Category Archives: Wine

Albarino mix-up spreads to Spain

29 April 2009People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Until recently Australia’s vignerons had – or thought they had – about 150 hectares of albarino in the ground. But DNA testing initiated by the CSIRO in January found that our albarino was, in fact, savagnin blanc (not related to the popular variety sauvignon blanc, and also known as traminer).

The discovery opens a can of worms for every one in the supply chain from vine nurseries, to growers, makers, distributors, retailers and scientific and regulatory bodies around the world.

In Australia, the first and most immediately affected are successful albarino makers with stock labelled and ready for market or under production from the 2009 vintage. These include the Barossa’s Damien Tscharke (our largest producer, with 4,000 cases of the 2009 vintage in the making), Brown Brothers, Crittenden Wines and Bermagui’s tiny Rusty Fig vineyard, owned by Garry Potts and Frances Perkins.

Following the CSIRO discovery, the Australian Wine and Brand Corporation – the federal body responsible for administering wine law – issued a blunt press release. It told winemakers that it was an offence to sell wine with a false description and that “if you have ‘albarino’ vines that were sourced from the CSIRO collection, then the wine produced from those vines cannot be described using that name”. It also urged growers with vines from other sources to have their material DNA tested.

On the surface that sound fair enough. Indeed, all of the albarino makers I’ve spoken to are preparing for the change. But the black letter of the law doesn’t take into account the peculiar circumstances of this error. It appears to have originated in Spain, affects many wine producing countries (including Spain, Portugal and Australia) and its origins may go as far back as 1100AD.

In a paper to be published in the May edition of Grape Grower & Winemaker, Chris Bourke (owner of Sons & Brother vineyard, Orange) traces the history of savagnin and discusses its confusion with albarino. He told me that savagnin probably found its way from France’s Jura region to Galicia, northwestern Spain, around 1100AD.

There it would have grown side-by-side with albarino, the region’s current signature variety, ever since. He says there is good evidence that modern Spanish and Portuguese ‘albarino’ vineyards contain a mix of three varieties – albarino, savagnin and caino blanco – and, therefore, that much of what Spain sells as ‘albarino’ is probably a blend of the three varieties.

This may explain why experts see so much similarity between Australian ‘albarino’, made from savagnin, and Spanish albarino

Just as a visiting French vine expert precipitated Australia’s recent ‘albarino’ testing, another Frenchman, Paul Truel, questioned the identity of Spain’s albarino as far back as 1983, Chris Bourke claims.

Ultimately the Spanish established that ‘true’ albarino had a distinctive DNA, identified savagnin as a ‘false’ albarino and removed it from the national collection – but not before the damage was done.

The Spanish, says Bourke, claim that a single mis-identified vine is responsible for the false albarino that spread around the world.

For Australia, the problem began unknowingly when the CSIRO sourced ‘albarino’ from Galicia, Spain, in 1989. This is thought to be the ultimate source of all the ‘albarino’ now planted here. In a letter to his albarino customers last week, Mornington Peninsula vigneron Garry Crittenden wrote, “The problem seems to be generic in that the only known source of planting material in the whole of Australia is CSIRO so every producer, Australia wide, is caught up in the issue. Somehow there has been a stuff up along the line”. Indeed.

Garry said that he sources albarino from two blocks on the Mornington Peninsula and Sam Miranda’s vineyard in the King Valley and that he’s tracked all three back to the CSIRO.

So if what we’ve been drinking as albarino is actually savagnin (an unfamiliar variety to most of us) and savagnin is just another name for traminer (a familiar old friend to Australians), why doesn’t it taste musky and grapey like the traminer we’re used to?

This is probably where the whole world is confused – and why experts like the Barossa’s Damien Tscharke and Mornington’s Garry Crittenden find it impossible to distinguish between savagnin and albarino vines or the wines made from them. The same might be said for all those Portuguese and Spanish growers, too.

It highlights the subtleties of the vine, the limitations of DNA testing and also the persistence of muscat, perhaps the oldest of our cultivated varieties. Muscat influences many varieties and accounts for the aroma and flavour difference between savagnin (traminer) and gewürztraminer.

Now, Australians and Germans use traminer, incorrectly, as a synonym for gewürztraminer. The difference between the two is easily discernible in the colour of the berries and the aroma and flavour of wine made from them. But, says Chris Bourke, the two have identical DNA.

He says the difference is probably made by a single enzyme that boosts production in the berries of monoterpenes – the compounds that give gewürztraminer its powerful, distinctive musky aroma, flavour and viscosity – traits absent in mere traminer (savagnin).

While the existence of the two strains (sometime called musque clones and non-musque clones) has long been known, Bourke believes that this is the first appearance in Australia of the non-musque strain since James Busby’s importation of it in 1832. But Bourke sees its presence as a positive.

However, Australian albarino makers now face a challenge in re-branding their product and selling the message to drinkers. But they have much on their side, including knowledgeable drinkers, strong trade support, especially among sommeliers, and a tasty product with a real flavour difference.

Garry Crittenden is hopeful that a coming stakeholder meeting with the AWBC can produce a practical result – perhaps giving producers a phasing-in period to sell existing stock in the domestic market as ‘albarino’.

However, other options could be available. Those with proprietary names, such as Tscharke ‘Girl Talk’ and Crittenden ‘Los Hermanos’ might remove the varietal tag from the front label altogether – and perhaps tell the savagnin story on the back label.

Tscharke, Crittenden, Brown and Potts all say that regardless of the outcome they intend to continue with the variety whatever it’s called. It’ll still taste the same.

