Category Archives: Wine

Tempranillo — a growing taste

26 October 2011People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

With production of a mere 3,000 tonnes annually, it’s tempting to dismiss tempranillo (a Spanish red variety) as a footnote to Australia’s 1.5 million tonne wine industry. But as the industry repeatedly demonstrates, big new things, and even niche new things, grow from modest beginnings, often driven by producer enthusiasm.

Great modern examples include the chardonnay boom of the eighties and nineties and the sauvignon blanc flood of the new century.

No one expects tempranillo to overtake shiraz or cabernet, our two most voluminous red varieties — nor, perhaps, even to be the next big thing. But despite its small total production, tempranillo has the attention of 286 wine companies, say the organisers of tempra neo, an annual workshop aimed at understanding and promoting the variety.

Local organiser, Mount Majura’s Frank van de Loo, says the organising group held this year’s workshops in Melbourne, Brisbane, Kingscliff and Canberra. In Canberra the events attracted full houses to both the consumer and trade events, says van de Loo.

Van de Loo, maker of Canberra’s leading tempranillo, initiated the workshop in 2010 with other tempranillo makers – La Linea (Adelaide Hills, South Australia), Tar and Roses (Alpine Valleys and Heathcote, Victoria), Running with Bulls (Barossa Valley and Wrattonbully, South Australia), Gemtree Vineyards (McLaren Vale, South Australia) and Mayford (Porepunkah, Victoria).

At the workshops, the group presented a mixed field of 18 Australian tempranillos, broken into three brackets of six wines. In an accompanying booklet, they wrote, “They have been chose from as wide a range of regions, climates and soils as we can find, to illustrate the regional expression of tempranillo around Australia.

Thanks to Frank van de Loo we reproduced the tasting, bar one wine, at Chateau Shanahan and later conferred with him on his impressions from the workshops. I’ve incorporated his comments into the tasting notes below.

The line up confirms to me the suitability of the variety in many parts of Australia, giving it a versatility, perhaps, comparable with shiraz. It also reveals the “mainstream” and distinctive flavour of the variety, suggesting to me that, over time, it may become a significant contributor here.

Tempranillos from the tempra neo workshops 2011

Running With Bulls Barossa 2010 $19.95
Running With Bulls Wrattonbully 2010 $19.95
These offer a terrific tempranillo starting point and demonstrate that sometimes less is more. The winemaker input, especially in relation to oak maturation, appear minimal, allowing the varietal expression of the two regions full reign. Both offer bright, pure fruit flavours, the Barossa with soft, juicy tannins to match. The Wrattonbully wine (from several hundred kilometres further south) introduces an earthy, savoury flavour element and firmer tannins. Surprisingly, says van de Loo, people tended to favour the Wrattonbully style – by a large margin in Canberra where five out of six buyers of a mixed tempranillo six pack opted for Wrattonbully over Barossa.

Topper’s Mountain New England 2009 $25
Frank van de Loo says many tasters at the workshops, drew comparison between this and his own Mount Majura, mainly through a shared hint of eucalypt and comparable tannin structures. It’s a delicious wine – the more it breathes, the greater the volume of vibrant red berry fruit flavours emerging (with the merest touch of eucalypt). The tannin structure is fine and soft.

Gemtree Vineyards Luna Roja McLaren Vale 2010 $25
Van de Loo says the wine received broad support at the workshops, where tasters described it as “interesting” and “reminiscent of French wine”. The winemakers, including its maker, Mike Brown, however, lamented its “brett” character – a spoilage caused by the unloved brettanomyces yeast. There’s lovely fruit under the brett, but once you’ve learned to identify brett you can’t forgive it.

Oliver’s Taranga Small Batch McLaren Vale 2009 $38
This is a big, round, soft red. But for me the vanilla-like influence of oak, while sweet and pleasant in its own way, overrides the varietal flavour. As the two Running with Bulls wines demonstrate, less intervention is better with new varieties.

Pfeiffer Winemakers Selection Rutherglen 2010 $30
Van de Loo heard many positive comments on the initially shy wine. However, after a few hours’ aeration, delicious red fruit flavours emerged, checked to some extent by fine, firm tannins.

Mayford Alpine Valleys Tempranillo 2010 $35
This was another of the top wines in the line up. It showed class from the moment it splashed into the glass, then held its power and depth for a couple of days afterwards on the tasting bench. It offers a wonderful tension between concentrated, sweet, restrained fruit and firm, fine, savoury tannins.

Sam Miranda King Valley 2009 $30
To my taste, this was a sound but unexciting wine, not pushing many tempranillo buttons.

Capital Wines the Ambassador Canberra District 2010 $27
This old and much loved friend, often enjoyed on its own, looked good among its peers. The keynotes are pure, red fruit aroma and flavour, elegant, cool-climate structure and very fine, pleasantly grippy tannins.

Mount Majura Vineyard Canberra District 2010 $40
One of my top wines of the tasting, Mount Majura showed some similarities to Topper’s Mountain in the workshops (see above). However, to me it’s a more concentrated expression of tempranillo. Its quite firm, tight tannins form a matrix with the deep, sweet underlying fruit.

Glandore Estate TPR Hunter Valley 2008 $35
First sniff – generic, earthy Hunter red aroma pinpoints its origins; then the plummy, juicy fruit flavour kicks in, not as fleshy as shiraz, with a spicy note, a little more oak than I like and a soft, fine finish.

Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes 2010 $15.45
The cheapest wine in the work shop was well received, says Frank van de Loo. It offers pleasant primary fruit and a solid tannin backbone for a medium-bodied, comparatively low-alcohol wine (12.5 per cent).

Sanguine Estate Heathcote 2009 $30
Sanguine, another star of the line up, flourished for several days on the tasting bench. It offers big volumes of alluring fruity, savoury, spicy aromas, backed by juicy fruit depth on the palate and solid, chewy but elegant tannins.

Tar and Roses Alpine Valleys and Heathcote 2010 $24
Like a nut, there’s sweetness inside this wine, but you have to work at it to find the kernel. A few hours after splashing and pouring, the fruit peeped through the tight mesh of tannin. Finally, one of the better wines in the tasting, just a little off the pace of the top few (Mayford, Sanguine and Mount Majura).

La Linea Adelaide Hills 2010 $27
La Linea split the room, says van de Loo, as people drifted towards or away from its pretty, fruity aroma and flavour. It certainly stands out from all the other wines because of that. Partners David LeMire and Peter Leske attribute the extraordinary (and lovely) fragrance to their coolest vineyard, Llangibby.

Stella Bella Margaret River 2009 $30
We tried to like this but found the fruit not quite up to the 14 per cent alcohol. The lack of fruit flavour, too, allowed the spicy oak flavour to come through. It’s a clean, well-made wine and pleasant enough but to our taste needs more fruit intensity.

Bunkers The Box Margaret River 2009 $20
Another pleasant, fault free wine but lacking fruit intensity and varietal definition.

Lots to think about in riesling challenge results

19 October 2011WineChris Shanahan

What a hard job for judges at Canberra’s International Riesling Challenge – two days discerning the differences among 435-odd mainly young, acidic whites, often in classes more notable for similarities than differences.

But the judges endured and, led by David O’Leary, handed out, by my count, 51 gold medals – a strike rate approaching one gold for every eight entries.

