decade. Under Hardys red winemaker Stephen Pannell, supported by Peter Dawson, the reds moved from the “solid oak and more rustic” style of the 1994 to become “refined and more expressive of fruit” – a perfect description of the exciting Leasingham Schobers Vineyard wines mentioned above (full reviews here next week).

Now for the first time in its history, the 71.8-hectare Schobers vineyard (shiraz 53.1ha, cabernet sauvignon 18.7ha), is receiving the single focus of private owners.

Murphy and Phelps will later this year release their first wines under the Schobers label at three price points – around $15, $22 and $35 – initially with some bought-in material, though form 2012, says Murphy, the reds (shiraz, cabernet and shiraz-cabernet) will be sourced entirely from the vineyard. The range will also include a Clare Valley riesling and, from the Adelaide Hills, a chardonnay and semillon sauvignon blanc blend.

Murphy and Phelps intend to enter Schobers wines in the show circuit and to seek wider distribution in retail outlets and restaurants.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

It was all smiles and champers in Clare last weekend. The region’s biggest and one of its oldest wineries at last found a new owner prepared to buy local grapes, make and market wine and reopen the cellar door.

Leasingham’s previous owner, Constellation Wines Australia, a subsidiary of Constellation Brands USA, closed the winery in August 2009, sold three of its key vineyard, then in 2010 offered its winemaking equipment and winery-cellar door facility for sale.

Constellation retained the Leasingham brand. But its decision to abandon the winery deeply depressed the mood of the region. Leasingham had been the largest winery in the region since the 1890s. Its operations affected hundreds of families across the Clare Valley, especially those of independent grape growers.

At the time of Constellation’s decision, with winemaking assets already flooding the market and seemingly few buyers, locals feared the site, on the edge of Clare township, might be bulldozed for housing.

Constellation quickly found buyers for the Rogers, Dunns and Schoebers vineyards. Then in December last year they offered the winemaking equipment and winery-cellar building for sale separately.

Luckily for Clare and its grape growers, local winemaker Tim Adams and wife, Pam Goldsack, reached an agreement with Constellation to buy the winery as a going concern, provided most of the winemaking equipment remained in place. Constellation agreed, sold only a small part of the winemaking gear, and in December Tim Adams announced details of the sale, to be completed in January 2011. Adams confirmed that the price was “much less than replacement cost”.

Last Friday at noon, Adams and Goldsack settled on the deal, becoming Leasingham’s first private owners since America’s H.J. Heinz acquired it from the Knappstein family in 1971.

Adams aims to make it “a community winery” as it was during his apprenticeship to Mick Knappstein from 1975. He says, “I was Mick’s last apprentice – the last apprentice of the last private owner. He was a generous, community minded man. He loved making wine for all sorts of people to enjoy. He cared for the 130-odd growers, and hated it when Heinz cut back on buying. His wife Gela is over the moon about our news”.

Adams says the winery contains some of the best, most efficient winemaking equipment on the planet – enough to process up to 5,000 tonnes of grapes annually – equivalent to about 350 thousand dozen bottles. The winery has storage capacity of about 4.5 million litres.

Adams says he’ll focus mainly on Mr Mick, a new brand honouring his late mentor. But he’ll also offer a badly needed regional contract winemaking facility.

The local growers have been having a tough time, says Adams. But he expects Mr Mick, pitched at $12–$15 a bottle, with broad appeal across the retail and restaurant markets, to bring them back into the market. “These will be wines with a real story to them”, he says. He anticipates strong support from Coles and Woolworths, albeit with occasional discounts to $9.99 a bottle.

Eighteen months before buying Leasingham winery, Adams bought its 80-hectare Rogers Vineyard. Panted to shiraz, riesling, cabernet sauvignon, semillon, chardonnay and malbec, it was source of Leasingham’s once legendary Bin 56 cabernet malbec.

He’s been using these grapes in his own brand (made at the 1,500-tonne capacity Tim Adams winery). In future the vineyard will also supply the Mr Mick brand.

In fact, we can enjoy the first Mr Mick wines later this year – a 2010 riesling, from the Rogers vineyard, and three wines sourced from grower vineyards: 2010 pinot gris rosato (a dry rose style), 2009 cabernet shiraz and 2009 shiraz. These were all made at the Tim Adams winery.

Adams doesn’t plan to combine the two wineries as their functions are distinct – Tim Adams to make dozens of small batches for the premium end of the market, and the Mr Mick facility for bulk production.

He’ll reopen the Mr Mick cellar door and hopes also to offer Leasingham wines should the new owners of Constellation Wines agree to it. Meanwhile Constellations Brand USA announced in November plans to sell its Australian and UK wine divisions to a private equity company, Champ, for around $290 million. Constellation paid a little under $2 billion for the assets in 2003, joining a long line of large businesses exiting the Australian wine industry through the same hole they came in at – but notably poorer.

