Category Archives: Wine

Two Tassie wineries make half the State’s wine

11 March 2001WineChris Shanahan

Two Tasmanian producers — Pipers Brook and Tamar Ridge — between them own a little over half the island’s approximately 500 hectares of vines. Both are set to boost production significantly and, through the hard-learned lessons of twenty-five years viticultural and winemaking experience, mechanisation of new vineyards and efficient winemaking processes, bring Tasmanian wines to a broader global audience.

According to Jane Ross, Pipers Brook Production Coordination Manager, the company’s vineyard holdings now stand at 224 hectares on ten sites in the Pipers Brook, Pipers River and West Tamar regions in northern Tasmania.

Site variation gives Pipers Brook a considerable range of ripening conditions for its diversity of grape varieties: predominantly chardonnay and pinot noir for both table and sparkling wine, plus commercial quantities of riesling, pinot gris, cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc, merlot, cabernet franc, traminer and pinot meunier.

Founded by Dr Andrew Pirie in 1974, Pipers Brook later became a privately listed public company before listing on the Australian stock exchange in 1998, acquiring the Heemskerk and Rochecombe vineyards from Jo Chromy, and establishing new, efficient vineyards.

The Heemskerk winery, adjacent to the original Pipers Brook vineyard has been decommissioned and the fruit directed to the Pipers Brook and Ninth Island brands. And the Rochecombe winery, to the south of Pipers Brook, has been re-Christened ‘Ninth Island’. It is now the processing centre for Pipers Brook sparkling-wine grapes.

After a quarter of a century at Pipers Brook, Andrew Pirie understands the idiosyncrasies of the original vineyards. What to the casual eye looks like an homogenous long line of undulating vines is, in fact, an intricate patchwork of sites producing a surprising spectrum of wine aromas and flavours depending on grape variety and subtle variations in aspect, soil type, drainage, vine orientation and other factors.

This intimate understanding of the older vineyards and a growing understanding of the newer vineyards in warmer sites underpins Pipers Brook’s new four-tier branding structure. And, just as it does in Burgundy, the wines at the very peak of the pyramid come from quite small, favoured locations.

Look at the photograph, for example, and locate the shed towards the top right hand corner. To the left, a little plot of well-drained, naturally low-yielding vineyard in mid-slope consistently produces the estate’s finest pinot noir grapes.

From the 2000 vintage this fruit has been processed separately and will eventually be released as a single site wine – presumably at whatever price the market will bear. One taste of a barrel sample suggests it will be a ripper. But let’s hold our verdict until it’s blended, bottled and ready to go.

Similarly, Andrew Pirie streams fruit of various quality towards the appropriate brand: the ‘budget’ Ninth Island range (‘budget’ meaning a little over $20 in Tassie terms), Pipers Brook Estate, Pipers Brook Reserve and the new Pipers Brook single-site wines (the forthcoming 2000 vintage chardonnay, like the Pinot, is a knockout).

This fractionation of the vineyard resource – and its expansion into the warmer West Tamar area – points to a surge in quality across the Pipers Brook range. In particular, we can look forward to fuller, riper, more complex cabernet-based blends, with notable lifts in quality, too, to the traditional strengths: riesling, traminer, chardonnay, pinot gris and pinot noir.

The release of Pirie 1995, Pipers Brook’s superb sparkling wine, also demonstrated the sensational fruit quality of the region’s cooler sites. The current-release 1996 vintage continues in the same mould.

Sourced predominantly from the ‘Hills’ vineyard, a cooler site not far to the south of the Pipers Brook winery, this 70 per cent pinot noir, 30 per cent chardonnay blend presents the intense but fine-boned flavours unique to fruit grown in a genuinely cool climate, where grapes become physiologically ripe at a low sugar, high acid level.

For all the excitement of Pipers Brooks’ top reds, whites and sparkling wines, the company’s bread, butter and profit appears most likely to come from the Ninth Island range, now moving rapidly up the quality curve as the new and better vineyard resource comes on stream.

These are less complex, less intensely flavoured wines than the Pipers Brook range. But they are honest, beautifully crafted wines offering the ripe but delicate flavours of the cool climate. I particularly like the 2000 vintage pinot noir for its delicious, pure varietal flavour and velvety, fruit-sweet palate, and the 2000 vintage chardonnay for its rich fruit and racy, bracing structure.

These delicious $20-ish Ninth Island wines along with those from Jo Chromy’s 55 hectare West Tamar vineyards may never be household names, as production remains comparatively modest. Nevertheless, these wonderful wines are the first Tassies to go mainstream. As production reaches its full potential over the next few years, we will see these wines on the shelves of all major wine retailers. And the flavours really are worth experiencing.

Cool climates, tasty berries and Tassie wine

18 February 2001WineChris Shanahan

What has a bowl of tiny, exquisitely flavoured strawberries got to do with wine? The intense but delicate flavours of a cool climate, that’s what. The strawberries, fresh picked from Tamar Retreat B&B’s garden, became a metaphor for the equally intense but delicate Tasmanian wines tasted on a quick tour in late January.

As if to emphasise the cool climate, northern Tasmania’s maximum temperature hovered — comfortably for vines and humans — in the mid twenties as the mainland wilted in the high thirties.

Near Bicheno on the east coast (two hours’ drive east south east of Launceston), manicured vines on Freycinet Vineyard’s amphitheatre-shape site, soaked up the gentle warmth, steadily ripening their lode.

In this cool but sunny site near the spectacular Freycinet National Park, winemaker Claudio Radenti lets the exquisite fruit flavours do the talking in a range of near perfect wines.

Claudio says he’s happy to follow the style established by his father-in-law, Freycinet’s founder Geoffrey Bull.

Geoff founded the vineyard in 1980, after carefully selecting the site for its climate and the lean, mean soils that help vines focus on ripening fruit, not growing new foliage.

Within ten years Geoff had established a reputation for his ripe, delicate, seamless wines – all estate grown, made and bottled.

During this period, while making wine at Goundreys in Western Australia, Claud hired Lindy Bull, Geoff’s daughter, as assistant winemaker. They later married, moved to Freycinet and took over the running of the vineyard and winemaking from Geoff in 1992.

With the same vineyard-to-bottle perfectionism established by Geoff, Claud makes a ripe, delicate riesling, one of Australia’s best pinot noirs, a surprising seductive, elegant cabernet merlot, and a glorious chardonnay which, like the pinot, sits amongst the very best made in Australia.

Freycinet’s tiny plot of muller-thurgau is giving way to more pinot noir. And Claud has recently added a superb bubbly, modestly named Radenti, to the portfolio.

He made the first vintage of this pinot noir – chardonnay blend in 1993. The family was thrilled by the quality and subsequently established a small vineyard, at a slightly cooler site, especially for the new wine.

Radenti 1996, a 60:40 pinot noir chardonnay blend, shows unequivocally just why Tasmania is destined to make Australia’s best sparkling wines. Aussie sparklers in general lack Radenti’s ripe, sweet depth and delicacy – characteristics drawn in Tasmania as they are in France’s Champagne region – from a cool climate that produces physiologically ripe grapes at low sugar and high acid levels.