The international event remains dominated by Australian wines. These accounted for about three quarters of entries (about 330), followed by New Zealand with around 42 wines (10 per cent of the total), Germany with about 20 (five per cent) and the United States with about 33 (eight per cent). Miniscule entries from Argentina (one), Austria (two), Canada (one), the Czech Republic (two), South Africa (two) and France (two) make up the balance of the ten-nation event.

And what does it all mean for wine drinkers? Well, we can comb through the catalogue of results at www.rieslingchallenge.com and be pretty confident in the quality of the medal winners – especially the gold and silver medallists. We can also make a note to attend next year’s public tasting with catalogue in hand, or attend a seminar.

And if we look only at Australian results, we confirm traditional wisdom in the dominance of the neighbouring Clare and Eden Valleys (17 golds) and the success of Western Australia’s diverse Great Southern region (five golds). We also discern a rising riesling star in Tasmania. The state won six gold medals and Waterton Vineyards won the trophies for best dry riesling and best wine of the show.

We also see a dusting of gold, if not the mother lode in Mudgee, the Grampians, McLaren Vale and Nagambie Lakes.

How disappointing, though not to see any Canberra wines in the gold-medal list. In fact, it’s not only disappointing, but annoying and puzzling, too – raising a perennial problem of hard-to-explain inconsistencies in show judging.

Just a few weeks earlier Gallagher Murrumbatemen Riesling 2011 won a gold medal in the Canberra Regional Wine Show. In the riesling challenge it fell completely off the judges’ radar. And Brindabella Hills, an also ran in the regional show, earned silver medal in the riesling challenge.

We can explain these inconsistencies in many ways – human error, acid overload, or even in conscious decisions. For example, the judges might decide in one show that a terrific but austere riesling really needs bottle age to show its best; in another show they might say, “yes, but so what, if it’ll be a gold medal wine in future it’s worth gold now”.

Whatever the reasoning, though, it suggests that the catalogue may conceal other very high quality wines that slipped through the sieve this time around. And that’s another reason to attend the public tasting.

The discrepancies, in my experience, tend to occur more among the very young wines, where high acid (especially as seen in many wines from the cool 2011 vintages) obscures the fruit.

The Brindabella Hills silver medallist went on to win the Chief Minister’s trophy for best Canberra District wine. It’s a worthy wine, but the challenge organisers ought to adopt the broader wine show standard of awarding trophies only to gold medal winners.

Although the classes for older rieslings tend to attract fewer entrants, these display the true glories of the variety. The ultimate trophy winner for older wines, Jacob’s Creek St Helga Eden Valley 2002, began life as a steely, austere drop from a cool vintage. Nine years on the power and purity of fruit show through, tinged by the magic of bottle age.

And the practical triumph of screw cap over cork shows in these classes, too, with a gold medal to Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 1999. This was the second vintage sealed under screw cap and the wine retailed for under $10 a bottle on release. It continues to drink beautifully today, as does the 1998 vintage, the wine that led the modern charge to screw cap, two years ahead of a larger Clare Valley riesling group.

Success of these older wines highlights the cellarability of these delicious, dry, generally inexpensive styles. While riesling remains a stubbornly niche variety, it provides superb drinking from its youth to old age across dry, semi-dry and luscious, sweet styles.

Canberra’s riesling challenge promotes the variety, puts many outstanding examples under our noses at the public tasting and provides an awards list in its catalogue. Like any show, it doesn’t provide all the answers, it’s not definitive, and there remain many gaps in its ranks, largely because many top producers see no reason to enter shows.

However, a sufficient number of entries from proven and upcoming producers give us outstanding examples of established styles as well as highlighting emerging stars, like Tasmania.

GOLD MEDAL WINNERS

Australia

2011 vintage dry rieslings

Annie’s Lane Quelltaler Watervale (Clare Valley), SA

Neagles Rock Clare Valley, SA

Leasingham Bin 7 Clare Valley

Eden Hall Single Vineyard Series Eden Valley, SA

Pewsey Vale Eden Valley, SA

Trevelen Farm Great Southern, WA

West Cape Howe Great Southern, WA

Moores Hill Tamar Valley, Tasmania

Jacob’s Creek, blend, SA

Casteli, Porongurup (Great Southern), WA

2011 vintage half-dry rieslings

Robert Stein Mudgee, NSW

2011 vintage sweet rieslings

Pooley Late Harvest Coal River Valley, Tasmania

2010 vintage dry rieslings

Cardinham Estate Clare Valley, SA

Eldredge Clare Valley, SA

Kilikanoon Mort’s Block Clare Valley, SA

Reilly’s Wines Watervale (Clare Valley), SA

Tim Adams Wines Clare Valley, SA

Echelon Wines Zeppelin Eden Valley, SA

Pooley Wines Coal River Valley, Tasmania

Tamar Ridge Kayema Vineyard Tamar Valley, Tasmania

Waterton, Tamar Valley, Tasmania

A.T. Richardson Grampian, Victoria

2010 vintage sweet rieslings

Waterton Tamar Valley, Tasmania

Patricks of Coonawarra, SA

Annie’s Lane Botrytis Clare Valley, SA

d’Arenberg The Noble Wrinkled, McLaren Vale, SA

Plantagenet Ringbark Mount Barker (Great Southern), WA

Older vintages dry rieslings

2005 Kilikanoon Mort’s Block Clare Valley, SA

2005 Kirrihill Estate Reserve Clare Valley, SA

2005 Reilly’s Wines Clare Valley, SA

2002 Jacob’s Creek St Helga Eden Valley, SA

1999 Richmond Grove Watervale (Clare Valley), SA

2006 Alkoomi Frankland River (Great Southern), WA

2007 Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes, Vic

Older vintages half-dry rieslings

2008 d’Arenberg The Dry Dam McLaren Vale, SA

Austria

2010 Fred Loimer Kamptel – dry

Czech Republic

2009 Znovin Znojmo Ice Wine, Morava – sweet

Germany

2010 Zimmerman-Graeff and Muller, Mosel – dry

2010 Weingut Anselman Ice Wine, Palatinate – sweet

2010 Weingut Gerog Muller Stiftung Hattenheimer Schutzenhaus Beerenauslese, Rheingau – sweet

New Zealand

2011 Yealands Estate Yealands Way Marlborough – half-dry

2009 Hunters Marlborough – dry

2010 Mud House Waipara – half-dry

2009 Forest Botrytised Marlborough – sweet

2010 Greystone Canterbury/Waipara – sweet

South Africa

2011 Nederburg Reserve Western Cape – half-dry

United States of America

2010 Sheldrake Point Vineyard Cayuga Lake – dry

2010 Chateau Sainte Michelle Columbia Valley – dry

2010 Sheldrake Point Vineyard Cayuga Lake – sweet

2008 Anthony Road Wine Company Martini Reinhardt Selection, Finger Lakes – sweet

Mosel with Heiko Fass and Ernie Loosen

12 October 2011People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Ernie Loosen tasting#678B3C edit — Ernie Loosen, Dr Loosen Wines, Bernkastel, 7 September 2011. Photo Jill Shanahan

We always want what we don’t have and value the scarcest things most of all. Australian winemakers value acidity – tasting berries anxiously as an ascendant sun pushes sugar levels ever higher as acid levels decline.

In the Mosel, it’s the opposite. There the winemakers value sugar, something Australia produces in abundance. At 50 degrees north only vines on the steepest south, southeast and southwest slopes, like giant solar panels, collect sufficient heat to ripen grapes fully. Acid levels remain high til the end and Germany’s quality system even grades wine according to the sugar content of the grapes.

