Canberra’s National Wine Show bills itself as the grand final of the Australian circuit. But to deserve the mantle it needs to re-invent itself. In reality, it’s just another capital city show, more notable for what’s not in the tasting line up than what is.

Its strength is the high standard of judging and the probity of its results, meaning that as drinkers we can rely generally rely on the award winners to put a smile on our faces. This is partly driven by stringent entry conditions, restricting entry in many classes to medal winners from other shows.

But the problem I see as I flick through the catalogue (you can view it at www.rncas.org.au) is the absence of so many leading, generally small, producers from most classes. In certain cases, such as the semillon and tokay and muscat classes this leads to the dominance of just one or two producers.

For example, in this year’s class 18 for 2008 vintage and older semillons, Tyrrell’s and McWilliams fielded 13 of the 22 entries. Good on them for putting forward so many extraordinary Hunter wines. But where were the dozens of other wonderful Hunter semillon producers? And in the tokay and muscat classes, Morris of Rutherglen once again dominated, but in the absence of other distinguished Rutherglen producers.

While single companies don’t dominate classes less regionally specific than semillon or fortifieds, the list of notable absentees expands. For example, in class 1 for 2009 vintage dry rieslings, one of Australia’s great specialties, 11 companies entered 19 wines – barely touching the diversity this variety offers across Australia.

The gold medallists, Knappstein Enterprise Clare Valley Handpicked Riesling and 2009 and its cellar mate from the Lion Nathan group, Knappstein Clare Valley Ackland Vineyard Riesling 2009, are beautiful wines and readily available. But given their victory in such a narrow, unrepresentative field, forgive me for not accepting the hype that they’re champs from a grand final. They’re not. And the pattern repeated itself throughout the show.

At the trophy presentation dinner, Jeremy Stockman, representing the major sponsor, Vintage Cellars (part of the Wesfarmers-owned Coles Liquor Group), called on the show organisers to rethink their approach and find ways to attract more entries from small makers.

As the Australian industry reels from the effects of overproduction and the wreckage of the ‘brand Australia’ juggernaut (we now have a surplus of about 100 million cases and growing), it’s shifting its marketing focus to regional specialisation – trying to sell our extraordinary, diverse winemaking achievements locally and in export markets.

In this environment, it’s perhaps logical for our look-alike capital city shows, run by conservative agricultural societies, to adopt a regional focus, too. This is not a call to bar medium and large companies from exhibiting, but to encourage participation from small producers as well.

It’s a difficult task, partly because many of our very best small makers happily develop their wine styles and markets independently of the show system. Winemakers like Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk and Tapanappa’s Brian Croser, for example, see no need for independent benchmarking or show awards. For various reasons, those that do see benefits in shows are more likely to enter in the growing number of regional shows (limited to wines produced in a single region or zone) or perhaps events like Canberra’s Winewise Small Vignerons Awards.

A solution might be a more structured show system that streams winners from regional shows to state shows to a truly national show. But given the independent, competitive and national focus of our capital city shows, this will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve.

It might be more practicable, therefore, for the National to seize the initiative by opening its doors to award winners from a greater range of regional shows and high-quality independent competitions like Winewise Small Vignerons and the Sydney International 100. However, if Canberra’s National simply ignores the gaps in its entry ranks, it will become increasingly irrelevant. The organisers have an opportunity now to re-invent the show and make it the truly innovative event that it was in the eighties.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

The International Riesling Challenge, held in Canberra in October, reminds us that riesling remains our best value-for-money white wine variety. The results catalogue is packed with delicious, potentially long-lived wines available at modest prices. However, riesling remains a niche variety, ignored by the vast majority of drinkers, despite the decades of praise heaped on it.

In a recent presentation, James Halliday said that before the mid eighties “more bottles of (true) riesling sold than all other major white varieties combined”. Between 1976 and 1986 Australia’s riesling production grew rapidly, then dipped slightly over the next decade and half, before growing modestly over the last few years to reach 36,900 tonnes in 2009. However, viewed on a graph, the riesling-production story looks near enough to a 20-year straight line – under a soaring rocket called chardonnay, that peaked at around 400 thousand tonnes.

But as we saw last week, that rocket ran out of thrust in 2004 and finally lost its number one position earlier this year to sauvignon blanc, led by the New Zealanders with seventy per cent of the still rapidly growing sauv blanc market.