Claudio Radenti’s fascination with bubbles runs to beer, too. With an old mate, former brewer Ken Holmes, he formed the Wineglass Bay Brewing Company. Together they make small runs of Hazards Ale (named after nearby Hazards Bay), a delightfully full and malty ale seasoned with aromatic/spicy hops, using Tasmanian grown Frankland malt and Hallertau hops.

If you’re in Tassie, you can enjoy Hazards Ale on top at Freycinet Lodge, in the national park, or at the Royal Oak, Launceston. The wines (with the exception of Radenti, at this stage) are distributed by Negociants Australia. However, the quantities are tiny. To ensure supply, reserve a little from your retailer, or order direct from the winery, phone (03 6257 8574.

Two hours’ drive north west of Freycinet, on the west bank of the Tamar River, Tamar Ridge presents a somewhat different face of Tasmanian wine. With 55 hectares under vine, another 30 hectares planned and with production pushing to about ten times that of Freycinet, Tamar aims to bring good Tassie wine to the world at a comparatively modest $20 a bottle.

Well-known Tasmanian businessman Jo Chromy, established Tamar Ridge in 1998 after disposing of Heemskerk and Rochecombe wineries to the publicly listed Pipers Brook.

Jo retained 22 hectares of vines on the West Tamar, designed and built a magnificent winery, extended the vineyard and hired veteran Tasmanian winemaker, Julian Alcorso, to head the small cellar team.

He also hired Adelaide-based wine-package specialist, Barbara Harkness, to design the complete package.
The result is surely one of the most stunning, complete and instant wine-brand creations in the history of Australia’s wine industry.

As if to emphasise the perfect appearance of the vineyards, winery and packaging, Alcorso’s wines won 4 trophies, 4 gold, 4 silver and 8 bronze medals at the Tasmanian wine show, judged by Huon Hooke, James Halliday and Zar Brooks the week before the Chateau Shanahan entourage hit the apple isle.

These are terrific wines which, along with Pipers Brook’s Ninth Island brand, are set to take Tasmanian wines out of the ‘boutique’ category. More on these next week.

Tasmania on the rise

28 January 2001WineChris Shanahan

In vintage 2000, Tasmania harvested 3263 tonnes of grapes, a little under 0.3 per cent of the nation’s 1.147 million tonne total.

Amongst the grape statistics, one little gem sparkles most. And that’s the relative volume of pinot noir being produced. The apple isle’s 1036 tonne pinot crush in 2000 represented 6.4% of the Australian total – disproportionately large after we’ve seen that Tassie makes less than 0.3 per cent of all Australian wine. And pinot noir accounts for 32 per cent of Tassie’s grape crush but makes up only 1.4 per cent of Australia’s.

Shiraz, the mainland’s red hero barely gets a look in. Even cabernet sauvignon, riesling and sauvignon blanc languish at 5, 9, and 8 per cent respectively of the island’s wine grape output.

In 2000 pinot noir’s sparkling wine sibling, chardonnay, weighed in at 1224 tonnes, representing 38 per cent of Tassie production. Australia’s 224,546 tonnes of chardonnay made up 20 per cent of the national crush.

The disparity between the national figures and Tasmania’s simply highlight a narrower focus on top-shelf table wines, and perhaps even more so, on the exquisitely-delicate top-shelf bubblies made only in truly cool climates.

Nobody seems to know exactly what proportion of Tasmania’s pinot noir and chardonnay goes to sparkling wine production. But local guesstimates expect the figure to be around sixty per cent in the coming, even larger vintage.

Certainly a couple of all-Tasmania sparkling blends – Jansz Vintage, Pipers Brook Pirie and Taltarni Clover Hill – may be found relatively easily on the mainland. And virtually every high-quality bubbly producer now acknowledges the importance of Tasmanian fruit.

Southcorp, BRL Hardy and Chandon all ship significant quantities across Bass Straight. Ed Carr, BRL Hardy’s talented bubbly maker, and the latest darling of wine shows, rates Tasmanian fruit as a key to the success of ‘Arras’, the company’s $55 sparkling flagship.

Tom Stevenson, Britain’s well-known sparkling wine aficionado, wrote that Pirie 1995 was the best sparkling wine yet produced in the southern hemisphere.

And, through the mists of time, I recall a dinner party held in about 1979 in Manly, Sydney by former Canberran, Jack Brilliant. Brian Croser was there. We discussed at length the emergent Petaluma’s strategy of sourcing each wine style from the most appropriate region: Clare Valley for riesling, Coonawarra for cabernet sauvignon and, one compromise, the Piccadilly Valley, in the Adelaide Hills, for sparkling wine.

I well recall Croser’s view of Tassie as the site most suited climatically for sparkling wine production. But the expense of running wine across Bass Straight ruled out that option, in his opinion. And so the Adelaide Hills it was – and still is, making it perhaps the only second-best call of one of our most percipient and most successful winemaker/marketers.

If sparkling wine is Tasmania’s biggest contribution to wine quality it is not the only one, as superb table wines across a spectrum of styles continues to emerge between latitudes 41 and 43 degrees south along the north, east and south east coast and hinterlands.

Volumes may be small, but to taste finely-crafted wines like Freycinet Pinot Noir, Lubiana Chardonnay, Pipers Brook Pinot Gris, Tamar Ridge Riesling and tens of others from the state’s 66 winemakers – is to see the unique, if small, place Tasmania occupies on Australia’s wine map.

Taking into account vines planted but not yet yielding in 2000, potential production, without further vineyard development, appears to be in the vicinity of 5000 tonnes – about fifty per cent more than was produced in 2000.

Five hundred and eight hectares in the far north, all within a short drive of Launceston, account for 70 per cent of Tasmania’s vineyard area. The remaining two hundred and twenty three hectares are sprinkled around the East Coast (Bicheno), Coal Valley, Derwent Valley and the Huon/Channel areas, the southernmost being in the vicinity of Cygnet, just below the forty-third parallel.

Vineyard ownership is anything but concentrated. Just eighteen growers own more than ten hectares, twenty three have between five and ten hectares and ninety one hold five or less.

At last count, sixty-six winemakers, including subsidiary brands of larger producers, actively make wine. Of these, just two — Moorilla Estate (1958) and Providence Vineyards (1956) – existed prior to 1960.

Eight commenced operations in the 1970’s, thirty-four in the 1980’s and twenty-one in the 1990’s. (I know, that adds up to sixty-five, not sixty-six. Brian Franklin of Apsley Gorge Vineyard, Bicheno, when did you set up shop?)

Clearly this is all deserves checking out in more detail. I’ll report back on a little Tassie tasting tour over the next few weeks.

WINE REVIEWS
With Tassie shaping up to be the pinot noir capital of Australia, both as sparkling wine star and as the southern hemisphere’s Burgundy, what better place to start than with two delicious red versions from the two producers set to take the style to larger audiences than have ever seen it before.