English writer, Hugh Johnson, likened the impossibly steep slopes to toast held to the fire – though at this latitude the sun’s oblique autumn angle ensures a very slow roast, ensuring the intense but delicate flavours of the area’s unique riesling.

On the right slopes, proven over two millennia, the grapes do, indeed, achieve full sugar and flavour ripeness and retain high acidity. And because of the high humidity, botrytis cinerea flourishes, dehydrating the berries and further concentrating sugar and acidity.

However, not all of the riesling succumbs to botrytis, widening the options available to winemakers – from fresh, fruity dry wines unaffected by botrytis, through delicate, semi-sweet styles, to profound, sticky wonders made only of rotten, shrivelled berries (beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese).

After enjoying his wines at a stall in Bernkastel, we visit Heiko Fass, a small maker based at Neumagen-Dhron. A graduate of Geisenheim wine university, Fass took over the old family business from his father and brothers.

He operates the compact cellar single handed, receiving small batches of hand-harvested grapes – picked by the same Polish family that’ve worked for his family for 50 years.

Everything in the steep vineyards is done by hand, he says, meaning Mosel can only ever be about quality, not quantity.

In the cellar we see similarities with mainstream Australian riesling making, but also some notable differences. Like leading Australian makers, Fass transports small batches of grapes quickly to the cellar, separates the juice into free-run and pressings components, settles the juice and ferments it at controlled temperatures in stainless steel tanks, keeping the various components separate until final blending.

A crucial difference, however, is maturing batches of the higher quality rieslings in “fuder”, old oak barrels of about 1,000-litre capacity, used widely in Mosel. Fass also uses a couple of larger 1,800-litre and 2,000-litre oak vessels. He says his father made some of the fuder, including a couple bearing 1965 and 1969 date stamps.

These old vessels allow micro-oxidation, mellowing the wine, muting some of the aromatics and adding texture, without injecting woody flavours.

Upstairs in the living room, overlooking the Mosel, we taste a range of Fass dry, semi-sweet and sweet rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, near Dhron (hence “Dhroner Hofberger” or Dhroner Roterd” on the labels).

What makes riesling sweet or dry? In short, the winemaker – if she wants dry, she ferments all the sugar; if she wants semi-sweet or sweet, she refrigerates the wine, the yeasts quit fermenting and she then filters the yeasts out, just to be sure. So, the sweeter the wine, the lower the alcohol; the drier the wine, the higher the alcohol – all relative, of course, to the amount of sugar in the juice originally.

In the case of the Fass rieslings, the driest wine at an undetectable 3.5 grams of sugar per litre, contained 12.5 per cent alcohol; the half-dry version had 16.8 grams and 11.5 per cent of sugar and alcohol respectively; and the kabinett, spaetlese and auslese at 7–8 per cent alcohol, contained between 48 and 220 grams per litre of sugar.

But because of the high acidity, the 48 grams-of-sugar kabinett remained delicate, clean and refreshing – definitely a three-glass wine; and the truly sticky sweet auslese, though luscious, remained light, buoyant and completely not cloying.

After the tasting we stop in Piesport to see the remains of an old Roman winery – a reminder of the area’s extraordinary winemaking history

If you’re visiting the Mosel, Heiko will gladly show you the cellar and wines by appointment. The visitor centre in Bernkastel has contact details for all Mosel producers.

A short walk out of Bernkastel, we join half a dozen young members of the Oxford University Wine Club for a “tasting and light supper afterwards” at Dr Loosen – one of the Mosel’s most visible, best and outspoken producers. Our host is owner, Ernst (Ernie) Loosen.

Loosen starts with a map of the middle Mosel’s vineyards, compiled in 1868 by the Prussian tax authorities. He says it still holds and became his basis for defining vineyard quality ever since he took over the family business from his father in 1988.

Loosen produces about 40 Mosel wines and takes us through a representative dozen. As we progress he explains, with exasperation, Germany’s confusing wine labelling laws, commenting, “We Germans really hate our customers. We want to make it as difficult as possible”.

Rather than a confusing matrix of regulations for Germany’s different regions, Loosen favours a system that ranks vineyards by their quality, then allows winemakers to choose how they make the wine and whether it’s sweet or dry or in between.

Loosen owns parts of some of the Mosel’s greatest vineyards, including Sonnenuhr, opposite the village of Wehlen; Wurzgarten, just downstream of Urzig; Pralat and Treppchen, opposite the village of Erden; and Lay, adjacent to Bernkastel.

We start with the two dry rieslings, relative newcomers to the portfolio and labelled simply Blue Slate and Red Slate, reflecting the different soils of the vineyards they come from.

But the delicate, sweeter, low alcohol wines from the great vineyards take centre stage. In the warm, sunny sitting room, we linger longer than we ought on the magnificent Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2010. Then with increasing pleasure we move through the sweeties, culminating in the profound Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel 2010 and Bernkastler Lay Riesling Eiswein 2008.

The tasting over, Loosen kicks off the “light supper” with a fresh, taut, bone-dry and delicate sparkling wine, based on a 1990 riesling auslese from the nearby Himmelreich vineyard at Graach.

The tasting finished at around six and we leave the light supper, Loosen and the Oxford mob at around two in the morning. By now we’ve sleuthed our collective our way through 18 mature mystery wines from Switzerland, the USA, South Africa, France, Germany and Australia ¬– the latter represented by the still excellent Coldstream Hills Reserve Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 1992.

The German wines came at the very end, with Loosen’s comment, “Now we will drink ourselves sober on Mosel”. The first, a still lively but mature Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1969, made by his grandfather, could’ve been 20-30 year old we thought, not 42. And the second, introduced as “a refresher”, had been put aside and never sold because of its searing acidity at the time. This was, indeed, a vibrant refresher. We guessed its age as three or four years. In fact, it was an Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1983.

While this demonstrates the staying power of Mosel in a good cellar, the main game for visitors to the region and shoppers in Australia will remain recent vintages. Current selections in Australia go back to 2004, and there are still some of the excellent 2007s around if you look hard.

MOSEL IMPORTERS

This is not a comprehensive list but should, however, lead you to some terrific Mosel rieslings.

Dr Loosen – www.drloosen.de

Imported by Cellarhand, Melbourne (www.cellarhand.com.au). Woolworths, through Dan Murphy, has an exclusive on Dr Loosen Blue Slate Riesling Trocken (dry). We tried and liked the 2010 vintage at Loosen’s cellars, Bernkastel.

Weingut Staffelter Hof

Imported by Canberra’s Lester and Adrienne Jesberg on indent. Winemaker Jan Klein (“one of a young brigade achieving great things”, writes Jesberg) sources fruit from the Letterlay and Steffensberg vineyard. Join the mailing list to hear of future indents by writing to Adrienne at adrjes@bigpond.net.au

Fritz Haag, A. J. Adam, Reinhold Haart, Knebel, Schloss Lieser, Willi Schaefer and Schmitges

Imported by Eurocentric Wines, Sydney (www.eurocentricwine.com.au). The website links to the producer sites.

J. J. Prum

Imported by Bibendum Wine Company, Melbourne (www.bibendum.com.au).

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt

Imported by Domaine Wine Shippers, Melbourne (www.domainewineshippers.com.au).