With Australian winemakers preparing to rename their albarinos, what should we expect of Spanish producers? If, as seems likely, much of their albarino production is a blend of albarino, savagnin and caino blanco, shouldn’t it, too, be renamed to reflect the reality?

Gago keeps the Penfolds flame burning

22 April 2009People, WineChris Shanahan

Peter Gago presented the soon-to-be-released Grange 2004 and other top-end Penfolds wines in Canberra recently. What a contrast I noted between these confident, beautiful, unique, world-class wines and the dour attitude of Foster’s (Penfolds’ parent company) towards its suffering wine division.

The survival of the Penfolds culture across decades of rationalisation, culminating in Foster’s disastrous acquisition of Southcorp (previous owner of Penfolds), seems to be a result largely of the tenacity of winemakers and grape growers behind the wines.

What Gago and his team have achieved is remarkable. It’s hard to over estimate just how profoundly good these top end wines are and how important they are to Australia’s export push into the future.

The ‘halo’ effect created by Penfolds wines now extends well beyond Grange as critics and some consumers in our major export markets realise the depth of what Max Schubert created and his successors, Don Ditter, John Duval and Peter Gago, extended. Much of the mystique rests on the outstanding cellaring capacity of the wines, with vintages back to the fifties and sixties periodically bowling the critics over.

The historic cellar at Magill, in urban Adelaide, is now a hub of innovation – where Gago and the team continue to fine-tune the traditional styles and develop new ones. They make many of the top wines, including Grange, in the same old open concrete fermenters that Max used back in the early fifties.

The traditional wines evolved over the last decade or so, maintaining their robust structure, but becoming perhaps a little brighter and purer in fruit expression with finer tannin structure. The new 2004 Grange is an extraordinary example of this subtle shift. It’s a powerful expression of warm-climate shiraz, still vibrant and crimson coloured at five years, with deep layers of fruit and tannin. Gago sees it as the ‘best in the last 25 years’, comparing it stylistically to the 1990 and 1996. But in true Grange fashion, it won’t begin to reveal its best for another decade.

Some of the zealots now spruiking our elegant cool-climates shiraz and pooh-poohing traditional styles might have a rethink when they taste 2004 Grange – or its robust but graceful and elegant cellar mate RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz 2006. This is as good as Barossa shiraz gets.

The third shiraz among the new releases, St Henri 2005, sits apart stylistically from Grange. It’s a taut, elegant style aged in very old, large oak casks. These provide maturation but not oak flavour – an inherent component, in different ways, of both Grange (100% new American oak) and RWT (French oak barrels, 70% new).

From experience, St Henri, despite its lighter body, needs time to reveal its best – perhaps from about ten years’ age, although good vintages like the 1983 and 1971 still drink beautifully.

The only single-vineyard red among the upcoming releases is the Magill Estate Shiraz 2006, matured, for the first time since 1998 in all new oak – 71% French, 29% American. It’s a fuller style than St Henri, but still fine boned and needing another four or of five years to reveal its best.

Bin 707 2006, the cabernet equivalent of Grange, is a multi-region blend matured in all new American oak. Current orthodoxy says that cabernet should be in French oak. But American oak works for modern Bin 707, principally because it’s such fine oak, but also because the fruit has the power to support it. Gago accurately describes 707 and Grange as being like wound-up springs, needing time to uncoil. This gels with my own experience as we are currently drinking the 1986 vintage at Chateau Shanahan and see no need to rush the last few precious bottles.

Gago says that from the 2008 vintage there’ll be an upmarket cabernet to accompany Bin 707. He believes that just as the fragrant, French-oak-matured RWT Barossa Shiraz protects the powerful American-oak-matured Grange style from change, the new French-oak-matured Coonawarra Cabernet (yet to be named) ought to protect the Bin 707 style.

And for visitors to the cellar door and restaurant at Magill, Gago offers several ‘Cellar Reserve’ wines made and matured on the estate.

The opulent, ripe, French-oak-matured, Cellar Reserve Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 comes from very old vineyards, including Penfolds Kalimna vineyard in the northern Barossa. This one could be cellared, but it’s succulent and lovely to enjoy now, too.

Cellar Reserve Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir has been on the menu for many years, but the 2007, to me is outstanding. It’s in the deeply layered Penfolds style, with silky, deep tannins and a spectrum of very complex varietal flavours. This should evolve well for a decade or more.

The first release of a Cellar Reserve McLaren Vale Tempranillo (2007 vintage) follows several earlier trials with the variety. It’s from the Oliver vineyard, McLaren Vale, and goes straight to the top of the class for this variety in Australia.

Even more accomplished is the Cellar Reserve Barossa Valley Sangiovese 2007, sourced from vines planted on the Kalimna Vineyard in the early eighties and the ten-year-old Georgiadis Vineyard at nearby Marananga.

I’ve not tasted another Australian sangiovese that comes near this for quality. It has richness, purity of varietal flavour, complexity and the loveliest ripe-tannin structure imaginable. This is a masterpiece.

It’s ‘fruity’ not ‘sweet’ to Brown Brothers

15 April 2009People, WineChris Shanahan

Big retailers quickly sense consumer pain. And to preserve sales and profits they apply pressure on suppliers for better trading terms – be it rebates, discounts, promotional payments, bonus stock, longer credit periods or even a combination of these.

The savings are largely competed away. And in Britain, said Ross Brown of Brown Brothers on a recent visit to Canberra, retailers turned ‘ballistic’ in the current severe economic downturn, driving prices ever lower. He says supermarket chain ASDA led the fray but Tesco quickly joined in, fearful of losing market share.