Tim Adams can’t save the name Leasingham. But he’l have saved the landmark facility, given hope to local growers and kept the Clare flame burning.

Leasingham timeline

1894 – Company founded by J.H. Knappstein and others

1895 – Opens for business in the old Clare Jam Factory

1900 or earlier – Making more wine than all other Clare wineries combined

1911 – J.H. Knappstein gains total control of the company

1971 – Knappstein family sells to H.J. Heinz

1988 – Thomas Hardy and Sons acquire the company

1992 – Thomas Hardy merges with the Berri-Renmano cooperative to become publicly listed BRL Hardy

2003 – Constellation Brands (USA) acquires BRL Hardy. Name changes to The Hardy Wine Company

2008 – The Hardy Wine Company becomes Constellation Wines Australia

2009 – Constellation Wines Australia closes Leasingham Winery and sells three vineyards but retains ownership of the Leasingham brand

2010 – Constellation offers Leasingham Winery and winemaking equipment for sale separately. Tim Adams and Pam Goldsack agree to buy winery and equipment as a going concern.

2011 – Tim Adams and Pam Goldsack settle on the winery and plan to launch a new Clare Valley wine range, Mr Mick, in honour of legendary winemaker Mick Knappstein. CHAMP equity buys 80 per cent stake in Constellation’s wine assets, including the Leasingham brand, changing the company name to Accolade

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

In December 2010 Philip Laffer handed the winemaking reins of Jacob’s Creek to Bernard Hickin. But Laffer, now 70, retains a globe-travelling role with Jacob’s Creek’s French owner, Pernod-Ricard, giving valuable advice to the company’s winemaking enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Spain and France.

Laffer’s career spans, on a large scale, every imaginable aspect of Australian wine, including viticulture, winemaking, research, commerce, trade, marketing and management. Even within Pernod-Ricard’s Australian operations, Laffer’s influence stretched beyond the flagship brand, Jacob’s Creek, to the company’s Wyndham Estate and Richmond Grove brands.

Laffer’s career began in 1956 with the decision, at age 16, to become a winemaker. He studied agricultural science then oenology between 1957 and 1962 and in January 1963 began working for Lindemans, one of only two publicly listed wine companies at the time (the other was Penfolds).

Lindemans leader at the time, the visionary Ray Kidd, presided over a widespread winemaking enterprise. Australian wine tastes had begun a shift from fortified wine to table wine and Kidd was positioning the company to develop this emerging market.

Lindemans had recently acquired Leo Burings with its strong Leonay sherry brand and emerging table wines, led by the new wave of bright, fresh, slightly sweet sparkling wines, inspired by Orlando’s Barossa Pearl, launched for the 1956 Olympics.

Lindeman’s winemaking extended to the Hunter Valley (the company’s original base), with its strong focus on shiraz and semillon (though marketed in those days under generic names like Chablis and Burgundy), to its increasingly popular multi-region blends, including Cawarra Claret.

So in 1963 when Laffer started work at Lindemans Corowa winery (across the Murray from Rutherglen) he was in the heart of fortified wine country and came under the influence of local legends, including Mick Morris. Bob Menzies was Prime Minister, Australians drove mainly Holdens and Falcons, men drank beer and women enjoyed a shandy or sherry. But table and sparkling wines were catching on.

By the time Laffer moved to Lindeman’s Sydney head office and cellars in 1969, he’d played a key role developing the company’s Coonawarra vineyards and selecting a site for the massive Padthaway vineyard, an hour’s drive north of Coonawarra, near Naracoorte. Ultimately this vineyard, planted in 1970, provided fruit for Lindemans hugely successful export brands of the 1980s (notably Bin 65 Chardonnay).

The huge Sydney cellar brought together wine for Australia-wide blends but was also home to regional specialties from the Hunter, Coonawarra, Padthaway, Barossa Valley, Eden Valley and Clare Valley.

The cellar, at Nyrang Street Auburn (now home to Tooheys) also gave its name to two popular blended reds, Nyrang Hermitage and Auburn Burgundy.

Located at the heart of the enterprise, Laffer now had a hand in making and developing the whole range of company wines embracing fortifieds, sparklings, whites, and reds.

During these years he worked closely with well-known winemakers including Gerry Sissingh and Carl Stockhausen in the Hunter, Greg Clayfield in Coonawarra, John Vickery (Mr Riesling) at Leo Burings in the Barossa and Albert Chan and Philip John in head office.