Egon Muller

Imported by Negociants Australia (www.necociantsaustralia.com)

Notes from the Mosel, riesling’s motherland

5 October 2011People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Bernkastel-Kues Mosel Jill Shanahan photo — Middle Mosel with Kues to the left, Bernkastel on the right. Photo: Copyright Jill Shanahan, August 2011

We’re a die-hard lot us riesling lovers, clinging to a great variety that appeals to few. We talk it up. We pore over the results of Canberra’s annual International Riesling Challenge. We admire Frankland Estate’s International Riesling Tasting. Then Coles liquor executive, Grant Ramage, reveals the sorry truth, “Riesling’s just not going anywhere. Nielsen data says sales are down nine per cent year-on-year to the end of August”.

In more gloomy riesling reality, the press release accompanying today’s wine of the week crows, “Sales of pinot gris/grigio have now overtaken riesling in this country”. Depressing news about a variety that more often than not produces ordinary wine.

We’re fishing for good riesling news, high on the variety after eight days in the central Mosel, Germany’s riesling heartland – source of the world’s most delicate, most profound rieslings.

We’ve carried these aromas and flavours in our head for over thirty years – memories born in the late seventies from tasting wines from the great 1976 vintage. What unforgettable wines they were, even if we knew little of the regions or names at the times.

The wines did the talking – gently fragrant kabinett and spaetlese rieslings, poised softly, ethereally on the palate, delivering intense flavours and a unique, perfect, thrilling balance between sweetness and dazzling, fresh acidity. Even the profound, sweet ausleses, beerenausleses and trockenbeerenausleses sat delicately on the palate, never cloying, never too sweet, but filling the room with their fragrance.

You can’t forget wines like that, and we didn’t. Though the selection included wines from the Rhine River, a few Mosel wines in particular etched their peculiar names in our minds – Bernkasteler Doctor, Wehlener Sonnenuhr and Graacher Himmelreich.

We were new in the trade at the time, but studied the vineyard maps, gained a basic understanding, and over the decades, enjoyed other vintages without ever losing the thrill of first discovery. These were great and unique wines.

But even then, long before the chardonnay or sauvignon blanc ages, selling German riesling in Australia proved difficult. It took years for Farmer Bros to move the 400 cases of 1976 it’d imported. David and Richard Farmer and staff probably drank more than they sold (I’m still grateful).

And nothing’s changed, says Grant Ramage, quoting the Nielsen year-to-August figures again. Sales of all German wines increased by 2.5 per cent in value but declined in volume, accounting for just one thousandth of wine sales in Australia.

Even in Germany, it’s not easy to find these home grown glories. In east and west Germany, in the weeks before arriving in the Mosel, we search supermarket shelves in vain. We find long lines of bland wines, German and imported, mostly priced between two and four euros.

At a tasting with renowned Mosel producer Dr Loosen, a German-based, English wine distributor confirms what we’ve feared. He tells us, “The Germans have no appreciation of what they’ve got. That’s why Ernie [Loosen] exports 70 per cent of his wine to America”.

But if sales of German riesling disperse in little wisps to admirers around the world, here in the central Mosel, up and downstream of Bernkastel, riesling rules, accounting for 60 per cent of the area’s 9,000 hectares of vines.

We didn’t come here for the other 40 per cent. However, because we’re there and we can, we taste a few examples of muller-thurgau (rivaner), elbling, pinot noir (spatburgunder), dornfelder and pinot blanc. But they’re not wines you’d travel 20,000 kilometres to taste.

We didn’t come to try the increasingly popular dry (trocken) rieslings either. But we do and conclude that the classic, delicate, semi-sweet versions – with their unique balance of acidity and sugar – remain the region’s great specialty.

Our visit coincides with the middle Mosel wine festival, so we taste dozens of wines simply by wandering from marquee to marqee strung along a riverfront road at Bernkastel. It’s an annual event, held each September shortly before vintage, and worth attending.

There we savour old friends, like J. J. Prum’s exquisite Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2007 at three euros a glass or 17 euros a bottle – amazingly modest prices for a wine of this stature.

We enjoy unfamiliar wines, too, and stop to chat with young winemaker Heiko Fass. Later we drive up to his underground cellars, built by his father in 1969, at Neumagen-Dhron. There we learn more about Fass rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, Dhron – and his recent access, through his wife’s family, to the great Goldtropfchen vineyard at Piesport, around the next bend of the Mosel, down stream.

Over the next days we drive upstream to the old Roman provincial capital, Trier, and downstream to Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine. Our constant travelling companion, Hugh Johnson’s wonderful World Atlas of Wine, with its detailed contour maps, allows us to identify the great vineyards on the Mosel’s impossibly steep south, south east and south west facing slopes.

Our other constant companion is a desire to drink those beautiful rieslings, which we do in buckets. What we’re not expecting, though, is to taste, alongside those rieslings, an eclectic and great range of perfectly cellared whites and reds from Switzerland, Loire Valley, Washington State, Corton-Charlemagne, South Africa, Aix-en-Provence, Yarra Valley, Volnay, Charmes-Chambertin, Pomerol and St Estephe.

But we did. And that’s part of the continuing Mosel story next week.

Shiraz triumphs at Canberra wine show 2011

28 September 2011WineChris Shanahan

Once again our local red specialty stormed home in the recent Canberra Regional Wine Show. Shiraz classes attracted the greatest number of entries (47), won the most medals (30), enjoyed the highest medal strike rate at 64 per cent (after adjusting for one statistical oddity) and produced the champion wine of the show – Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier 2009. Riesling, the other local favourite, followed a length behind with 19 medals from 33 entries – a strike rate of 58 per cent.

We can thank Coolangatta Estate, Nowra, for the statistical oddity – a 100 per cent medal strike rate for dry semillons. But as it was the only exhibitor showing the variety, the figures simply confirm that Coolangatta grows good semillon and Tyrrell’s, the contract winemaker, remains the best in the game with this variety.

That oddity aside, the accompanying table gives a collective image of the winegrowing areas within the show’s catchment – Canberra, Hilltops, Tumbarumba, Gundagai, Southern Highlands and the Shoalhaven Coast. And by drilling down a bit we see a few regional specialties.

If we view a medal strike rate below 50 per cent as a poor result, then the collective figures suggest little excitement beyond shiraz, riesling and chardonnay. Drilling down, however, we find pockets of excitement everywhere, except in pinot noir, including among niche varieties not covered in the table.

For example, Clonakilla Canberra District Viognier 2010 scorched Class 8 (other varieties 2010 and earlier) with a rarely achieved score of 56.5 out of 60. It’s a magnificent wine, widely recognised as the best of the variety from the district. Good on Tim Kirk for exhibiting a wine of this calibre.

And among the 12 pinot gris exhibited, two Canberra wines excited the judges – gold medallist, Mount Majura Pinot Gris 2011 and silver medallist, Lerida Estate Lake George Pinot Grigio 2011.

A wider range of niche red varieties fared well, with a sprinkling of medals for sangiovese, tempranillo, merlot, a tempranillo-shiraz-graciano (TSG) blend and a couple of cabernet franc-merlot blends.

The gold medallists in this group were Mount Majura’s TSG 2010, Dinny’s Block 2010 (cabernet franc-merlot) and Merlot 2009 and Coolangatta Estate Shoalhaven Coast Tempranillo 2009.