Tamar Ridge Tasmania Pinot Noir 1999, about $20
Although Tamar Ridge was founded by Joseph Chromy just two years ago, he brought to it 22 hectares of established vineyard on the west Tamar, his own wealth of experience as former owner of Heemskerk and Rochecombe – and the formidable talents of veteran Tasmanian winemaker, Julian Alcorso. Under the attractive Barbara-Harkness-designed package lies a mid-weight, delightfully pinot-scented red with a tasty but fine-boned palate. It captures the elusive and elegant character of pinot with touches of the variety’s gamey character, albeit in a lighter vein. This is a great start to the line, but after tasting several barrel samples of the 2000 vintage with Julian Alcorso this week, there is even better to come. I see this as a seminal wine – one to bring high-quality, complex pinot noir to the market at a comparatively modest price. If you can’t find it in Canberra, call the winery on 03 6334 6208..

Ninth Island Tasmania Pinot Noir 2000, about $22
The recent expansion of publicly listed Pipers Brook, through acquisition and planting, to 224 hectares, makes it the Tassie giant. The expansion will see the company’s second label, Ninth Island, grow considerably in both volume and quality, thanks to Dr Andrew Pirie’s clear vision. Using fruit from the slightly warmer West Tamar region (about thirty kilometres west of Pipers Brook), Andrew’s winemaker Andre Bezemer fashioned in vintage 2000 a wine of exceptionally good aroma and fruit sweetness. It’s easy to drink, but has convincing fine tannins and should develop gamey pinot character if aged for just a year or two. Although a comparative newcomer to the scene, a wine of this character and sophistication could not have been created without Dr Pirie’s quarter century of winemaking and viticultural experience in the Pipers Brook/Tamar regions.

Orange a bright star on the NSW Great Dividing Range

5 March 2000People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

A collation of my Canberra Times articles published between January and March 2000

January 23 2000
Along New South Wales’ Great Divide — from Tooma and Tumbarumba in the south, heading north through Gundagai, Canberra, Yass, Young, Harden, Cowra, Cudal and Cargo, to the cool heights of Orange’s Mount Canobolas and on to Mudgee – sheep, cattle, wheat and orchards have been giving way to the vine at an accelerating rate during the late nineties.

Of New South Wales’ record 1999 grape crop of around 290,000 tonnes (about one quarter of the national crush), vineyards on the West of the Divide accounted for just over 36 thousand tonnes (2.5 million dozen bottles).

Although that may appear small change compared to the Riverina’s 155 thousand tonne harvest (10.9 million dozen) or the Murray River’s 68 thousand tonnes (4.8 million dozen), we’re talking about superior wine quality, higher production costs and, consequently higher grape and wine prices.

The difference is significant. Take for example the weighted average prices of popular wine-grape varieties. In the Riverina in 1999, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon fetched $686 and $989 a tonne respectively. The same varieties in the ACT and Southern Highlands sold for $1,347 and $1,468.

While grape prices don’t tell us everything – and the gap could narrow if there’s a glut or recession – they do reflect, in a general sense, the different roles of the broad acres along the hot, irrigated river lands and the more fragmented, often pioneering, activities in the cooler, higher altitudes.

What all of the State’s remarkably varied wine regions share is the growth in wine tourism being driven by the industry’s expansion. Where there’s wine there are tourists. And where there are tourists there’s food, accommodation and entertainment.

Groupings of vineyards easily accessed by road from Sydney appear to be in a prime position to draw tourists, both local and foreign. That makes Canberra an attractive destination, especially if it can be linked, in tourists’ minds, with a grand wine tour that might come south to Canberra, head north to Cowra/Canowindra and Young, then on to Orange, then Mudgee, then back to Sydney.

These regions already offer diversity and quality. But the future appears even brighter, especially in light of recent Bureau of Tourism research showing that food and wine are now major attractions for international tourists.

The ACT and Southern Highlands (including Tumbarumba, Young and Bowral) produced just 3,300 tonnes of grapes in 1999. By 2004 the figures should be 19,202 tonnes.

In the same period, Cowra’s output should grow from 14,700 to 20,100 tonnes. Perhaps the biggest change in Cowra is not so much increasing quantity (much of its production goes to multi-regional blends) but the development of cellar door outlets selling regionally labelled product.

Amazing as it may seem, it was not until the 1999 vintage that Cowra’s first winery opened, at the O’Dea family’s Windowrie Estate.

Mudgee, one of Australia’s oldest wine-growing regions, changed rapidly in the late nineties. Rosemount Estate and several large investors commenced broad acre planting on a scale not previously seen in the district. As a result production exploded from around 6000 tonnes annually in the early nineties to 14,000 tonnes in 1999 and should double again to 30,000 tonnes in 2004.

The relocation of Orlando-Wyndham’s winery from the Hunter to Mudgee further underpinned Mudgee’s rapid shift into the big time.

Where Cowra began with broad acre plantings and no wineries, Orange was pioneered by small grower-makers whose success played some part in the arrival of bigger players, like Rosemount and, later, the massive “Little Boomey” vineyard, near Molong.

But, as in Cowra, fruit from these bigger developments goes to wineries outside the district. Southcorp Wines takes the majority of “Little Boomey’s” grapes, while Rosemount’s go to Denman. Here, Philip Shaw crafts the strong and elegant wines appearing under the company’s Orange label.

The wide distribution of Rosemount’s Orange wines (Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a Merlot due for release later this year) has been important in spreading the district name, both locally and internationally. It helped, too, when the 1997 Chardonnay won a Gold Medal and the Prix d’Excellence at Bordeaux’s 1999 Challenge International du Vin.

Largely because of the new broad acre plantings, Orange’s harvest is set to grow from 4,300 tonnes in 1999 to 15,600 tonnes in 2004.

The sheer quality of Orange wine, the natural beauty of the area and the terrific food make it ‘must visit’ for Canberrans. More on Orange next week.

January 30 2000
In 1999 the ACT and southern highlands together with Cowra, Mudgee and Orange, produced about 36 thousand tonnes of wine grapes (equivalent to 2.5 million dozen bottles. By 2004, weather permitting, that figure will have grown to 85 thousand tonnes (6 million dozen bottles).

From the fruits of this new sea of vines, Orange, just three hours drive north of Canberra, produces some of the loveliest wines of all. In my view they are potentially the best in New South Wales, and perhaps good enough to put Orange beside Victoria’s Yarra Valley, South Australia’s Coonawarra and Adelaide Hills and Western Australia’s Margaret River as our very best wine growing regions.

However, it’ll take another decade or two to take Orange’s measure. Vineyards and winemaking skills need to mature. And we have yet to see if today’s exciting wines look as good in maturity as in youth.

As wine making regions go, Orange is young. The oldest winery of twelve listed in ‘The Australian Wine Industry is Stephen and Rhonda Doyle’s Bloodwood Wines, founded in 1983 – twelve years after Drs Edgar Riek and John Kirk planted Canberra’s first vines at Lake George and Murrumbateman respectively.