For cash-strapped drinkers the discounting keeps wine in reach. But for equally cash-strapped producers, it’s making the UK’s feared BOGOF (by-one-get-one-free) deals of recent years appear gentle.

In the domestic market, Brown sees the biggest threat to wineries like his own as the rapid growth of private labels offered by Coles and Woolworths. Even so, he says the local market remains strong for the Brown Brothers brand.

He recalls that in the downturn following the market crash of 1989 his business came through strongly. He sees this as a result of strong branding and positioning most of their range at a modest price, not at the vulnerable top end.

Today that means very good, very strongly branded products retailing at $15–$20, with sales driven by consumer desire for the wines, not retailer discounting. Across the decades Browns have stood out as brand builders in a discount-led market, often coming to market with novel new products.

Ross cites the example of Moscato, a fruity, muscat-based, low alcohol wine. It’s a classic style of Asti, Italy, but had little following here in Australia and virtually no local examples until Browns launched theirs ten years ago.

It became market leader and according to AC Nielsen, in the year to 22 March 2009 was Australia’s ninth biggest selling white by value. Its success inspired many others and may have saved the various muscat varieties from extinction in Australia.

It also spawned Zibbibo, Browns phenomenally successful low alcohol, fruity sparkling wine. Then a pink version, Zibbibo Rosa, launched last year found a new army of followers without taking share from the original.

Another huge success in what Ross and his wife Judy call the ‘fruity’ category is the red Dolcetto & Syrah, Australia’s fourth biggest selling red wine by value. Now, we’d normally expect the red varieties dolcetto or syrah (aka shiraz) to be dry. But Brown’s version is very sweet – containing about 50 grams per litre of sugar.

That’s unconventional. But like so many Brown Brothers wines before it, its large scale roll out flowed from more modest success at the cellar door – perhaps one of the best test markets in the world with 90,000 or so visitors a year.

Like the odd winemaker in every generation, probably since the year dot, Browns have perceived that wine is a peculiar flavour, perhaps to the majority of humans. It’s generally an acquired taste and often the introduction is through fruity, sweet styles, often with an invigorating bubble.

In his wonderful little booklet, The view from our place (Simon & Schuster, UK, 2006) winemaker Phil Laffer writes of the birth of our modern wine industry, “Australian really started drinking wine in a serious way with the advent in the 1950s and 1960s of products with wonderful names such as Rhinegold, Barossa Pearl and Ben Ean Moselle. These are now as unfashionable as the sweet German hock that was popular in the UK market in the 1960s.

“They were all white wines, they were all sweet and they were all well made… Each was attractive to drink and, collectively, this style persuaded Australians into drinking wine”.

The Browns, though, see this a perennially successful theme. Each new generation finds its own taste – and Browns have been incredibly perceptive in finding it and offering very high quality wines that Ross and Judy, with some justification, prefer to call ‘fruity’ rather than sweet. It’s justified because the successful wines all have terrific grapey flavours, not just sweetness.

But there’s more – as Brown Brothers offers seriously good, often cutting edge, quality across a very wide spectrum of styles

Wines sleuths sniff out the pepper molecule

8 April 2009People, WineChris Shanahan

Research being done by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), with help from Canberra’s Jim Lumbers (Lerida Estate) and Frank van der Loo (Mount Majura Vineyard), could have a profound impact on how vignerons control the level of pepperiness in shiraz – Australia’s signature variety.

Their work is part of the long history we have of digging into the chemistry of wine flavours. And what science unearths sometimes gels with long-used wine descriptions. A few decades back, for example, Australian scientists identified methoxypyrazene as the compound underpinning the aroma and flavour of sauvignon blanc.

Wines made from the variety, especially those from cool areas, had often been described as tasting of capsicum or gooseberry. Subsequent testing found methoxypyrazene at the heart of capsicum and gooseberry flavours, giving a scientific basis for the descriptors used for sauvignon blanc.

I don’t think Australian scientists discovered the terpene family behind riesling’s distinctive floral character. But they’ve certainly wondered why, with bottle age, some rieslings develop a distinctive ‘kero’ aroma. It’s now thought to be caused by the oxidation of terpenes. And since terpenes are partly behind the aroma of kerosene, the descriptor ‘kero’ for old riesling has some scientific basis.

And less than two years ago a group of Australian scientists discovered the molecule (another of the terpene family) behind the widely observed ‘peppery’ character in shiraz.

In a paper published on the BioInfoBank Library website early last year, the scientists write, “An obscure sesquiterpene, rotundone, has been identified as a hitherto unrecognised important aroma impact compound with a strong spicy, peppercorn aroma. Excellent correlations were observed between the concentration of rotundone and the mean ‘black pepper’ aroma intensity rated by sensory panels for both grape and wine samples, indicating that rotundone is a major contributor to peppery characters in shiraz grapes and wine…”

OK, so rotundone makes shiraz grapes and wine taste peppery. But what makes peppercorns peppery? The wine sleuths weren’t buying into the old belief that it resulted from chemical complexity.

Further investigation revealed “Rotundone was found in much higher amounts in other common herbs and spices, especially black and white peppercorns, where it was present at approximately 10,000 times the level found in ‘peppery’ wine. Rotundone is the firsts compound found in black or white peppercorns that has a distinctive peppery aroma”.

The sensory tests revealed two other remarkable facts about rotundone. The first was that 80 per cent of the tasting panel detected it in amazingly tiny concentrations: 16 billionths of a gram per litre in wine or 8 billionths of a gram in water. These tasters could also discern spikes in flavour intensity as the concentration increased.