But even in decline, chardonnay still accounts for a quarter of all bottled white wine sales in Australia by value. While riesling might appear to be holding its own in absolute volume, its dramatic loss of market share since the burgeoning of chardonnay in the eighties and sauvignon blanc this decade remains something of a mystery.

Dramatising riesling’s niche status is the rapid rise this decade of pinot gris (aka pinot grigio) in our production figures. In 2009 Australian vignerons harvested 40,500 tonnes of it – a little ahead of riesling’s 36,900 tonnes. This is probably fashion driven as from my experience the ratio of mediocre to good pinot gris runs at about ten to one – the opposite of what you’d expect of riesling.

But riesling’s stubborn refusal to become popular, galling as that might be to its spruikers, is surely one of the reasons we pay comparatively little for often stellar quality.

For example, among the Riesling Challenge’s gold medallists in the Australian dry categories, prices range from as little as $15 (probably $10 on special) to around $45, with the majority somewhere in between.

The judges awarded nineteen gold medals in these classes, the majority of them to currently available wines and with a sprinkling of harder-to-find back vintages.  The latter simply prove riesling’s durability – and the rewards that come from cellaring.

If the results don’t fully reflect the diversity of styles we make across the continent, the judges nevertheless spread their favours reasonably widely. Not surprisingly, the classic Clare and Eden Valleys (neighbours on South Australia’s Mount Lofty Ranges) dominated with fourteen gold medals. But Canberra scored two golds, Tasmania one, Coonawarra one and Mansfield, in Victoria’s Upper Goulburn region, one.

The full honours roll makes a great shopping list. The prices given below are either cellar door or current retail prices found online. Some of the wines may not be released yet; and older ones may no longer be available, although it’s worth Googling the wineries and asking.

Canberra gold medallists
Helm Premium Riesling 2009 $45
Shaw Vineyard Estate Winemaker Selection 2008 $22

Coonawarra gold medallist
Wynns Coonawarra Estate Riesling 2008 $17–$20

Upper Goulburn gold medallist
Delatite Riesling 2008 $23

Tasmania gold medallist
The Wine Society Tasmania Riesling 2007 (2009 currently selling at $16.99)

Clare Valley gold medallists
Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2009 $14–$17
Knappstein Ackland Vineyard Watervale Riesling 2009 $32.95
Tim Adams Clare Valley Riesling 2009 $20–$25
Sevenhill Clare INIGO Riesling 2008 price not available
Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 2008 $14–$20
Cardinham Estate Clare Valley Riesling 2003 (2008 currently selling at $18)
Leo Buring Leonay Clare Valley Riesling 2005 (probably high thirties)

Eden Valley gold medallists
Poverty Hill Eden Valley Riesling 2009 $18–$22
St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling 2008 $16–$20
St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling 2005 (hard to find, go for the current release)
Peter Lehmann Wigan Eden Valley Riesling 2004 ($40 at cellar door)
Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling 2007 $28–$32 (officially ‘Barossa’ but sourced from elevated, cool, southern Barossa sites skirting the Eden Valley).

Multi-region gold medallist
Jacob’s Creek Reserve Riesling 2009 $15–$18 (region not given but generally a blend of very good predominantly Clare and Eden Valley material).

Copyright © Chris Shanahan

The Jimmy Watson trophy is to wine drinkers what the Melbourne Cup is to once a year punters. We’ve all heard of it. There’s a buzz each year as the Melbourne show unveils the latest winner. And for the winner, especially if it’s a little known winery, victory can be a fast track to glory.

This year the coveted crystal and silver jug came to the Eden Road Winery, Canberra, for its Hilltops Shiraz 2008. The wine had previously won trophies as best shiraz and best red at the 2009 Canberra Regional show and shared the champion-wine trophy with Ken Helm’s Premium Riesling 2009 (which also won gold in Melbourne).

The bad news is that the juicy, drink-now red sold out shortly after the trophy announcement a few weeks back. And the good news is that the 2009 vintage – now maturing in Eden Road’s cellar in the old Kamberra Winery – will remain at a modest $16.50 a bottle when it’s released next year. I tasted components of it today alongside the Jimmy winner and have little doubt that it’ll be at least as good, and in the same supple, easy-drinking mould. Winemaker Nick Spencers views the 2009s as ‘a big step up from the 2008s’.