If Orange was a late starter, it quickly overtook Canberra in volume. Smaller estates like Bloodwood and Canobolas-Smith were joined in the mid eighties by the 20-hectare Highland Heritage Estate and, in the late 1980’s by Rosemount’s broad-acre plantings.

But by far the biggest individual development was the “Little Boomey” project near Molong, just within the official Orange wine region’s minimum 600-metre altitude requirement.

This former sheep paddock was planted to 153 hectares of vines in 1995, 124 hectares in 1996 and 180 hectares in 1997. Little Boomey is planted predominantly to red varieties. As I understand it, the grapes are contracted largely to Southcorp Wines initially but with the publicly listed Cabonne to take increasing quantities for its new Cudal winery in the future.

In 1999 Orange’s wine-grape harvest was about 4352 tonnes (305 thousand dozen bottles). Of the total, reds accounted for 3001 tonnes (210 thousand dozen) and whites for 1351 tonnes (95 thousand dozen).

A great deal of this output – how much, I don’t know — will have been shipped out of the district as grapes destined for multi-regional blends.

A survey by the New South Wales Wine Industry Association suggests that output is set to rise dramatically to 15,577 tonnes (1.09 million dozen) by 2004. (3721 tonnes – 260 thousand dozen – white; and 11,857 tonnes – 830 thousand dozen – red).

Rising production will also see a broadening palate of flavours as the grape varietal mix changes in the vineyard.

In 1999 chardonnay (1,168 tonnes) totally dominated the white harvested. Sauvignon blanc came a distant second at 129 tonnes; riesling fourth on 19 tonnes; then semillon, 18 tonnes and marsanne, 12 tonnes.

In 2004 we should see 1680 tonnes of chardonnay, 704 of sauvignon blanc, 375 of semillon, 307 of riesling, 294 of marsanne, 275 of verdelho, 50 of viognier and 6 of traminer.

If we think of Orange only as the cool 800–1000 metre altitude vineyards near Mount Canobolas, then the dominance of heat-loving shiraz (1623 tonnes) in 1999 is surprising. However, we’ll have to assume that a good deal of this comes from the lower, warmer vineyards, principally Little Boomey.

Cabernet sauvignon was Orange’s number two red variety in 1999 at 850 tonnes; followed by merlot’s 351 tonnes; then pinot noir 97 tonnes, cabernet franc 44 tonnes, petit verdot 12 tonnes and ‘others’ 15 tonnes.

By 2004, the red mix, too, will increase: Shiraz 4,806 tonnes, cabernet sauvignon 4,764 tonnes, merlot 1716 tonnes, pinot noir 308 tonnes, cabernet franc 82 tonnes, grenache 60 tonnes, mourvedre 49 tonnes, pinot meunier 43 tonnes, malbec 14 tonnes, petit verdot 12 tonnes and ‘others’ just 1 tonne.

Orange’s increasing grape diversity reflects the varying styles and interests of the region’s grape growers and winemakers as well as the significant climatic differences experienced when vineyards stretch between 600 and 1000 metres above sea level.

The region provides a happy hunting ground for Canberra wine drinkers, as I found on a one-day visit two weeks ago. But don’t try to do it in a day as I did. A dawn start and midnight return pushes even two drivers. Plan a weekend. And see next Sunday’s column for a glimpse of what Orange’s wineries have to offer.

February 6 2000
To discover the wines of Orange the easy way, head down to your nearest liquor outlet and buy a bottle or two. If the range is small, go straight for the widely distributed Rosemount Orange Chardonnay. Pull the cork and you’ll see what tremendous excitement the region offers.

This is the wine that first alerted me to Orange’s exceptional quality. At a masked tasting of top-shelf chardonnays five years ago, the wrappers came off to reveal Rosemount’s 1994 as my highest ranked wine. And that was against some of the big names of the industry.

And it wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Sometimes a newcomer stars in a tasting, before disappearing into the background. However, subsequent Rosemount vintages show equally good form. As well, those earlier vintages, going against the tendency for Australian chardonnays to fade quickly, are actually blossoming with age.

At Sydney’s Wokpool Restaurant a few months back, Rosemount’s 1993 Orange Chardonnay showed real class – a class shared by bottles of the 1994, 1995 and 1996 vintages stashed under Chateau Shanahan when the wine could be picked up for $14.99 a bottle, rather than today’s $24.

The comparatively large scale of Rosemount’s Orange vineyard, combined with the company’s marketing strength and winemaking resources — especially Philip Shaw’s highly-polished chardonnay making skills – have created good will for the region throughout Australia and in some export markets, too.

However, there’s a lot more to Orange than Rosemount. Indeed, visit Orange and Rosemount is virtually invisible as it has no cellar door outlet. What you’ll find is a mixed and interesting bag of operators showing, in varying degrees, the rich but delicate flavours of the area’s wines.

Drive north from Canberra through Yass, Boorowa, Cowra, Canowindra and Cargo. In Orange, pull into Cook Park for a breather (have a look at the magnificent Sequoia trees). Then head down to the Visitors information centre (Civic Gardens, Byng Street) for a guide to the local wineries.

One of earliest established and best wineries, Bloodwood, isn’t on the map. Fortunately Griffin Road (about 3kms from Orange on the Molong Road) is marked. Pencil Bloodwood in, on the left-hand side of Griffin Road, 3.5 kms from the turnoff. This is a must visit. But you need an appointment. Phone 6362 5631 a few days in advance.

Stephen and Rhonda Doyle bought the Bloodwood site during the drought of 1983. “It was clapped out grazing country”, says Stephen. They lived in a car on the property for five years as they established dams, orchards and vineyards in some of the oldest soils on earth.

Today the property has 10 hectares of vines producing cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, riesling, merlot, shiraz, pinot noir malbec and cabernet franc grapes, with plans to establish the Italian varieties, sangiovese, barbera and nebbiolo in the future.

Stephen says that the very old geology of the site was an important factor in its selection. The tired old soils, he says, means that the vines struggle a little. That means less work fighting the excess vigour that comes when vines are planted in more fertile soils.

Excess vigour, especially in cool areas like Orange, means special trellising and more work in the vineyard. Vines have to be coaxed into ripening fruit rather than putting out more foliage.

The Bloodwood vines are hand pruned, the fruit hand harvested and the wines made in a tiny, spotlessly clean, well-equipped winery on site. It even has an air-conditioned barrel maturation area – the sort of detail that finally makes a big difference to wine quality.

Current offerings, tasted at the winery two weeks ago, include a delicious, delicate 1999 riesling ($14) which we tasted alongside a 1992 – proving both the variety’s suitability for this site and its staying power; an outstanding 1998 chardonnay ($18), again showing the region’s superiority with this variety; and a strong, elegant 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon ($18).

‘Chirac’($25), the Doyle’s controversially named bubbly, launched during the last round of French nuclear testing, is a terrific pinot noir-chardonnay, built on outstanding, delicate fruit flavours. The base wine is made on site, then sent to Charles Sturt University, Wagga for conversion to sparkling wine.