The second striking observation (marketers please note) was that 20 per cent of the tasters couldn’t detect rotundone at all – even in water at concentrations of 4,000 billionths a gram per litre, 500 times the detectable threshold for the other tasters. Their conclusion that “the sensory experience of two consumers enjoying the same glass of shiraz wine might be very different” could be an understatement -– but it won’t stop the research on rotundone’s affect on wine flavour.

To track it’s development in grapes and wine, Frank and Jim began sending shiraz berry samples to the AWRI from the time of veraison (the stage where grapes begin to soften, develop red colour and ripen). The AWRI hopes to gain a better understanding of when and how rotundone forms and what determines its concentration in the berries.

And because rotundone is believed to be in or near the skin of the grape, its concentration in wine could be affected by the duration of skin contact during winemaking. The time varies considerably – from a minimum of perhaps seven days to three or four weeks.

The duration of contact depends largely on the winemaker’s preference – shorter periods allow for fermentation and extraction of colour and tannin from the skins; longer periods often include pre-ferment or post-ferment maceration, or both, to modify tannin structure.

Whether or not this affects the pepperiness of shiraz should be better understood following the current research.

And to give a long-run perspective on finished wine, Jim Lumbers says “I have donated my vertical of Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier (2007 to 1997) with three gaps kindly being filled by Tim [Kirk, or Clonakilla]”.

Mitchell — a great Clare Estate

1 April 2009People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Mitchell’s of Clare have made extraordinarily good wines consistently since 1975, when Jane and Andrew Mitchell kicked off the venture. I first tasted the wines in the late seventies and have enjoyed them every year since – on the tasting bench, with meals and on all-too-rare visits to the winery. It’s a sustained and impressive performance.

The Mitchell’s drew inspiration from Andrew’s father, Peter McNicol Mitchell, who’d arrived in Clare to grow grapes in 1949. “His hard work”, writes Andrew on one of his back labels, “provided the ideal foundation for the vineyard, cellars and winemaking philosophy which Jane and I have spent most of our lives developing”.

From a small start in 1975, the Mitchell’s now crush 500–700 tonnes of grapes annually, equivalent to around 35–50 thousand dozen bottles. This makes them pretty big as small winemakers go. But they’ve stuck to their knitting and produce nothing but Clare Valley wines, principally from their own vineyards but with some material from local growers.

The Mitchell’s riesling and shiraz (Clare’s signature varieties) always rank with the best from the region. But they produce several other convincing styles, including semillon, cabernet sauvignon and a unique grenache, sangiovese, mourvedre blend.

The current releases include two rieslings, Watervale 2008 from the Mitchell’s Watervale vineyard in southern Clare, and McNicol 2005 from a cooler, higher site (500 metres versus 420 metres) to the north.

It’s the first release of the McNicol 2005 so for comparison we opened it alongside a bottle of the 2005 Watervale. They were both fresh and lively but the Watervale was half a shade deeper in colour than the McNicol and a little rounder, softer and more mature on the palate – a delicious wine, but notably different from the brisk, taut, very concentrated McNicol.

Given similar winemaking approaches, the subtle aroma and flavour differences express the two different sites. Presumably that’s driven largely by altitude and, hence, ripening temperature. But different soil types probably play a role, too – stony quartzite at the McNicol site and red loam over limestone at Watervale.

The McNicol represents excellent value at $42 for a beautiful five-year-old riesling. The 2005 Watervale is no longer available. But the 2008 is outstanding – in the Mitchell’s comparatively full, ripe and richly textured style. Like the 2005 it should continue to drink well as it matures over years – perhaps for a decade.

Semillon’s long and, at times, successful history in the Clare Valley probably had its heyday was when it was labelled ‘white burgundy’. It continues to make a delicious wine but for reasons unknown the word ‘semillon’ now seems to turn wine drinkers off.

It’s a pity because several Clare growers, including Mitchell and Mount Horrocks, make appealing, satisfying versions. The just-released Mitchell Watervale 2007 uses wild-yeast ferment and French oak to great effect. The technique captures the appealing lemon-like varietal character of the variety, builds a rich, smooth texture and inserts a sympathetic note of oak flavour. It’s vibrant and enjoyable now and ought to age well for many years. And showing semillon’s versatility, Mitchell Noble Semillon 2006 ($20 for 375ml) shows the variety’s sweet but dazzling face, overlaid with apricot and marmalade-like notes of botrytis cinerea (noble rot).

The Mitchell reds all come with a little bottle age. That’s rare and it adds a lot to their enjoyment. The modestly priced GSM, for example, comes from the excellent 2005 vintage. It’s an unoaked blend of grenache, sangiovese and mourvedre sourced from very old hand-pruned vines. Exuberant grenache forms the base but it’s restrained by small amounts of savoury, tannic sangiovese and mourvedre – resulting in a lively, fruity, maturing red with a fine-boned but assertive tannic bite. $22 is a small price to pay for a wine of this calibre.

The two shirazes in the release are from the 2006 and 2001 vintages. Mitchell Peppertree Shiraz 2006, from Watervale, is crimson-rimmed and fragrant with succulent varietal flavour reminiscent of ripe-black-cherry (with a little black-pepper in the background).

The screwcap sealed McNicol Shiraz 2001 ($45) reveals its extra five years bottle age in its colour (red, not crimson like the 2006) and that indescribable, satisfying shift from ‘grape-like to ‘red-wine-like’. A deep, sweet fruitiness remains (that’s the core of the wine) but there’s now a mellow edge that adds immensely to the drinking pleasure. But it’s only just entering that mellow phase, so it’s likely to give pleasure for another decade or more.