Nick says the majority of grapes used in the trophy winner came from Jason Brown’s Moppity Park vineyard – the second oldest in the Hilltops region (established 1973) – with components from Grove Estate and other vineyards.

And he sees a fundamental difference between Hilltops and Canberra shiraz – the former showing bright, berry fruit, with an open, easy drinking character; the latter making fragrant but taut wines needing time to mature.

The Hilltops fruit, he says, doesn’t demand oak maturation the way cabernet or fuller bodied shiraz does. Indeed, Nick matured the majority of the winning blend in steel tanks and the balance in older oak barrels.

Apart from cutting the oak bill (and the price of the finished wine) maturation in tank lends an agreeable gamey note to the wine – a characteristic readily observed while comparing tank and barrel samples of the as yet unblended 2009 vintage.

Eden Road Hilltops Shiraz 2008, says Steve Webber, chair of the Melbourne show, is only the second winner in the trophy’s 37-history to have been bottled and in the market at the time of judging. Until recently the line up was the domain of raw young reds not due for blending, let alone bottling, for many months away. The break out box explains why this was so – and why it made the Jimmy Watson not only Australia’s best-known wine award but also its most reviled by critics, including me.

Stephen Shelmerdine, Chair of the wine show committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV), tells me that bottled exhibits now account for 75–80 per cent of all entries. The change, he says, result from a run of earlier vintages, wines spending less time in oak and shifting the judging from July to October.

And there’s been tremendous pressure, too, to bring the trophy in line with standards adopted by Australia’s other wine shows: no awards for unfinished wine.

Stephen explained that making changes requires the agreement of RASV, as show organise, and the Watson family, as custodians of the Jimmy Watson Trophy trust deed.

He says that after widespread consultation with the industry, from 2010 the trophy will be open to both one and two year old reds – meaning an even higher proportion of bottled wine in the judging line up.

But he admits there’s continuing pressure to exclude unfinished wine – an option still being considered by the RASV and the Watson family.

But even if we assume that what wins the trophy is what we finally drink, what makes the trophy so noteworthy?

I can’t fathom it. It’s not inherently superior to other judgements. It’s not a line-up of the best of the best – just a gang of one-year-old reds from all over the country. The trophy’s success seems to be based more on an emotional appeal, perhaps derived from its long history and steady promotion over four decades. Interestingly, the background story is seldom told now that the trophy has a life of its own.

I remain a Jimmy Watson sceptic on three grounds. The first, now receding as we see more finished products in the race; the second that no single award means a great deal – look for wines with a string of successes in different shows; and thirdly that just because the judges at one show like a wine doesn’t mean that you or will.

Take, for example last year’s winner, Flametree Cabernet Merlot 2007 – I couldn’t get through even a single glass of; down the sink it went.
This year’s winner is another story. It’s delicious, but sadly no longer available. Full marks, though, to the Eden Road team for not letting the victory go to its head. We can all look forward to trying the 2009 next year at the same realistic price.

The Jimmy Watson trophy over the years
In 1962 Jimmy Watson, wine merchant, died. At his funeral, a hat passed amongst Watson’s loyal followers, raising funds to sponsor an annual ‘Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy’ for the best one-year-old red wine at the Melbourne Wine Show.

There are those who still remember Jimmy with fondness – none more so than his son Alan as he presides, with his son, over the Jimmy Watson Wine Bar founded by his father all those years ago.

But somewhere along the way, the trophy took on a life of its own – a farcical, commercial life far removed from the world Jimmy Watson inhabited during his lifetime.

Alan Watson remembers his father as a wine pioneer – a man who cheerfully weathered the sneers of some fellow Australians for nothing more than encouraging the consumption of table wine with food. In those days wine was just plonk.

Bill Chambers, maker of superb Rutherglen fortifieds and long-term chair of judges at the Melbourne wine show, once told me that he recalled Watson’s Wine bar in the late 1950s. There were bottles everywhere as a leather-apronned Jimmy, a great showman, worked with two rubber tubes to bottle a hogshead of red before lunch – an enviable feat in Chamber’s view, and one Jimmy Watson was proud of.

In those days Bill Chambers worked up in the Clare Valley with the Stanley Wine Company. He remembers Melbourne Wine Merchant, Doug Seabrook, buying hogsheads of raw young Clare Valley reds, many of which he sold to Watson. By all accounts it was these vigorous young reds, and not only those from Clare, that interested him most of all.