Demonstrating that different varieties suit different regions, high, cool Tumbarumba monopolised the chardonnay honours list, winning seven of the eight medals, and all four gold medals, in Class 7 for 2010 and earlier vintages.

Barwang Estate (owned by McWilliams) earned golds for the 2010 and 2009 vintages of its 842 Tumbarumba Chardonnay. The other two gold medallists were Echelon Armchair Critic Tumbarumba 2010 and Hungerford Hill Tumbarumba 2010. Centennial Vineyards, Southern Highlands, the sole non-Tumbarumba medallist, earned silver for its Woodside Winery Block 2009.

But the judges recognised Canberra, too, awarding a gold to Lerida Estate Lake George Chardonnay 2006, the sole entrant in the white museum class.

It takes a lot to fire up judges in sauvignon blanc classes these days. Alas, the local show attracted just 10 entries, largely dismissed by the judges as they awarded only one silver and one bronze medal.

Pinot noir also lacked sizzle, the 19 entrants earning three silver and one bronze medals – all won by wines from the Southern Highlands. Tertini Wines won silver for its 2009 and 2010 wines and bronze for its 2009 Reserve. Centennial Vineyards Reserve 2010 won silver.

Cabernet sauvignon also failed to excite – an example of a variety struggling to find suitable sites across the show’s large catchment. The Hilltops region generally fares better than Canberra and, indeed, produced the only gold medallist – Hungerford Hill 2009 – and two bronze medals. Canberra wines earned three of the medals, including silvers for Pankhurst Wines Cabernet Merlot 2010 and A. Retief Cabernet Sauvignon Petit Verdot 2008.

Canberra retained its dominance, if not a monopoly, of the riesling classes and a couple of new faces smiled through the crowd. In the 2011 vintage class Four Winds Vineyard and Gallagher Wines, both of Murrumbateman, nabbed the gold medals. Gallagher, a nose ahead of Four Winds, moved into the trophy taste-off.

In the class for 2010 and older rieslings, Lake George 2010 top scored and ultimately won the trophy for best riesling of the show. Winemaker Alex McKay credits the Karelas family, owners of the Lake George Vineyard (the former Madew property) for the quality of fruit from their vineyard. Tertini Wines 2008, Southern Highlands, won the second gold medal in the class.

Helm Wines, often a star of the riesling section, earned silvers for its Half Dry 2011 and Premium Riesling 2010, while the Classic Dry 2011 missed out altogether. Having seen the latter on a couple of occasions, I’d predict big success for it further down the track as austere, high-acid styles like this need time for the fruit to poke through. These styles often miss the show accolades in their youth.

And finally to the variety we’ve all been waiting for – shiraz, the region’s great champion. Interestingly the highly regarded 2009s and 2008s fared less well in aggregate than the supposedly “bony” 2010s.

Seventy five per cent of the 2010s won medals compared to 57 per cent of wines in the 2009 and older class, a rate exceeded even by shirazes in the museum class. Interestingly, the judge’s comments in the results catalogue indicate greater excitement with the 2008s and 2009s than with the 2010s, despite the higher medal strike rate in the latter.

In the 2010 class, the judges’ tastes leaned distinctly towards the juicier, softer styles, with all three gold medals awarded to slightly warmer regions – Eden Road Wines Gundagai Shiraz, Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz and Eden Road The Long Road Gundagai Shiraz. The latter topped the class and moved on to the trophy taste off.

The judges commented they expected some of the wines in this class “to benefit with time”. Undoubtedly Clonakilla’s O’Riada Canberra District (bronze medal) falls in this category – a magnificent drop that reveals it virtues in a leisurely tasting now, if not in the rush of wine show.

In the class for 2009 and older shiraz, comprised mainly of 2009s and 2008s, the judges spread their favours around Canberra, Hilltops and Tumbarumba. They awarded to golds each to Canberra (Lerida Lake George Shiraz Viognier 2009 and Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier 2009) and Hilltops (Chalkers Crossing Shiraz 2009 and Grove Estate Cellar Block Shiraz Viognier 2009).

In the end the rich, soft fruit and silky tannins of Ravensworth seduced the judges’ palates. It topped the class, then sailed through the trophy taste-offs to be voted best shiraz, best red and best wine of the show. Shiraz showed its class, too, in the museum class where Lerida Estate Lake George Shiraz Viognier 2006 won gold.

Fittingly, we begin and end the show report on shiraz. It’s the big deal around here. The wines in classes 13, 14 and 23 offer some of the best red drinking in Australia – and that’s not even a complete list of top Canberra shirazes.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful one day to see all of our top shirazes in the show. Imagine including Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier and wines from Collector, Kyeema and Nick O’Leary in this already amazing line up.


How the varieties fared (dry wines only)
	Entries	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	%
Riesling
Class 1, 2010	20	2	3	5	10	50
Class 5, 2010 and older	13	2	3	4	9	69
TOTAL	33	4	6	9	19	58

Sauvignon blanc and blends
Class 2, 2011	8	0	1	1	2	25
Class 6, 2010 and older	2	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL	10	0	1	1	2	20

Chardonnay
Class 3, 2011	1	0	0	0	0	0
Class 7, 2010 and older	16	4	1	3	8	50
Class 22, 2006 and older (museum)	1	1	0	0	1	100
TOTAL	18	5	1	3	9	50

Pinot gris/grigio
Class 4, other varieties 2011	7	1	1	1	3	43
Class 8, other varieties 2010 and older	5	0	0	1	1	20
TOTAL	12	1	1	2	4	33

Semillon
Class 4, other varieties 2011	1	0	0	1	1	100
Class 8, other varieties 2010 and older	4	1	0	3	4	100
TOTAL	5	1	0	4	5	100

Shiraz
Class 13, 2010	16	3	2	7	12	75
Class 14, 2009 and older	28	4	3	9	16	57
Class 23, 2006 and older (museum)	3	1	0	1	2	67
TOTAL	47	8	5	17	30	64

Pinot noir
Class 11, 2010	7	0	2	0	2	29
Class 12, 2009 and older	11	0	1	1	2	18
Class 23, 2006 and older (museum)	1	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL	19	0	3	1	4	21

Cabernet sauvignon and blends
Class 15, 2010	6	0	1	1	2	33
Class 16, 2009 and older	21	1	1	3	5	24
Class 17, other varieties 2010	1	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL	28	1	2	4	7	25

Merlot and blends
Class 17, 2010 other varieties	5	0	0	2	2	40
Class 18, 2009 and older other varieties	6	1	0	1	2	33
Class 223, 2006 and older (museum)	1	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL	12	1	0	3	4	33

Lark Hill grabs a slice of Canberra’s shiraz heartland

17 August 2011People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Early in August, Lark Hill Winery bought an established 3.6-hectare vineyard at Murrumbateman. The purchase coincided with the release of Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 and Viognier 2011 (top drops today), both sourced from the vineyard.

Chris Carpenter commented, “We purchased the vineyard in order to secure our long-term supplies of these varieties, and have renamed it ‘Dark Horse Vineyard’. We will be converting this vineyard to biodynamic and organic farming this year”.

Carpenter says the vineyard comprises about 1.2 hectares each of shiraz and sangiovese, about 0.8 hectares of viognier, 0.4 hectares of marsanne and a small patch of roussanne (part of the Rhone Valley white family, along with marsanne and viognier).