The Mitchell wines are well distributed, so they shouldn’t be too hard to find. They’re also available at cellar – a must-visit if you visit the Clare Valley. See www.mitchellwines.com

Canberra vintage 2009 begins

25 March 2009WineChris Shanahan

Canberra’s 2009 vintage is underway as I write and will be in full swing when you read this. It’s almost certain to be smaller than the extraordinary 2008 season when, for example, Lerida Estate harvested more than 70 tonnes from a vineyard that ought to yield about 45 tonnes. However, barring adverse weather in the next few weeks, quantities will still be in the normal range.

We won’t know the quality until we begin drinking the wines in a few months. But the fruit that’s been harvested so far appears to be ripe and healthy and reflects the seasonal conditions.

The season started well with mild weather and good spring and early summer rainfall. Then dry conditions set in and temperatures rose, culminating in a couple of severe heat waves that put vines under stress.

But locals makers escaped the extremes experienced by vignerons in Victoria and South Australia, where temperatures soared into the forties and strong winds exacerbated heat stress in the vines.

In Victoria and South Australia many growers reported severe crop losses caused by sunburn to the fruit or leaf loss that left vines unable to ripen their loads.
Canberra’s losses, in general, appear to be more modest although some growers, including Roger and Faye Harris at Brindabella Hills, reported significant reduction in yields caused by hot winds. In general, it seems that growers with adequate water were able to maintain vine health during the heat.

At Hall, the Canberra District’s lowest sub-region (around 550 metres), Dr Roger Harris of Brindabella Hills Winery calls it ‘a funny season’. Rogers says any summer rain came only as thunderstorms distributing moisture unevenly. One storm dumped 50 mm at Murrumbateman, but only 5 mm at Hall.

When I spoke to Roger on 14 March he’d already harvested the early-ripening varieties, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay and expected to start on riesling and shiraz from about 21 March.

He’d also processed fruit from a couple of warmer areas outside of Canberra. These included verdelho, albarino and tempranillo from the Rusty Fig vineyard near Bermagui and shiraz from Tumblong, near Gundagai.

From Murrumbateman Ken Helm rates the 2009 riesling from Al Lustenberger’s as even better than the 2008. He said the green juice had ‘beautiful acid and flavour’. He’d crushed nine tonnes of riesling by Saturday 14 March.

By that time chardonnay had just finished fermenting and sauvignon blanc had begun ticking over. Ken anticipates a smaller vintage than in 2008. He says that Canberra may have been spared the worst of the heat damage because it arrived before veraison (when berries begin to soften and ripen) for most varieties.

At nearby Clonakilla Tim Kirk reports great colour and ripe flavours, but low acidity, in shiraz from the warmer Hilltops region. Because of the heat wave he sees 2009 as ‘more of a red vintage than a white vintage’.

Tim makes a slightly fuller style of riesling than Ken Helm and was leaving his on the vines for another couple of weeks. He expected to harvest viognier from 22 March and shiraz from 25 March. He believed that if the fine, mild weather held for another two weeks a good vintage could become an outstanding one.

Frank Van de Loo of Mount Majura Vineyard was busy pressing chardonnay when I called and had also harvested merlot for rosé and pinot noir for sparkling wine. Other varieties, including riesling and pinot gris needed another week or two of ripening, Frank said.

Unlike many vineyards in the region Mount Majura had set an even larger crop than in the generous 2008 season. If left on the vine this would’ve reduced wine quality, so Frank’s team trimmed it back in January – dropping around 60 per cent of the riesling and graciano on the ground.

During the season Frank’s been working with the Australian Wine Research Institute on rotundone, the compound recently identified as the source of shiraz’s distinctive peppery character. He’s been sending shiraz berries at various stages of ripeness and will later send samples from the fermentation. But that’s a story for another day.

At Lake George Lerida Estate’s Jim Lumbers anticipates an even higher quality vintage than the ‘wonderful’ 2008. He said that after the heatwave ‘ripening slowed delightfully’. He believes that the longer hanging time for the fruit will produce ripe flavours at low sugar (and therefore lower alcohol) levels.

Pinot and chardonnay for sparkling wine and pinot noir for rosé were already fermenting when I spoke to Jim. And he expected to be under way with the main harvest by 21 March.

Up at Lark Hill, our highest vineyard, at 860 metres, vintage was still a week away when I spoke to Chris Carpenter. He said he expected to harvest pinot noir and chardonnay for sparkling wine on 19 and 20 March and for table wine in the first week of April, followed by riesling and grüner veltliner (their first crop of this variety) a week later.

Chris said they’d been short of water during the heatwave but their biodynamic practices, including deep mulching, had kept the vineyards in good health. He expects volumes to be about the same as in 2008.

We’ll have a sniff around the district in a few months to see what’s really in store from vintage 2009.

Shaky metaphor stirs Aussie wine writers

18 March 2009People, WineChris Shanahan

The first handwritten postcard arrived in early July 2006, postmarked Paris, 30 June. It read ‘Dear Chris, It’s a long time since we’ve seen each other as I have been away for nearly 10 years now. Funnily enough I am back where I started and it made me think of you and the old days. Anyway, I plan to catch up with you when I get back to Australia soon. Love & wishes OBS’.

It made me think of the old days, too. But I couldn’t remember ‘OBS’. And I couldn’t think of any lost friends. My wife raised her eyebrows; grown-up kids seemed amused but suspicious.

A week later the second card arrived from Dubai, postmarked just one day after the Paris one. OBS was on the move. ‘Dear Chris’, she greeted me (it was a woman’s handwriting), ‘Dubai is hot at this time of year and will get hotter. The gold here is beautiful, good value and adorns the most stylish.