In an interview some years back, Alan Watson told me that his father’s business was not originally a watering hole as it is today, but a bottle shop where the owner selected and bottled everything himself. But Watson’s great enthusiasm attracted a ring of disciples who soon began bringing food to the shop and adopting a liberal interpretation of licensing laws that permitted patrons to taste wine before purchasing.

The clientele, enthralled by Watson, showman and extrovert, came from all walks of life. But with Melbourne University just up the road from Watson’s Lygon Street premises, academics and students swelled his ranks of followers. Eagerly they swallowed his message.

“Dad tried to move the trade into another era,” reminisced Alan Watson. “He wanted wine to be seen as an everyday occurrence, something to be consumed with meals.” He also urged patience, encouraging customers to cellar the immature, purple, one-year-old reds that were the bulk of his trade.

Jimmy Watson was an educator of old and young alike according to Bill Chambers. “Students, professors, everyone brought their tucker down the road before heading up to Watson’s to drink wine. But he was a showman and I can’t remember him drinking much himself.”

Watson’s senior disciples, mostly academics and businessmen, gravitated to an upstairs room, eventually dubbed ‘The House of Lords’ by him. It was these most ardent and articulate followers who passed the hat at Jimmy Watson’s funeral, thus perpetuating his name in the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy to be awarded to the robust, year-old reds he so loved.

For the next ten years the Jimmy Watson Trophy – now a household word amongst wine drinkers – remained unknown to wine consumers and of only minor interest to wine companies.

Bill Chambers judged in Melbourne from the early 1960’s. He recalls little fuss over the Watson Trophy until the Berri Co-operative won it in 1973. Then, recalls Chambers, after an heroic celebration, winemaker Brian Barry boarded the plane carrying the Murray River’s first major trophy.

Perhaps we can link the trophy’s rise to fame more with Wolf Blass’s hat trick. He won it in 1974, 1975 and 1976 for his 1973, 1974 and 1975 vintages of ‘Dry Red Claret’. He renamed the wine Wolf Blass Black Label and used the Jimmy as its launching pad. He even proclaimed the triple victory on the neck label of his sparkling wine at the time.

Increasingly since then, to win the trophy is to harvest a windfall. For the hype surrounding each year’s winner virtually guarantees the wine’s commercial success.

While no amount of hosing down seems to quell trade or public clamouring for the winner, the fact is that for most of the trophy’s history, the winning wine has not been the finished product.

This has been the source of sustained and intense criticism, principally from those concerned with the integrity of show results. Awarding medals and trophies to unfinished wine simply magnifies the chance of fraud.

Even the most meticulously honest winery blending a “representative” show sample across a range of barrels can’t say with certainty that what the judges tasted and what goes into bottle are the same wine.

While recent changes made by the show organisers and the Watson family, deserve praise, the reform must go all the way and close the trophy judging to unfinished wine.

We can sympathise with the Watson family’s emotional connection to the raw young reds Jimmy loved to bottle. But the interests of wine drinkers and the integrity of the show system must ultimately rise above those sentiments.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

A few weeks back, Foster’s Group held a little conference, titled ‘restoring the maligned reputation of the world’s greatest white grape variety’.

Nielsen figures released at the event show that chardonnay began its shocking fall from grace in August 2004 – after thirty years as the darling of our industry. Since 1976 our production had grown from a bucketful, to 17,400 tonnes in 1986 to 444,000 tonnes in 2008.

But domestic sales are still falling (7.1 per cent in the year to August 2009 in a white wine market that grew by 6.9 per cent). And to add to the ignominy being heaped on chardonnay, the usurper is the ignoble sauvignon blanc.

The Nielsen figures reveal that sauvignon blanc overtook chardonnay as our biggest selling white in March this year – and left it in its dust. New Zealand wine, representing 70 per cent of our sauvignon blanc sales, continues to grow at an extraordinary 35.9 per cent. But it’s too early to write chardonnay’s obituary.

The problem with chardonnay seems to be partly one of image – suggesting long-term flaws in the way it’s been marketed and packaged, combined with consumer memories of the fat, heavy, oaky styles that once excited wine drinkers. It matters little that this was twenty years ago and that styles have since moved on. Drinkers haven’t heard the message.

Foster’s attribute part of the decline to fashion – linking it to Kath and Kim’s ‘kardonnay’ (but not their ‘sauvignon plonk’) and the ABC (anything but chardonnay) movement.