Bloodwood also offers two flagship reds ‘Schubert’ and ‘Maurice’ named after two great Australian winemakers, Max Schubert, creator of Grange, and Maurice O’Shea, creator of superb Hunter wines at Mount Pleasant during the 1940’s and early 1950’s.

Both are offered at $25 . I didn’t taste Schubert, but the soon to be released merlot-based Maurice 1998 is a wonderful, idiosyncratic drop, showing merlot’s nobler qualities. It’s not one of those soft, drink now styles. This wine has real class and staying power.

Next week we’ll look at the results of the Canberra district wine show, then return the week after for more Orange wineries.

March 5 2000
In this fourth and final piece on the Orange wine region, we look at three contrasting operations, each of them worth a visit: Brangayne, a broadacre grape grower with one foot in the winemaking door; Canobolas-Smith, a dedicated boutique grower, maker, marketer; and Highland Heritage Estate, a tourist orientated, middle-sized producer offering estate-grown wine; fresh, frozen and preserved blackberries, gooseberries, red currants and blackcurrants and a large restaurant overlooking the vineyard.

The first of these, Brangayne vineyard, sits on a gentle slope, 970 metres above sea level, between the city of Orange and Mount Canobolas. Proprietors, Don and Pam Hoskins, became grape growers not, initially, through any romance with wine but because a decision needed to be made about the future of the family fruit growing business.

Don’s parents had moved to Orange and established the orchard (naming it after the character Brangayne in Wagner’s opera, Tristan and Isolde) during the depression. But by the early nineties the old fruit trees needed replacing.

Pam and Don considered retiring — selling the second property, Ynys Witrin (island of eternal youth), and turning Brangayne into a park.

Instead, they turned to grape growing and, with advice from well-known viticulturist Dr Richard Smart, commenced planting in 1994.

Now the Hoskins have 25 hectares of vines: chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and pinot meunier at Brangayne, with cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, merlot, pinot noir and pinot meunier at the lower (870 metres) and warmer Ynys Witrin site, on the other side of Orange.

Three quarters of the crop goes to other wine makers, the remainder being made into wine for the Hoskins’ Brangayne label by Simon Gilbert at Mudgee.

It’s early days, but the wines produced to date show this high, cool region’s delicate but strong flavours. The current releases include sauvignon blancs from the warm1998 vintage and cooler 1999 vintage, a terrific 1999 chardonnay, a fruity, solid 1998 pinot noir from the Ynys Witrin vineyard and ‘The Tristan’ a delicious, firm cabernet shiraz merlot blend.

Brangayne wines show up occasionally on retail shelves and may be purchased at cellar door – although you need an appointment to do so. For appointments, details of Canberra stockists or to place orders, phone Pam and Don on 6365 3229.

A few kilometres from Brangayne, and a little lower down the slopes at 800 metres, Murray Smith hand-crafts marvellous, idiosyncratic wines from his six-hectare vineyard.

Smith selected Orange after studying winemaking and working at Rothbury, Huntington and Woodstock in Australia, as well as in New Zealand, California and Bordeaux.

He purchased land in 1986, attracted to Orange by the altitude and the resultant later, cooler vintage; the winter/spring rainfall pattern and the lack of vintage rains.

With a rare passion and commitment Smith comparatively quickly built a following. His highly-awarded chardonnay, in particular, attracted favourable attention from wine critics and eagle-eyed enthusiasts.

Pop in to the vineyard and buy a bottle of his luridly-labelled and exciting 1997 Chardonnay , a top performer at last year’s ‘Winewise’ small vignerons awards here in Canberra. Like Rosemount’s Orange Chardonnay mentioned earlier in this series, the Canobolas-Smith version confirms chardonnay as the greatest white grape of all — and that Orange sits amongst the best of Australia’s chardonnay-growing regions.

Murray’s second most sought after wine, ‘Alchemy’, combines cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and shiraz. The style is super ripe and robust, but in a refined and palate-friendly way.

Shiraz, say Murray, is slightly less reliable than cabernet in this climate. Nevertheless, there are a couple of particularly pleasing, supple, sweet batches maturing in barrel right now. Pinot Noir, too, shows promise. Time will tell.

For exciting and individual drinking, visit Canobolas-Smith on weekends and public holidays between 11am and 5pm. Phone 6365 6113.

The d’Aquino family’s Highland Heritage Estate sits on the right hand side of the Mitchell Highway as you approach Orange from Bathurst.

Current head of the family’s business, Rex d’Aquino, says his grandfather migrated to Orange from Sicily in 1954. He established a thriving mixed liquor importing, exporting, wholesaling and retailing business.

In time the reins passed to Leo d’Aquino and, recently, from Leo to his son Rex.

The vineyards and winery are a recent family acqu isition – the family’s first venture into winemaking. Rex trucks grapes from his 20-hectare vineyard to his own winemaker, John Hordern, at Simon Gilbert’s Mudgee winery.

Pull off the highway, step into the converted tram tasting room and sample Highland Heritage Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon – the latter the best in the range, in my view.

And for something completely different and delightful, try ‘Mountain Flame’ – Highland Heritage’s irresistible fortified raspberry wine.

Or stock up on a punnet or two of fresh berries in season, or jams – all made from fruit grown on the property – all year round. Highland Heritage is open 9-3 weekdays and 9-5 on weekends.

Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay: ahead of its time, still a leader

11 July 1999People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Champions, whether they be wines or sportspersons, don’t just happen; nor do they suddenly disappear. When 17 year old Boris Becker blasted his way through Wimbledon it was hardly his first outing with a racket. Equally, he didn’t win every competition thereafter. But he was always in the running and seldom far from the top.

Like Becker at Wimbledon, Tyrrells Vat 47 Chardonnay blasted its way onto the Australian wine scene in the early 1970s. Unlike Becker, it faced very little competition as the chardonnay grape was barely planted in Australia at the time.

But like a true champion, Vat 47 grew in quality and stature to match anything arriving on the scene in the following twenty years. Today it is one of the few chardonnays on the auction scene consistently fetching more than its release. And its perception in auctions is matched in wine shows.

At the prestigious Sydney Show, for instance Vat 47 consecutive vintages (1994 and 1995) have each won two of the most important trophies: the Bert Bear Trophy as best young white and the Albert Chan Memorial Trophy as best white of the show.

At the NSW Wine Press Club lunch held after presentation of awards just after the 1995 won those trophies, Chairman of Judges Len Evans praised Tyrrells “for making Vat 47 as well as they can and having the guts to put it in the show.” Evans made the point that having won a reputation it’s all too easy to step away from the Wine Show circuit and the risk of not winning. He challenged Petaluma and others to follow Tyrrell’s lead.

Like other great wines, Vat 47 grew from a vision. Murray Tyrrell wrote in Langton’s Vintage Wine Price Guide, “My first introduction to chardonnay was through my great friend and wine judge, Rudy Komon, in the early to mid 60s. The great flavours and the resemblance to aged Hunter semillons drew me immediately to this variety. I must admit that in those days we drank huge quantities of White Burgundy and when I realised that the French ones were getting too expensive for me, I became determined that we could grow and make chardonnay here as well as they did in Burgundy… ”

To fulfil his vision Tyrrell required chardonnay grapes. And since the best were next door, he jumped the fence of Penfolds HVD Vineyard in 1967, and from these planted a 0.6 hectare vineyard on the sandy flats near his home in 1968.