‘New Dubai is the vision of one man – truly amazing. 25% of the world’s building cranes are here. It makes me realise that with dedication and passion there are no boundaries to quality and success. I’m so looking forward to talking with you about our mutual friend. Love & wishes OBS’.

So, I shared a mutual friend with OBS. ‘It’s a prank’, said my wife, eyebrows relaxed; grown up son joked about a secret sibling, winked.

Almost two weeks later came the London postcard. ‘Dear Chris’, wrote my long lost friend, ‘Well it’s all been happening here what with the World Cup, Wimbledon and the sales. I was the toast of London and I both dressed and played up like you could not believe. But everyone loved me and it made me so proud to be an Aussie.

‘It’s now time to plan my journey home although I’ll probably make one more stopover. When I do get there I’d love to spend some time with you. Love & wishes OBS’.

By now we were looking forward to the postcards, their hints of lifestyle and self-promotion adding to the OBS mystery. A week or so later came another, from Beau-Rivage Palace, Lausanne, Switzerland. ‘Dear Chris, I’ve travelled well across the alps to Switzerland and I’m now rested in this world famous hotel.

‘I was feeling quite intimidated by the famous parade of names at the hotel when a delightful, professional man agreed to join me in a drink. He liked me immediately and we enjoyed each other’s company most of the night. However, I miss you and my other friends at home and look forward to being with you soon. Love & wishes OBS’.

By now we’d concluded that OBS was a drink. She was Aussie, she saw no limits to quality or success, she’d been the toast of London, she’d travelled well across the alps, and even against other famous names had been enjoyed by a professional gentleman, albeit to excess.

But questions remained unanswered. Who was she and why had she been out of Australia for ten years?

The final postcard, from Sydney, arrived in early August but OBS revealed little: ‘Dear Chris, It’s great to be home safe and sound what with all the trouble in the Middle East right now. Winter is really here isn’t it whilst Europe swelters.
‘The Sydney fish markets received a visit yesterday and a seafood feast was prepared last night, which is something I have missed more than nearly everything else. Oh what joy! I’ve been away for some time now and I can’t tell you how much I have been looking forward to seeing you and making up for lost time. Anyway, I’ll call you in the next few days to try to catch up. Love & wishes OBS’.

But the phone didn’t ring. Instead, came a letter from Richard Owens of Hunter Valley winery, Oakvale, apologising for ‘a marketing programme that may have back fired’. He was also ‘sorry if you or anyone in your family has been concerned or hurt’. What had my fellow wine writers been up to in the good old days? And what were their partners thinking now?

At Chateau Shanahan we’d been puzzled at first, then amused and then curious after the Swiss postcard. We wanted to know who OBS was, not an apology.

And Richard answered our question in the same letter, revealing OBS as Oakvale Barrel Select Shiraz – and she’d been travelling around Europe in a suitcase.

As it turned out OBS wasn’t an old friend – we’d never met – and we didn’t have any mutual friends. She was a metaphor, and a pretty shaky one at that. But she’s welcome to our next dinner party, perhaps accompanying the roast beef. She might even spend the night.

A decade of screwcaps pays off for riesling drinkers

11 March 2009People, WineChris Shanahan

Chateau Shanahan’s in the grip of a severe riesling addiction. Our pleasure comes reliably and economically. And it’s a direct result of Australia’s dramatic switch from cork to screwcap – precipitated in 1999 by a group of determined Clare Valley riesling makers.

Thanks to winemaker Jeffrey Grosset and his Clare Valley mates we’re all enjoying better, fresher wines of every style every day. And if, like Chateau Shanahan, you began tossing a few cases of screw-capped Aussie rieslings under the house ten years ago you’ll understand our excitement.

Over the last few months we’ve snapped the caps off every vintage from 1998 on. We’ve particularly enjoyed those from 2003 and earlier. And though the styles vary from maker to maker and year-to-year, the best share a delicious combination of mature flavours with shimmering freshness.

What’s also coming through is that inexpensive wines from the right regions and makers often cellar well. A good example is Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 2002, bought for around $10 in late 2002.
It’s a wine we’ve always regarded as deliciously undervalued, so there’s a few vintages of it on hand, including the 1997, which is cork sealed. And therein lies a little-known screw cap story that precedes the Clare Valley initiative by one year.

It involves John Vickery, perhaps our most influential riesling maker ever, a team of like-minded makers at Orlando (owners of Richmond Grove) and a few people from the then Coles-Myer-owned Liquorland group.

In April 1997 Vickery conducted tastings of his rieslings back to the 1963 vintage for a handful of fortunate media and the trade at the Richmond Grove Winery, Tanunda. (To read about the tasting search for ‘Riesling master John Vickery unveils a life’s work’ on this site).

The best were magnificent. But John lamented the damage caused by corks, saying that he’d had to open many bottles of some vintages to find one good one. By then he was advocating a return to screw caps, a practice that had been abandoned by winemakers after commercial trials in the late seventies. Though drinkers had rejected screw caps, the seal had subsequently proven itself to be highly effective over the ensuing decades.

Immediately after the tasting, the Coles Myer people negotiated with Orlando to have 1,000 cases each of Richmond Grove’s Watervale and Barossa Rieslings sealed under screwcap from the 1998 vintage.

Coles Myer duly launched the wines Australia wide through its Vintage Cellars wine club magazine, Cellar Press, explaining the benefits to its readers.