If popularity breeds its own counter culture, then sauvignon blanc could be headed for the same fate as chardonnay. It’s everywhere we look – dominating wine lists, pushing good riesling and chardonnay from retail refrigerators and dominating the Nielsen list of Australia’s top 10 whites selling for between $14 and $19 a bottle.

In the year to August, sauvignon blanc and blends, including five New Zealanders, held eight of the top 10 spots. Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc topped the list (we drank $48.7 million worth), followed by Giesen and Stoneleigh, then Montana in fifth position and Secret Stone in ninth. The only chardonnay was Oyster Bay from New Zealand.

If there’s to be a reaction to New Zealand sauvignon blanc it could come in the next few years in the face of a real or perceived decline in quality. The New Zealand invasion began with high quality products, notably Cloudy Bay of Marlborough, founded by Australian David Hohnen in the mid eighties and now owned by Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton.

The quality gap between Marlborough’s best, like Cloudy, and the worst is now wider than ever following years of large scale planting. New Zealand’s sauvignon blanc hit 177 thousand tonnes in 2010, following harvests of 169 thousand tonnes, 102 thousand tonnes, 96 thousand tonnes and 63 thousand tonnes in the previous four vintages.

A simple fact of rapid expansion is unequal quality – based on vine age, site selection, vineyard management and winemaking, and the skinny flavours arising from overcropping. Certainly much of the New Zealand material now coming our way is pretty ordinary in my opinion.

Not surprisingly, New Zealand’s overproduction means lower prices. This starts with declining grape prices (Marlborough sauvignon blanc fell from $2,230 a tonne in 2005 to $1,651 in 2009) and flows immediately to wine prices – confirmed by the rapid growth of cheaper New Zealand sauvignon blanc in Australia (1,035 per cent in the $8–$11 bracket; 59.1 per cent in the $11–$14 bracket in the year to August).

Of course, waiting for the sauvignon blanc rot to set in isn’t going to save chardonnay’s bacon. Its revival will have to be driven by makers. And that will come from a high base. Despite its decline bottled chardonnay still accounts for $269.7 million in sales; 25.5 per cent of all bottled wine sold in Australia; and 92 per cent of sales over $19.

Foster’s consumer taste testing shows that even non chardonnay drinking sauvignon blanc drinkers like chardonnay when they don’t know what they’re drinking – provide they’re fresh, low or no-oak versions. So there’s hope.

But I don’t think unoaked chardonnays are the way to go. Modern chardonnays gain great complexity, but not oak flavour, from barrel fermentation and maturation. Perhaps the biggest shift, as we inevitably rip out many chardonnay vines, will be in sourcing from the cooler areas that produce the crispest, finest flavours. With such a versatile variety, that still leaves many options in Australia.

Marketing it then remains the issue, just as it is now. Ultimately, though, it’s a superior grape variety producing beautiful, complex flavours. It will ride out the fads and remain one of our biggest sellers as long as we drink white wine.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

I’ve heard it called the paradox of tasting – the situation where professional tasters elect a champion wine and then drink anything but the champ during the following discussion.

I don’t why it is, but sometimes a wine that seems terrific at first sip, loses interest while an apparently plainer wine grows in interest with every mouthful. I’ve heard of one tasting group that rates the wines in the order in which they disappear over a meal. Sensible folks.

As a lapsed retailer and veteran of dozens of public tastings, I’ve seen over and again how individual perceptions vary enormously, sometimes fundamentally, and how any number of visual or spoken cues profoundly affect how we perceive and rate wine.

Organised tastings, whether they’re on the sterile white benches of wine shows, in the scramble of a crowded retail store or in a relaxed cellar door atmosphere seem far removed from how we actually drink and enjoy wine – with food in the company of friends.

One of our wine shows, the Sydney International Top 100 acknowledges this by bringing food into the equation during judging. And one of the tasting groups that supplies many of my own recommendations enjoys small flights of masked wines over a meal – yes, actually swallowing the wine and enjoying its affects as well as flavour.

On a larger scale, an event that started as a yearly extended-family holiday now includes broad-ranging tastings during the evening meals. This year, across eight evenings, about 25 adults ranging from 21 to 65 tasted (to be polite) about 150 wines served with everything from snags to scallops.

We had no intention of drawing a list of favourites or rating wines by points or stars. But the diverse opinions flowed – sometimes eloquently, sometimes with a quiet grin or a second glass (politeness again) or a glass untouched.