A few bucketsful of an experimental chardonnay were made in 1970, followed by the first Vat 47 in 1971.

Murray’s son Bruce recalls that through the seventies, Vat 47 Chardonnay was made pretty much along the lines of the company’s well-established semillons. But some oak maturation was introduced and Murray claims that the 1973 Vat 47 was the first oak matured white entered in Australian shows.

Bruce says that from 1980 a Californian influence crept in, and until 1989 Vat 47 carried more wine-maker induced aromas and flavours thanks to malo-lactic fermentation (converting harsh malic acid to soft lactic acid) and stronger oak flavours.

The style was altered from 1989 as the Tyrrells realised that wines of the 1970s were aging better than those of the eighties. Tyrrell says he abandoned malo-lactic fermentation as he believed it was not appropriate to the low-acid, high-flavour grapes grown in the Hunter Valley.

And where oak from Nevers in the 1970s gave way to more pungent Limousin oak in the 1980s, the 1990s have seen the use of about 50 per cent Limousin, 30 per cent Nevers and 20 per cent unoaked material in the final blends.

From the start grapes for Vat 47 have been sourced from vines propagated on sandy soils using cuttings from the HVD vines (believed to descended from the Busby collection of 1832). But with production of just 3,000 to 5,000 cases annually (new plantings might lift that by 1,000), Vat 47 will always be scarce.

The quality glimpsed in those early years has been fully realised in the 1990s. Vat 47 is a true champion created from Murray Tyrrell’s vision of re-creating that wonderful amalgam of oak and fruit flavours perfected in France‘s great white Burgundies.

The arrival on the scene of Australian super chardonnays Penfold Yattarna and Petaluma Tiers (both selling at triple Bin 47’s price), in no way diminishes Vat 47’s appeal at Chateau Shanahan. We’ve monitored the cellaring potential of those terrific vintages, 1994 and 1995, and reckon it’s one of the safest bets around when it comes to top-shelf chardonnay.

Saltram celebrates 140 years

28 February 1999People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

As a Johnnie-come-lately of the wine world, Australia boasts some remarkably old wine dynasties.

We can’t equal the 600 years of Italy’s Antinori family; nor the 952 years claimed by my old mate Ferdinando Guicciardini of Poppiano, Florence.

Considering the comparative recency of our own industry — and the lack of a popular wine-drinking culture for most of that time — it seems even more amazing that so many of our last century’s wine businesses survived – either still in family hands or subsumed into larger companies — until 1999.

The Hill-Smith family (Yalumba) in the Barossa, the Henschke’s in the Eden Valley, the Drayton’s in the Hunter Valley and the Potts (Bleasdale), to give a few examples, continue the work started by their families last century.

The Penfold, Lindeman, Seppelt and Hardy families all lost control of their enterprises. Not only the names but elements of those original cultures survive in today’s global brands.

Saltram, founded by William Salter and his son Edward, in 1859 might easily have perished. It flourished, slumped, sputtered, almost died and now seems set to flourish again under its sixth owner, Mildara Blass.

Mildara acquired the lovely old winery at Angaston (Barossa Valley) as part of its Rothbury acquisition in 1996. The languishing Saltram and Stonyfell brands came with it.

Celebrating the company’s 140^th birthday last week, wine maker Nigel Dolan commented how in his own time, he’s seen three owners: the inept (Seagram, 1979 to 1994)), the romantic (Rothbury, 1994 to 1996) and the professional (Mildara Blass, from 1996).

Prior to that Saltram had been owned by the Dalgety Pastoral company (1972-1979), HM Martin and Sons (1937-1972) and the Salter family (1859-1937).

The Saltram brand weathered the early changes in ownership and acquired Stonyfell along the way.

Both brands may have blossomed in the wine boom of the eighties. But Dalgetys disposed of the winery shortly before the 1979 vintage, leaving wine maker Peter Lehmann without a job and many grape contractors without a buyer for the year’s crop.

Magically, Lehmann rescued the growers by establishing another winery in time for the vintage. Peter Lehmann Wines (now a listed company) was the result.

New owners, Seagram, the giant Canadian spirit company, with all the best will in the world, just could not come to grips with the wine industry.

In my view wine quality deteriorated and the old flagship brands Saltram’s Mamre Brook and Stonyfell Metala gave way to Saltram Pinnacle Selection, widely viewed in the industry at the time as a poor joke.

Yet Saltram and Stonyfell survived the Seagram period. Just two years before the end of that sorry time, Nigel Dolan left Seppelts, where he’d been red wine maker, to join Saltram.

His arrival was, perhaps, an omen of better things to come, first under Rothbury and then under Mildara Blass.

Nigel came to Saltram with a strong awareness of its winemaking heritage. His father Bryan, had been winemaker there from 1949 to 1959, before transferring to Stonyfell, the company’s other winery.

For his first four years at Saltram Bryan worked alongside Fred Ludlow. Fred had been there since 1893, making wine for the last fifteen years of a remarkable sixty years’ service.

When Bryan moved to Stonyfell in 1959, he was replaced by Peter Lehmann. Peter (trained at Yalumba) continued making robust, long-lived reds in the style established by Ludlow and Dolan.

As Peter developed the Saltram wines, introducing and a flagship red, Mamre Brook in 1963 the use of new oak in 1973, Bryan Dolan took over wine making from Jack Kilgour at Stonyfell. Jack made wine there from 1932 to 1959.

Across the decades Jack had been making a sumptuous, velvety red from the Metala vineyard (planted at Langhorne Creek in 1891). Bryan changed the name of the wine from Stonyfell Private Bin Claret to Stonyfell Metala in recognition of the vineyard.

1961 Metala, the first vintage, won the inaugural Jimmy Watson Trophy at Melbourne Wine Show in 1962.

So, when Nigel Dolan joined Saltram in 1992, he inherited both the Stonyfell and Saltram red-wine traditions.

And when Nigel joined Saltram he found the most palpable and palatable of all connections with these traditions.

Sprinkled around various warehouses were thousand of bottles of Saltram and Stonyfell red dating back into the 1940s.

Saltram 140th anniversary, part 2

Last week we saw how Saltram wine maker Nigel Dolan inherited two red-wine making traditions — one (Saltram) based on Barossa Valley grapes, the other (Stonyfell) on fruit sourced from the Metala vineyard at Langhorne Creek, near Lake Alexandrina.

When Nigel moved from Seppelt to Saltram in 1992 he brought not just his own considerable wine-making skills, but family connections with those traditions through his father, Bryan, winemaker at Saltram from 1949 to 1959 and at Stonyfell (owned by Saltram) from 1960 to 1966.

Nigel recalls, as a child living in Mamre Brook House on the Saltram winery site, meeting Fred Ludlow, winemaker for the last fifteen of sixty years (1893 to 1953) spent with the company.