He was there for the birth of chardonnay in Australia and helped develop both large-volume commercial styles and cutting edge oak matured versions, initially from the Padthaway vineyard – a style he was still influencing when he handed the Jacob’s Creek winemaking reins to Bernard Hickin last month.

Laffer moved quickly through the ranks across a diversity of roles, including Technical Director, Sales and Marketing Director and General Manager. Laffer was perceived as a successor to Ray Kidd, but a boardroom mood swing in New York ended that possibility.

Philip Morris Limited had acquired Lindemans in 1971 at about the same time as a number of internationals, including Rothmans and Heinz, piled into Australian wine production. They all departed.

To prepare Lindemans for sale, Philip Morris placed one if its successful tobacco executives, Peter Barnes, at the helm. Following its sale to Penfolds Wine Group, Laffer left Lindemans in 1990.

Shortly afterwards Orlando Wyndham, (as the Jacob’s Creek owner was then called) approached Laffer. He joined the company as Production Director but within three years had become Chief Winemaker.

Laffer transferred thirty years’ experience to his new employers and with characteristic cheer and energy drove significant quality improvements in vineyards, winemaking, production and storage.

His experience dovetailed with Orlando traditions, too, based on technical innovations by Colin Gramp in the 1950s, and carried on by Gramp’s successor (and German import) Gunther Prass and by other long-term employees, notably Stephen Couche, Mark Tummel and Robin Day.

Laffer was instrumental, too, in hiring former Leo Buring riesling master, John Vickery (he’d worked with Buring from the 1950s), and acquiring Buring’s Chateau Leonay winery as the new Barossa home for Orlando Wyndham’s then Hunter-derived Richmond Grove brand.

Vickery added to Orlando’s already substantial riesling making skills. And in developing riesling as Richmond Grove’s flagship variety, Vickery purchased grapes from the Florita vineyard at Watervale, source of many legendary Leo Buring rieslings. Philip Morris had sold this strategic asset to the Barry family as it trimmed Lindemans down for sale.

Between them, Laffer and Vickery used Richmond Grove riesling to launch one of wine’s most significant technical successes of the twentieth century. In 1998, in conjuntion with Coles Liquor Group’s Vintage Cellars outlets, they released the first commercial-scale bottling of top-shelf riesling under screw cap since the failed efforts of the 1970s. Consumers embraced the seal. Thirteen years on it’s the dominant seal on Australian wines, red and white.

Laffer was also there across the years steering Jacob’s Creek – finessing the style of existing wines and setting the stage for future development. In 2000 the company launched a “reserve” range and then in 2005, with an eye to the regional focus of future marketing, brought the company’s flagship regional varietals under the brand – Steingarten Barossa Riesling, St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and Centenary Hill Barossa Shiraz. They also included in this range two upmarket cross-regional blends – Johann Shiraz Cabernet and Reeves Point Chardonnay.

Laffer probably suffered at being wrenched from Lindemans after almost thirty years in 1990. He must look back now with sadness at the subsequent terrible destruction of those brands, ultimately consolidated under Fosters.

In contrast, Pernod-Ricard steadily built wine brands capable of surviving even the financial crisis. Behind the brand lies almost two centuries of Australian winemaking tradition and the best of modern innovation – building on knowledge acquired by past generations.

Phillip Laffer is one of those great builders and expanders, influenced by those who’ve gone before, and a continuing mentor for new generations coming through.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

A few weeks back this column looked at the massive decline in value of Foster’s wine assets over the past decade. Despite the carnage, however, the business maintains a pulse. And within the newly named Treasury Wine Estates some of the key Australian brands remain intact from a grape-growing and winemaking perspective – albeit savaged by commercial blunders and the global financial crisis.

Despite serious write-downs, Treasury remains a large operation, “with over 12,000 hectares of vineyards, sales totalling 35 million cases of wine annually and revenue of over $2 billion” and employing over 4,000 people in 12 countries.

Its brands include Beringer, Chateau St Jean, Etude and Stags Leap in the United States; Matua Valley in New Zealand; Castello di Gabbiano in Italy; and, in Australia, Lindemans, Wolf Blass, Penfolds, Rosemount Estate, Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Seppelt, Coldstream Hills, Devil’s Lair, Annie’s Lane, Black Opal, Heemskerk, Ingoldby, Jamiesons Run, Killawarra, Leo Buring, Mildara, Pepperjack, Rothbury Estate, Robertson’s Well, Metala, Saltram, Seaview, St Huberts, T’Gallant, Little Penguin, Tollana and Yellowglen.