Surprisingly we couldn’t see any age or gender related preferences. But we did see a couple of broad trends – a very strong bias towards red wine; a notable preference for soft, fleshy reds (shiraz, pinot, grenache, tempranillo) as stand alone drinks; a more catholic appreciation of red styles as the food flowed – including very firm cabernet and savoury sangiovese and nebbiolo; delight in riesling at any time; a preference for sauvignon blanc with petanque; and a mix of surprise and delight at the oak-fermented chardonnays, especially served with local fresh seafood.

From the 150 wines an eclectic and small list of standouts emerged.

Holm Oak Tasmania Sauvignon Blanc 2009 $25
A lovely, pure and understated expression of the style from Tassie’s Tamar Valley. It’ll never be better than it is now – exquisitely fresh.

Scarborough Hunter Valley Chardonnay 2008 $25
Full and juicy with seafood chowder – in the soft but fine and complex Hunter style.

Shelmerdine Heathcote Riesling 2009 $29
An absolute knockout from the Victorian region more renowned for its shiraz.

Shelmerdine Heathcote Viognier 2009 $29
Another winner from the Shelmerdine family – complex, subtle viognier without the fat oiliness generally associated with viognier.

Essenze Waipara Pinot Gris 2009 $21
From Waipara, a little to the north of Christchurch New Zealand – a full-bodied, richly textured pinot gris with matching crisp acidity.

Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir 2008 $23
An easy drinking pinot showing many of the key good characteristics of this difficult variety – fragrant and fruity with sufficient tannic grip to be a real red – if not the magic of the best.

Stone Dwellers Strathbogie Ranges Pinot Noir 2008 $25
A lovely surprise from the Plunkett and Fowles families – this has the aroma, flavour, elegance and grippy structure of good pinot. Very good at this price. One to watch.

Wyndham Estate George Wyndham Shiraz Grenache McLaren Vale Barossa Valley Shiraz Grenache 2007 $21.59
Probably a lot cheaper on special. A juicy mouthful of ripe, grapey flavours and soft tannins. George Wyndham died a century and a half ago, but they dug him up to sign the label.

Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 $21.50
There’s fabulous value here from the Purbrick family estate – elegant but rich and quite firm in the house style, and oh so good with protein rich food.

Tahbilk Eric Stevens Purbrick Nagambie Lakes Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 $69.95
Savoured alongside the cheaper Tahbilk wine and significantly more concentrated in flavour – a superior wine for long cellaring. Not three times as good, but discernibly better and with quite a pedigree.

Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes Shiraz 2006 $21.50
A tight, savoury, quite tannic shiraz that disappeared very quickly.

Zema Estate Coonawarra Shiraz 2006 $25.95
A contrast to the Tahbilk wine, still in the medium bodied, cool-climate style with Coonawarra’s bright berry flavours and soft tannins.

Domaine Chandon Barrel Selection Shiraz 2006 $49.95
Of unknown origin, but clearly from a cool climate with its medium body, elegance, concentrated flavour and silky, plush texture. A class act.

Turkey Flat Vineyards Barossa Valley Shiraz 2007 $47
A deep and generous, soft and savoury shiraz sourced in part from vines planted in 1847. From Peter and Christie Schulz’s Turkey Flat Vineyard.

Turkey Flat Vineyards Barossa Valley Mourvedre 2007 $35
A wine that divided the crowd – comments ranged from ‘the best wine all week’, to ‘that’s nice’ to ‘yuk, don’t like that one at all’. To my taste it was wonderful – full and savoury with mourvedre’s distinctive, firm tannins.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

In 1989 the CSIRO bought a woolly pup from Galacia, Spain. But it learned this only twenty years later. What the CSIRO believed to be the white variety, albarino, turned out to be savagnin. By then Australian vignerons had about 150-hectares of ‘albarino’ in the ground, all of it sourced ultimately from the original CSIRO holdings, and some of it well on the way to commercial success.

The news broke around vintage time, posing the dilemma of what to call the coming crop. Out came the viticulture books and makers listed the many synonyms – savagnin blanc, uvernat blanc, bon blanc, forment, formentin blanc, fraentsch, fromenteau, gentil blanc, gringet, gruenedel, grumin, princ bily, heida, païen, printsch grau, ryvola bila, schleitheimer, servoyen blanc, traminer, traminer d’Ore, traminer weiss – as obscure and motley a crew as you’d ever assemble on a tasting bench.