Drinkers embraced the idea. And the launch sparked a reaction from other retailers demanding the Richmond Grove rieslings under screw cap. But as Orlando had sealed all but the Coles Myer portion under cork they couldn’t oblige. The exercise, however, demonstrated that the screw cap was an idea whose time had come.

However, it wasn’t embraced universally at first. Some sceptics, including the late Len Evans, felt that wine, and especially red wines, wouldn’t mature properly under screw cap. Others lamented the loss of the ‘romantic’ associations of pulling a cork.

And though the uptake for white wines was rapid, there were teething problems. Some of the early bottlings of riesling and, later, red wines, developed smelly sulphide compounds -– a problem of reduction (lack of oxygen) that could be fixed (and was) by more attentive winemaking.

As well, screw caps could be damaged by direct impact and by being on the top layer of the bottom palate of a three-palate-high stack – both of which could break the airtight seal. But these and other glitches were minor and largely manageable problems, especially when compared to the high failure rate of cork over time.

Of riesling taken from the Chateau Shanahan cellar in the past year or so, we’ve found, for example, that to get one really good bottle of the highly prized, cork-sealed 1997 Orlando Steingarten Riesling, we have to open five bottles. Of those one will be corked or so oxidised that’s it’s not much fun to drink, three will be OK, but dull and one bouncing with life.

We’ve found the same, too, with the cork-sealed 1997 Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling. On the other hand, we’ve had no failures (and lots of pleasure) from numerous screw cap sealed Richmond Grove rieslings from 1998 on.

Other memorable, aged-but-fresh, screw cap bottles enjoyed recently include Petaluma Hanlin Hill Clare Valley Riesling 2003, St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling 2002 and 2003, Leo Buring Eden Valley Riesling 2003, Henschke Julius Eden Valley Riesling 2001, Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling 2005 and Tim Adams Clare Valley Riesling 2003.

This experience suggests that the advent of the screw cap makes riesling perhaps the safest, cheapest and most interesting of Australia’s cellaring wines. It’s all about drinking pleasure in the end. You have to choose the right wines – not all riesling will cellar (your wine retailer could point to a few, and these days that’d include several Canberra District wines).

And you have to keep them somewhere cool and dark. A typical under-the-house Canberra storeroom – annual temperature range from 10 degrees to 20 degrees Celsius – seems fine for ten years or so. That’s all we have. But if you have controlled temperature storage at around 16 degrees constant, the best rieslings should cellar for many decades. My favourite of the Vickery 1997 tastings, for example, was from the 1972 vintage.

Mornington pinot celebration part 3

4 March 2009WineChris Shanahan

At a recent series of pinot noir tastings at Mornington, the opening brackets showed just how variable styles can be. Were these style differences, we were asked, a result of human intervention or attributable to ‘terroir’ – the French the French term, for which there is no English equivalent, meaning roughly ‘the sum of the effects that the local environment has’ on the vine, its fruit and, ultimately, the character of the wine it produces.

I don’t think we solved the riddle of terroir. But we saw that Australia produces very fine pinot in a variety of styles – and that there are certainly observable differences in wines from neighbouring vineyards produced by the same maker, using constant winemaking techniques.

Indeed, the clearest examples of vineyard-derived flavour differences were in the two brackets from France’s Burgundy region.

In the first French bracket, Thierry and Estelle Violet-Guillemard showed us five 2006 vintage wines from their five hectares of vineyards in Pommard, a village just to the south of Beaune.

These were light to medium coloured wines showing subtle but definite variations in aroma, flavour and structure – from the gentle, elegant Pommard 2006 (the basic village classification) through four, more highly-rated individual vineyard wines, La Platiere, Clos de Derriere St-Jean, Pézerolles and the distinctly richer, more supple Les Rugiens.

The distance from vineyard to vineyard is not great (check Pommard on Google Earth to see how small it is) yet Thierry attributed the differences we could smell and taste to ‘terroir’ – a plausible but unprovable hypothesis. The evidence for ‘terroir’ is our ability to sense differences and the very long-term consistency of those differences. What we don’t understand is the why – what is it specifically that makes the wines of one vineyard different from wines from another?

Perhaps the biggest cause, even across comparatively small distances, is temperature variation. We certainly found evidence for this in two brackets of 2006 vintage Mornington Peninsula wines. Wines from cooler sites tended to be paler and more delicate than those from warmer sites.

For whatever reason, it was a delicious progression – all in the comparatively fine, delicate pinot mould. The style bookends in the first bracket were the amazingly fragrant, taut and delicious Main Ridge Estate Half Acre 2006 (from the Red Hill sub-region) and the much deeper, riper, rounder, softer (and still delicious) Kooyong Single Vineyard Ferrous 2006 (from the Tuerong sub-region).

In between, roughly ascending order of body, were Ten Minutes by Tractor McCutcheon Vineyard 2006 (Main Ridge); Port Phillip Estate Morillon 2006 (Red Hill South); Lindenderry 2006 (Red Hill) and Paradigm Hill 2006 (Merricks).

Similarly, the second bracket of Mornington wines offered a lighter-to-darker spectrum – my favourite in the group being the lighter, finer Eldridge Estate 2006 (Red Hill), similar in its fruit flavours to the Main Ridge Estate wine.

But that’s only a personal preference in a thoroughly delicious line up, again the others, in roughly ascending order of body: Morning Sun 2006 (Main Ridge); Montalto 2006 (Red Hill South); Scorpo 2006 (Red Hill South); Hurley Vineyard ‘Harcourt’ 2006 (Balnarring); and Yabby Lake 2006 (Tuerong).