When Nigel moved from Seppelt to Saltram in 1992, connection with the past became more palpable with the discovery of a treasure trove of old table and fortified wines – thousands of bottles dating back in an almost unbroken chain to the 1940’s.

It’s difficult to imagine how this valuable (and drinkable) collection survived Saltram’s traumas and ownership changes of the past twenty years. But survive it did, and now resides (albeit, depleted after our visit there two weeks back) in a museum cellar of interconnected underground concrete wine tanks at the winery.

Given the similar provenance of many of those old wines to today’s, they give insights into what today’s wines might taste like in ten, twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty years from now.

The notion of glimpsing the future by probing the past may seem peculiar. But Nigel and his wine-making crew certainly view past triumphs as a key to current and future success.

After a tasting of reds from most vintages between 1946 and the present two weeks back, Nigel paid tribute to his father and Peter Lehmann (both present), acknowledging the importance of being able both to savour and build upon their achievements.

Remarkably, the great majority of those ancient Saltram and Stonyfell wines not only survived, but flourished over the decades.

Quite often, reds of hoary old age yield, at best, hint of past glories. But not these. With few exceptions, they shone.

The very first wine of the tasting, a tawny-rimmed 1946 Saltram Dry Red combined ancient, earthy, old-furniture smells with big, mellow, sweet-fruited, autumn-leaf flavours.

The standard held though vintages 1948, 1950, 1952 with a tremendous jump to a marvellous 1954 Saltram Selected Vintage Claret Bin 5 and even greater 1954 Leo Buring Vintage Claret (made by Saltram).

Other highlights were: 1957 Saltram Shiraz Bin 18; 1960 Saltram Selected Vintage Burgundy Bin 28; 1961 Saltram Dry Red Shiraz; 1963 Saltram Claret Bin 36; 1963 Stonyfell Angaston Burgundy (Barossa Shiraz); 1964, 1967, 1972, 1978 Mamre Brook Cabernet Shiraz; 1964 Saltram Shiraz; 1971 Saltram Selected Vintage Claret Bin 71/86; and 1973 Saltram Show Dry Red (first use of new oak at the winery).

What a disappointment after these to taste the feeble wines of the 1980’s – a truly disastrous decade for Saltram wine making.

At dinner after the tasting, Nigel introduced his flagship wines alongside more of the oldies:

A lively, intense fresh 1998 Mamre Brook Chardonnay overshadowed a tired, fat and faded 1982 vintage.

A lovely 1958 Saltram Claret Bin 21 and elegant, supple 1961 Stonyfell Langhorne Creek Metala (the first vintage and Jimmy Watson trophy winner) provided mature contrast to Nigel’s stunning Stonyfell Metala Original Plantings Shiraz 1996.

A wine of dense, crimson colour, striking perfume and opulent fruit character, Metala Original Plantings Shiraz, as the name hints, springs solely from grapes grown on the Metala vineyard’s century-old shiraz vines.

Nigel’s Barossa flagships, Saltram No. 1 Shiraz 1996, Saltram Mamre Brook Shiraz 1996 and Saltram Mamre Brook Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 (winners of a combined 8 trophies and 12 gold medals) sat gloriously — latently — beside 1973 Saltram Bin 53 Claret, 1975 Saltram Show Dry Red, 1964 Mamre Brook Cabernet Shiraz and 1976 Mamre Brook Cabernet Shiraz.

This new generation of Saltram and Stonyfell Metala reds rate, in my view, amongst the best and most sensitively handled in the country.

They’re big, powerful, potentially long-lived wines. But the bigness comes not through over-extraction of colour and tannins, nor through heavy-handed use of oak.

Like the older wines crafted by Fred Ludlow, Bryan Dolan and Peter Lehmann, the new Saltram and Stonyfell reds draw their great, supple strength from ripe, deeply flavoured grapes from the Barossa and Langhorne Creek.

A better equipped winery (meaning greater control) plus access to high-quality French oak (and the skill to use it subtly) probably gives today’s wines a slight edge over those glorious old ones.

Given the great pleasure derived from drinking those oldies from the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, $18 to $25 a bottle for the great 1996 reds seems a modest enough price to pay.

Langton’s Classification: Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay one of the few white elites

20 September 1998People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Whoever it was who called white wine foreplay, must’ve had a Langton’s Fine Wine Investment Guide at hand. As if to confirm that white wines are fun, but lead to something more satisfying, Langton’s classification cites just seventeen whites amongst our sixty-three highest priced, most frequently traded Australian wines in auctions.

In what Langton’s call the ‘Outstanding A’ category, a holy trinity of reds (Penfolds Grange, Henschke Hill of Grace and Mount Mary Quintets) perches on the very pointy part of the high-price pyramid.

Not a white in sight! Not even the $150-a-bottle Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay gets a guernsey. It can’t get in for ten years under club rules that favour long-term performance over one-night stands.

On the next level down, in the ‘Outstanding’ category three whites – all Chardonnays – stand beside nine reds. Leeuwin Estate Art Series Margaret River, Piccadilly Valley and Tyrrells Vat 47 Hunter, all have pedigrees stretching back into the seventies – about the time the chardonnay phenomenon started in Australia.

Tyrrells Vat 47, the oldest of the three, kicked off (from memory) in 1971, gradually carving a reputation for itself. Only in the last three years has the cellar-door price broached first the twenty dollars a bottle a mark and then thirty dollars – still quite modest in comparison with Leeuwin’s seventy dollars, or the one to two hundred dollars a French white Burgundy fetches

Vat 47 looked good in the seventies, put on weight in the eighties as Californian wine-making styles influenced the Tyrrells, then trimmed down again from 1987 before settling into the stunning quality we’ve seen in the nineties.

While the eighties vintages appear to be fading, some of the seventies Vat 47s power on, as Bruce Tyrrell demonstrated at Len Evans’ house after the recent Hunter Valley wine show.

Asked for a good old white Burgundy (the French region famed for its chardonnay) for the occasion, Bruce showed up with a 1973 Vat 47. Evans demurred at serving it masked alongside a bottle of 1982 Corton Charlemagne (one of the very greatest French chardonnay vineyards). Bruce insisted. Evans poured.

Well, it was an experienced wine group gathered. And they decided that the two chardonnays served in unmarked glasses were, in fact, very fine examples of Corton Charlemagne.

I guess we might call that another blow for French mystique and reason to question our views on Australian chardonnay – not just on how well it ages but on current wine-making practices that might influence ageing potential.

Bruce Tyrrell says he was greatly influenced by a tasting of all the Vat 47s in 1992. The less manipulated 1970s wines were ageing gracefully, while the fatter 1980s simply grew fatter. “I could’ve switched the wines around and no one would’ve noticed”, recalls Bruce referring to the deceptive youthfulness of the 1970s wines.

By the time of the tasting, Bruce had already altered wine-making practice, having totally eliminated malo-lactic fermentation from the 1988 vintage onwards. Malo-lactic fermentation reduces totally acidity in a wine and converts malic acid to soft lactic acid.