The purchase increases the Carpenter’s vineyard holdings to about 10 hectares – the balancing being on their original vineyard, planted in 1978, on the Lake George escarpment, overlooking Bungendore. At 860 metres it’s Canberra’s highest, coolest vineyard.

Over the years David and Sue Carpenter pared back varieties that didn’t work on this cool site. As a result they now focus on the proven winners – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir and, from 2006, Austria’s specialty white variety, gruner veltliner. By this time their son, Chris, had joined the business and shiraz had entrenched itself as Canberra’s standout variety.

The site being too cold for shiraz, the Carpenters sourced material from lower, warmer Murrumbateman for several years before taking the plunge and buying their own vineyard this month.

The vineyard was one of two blocks in the Ravensworth operation, associated with Bryan and Jocelyn Martin and other business associates over the years.

Martin says the Ravensworth name belonged originally to Brendan Ryan and an American partner.

Later, Michael Kirk, brother of Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk, bought Brendan Ryan’s section of the vineyard and converted Ravensworth from a partnership to a company, with Kirk and the Martins as shareholders. Kirk leased his section of the vineyard to the Martins.

In this month’s transactions, the Carpenters bought Kirk’s section of the vineyard and the Martins bought Kirk out of Ravensworth, to be become sole owners of the name as well as the other section of vineyard.

Martin says he planted the vineyards and knows every vine by name. But he’s relieved to be managing only one vineyard from now on. While the Carpenters vineyard includes the marsanne vines behind Ravensworth’s highly regarded dry white, Chris Carpenter says they will sell the fruit to Martin.

The Carpenters intend to convert the Murrumbatemen vineyard to certified biodynamic – an expensive process, expected to take about five years.

Chris Carpenter says they made no shiraz from the vineyard this year but expect to produce a shiraz viognier under the Dark Horse label in 2012. Lark Hill produced sangiovese from the site in 2007 and 2009 ¬ – the latter, still being offered at cellar door.

The Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 reviewed below came from the vineyard but had been bottled and labelled before the purchase, so doesn’t have the Dark Horse name on the label.

Lark Hill Canberra District Shiraz Viognier 2010 $40
Grown at Murrumbateman and made at Lark Hill, this wine combines shiraz and the white variety viognier (six per cent of the blend) fermented together. It’s a highly fragrant combination, inspired by the wines of Cote-Rotie in France’s northern Rhone Valley. In the 2010 vintage the floral, spicy and peppery aromas and flavours come with a marked savoury streak and quite firm tannins. That’s firm in a slinky, elegant, medium-bodied context. It builds in interest over time – always a good sign.

QR codes – smarties are onto them

Lark Hill introduced QR codes to their back labels with the release of their 2011 vintage whites – riesling, gruner veltliner and viognier.

QR stands for “quick response” code and refers to a little, square white-on-black pattern, readable by special scanners or smart phones. They’ve been a big deal in Japan for yonks and now seem certain to spread in Australia with the rapid uptake of smart phones – including Apple’s iPhone and other brands, such as Samsung Galaxy, using Google’s Android operating system.

Free scanning apps for the phones read QR codes, which can be encoded with a variety of data, including a link to a website. This is what the Carpenters use in their codes.

Chris Carpenter writes, “I believe we are the first Canberra wine to use QRs. Our aim is to provide what amounts to after-sales support for people – so if a bottle is picked up in a bottle shop, restaurant or similar, anyone with a smart phone can find out more about the wine including its RRP, reviews and our tasting notes.

We will be keeping these links as permanent pages on our website and continuing to add reviews and tasting notes as the wines age – so the QR codes should be useful even if somebody picks up a bottle in their cellar in 10 years (or 20!)”.

Using Bakodo (a free app) we zapped the Lark Hill codes on the Chateau Shanahan iPhone – and bingo, strait through to the detail on the website.

If you have a smart phone try scanning the QR code on Lark Hill Gruner Veltliner back label, pictured.

Lark Hill Gruner Canberra District Veltliner 2011 — Lark Hill -- first Canberra winery to adopt a QR code

Winewise Small Vignerons Awards 2011

10 August 2011WineChris Shanahan

For a report card on small Australian winemakers, check out the Winewise website, www.winewise.net.au

The competition, judged here in Canberra in July, opens its door to wineries crushing 250 tonnes or less for their own labels. The independent event began as an outlet for small makers off the radar of the big, prestigious capital wine shows, including Canberra’s National.

From last year, however, Winewise offered a potential route into the National Show for these small makers. The national’s organisers, attempting to attract small makers, declared that wines winning gold or silver medals qualified for the national event – and some winemakers seized the opportunity.

While many of our most recognised small makers don’t enter wines in shows, the Winewise event nevertheless attracts a great diversity of wines from across Australia.

The awards list therefore covers a lot of territory, and invariably includes surprises from little known wineries and emerging varieties.

The list of trophy winners gives a hint of the diversity. But it’s rewarding to scroll through the entire list, noting the gold, silver and bronze medallists – as well as highly regarded wines that missed the boat. That always happens in wine shows.

The trophy results can take us away from well-trodden paths. The best riesling, for example, comes not from the Clare or Eden Valleys, but from the Coal River Valley Tasmania – Pooley Wine Margaret Pooley Tribute Riesling 2010. It’s no secret that Tasmania makes good riesling, but in the bigger shows the bigger company wines tend to dominate – and that generally means Clare or Eden Valley.

For the most part, though, Winewise trophy winners reflect well-known regional specialties – cabernet and bends and semillon-sauvignon blanc blends from Margaret River, semillon from the Hunter Valley, sticky from Riverina, liqueur muscat from Rutherglen, pinot noir from Tasmania and sparkling wine from the Adelaide Hills.

But by the nature of the show they’re not household names – in some cases they’re names not familiar even to wine enthusiasts. Heard of Hutton Margaret River, Warner Glen Estate Margaret River, Barringwood Park Tasmania or Sandhurst Ridge Bendigo? They’re all among the trophy winners.

And how often would a saperavi (Russian red variety) win a trophy – or a blend of tempranillo, shiraz and sangiovese. Hugh Hamilton won the “best other red variety” trophy for The Oddball McLaren Vale Saperavi 2009; and Canberra’s Mount Majura won the “best other red blend” trophy for its delicious Tempranillo Shiraz Graciano 2010.

If a Bendigo wine won the shiraz trophy (Harcourt Valley Vineyards Barbara’s Shiraz 2009), the warmer Barossa valley retained its honour, too. Sons of Eden winery won the trophy as most successful exhibitor, winning gold medals for its Kennedy Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2009, Zephyrus Shiraz 2009, Remus Shiraz 2008 and Romulus Shiraz 2008. Now that’s a powerful performance – no trophy for any individual wine but a powerhouse performance.

As we scroll to the individual wine classes, we see just 13 rieslings from the 2011 vintage made it to the show. Ken Helm topped the class with a silver medal for his Classic Dry. It’s young and acidic now, but I’ll predict gold medals ahead as the fruit sticks its head through the acidity over the next few months. Mount Majura won bronze. But in the way of show judging, in the 2010 vintage class, Helm Premium Riesling, a darling of last year’s shows, missed out altogether.

Among the chardonnays, Bourke Street 2010 (a budget brand, made by Canberra’s Nick O’Leary and Alex McKay) won a silver medal. But a couple of other beautiful Canberra wines missed the medal cut – Mount Majura 2010 and Lark Hill 2009.