There was some talk of coining a name – an idea that’s stirred repeatedly in varying contexts during our three-decade withdrawal from European wine names. Remember all those misguided shots at a single name for Australia’s hundreds of sparkling wines? Who can remember of any them now? The reasoning went along the lines, we can’t call it champagne any more, so let’s come up with something new.

While the blinkered few chalked up their bright ideas, makers of premium bubblies pushed on with sensible varietal labels, sometimes regionally badged, sometimes coupled with registered proprietary names like Salinger, Croser and Pirie; and purveyors of mass bubblies like Minchinbury and Great Western simply dropped the word ‘champagne’ – the packaging and established branding said all that needed to be said.

More recently we saw an industry committee inflict ‘topaque’ and ‘apera’ on our tokay and sherry makers after the Europeans reclaimed those names. I’m told Spike Milligan sat on the committee posthumously. While some makers adopted topaque and apera, how the names cut with wine drinkers has yet to be gauged. But it could be some time before the laughter subsides.

At least the venerable old Rutherglen winery, Chambers, for one, saw it as a crock, crossed out ‘tokay’ and replaced it with ‘muscadelle’ – a sensible, serious and easily explained name for a wine made in Rutherglen from the muscadelle grape. Perhaps more will follow suit.

If our diverse albarino-turned-savagnin makers (I found 35 growers in the Australian Wine Industry Directory, but the number of labels would be greater) wanted a single alternative name they could’ve followed Kraft and appealed to the public. But then we’d have iDrink2.0, eHAAA! and any number of alternatives floating around on Facebook.

As I write, we albarino drinkers watch anxiously for the 2009s and wonder what they’ll be called. We don’t care all that much, as long as it’s not silly, because we’ve developed a tasted for these aromatic but deliciously savoury dry whites. What we can predict with some certainty, though, is a pragmatic approach from most makers.

So far I’ve tasted but one, Chapel Hill’s excellent il Vescovo 2009, from the company’s vineyard at Kangarilla, a sub-region of McLaren. Winemaker Michael Fragos says it’s one of the few whites that really thrives in this warm dry region, producing terrific aroma and savoury fruit flavour at a comparatively low alcohol level – a refreshing 12.5 per cent for the new release. Replacing ‘albarino’ with ‘savagnin’ was the only change Michael made to the label. At $20 a bottle it offers intriguing new flavours. See www.chapelhillwine.com.au

And I’m looking forward to trying Crittenden’s 2009 Mornington Peninsula version. Until 2009 it sold under the “Los Hermanos” label, especially created for the company’s Spanish varieties.

I predicted that founder Garry Crittenden’s children, Zoe Rollo might keep it under the Los Hermanos name giving continuity to the wine’s identity, if not its varietal name.
But, no, they’ve just released it as a savagnin called “Tributo A Galacia”. Now, albarino is the signature white variety of Galacia, Spain. But savagnin is not. So the name’s possibly ironic, given the origin of Australian savagnin, though it possibly translates as “up yours”.

While that’s two out of two makers, so far, opting for ‘savagnin’ it’ll be interesting to see if any makers adopt other synonyms. Of these ‘traminer’ is widely known but almost certainly too tainted with a fruity, sweet image.

Interestingly, traminer and gewürztraminer share identical DNA. The difference is that the gewürztraminer clone, an old Australian workhorse, displays characteristics of the ancient muscat grape. It’s intensely aromatic, grapey and once tasted never forgotten. Traminer, the ‘non-musque’ clone, shows none of this muscat character and, though aromatic in a vinous sort of way, is more savoury.

Before we identified our albarino as savagnin earlier this year, visiting Spanish albarino makers had considered our vines and wines to be albarino in appearance and taste.
What we have, according to Chris Bourke of Sons & Brothers Vineyard, Orange, is the first plantings of non-musque traminer since James Busby’s importation in 1832. Bourke and others see this clone as a valuable addition to Australia’s vine stock.

Whatever you call it, the vine suits our warm dry climate and produces wine distinct different from chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, semillon or riesling.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

A couple of weeks back well-known author James Halliday rated 13 Canberra wines among his top 100 in New South Wales. Buoyed by this, our local vignerons threw a dinner at the members’ dining room in old parliament house. The dinner paired flights of the Halliday 13, plus a ring-in from Hilltops, with food prepared by Janet Jeffs’ Ginger Catering – the ingredients coming from Canberra and surrounding regions.