If once-great brands like Lindemans and Rosemount seem almost invisible, others retain clear style identities – based on surprisingly resilient winemaking cultures, backed by distinctive grape sourcing. Almost miraculously, it seems, great old brands, for example Penfolds, Wynns, Wolf Blass and Seppelt escaped the corporate blending vat. Thankfully, the quest for back-office synergies didn’t (or hasn’t yet) devastated these individual cultures as it did their sales and marketing arms.

The resilience demonstrates how top makers build their reputations on the types of wine they make. And a wine’s style always gets back to regions, grape varieties and human interaction with them – usually over great spans of time. This is the international vocabulary of fine wine.

Success never has been, never will be driven by glib marketing or brand management of the fast-moving-consumer-goods mould. With wine, the brand starts with the product and the rest – packaging, logos, advertising, promotional activities – all grow from it.

No one markets wine as well as the winemaker. Australia’s boutique industry demonstrates this consistently. And even in a declining Foster’s wine arm, the makers drove the marketing – taking their message to wine drinkers through the media and wine events.

In recent months, for example, we’ve seen Penfolds chief winemaker, Peter Gago, on his annual road show presenting the new vintages. He preceded the Wynns’ double act of winemaker Sue Hodder and viticulturist Allen Jenkins. And in the last week or two we’ve seen the Wolf Blass team out and about, led by chief winemaker Chris Hatcher.

We hope to visit the Barossa winemaking headquarters soon to piece together the bits behind all of Treasury Estate’s key brands. But in the meantime, let’s consider the extraordinary contribution Sue Hodder and Allen Jenkins made to Wynns Coonawarra wines over the last decade. They’ve effectively restructured the region’s biggest vineyard holding, spread over Coonawarra’s entire north-south, east-west spread.

Sue and Allen knew that while Coonawarra might look flat and homogenous, its subtle variations produce wines of surprising diversity. Ripening time varies by a couple of weeks from north to south – and even vary markedly within a single row of the same vineyard. Different clones of a variety produce different results, as do different soils. And a single soil type produces different grapes according to the season.

They studied vine behaviour and grape characteristics, following this through to the finished wine. Allen’s team rejuvenated old vineyards. Some, for example, after being “minimally pruned” for decades had thickly thatched crowns. Often these were lopped off completely and the vine trained up to new trellising.

Their work began early in the decade and progressed steadily under Southcorp ownership, Southcorp-Rosemount ownership and, ultimately, under Fosters. The focus was always to make better wine by producing better grapes.

Then in 2004 Sue conducted a tasting of all the Wynns cabernets back to the original of 1954, having done the same with the shiraz a few years earlier. While the tastings confirmed the great longevity and elegance of the Wynns style, they also gave Sue and Allen and their team’s great insights into the changing styles over the decades and ways to meld the best of the old days with modern practice.

As work progressed in the vineyards, Sue modified some winemaking practices and made the best of the segmented batches coming to the winery.

Despite the quality lift there remained a gap between what the vineyards could deliver and the ability of the winery to capitalise on it. That gap was closed in 2008 with the commissioning of a new small-batch cellar at the western end of the winery.

It’s a self-contained unit with twenty-four ten-tonne, temperature controlled, open fermenters and separate crushing and pressing equipment – designed to process small batches of more-evenly ripened fruit.

The old winery had been geared to process fairly large batches of grapes. And its few smaller fermenters couldn’t meet demand.

Even though the winemakers and grape growers knew that different sections of a vineyard ripened at different times, there simply weren’t enough small fermenters to partition the crop to the level that they wanted.

The arrival of the new winery meant that from 2008 grapes from a larger block, producing, say, forty to sixty tonnes, might be processed in five or six batches instead of two or three. In other words, grapes could be picked at perfect ripeness.

The impact that this has on quality lies partly in the batch size and partly in better fruit quality. Sue Hodder says small, small, open fermenters, being more aerobic, give winemakers better control over “reduction” (smelly hydrogen sulphide tends to develop in a closed, or reductive, environment). And harvesting small batches at perfect ripeness, rather than large batches with a range of ripeness, gives “brighter fruit with more evenly ripe, supple tannins’, says Sue.

Processing in multiple, small batches gives the winemakers more components and greater variation than they had in the past. And though it means more work it brings home all the work done in the vineyards over the last decade and already affects the quality and diversity of Wynns wines.

So, when a Wynns release comes around now, we’re treated not just to the long-established styles – like grey-label shiraz and black-label cabernet sauvignon – but a changing feast of wines from individual vineyards.

Each of these is made in small batches and has its own tailored oak-maturation. This year, for example, the release includes two reds from the V&A Lane vineyards – a shiraz and a cabernet shiraz blend and cabernet sauvignon from the Glengyle vineyard.

There’s a story behind each of these beautiful wines. And we’ll look at them next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2010