However, neighbouring cooler growing regions, Orange and Tumbarumba, won gold medals for Philip Shaw No 11 2009 and Hungerford Hill 2009 respectively.

Pinot gris and verdelho failed to excite the judges. The best either of those varieties could muster was silver. However, two viogniers earned gold – Baillieu Mornington Peninsula 2010 and Topper’s Mountain New England Wild Ferment 2010.

In the “other single white varieties” class, Tscharke Girl Talk Savagnin 2011 (thought to be albarino when planted) earned the top gold medal with Alex McKay’s Collector Lamp Lit Marsanne 2010 just half a point behind winning the other gold medal in the class.

Several pinot noirs won gold medals – Seville Estate Yarra Valley 2010, Paringa Estate The Paringa Mornington Peninsula 2010, Cannibal Creek Gippsland 2010, Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula 2009, Freycinet Tasmania 2009, Laurel Bank Tasmania 2009 and Barringwood Park Mill Block Tasmania 2008 (the trophy winner).

Many regions, warm and cool, won gold for shiraz – Barossa, Langhorne Creek, the Adelaide Hills, the Hunter Valley, Hilltops, Canberra District, Bathurst, Orange, Geelong, Mornington Peninsula, Heathcote, Bendigo, Pyrenees, Margaret River and Geographe.

Included in shiraz’s show-stopping performance were three Canberra District wines, Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier 2009 (the district’s top scorer), Bourke Street 2009 and Lerida Lake George Shiraz Viognier 2009. The district’s gold medal parade may have been long had some of our other makers entered the shiraz classes – Clonakilla, Collector, Nick O’Leary and Capital Wines. Next year, maybe?

Cabernet sauvignon, Australia’s next biggest red variety after shiraz, also fared well but not so universally as shiraz. The gold medal winning districts were: Coonawarra, Mudgee, Strathbogie Ranges, Pyrenees, Margaret River (the star, with five golds), and the Swan Valley (perhaps – the region of Heafod Glen 2009 isn’t given, but the winery address is Swan Valley).

It was disappointing to see Mount Majura Tempranillo 2010 miss out on a medal. But having tasted this wine very carefully over several days I predict better ratings in future. It’s a very, very good wine.

The Costco Canberra wine offer

4 August 2011WineChris Shanahan

The liquor section occupies just one aisle of the vast Costco warehouse. You weave your way to it past pre-fab gazebos, kayaks, pallets of flat screen televisions, groceries, small goods, dairy products and more, dodging truck-sized trolleys loaded with everything – including the kitchen sink (double tub).

Yes, the kitchen sink distracts us as we arrive at the long gondola of waist-to-chest-high open wooden boxes crammed with wines. The gondola-end screams for attention with tissue-wrapped Penfolds reds, including Grange 2006 ($479.99) and Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 ($149.99).

Fittingly, they’re in company with blue chips from France’s Bordeaux region – first growth, Chateau Margaux 2008, cheaper than Grange at $399.99 (and probably not as good in this vintage) and second growth, Chateau Pichon-Lalande 2008 at $124.99.

We wander around the two-sided gondola discovering an eclectic mix of Australian and imported wines, with perhaps a greater weight to imports than we’d see in the average local liquor store. This probably reflects Costco’s American origins – Americans tend to drink a greater proportion of imports than Australians do – and formidable international buying power.

There’s a strong focus on Champagne at very keen prices, starting with the house brand, Kirkland Signature Brut NV at $33.99. It’s sourced from an address in Verzenay (a village in the Champagne region) and shipped via Louisiana, USA. I’ve not tried it yet, but the price is good for the real thing, so it’s worth a try.

If you’re not willing to chance your money on the house brand, a big stack of the delicious Bollinger Brut NV at $58.99 may prove tempting – though it’s close to Dan Murphy’s $59.85 and 1^st Choice’s $62-odd. Competition may bring them all back to the same level. We note Cosco’s stock doesn’t bear the import sticker of the Australian agent, Fine Wine Partners. So it’s probably a direct import.

A big floor stack of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Brut NV at 51.99 offers great value, too, though not dramatically below Dan Murphy’s $52.85 each (in six-packs). But Moet et Chandon Brut Imperial NV at $48.99 trims a bit over $10 off the Dan Murphy price. Likewise Moet’s deluxe blend, Dom Perignon 2002 at $187.99 makes Dan Murphy look expensive at $214.95 each in six-packs.

A couple of potential bargains catch our eye among these wooden crates – 2009 vintage Chablis from Domaine William Fevre ($18.99), one of the region’s most highly regarded producers, and Michel Bouchard ($14.99). We can’t resist, so watch for the reviews in a few weeks. While we’re in chardonnay mode we grab a bottle, too, of Puligny-Montrachet 2008 ($42.99) from negociant Louis Latour. We’ll throw that in the same tasting.

Nearby we spot the beautiful De Bortoli Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2010 (reviewed today) at $21.10 – towards the bottom end of its price range.

We notice a mix of Australian wines from big and small makers, including Grant Burge, Penfolds, Wolf Blass, Tyrrell’s, McWilliams, Evans and Tate, Brokenwood (especially Beechworth Pinot Gris at $11.99), Seville Estate, Freycinet, Meerea, Tarrawarra, Yarra Yering, Ross Hill, Tamar Ridge, De Bortoli, Knappstein, Fonty’s Pool and Petaluma.

The Australian selection continues on pallet racks near the wooden-case displays, dominated by cut cases of Yellow Tail 1.5 litre bottles at $11.99. On an adjacent rack we find the only two wine casks on offer – four-litre De Bortoli Colombard Chardonnay and Cabernet Merlot.

Back at the wooden cases we poke around among the imports, including Chateau Tour St Bonnet 2006, a cru bourgeois from the Medoc, Bordeaux at $19.99 – worth a chance, for sure at that price. Nearby we see a small selection from Spain’s Rioja region, ranging from $14.99 to $29.99 for Campo Viejo Gran Reserva 2003. We have no idea how good these might be, but we’ll taste and review them over time. Likewise we’ll try Flori Barolo 2006 at $16.99 and Castello Banfi Brunello di Montalcino 2005 at $35.99.

From Beaujolais in France we see Fleurie 2009 (Chateau du Chenas) at $14.99 and from Burgundy, Savigny-Les-Beaune 2008 (Michel Bouchard) at $15.99 and Nuits-St-George 2008 (Bouchard Pere et Fils) at $38.98. We don’t expect any excitement here, but these are good prices for Burgundy and the wines just might be OK. We’ll let the wines do the talking.

Our pulses race when we see a couple of wines from Taylors, one of Portugal’s great Port houses – and the prices seem sharp: $37.99 for Taylors Quinta de Vargellas Vintage Port 2001 and $16.98 for Late Bottled Vintage Port 2004. These are unique, undervalued fortified wines, far removed the styles we produce in Australia. We notice Morris of Rutherglen muscat and tokay among the tiny range of fortifieds.

Nearby we see a couple of whites from Alsace and a potentially good German wine, Urziger Wurztgarten Riesling Spaetlese 2008 (Christoffel) at $14.99.

From New Zealand we see wines from Cloudy Bay and Villa Maria – but not like the acres of sauvignon blanc lined up in most liquor stores. Oh, yes, we spot a French sauvignon blanc, too, from Sancerre in the Loire Valley.