Halliday’s top 13 unsurprisingly emphasised the strength of Canberra shiraz, which accounted for five of the thirteen wines. Surprisingly, until you enquire into conditions of entry, sauvignon blanc and blends (three wines) outscored riesling (two wines). And cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese and one dessert riesling earned one spot each on the elite list.

The glaring omission from the list is Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2008. On form it ought to have held number one spot in Canberra. And Halliday’s 97-point rating for it in his Australian Wine Companion 2010 should, in theory, put it as NSW’s top red, one point ahead of Collector Canberra District Reserve 2007 and Tulloch ‘Hector’ of Glen Elgin Limited Release Hunter Shiraz 2005.

The omission of so many of our top rieslings and the Clonakilla shiraz, though, gets back to quantity-based entry conditions, not skulduggery or inconsistency. It simply underlines the limitations of any rating system – and especially one endorsed, seemingly, by the NSW Government and the inherent pressure to spread the goodies around the regions.

While minimum quantity requirements ensure that drinkers have access to the winners, they skew the results for a small region like Canberra. The dinner would unquestionably haft lifted another few notches had we seen more riesling and our only (to date) red legend.

For Clonakilla’s Shiraz Viognier is to Canberra shiraz what Grange is to Penfolds – the halo over our region; the sizzle at our barbecue. And even if we make a handful of half decent sauvignon blancs and blends, they’re about knee high in quality and interest to our rieslings.

What this says to our vignerons is by all means harness third-party endorsement like Halliday’s, but don’t let it drive your agenda totally. You all know what out best wines are. So have the confidence to run with them. A showcase is just that; it shouldn’t hold any also-rans.

For the price of a dozen Clonakilla and the confidence to nudge the sauvignon blanc and blends aside with rieslings, we could’ve had a really stunning Canberra line up. Oh, and one last quibble, what was a shiraz from the Hilltops region doing in a Canberra line-up? It’s another beautiful Clonakilla wine anointed by Halliday, but it ain’t from Canberra.

A high point of the dinner was the grand setting – pre-dinner drinks in the members bar then an ‘oh, wow’ moment as the doors rolled back for us to surge into the members dining area.

We left the bar with a little sadness though, as only two of the five canapés had come our way and only one of the two rieslings. The Helm Classic 2008 is a favourite and we savoured it. But we would’ve loved another taste of the Wallaroo 2008, a delicious drop from Hall.

The well thought out menu produced a few gems: the simple pleasure of Gingerbread Bakery sourdough dunked in fresh, peppery, piquant Homeleigh Grove Olive Oil, from Hall (see www.homeleighgroveolives.com.au); and a mouth watering fricassee of Lake Bathurst rabbit, roasted root vegetables, Jerusalem artichokes and cardamom jus.

The latter came with three contrasting reds – the big, ripe, needs-more-bottle-age Lerida Estate Shiraz Viognier 2007; the sublimely elegant Clonakilla O’Riada Shiraz 2008 and the spicy, tangy Collector Reserve Shiraz 2007.

Another three shirazes followed, tastily matched with Wyntrade lamb shoulder (www.wyntradelamb.com.au)  and smoked, semi-dried tomato and mushroom ragout: Capital Wines The Frontbencher Shiraz 2007, an outstanding medium bodied style with distinctive firm, tight, tannin structure and great cellaring future; the perfumed, sumptuous and soft Clonakilla Hilltop Shiraz 2008 (but why, oh why was it at this dinner?); and a fading Four Winds Vineyard Shiraz 2005.

The final course put three Small Cow Farm cheeses (Robertson, NSW – www.smallcowfarm.com) alongside the bright but savoury and dry Ravensworth Sangiovese 2008; the austere Yarrh Wines Cabernet Sauvignon 2006; and the marvellously intense, fine, brisk and sweet Lark Hill Auslese Riesling 2008, from our district’s highest vineyard.

From this and other tastings it’s clear that 2008 was a great vintage for Canberra for both red and white wines. And because they’re available in greater quantities than the frost devastated 2007s, they should be more easily accessible. The 2008 whites, released for the most part last year, are now running down, but the reds are just coming into the market and will be worth pursuing.

The connection between local wines and food, too, is strong. It’s a passionate theme for Janet Jeffs, but that’s a story for another day.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009