Before we got to the French or Mornington wines, though, we’d tasted those six amazingly varied Aussie pinots mentioned at the beginning. These ranged in style from the light-coloured and fragrant Paringa Estate Reserve Mornington Peninsula 2006 (Red Hill) to the very deep and powerful Coldstream Hills Yarra Valley Reserve 2006.

Again, I preferred the more restrained, pure Paringa style and the utterly contrasting (though still pale coloured) Bass Phillip 21 South Gippsland 2006 – an idiosyncratic drop that divided opinion but, to me, drank like nectar.

The other marvellous wines in this bracket were Kelvedon Estate East Coast Tasmania 2006, Stefano Lubiana Southern Tasmania 2006 and Bindi Block 5 Macedon Ranges 2006.

Other wines tasted with meals during the two-day Mornington event added to the exciting pinot line up. Here are some that appealed: Foxys Hangout Mornington Peninsula Reserve 2007, Merricks Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004, Nazaary Mornington Peninsula 2004, Tucks Ridge Mornington Peninsula 2007, Phaedrus Mornington Peninsula 007, Morning Sun Mornington 2007, Jones Road Mornington Peninsula 2006, Silverwood Mornington Peninsula 2006, Freycinet Bicheno Tasmania 2006, T’Gallant Tribute Mornington Peninsula 2006, Domain Epis Macedon Ranges 2007, Stonier KBS Mornington Peninsula 2006 (stunning!), Wantirna Yarra Valley 2006, Elgee Park Mornington 2006 and Seaforth Mornington Peninsula 2006.

To me the tastings said that after thirty-odd years of serious pinot making Australia has an extraordinary depth and quality emerging from dozens of outstanding makers. International visitors, Jancis Robinson said that our pinots could make a few jaws drop in the UK – a sentiment supported by Burgundian winemaker Frederic Mugnier. He said it was his first visit to Australia and he’d had a pre-conception of our wines being big, dark and alcoholic – but was surprised instead to find wines of such elegance.

Frederic’s wines (from the villages of Nuits-St-Georges and Chambolle-Musigny) were the real showstoppers. But that’s another story. And we’ll revisit ‘terroir’ before too long.

Mornington pinot celebration part 2

25 February 2009WineChris Shanahan

There’ll be no ‘paradox of thrift’ should any of Uncle Kevin’s largesse wash up at Chateau Shanahan. We’ve developed a taste for expensive pinot noir so we’re hoping to stimulate the economy most nights. And we’ve got our sights on a long list from Australia, New Zealand and Burgundy.

It’s an old craving, fanned recently by three nights and two and a half days of pinot tasting at Mornington Peninsula’s International Pinot Noir Celebration. The locals down there make some of the best pinots in Australia – and had the confidence to show their wines alongside top examples from other Australian regions, New Zealand, Chile, California, Oregon, British Columbia and even Burgundy, pinot’s home.

The Aussie wines – and not just those from the host region – scrubbed up beautifully in a range of styles, from pale and delicate to deep, dark and brooding.

Indeed, the tastings, attended by about 170 people, focused on these style differences and whether they could be attributed to nature or nurture. Were the flavour differences shaped by humans? Or had they more to do with ‘terroir’, the French term, for which there is no English equivalent, meaning roughly ‘the sum of the effects that the local environment has’ on the vine, its fruit and, ultimately, the character of the wine it produces.

The concept is an article of faith in Burgundy, pinot’s home, where the variety has been noted since 1395. As Burgundian winemaker, Frederic Mugnier, reminded us during discussions, over many centuries the Cistercians of the Abbey of Citeaux systematically mapped and described in fine detail the vineyards of Burgundy, providing the basis of today’s classification system.

Their concept of beauty in simplicity, said Mugnier, underpins the Burgundian approach to pinot, a variety that he believes expresses the site on which it’s grown. And in a region where land surfaces vary noticeably in short distances, this results in countless ‘terroirs’ producing wines that differ, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.

UK critic Jancis Robinson said our tastings would look at three levels of ‘terroir’ – macro (different world regions), mezzo (different regions in one country) and micro (different vineyards in one region).
Like Fred Mugnier, Robinson sees pinot as a delicate and fine variety that ‘interprets’ the site on which it’s grown and she assumed, correctly, that the room was full of ‘terroir’ true believers.

She made the point that there are bad ‘terroirs’ as well as good ones, where vines struggle so humans intervene to get a half decent result – for example, a winemaker might make up for poor fruit flavour with a dose of spicy new oak. And there are good ‘terroirs’ where humans overwhelm delicious fruit flavours with heavy-handed winemaking.

After Jancis’s talk we moved on to a series of thoughtfully structured small tastings, knowing what the wines were but, for most of the groupings, not their serving order.

We began with a little, high-quality snapshot of Australian pinots from South Gippsland, Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley, East Coast Tasmania, Mornington Peninsula and Southern Tasmania.

The follow up was a big-picture new world group – from Willamette Valley Oregon, San Antonio Valley Chile, Martinborough New Zealand, Anderson Valley California, Waikari New Zealand and the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada.

From there it was on to micro ‘terroirs’ tasting five pinots from Pommard, a Burgundy sub-region. The wines were all from the same vintage and all from the same maker.

We followed this with two Mornington brackets, examining the marked style variations of this one region, and finished with a line up of Frederic Mugnier’s wines from two Burgundy sub-regions, Nuits-St-Georges and Chambolle-Musigny.

These were formal tastings with facilitators directing discussions between 170 of us on the floor and a panel of winemakers for each bracket. With informal tasting over lunch and dinner, we tasted perhaps 70 top-notch pinots during the event.

We’ll look at some of these next week.