Clearly Costco are not attempting to be all things to all people. It’s a small selection and while the prices seem good, there’s nothing here that the big retailers won’t be able to match. Indeed their focus on known Australian brands will certainly increase competition in the region. Smaller retailers, however, may feel the pinch as they lack the buying power of these big groups.

Whether or not Costco can hold our interest is another matter. If the range on offer changes over time then there’ll be reason to return. But if it’s a static offering, then it won’t take long to work through the range – which is so much smaller than offered by the big retailers and independent operators in our region.

On the other hand, a narrower choice may appeal to many wine drinkers confused by the colossal range on offer in some outlets. And by including so many affordable imports in the mix, Costco may tempt drinkers outside their comfort zones.

Wynns Coonawarra — vignettes of the great terra rossa

27 July 2011People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Wynns Coonawarra Estate winemaker Sarah Pidgeon flashed through Canberra recently, judging at the Winewise Small Vignerons Awards, but taking time out to show-off her new releases – some of the best drinking and most cellarable reds in the country.

Pidgeon works alongside chief winemaker, Sue Hodder. And together, since 2001, they’ve collaborated closely with Coonawarra vineyard manager Allen Jenkins, polishing the wines of Coonawarra’s best-known and biggest brand to a dazzling sheen.

They started with a makeover of the vineyards, then in time for the 2008 vintage, commissioned a new small-batch winery. The latter finally allowed separate harvesting and processing of small batches of grapes from the potentially thousands of sections of what is now Treasury Wine Estates’ 900-odd hectares in Coonawarra.

Those vast holding service Penfolds, Lindemans and Rosemount, as well as Wynns – so the benefits of segmenting the crop potentially flows through to those brands, too.

But for Treasury Wine Estates (formerly Foster’s), Wynns remains the main game in Coonawarra, with its big volume white label shiraz and black label cabernet, icon wines, Michael shiraz and John Riddoch cabernet, and a growing range of specialty, sometimes one-off reds, showcasing various sections of the vineyard.

Harold Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2001 was the first of these one-off specialties. It’s followed this year by a 2009 cabernet sauvignon from the Davis vineyard and new releases of shiraz and a cabernet shiraz blend from vineyards sprinkled along V and A Lane – Coonawarra’s traditional north-south dividing line.

Wynns’ eight new-release reds come from the 2008, 2009 and 2010 vintages – all good years in Coonawarra. It is, quite simply, a stunning line up, ranging from the charming, easy-drinking white label shiraz 2010 (with proven long-term cellaring ability) to the profound Michael Shiraz 2008 and John Riddoch 2008.

I review each of the wines below, based on a tasting with Sarah Pidgeon. The price range for any individual wine can be very wide. The lower prices are a combination of estimates, based on discounting of the previous vintages, or actual advertised prices of the new releases. The higher prices are Treasury Wine Estates’ recommended retail prices.

Given intense retail interest, especially in the white label shiraz and black label cabernet, we’re almost certain to see intermittent discount wars – so it pays to shop around. For example, the 2009 vintage of the shiraz recently specialled at $8.75 a bottle – an absurdly low price for a wine with proven capacity to cellar for decades.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz 2010 $8.75–$23
Sarah Pidgeon says, “I was pleased to be there for 2010, it was such a wonderful vintage”. She describes it as an “even” year, without the temperature spikes of 2008 and 2009, with warm temperatures at flowering and veraison (when the berries change colour and begin to soften) and more moderate temperatures during the ripening period.

The wine’s probably a touch better even than the very good 2008 and 2009 vintages. And it continues in the same bright, pure and fruity style – a result of the vineyard overhaul, harvesting times and tweaking in the cellar, especially in regard to oak maturation.

Pidgeon says only about 10 per cent of the barrels are new, with the remainder two to three years old, and roughly one fifth of the wine not oaked at all – to provide “freshness and purity”.

And that’s what the wine has – a heady, floral aroma and freshness and purity of Coonawarra red berry flavours with a delicious, deep, silky texture. It’s medium bodied, seductively fruity and easy to drink now. But it has the substance to age gracefully for many years.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate V and A Lane Shiraz 2009 $40–$50
This is a selection of more powerful shiraz from vineyards along the east-west running V and A Lane. Here we see the benefit of the new small-batch winery, says Pidgeon. It enabled progressive harvesting and fermentation of fruit and consequent maturation in a range of different types of oak barrels. This gave the winemakers greater blending options.

The wine’s dense, crimson-rimmed colour points to its power and ripeness – a deeper, denser more brooding wine than the white label shiraz. It still has vibrancy and freshness, but spicy oak flavours and tannins weave through the fruit. But despite its greater dimension, the wine retains signature Coonawarra elegance.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Michael Shiraz 2008 $69.35–$90
Pidgeon says the winemaking and grape growing teams think long and hard about what goes into Michael. It has to be “the best, perfect and the pinnacle” she says. It’s based on a couple of key vineyards on the eastern side of the Riddoch Highway, near the winery and “others we keep our eye on”, she says.

It’s an extraordinary wine – somewhat less chunky than the ones made in the nineties, more refined, but still deep and powerful. It’s aromatic and based on deep, sweet, blueberry-like fruit flavours, mingled with beautiful, cedary oak – a wine of rare dimension needing time to evolve. While the tannins are strong, they’re integrated with the fruit flavours, fine-grained and soft.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate V and A Lane Cabernet Shiraz 2009 $38–$50
Like the shiraz from V and A Lane, this wine presents a strong face of Coonawarra – a blend of many parts, including components matured in a range of oak from different areas and coopers. The oak gives a cedary note, but the cabernet drives the wine with its blackcurrant flavour and strong, fine, elegant structure – fleshed out subtly by the shiraz. This is another strong but elegant red.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate “The Siding” Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $10.95–$23
Introduced to the range from the 2009 vintage, “The Siding” is an aromatic cabernet made specifically for early drinking. It captures a spectrum Coonawarra cabernet flavours from red-berry to cassis and even a slight touch of leafiness. Like the white label shiraz, some components see no oak and provide a purity and freshness that puts fruit to the fore. It’s very Coonawarra, very cabernet and very drinkable – right now.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $25–$35
Black Label is deeper coloured than “The Sidings”, but still limpid. It presents a deeper side of cabernet, including black-olive and cassis-like flavours, bound up in sweet, spicy oak. It’s a buoyant, balanced cabernet – generous but elegant, with fine, firm tannins. It remains one of Australia’s best value, long-term cellaring wines. It’s probably better now than it’s ever been. Watch for the discounting as occasionally dips below $20.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate “Davis” Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $40–$50
The Davis vineyard, located just south of the winery, was planted to cabernet sauvignon in 1957. In 2008 wine from the vineyard “stood up as different”, says Pidgeon, so they kept it aside for individual bottling. This is an opulent and powerful cabernet, combining black olive and cassis varietal flavours with a particularly juicy, ripe, supple mid palate and powerful but soft tannins – opulence and elegance combined. An outstanding and potentially long-lived wine.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $69.35–$90
Sarah Pidgeon says the flagship cabernet comes from a diversity of vineyards sprinkled around Coonawarra, principally in the north, but can include southern vineyards in warmer years. Since John Riddoch’s reintroduction under Hodder and Pidgeon, the style has retained its power and intensity but become softer. The current release is densely coloured with a brilliant crimson rim – a deep and brooding wine in which the cabernet fruit and oak really sing in harmony. This is a great cabernet.

Pinnaroo partners and the Yellowtail connection

13 July 2011People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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