The process can give a soft, creamy texture to chardonnay. But it also introduces an aroma and flavour resembling butterscotch – quite a strong characteristic in many of our better quality chardonnays.

Tyrrell’s view is that in the Hunter’s warm climate, Chardonnay grapes develop ample, ripe flavours and that acid levels, if anything, tend to be too low, not too high. In contrast, cooler areas experience higher grape-acid levels and produce wines that often benefit from the mid-palate boost given by malo-lactic fermentation.

Since abandoning malo-lactic fermentation, Tyrrells see greater freshness in Vat 47 Chardonnay and has great confidence in the cellaring capacity of recent vintages. Only time will tell, of course. (Chateau Shanahan’s experience supports the Tyrrell view).

Of course plenty of other factors influence how chardonnay ages: age of vines, vineyard management, climate, soil, clone of vine, timing of harvest, crushing and juice handling techniques, fermentation temperature, type of oak and maturation regime are vitally important.

But, just as an intrusive oak character marred some chardonnays of the eighties, excessive malo-lactic character (a cloying butterscotch aroma and flavour) spoils my pleasure of some of today’s generally much better wines.

In some ways this is a quibble on a quite a valid wine-maker technique to reduce acidity and increase flavour. But I do wonder if, when it’s overdone, it reduces the ageing capacity of some wines. Could this be the next area for fine-tuning by our chardonnay makers now that oak usage is pretty well under control?

Chardonnay a perennial favourite. But beware the unoaked versions

13 September 1998People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Twenty years ago Australia’s chardonnay plantings were too small to be noted in official statistics.

In 1988 we harvested 21,800 (1.5 million dozen bottles) tonnes of chardonnay — just one eighth of 1998’s record 173,000 tonnes (12.1 million cases).

1988’s chardonnay harvest accounted for just five per cent of Australia’s wine grape production; 1998’s represented eighteen per cent of the total harvest and half of premium white production.

Even in 1988 people spoke – as some do today – of chardonnay going out of fashion. But for all the talk, the flow of chardonnay continues to increase – suggesting that as long as people drink dry white wine, chardonnay might remain number one.

Clearly, consumers prefer it to riesling, semillon and sauvignon blanc, the other leaders in Australia’s white-wine popularity stakes. Perhaps the reason for chardonnay’s sustained success lies not just in an inherently pleasant flavour, but also in its tremendous versatility and, ironically, that at the cheaper end of the scale it makes pleasant whites that don’t make the mistake of having too much flavour.

(You only have to taste beer to see what I mean by that last remark. Modern, mass-produced lagers appear to be ‘de-brewed’ – literally stripped of any distinctive malty or hop aromas and flavours in order to please the widest range of palates and offend none).

If the very cheapest chardonnays tend to blandness it’s not such a bad thing. At least they’re clean, fresh, very, very cheap and don’t have the distinctive flavours of sauvignon blanc, semillon and riesling that turn some drinkers off.

A short step up from commodity chardonnay we find distinctly more colourful beasts like Lindemans Bin 65 and Rosemount Diamond Label. These globally loved whites were decades in the developing.

Besides showing good varietal flavour from a continuously evolving range of vineyards, each benefits in its own way from considerable wine-maker added aromas and flavours. Philip John at Lindemans Karadoc winery and Philip Shaw at Rosemount’s Denman winery between them know (or invented) every chardonnay trick in the book.

Unoaked chardonnays have been with us a long time, although the proliferation of brands and popularity with marketers is a relatively new phenomenon. The first brand to make a virtue of not having contact with oak, as far as I can recall, was a 1977 Saxonvale Chardonnay, released alongside its oak-matured cellarmate.

My impression of the new-age unoaked chardonnays is that they were a reaction to the worst of the over-oaked chardonnays of the 1980s. This was a period of learning by wine makers and, not surprisingly, many wines tasted more of resin and fresh timber than they did of the grape.

However, the unoaked craze is well and truly sprinting, even if the majority of the runners, to my palate, come close to water. My advice is to approach with caution. Region of origin, wine maker reputation, vintage and price should all be watched. Above all, since these wines come to the market without expensive oak maturation, they should be offered at a discount not a premium.

These three, tasted recently, appealed to my palate, offering various expressions of rich, clean, crisp varietal flavour: Antipodean Eden Valley Unwooded Chardonnay 1997, Goundrey Unwooded Chardonnay 1998, and, at the budget end of the market, the new Lindemans Cawarra Chardonnay 1998 (predominantly from the old Seppelt Barooga vineyard on the Murray River in New South Wales).

‘Unoaked’ is not the only adjective to excite chardonnay marketers. It’s been joined recently by a ‘gentle press’ product, Sarantos, from Kingston Estates (referring to the common practice of using only the finest cut of juice in making some premium products) and ‘malo’ unwooded chardonnay from the old master, Brian McGuigan.

‘Malo’ refers to the also common practice amongst chardonnay makers of reducing malic acid by inducing a secondary fermentation and converting malic acid to lactic acid. The result is a softer wine with, quite often, a distinctive ‘butterscotch’ aroma and flavour derived from the malo-lactic ferment. McGuigan’s wine certainly has buckets of this character, although I was hard pressed to spot any chardonnay flavour.

This merely highlights the fact that chardonnay is perhaps the most highly-manipulated of any grape variety. It’s flavours mix and match readily with a number of wine-maker inputs and this only adds to the diversity created by nature. More on this next week.

Marlborough New Zealand — pinot noir will have its day

30 August 1998Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Marlborough, New Zealand, rates amongst the world’s great wine growing regions even though it was first planted to vines just twenty five years ago.

Its great specialty — pungent, in-your-face whites made from the sauvignon blanc grape — enjoy an international following, shading even France’s Pouilly-sur-Loire and Sancerre, the wines on which they were modelled.

If you’ve seen the label of leading Marlborough producer, Cloudy Bay, then you already have some feeling for Marlborough’s Mountain-framed, broad Wairu Valley fanning north to the sea on the South Island’s northern tip.

The Wairu River cuts through the valley’s deep, basaltic gravels. These gravels, sometimes bursting to the surface, sometimes covered in river silt, host the area’s vines and in places resemble the Medoc in France’s Bordeaux region.

Looking across this huge valley and its subsidiaries, it’s staggering to envisage the massive glacier that must have ground mountains to rubble, in the process creating a unique, stony vineyard site at just the right latitude to make delicate, intensely-flavoured table wine.

According to Dr John Gladstones (Viticulture and Environment, Winetitles,1992) Marlborough’s heat-retaining, stony soils and cool, equable climate ‘should theoretically result in outstanding delicacy and aroma retention in fruit and wines”.

Gladstones’ theoretical studies indicate a rosy future not just for Marlborough’s already proven sauvignon blanc and chardonnay but for “pinot noir (frost allowing) and pinot meunier …. for champagne-style wines in cool seasons, and for still dry red wines in warmer seasons”.

His theories tend to be supported by the experience of wine makers in the area. With twenty five years’ practice, collective wisdom says a definite yes to sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir (for sparkling wine); no to cabernet sauvignon; yes, sometimes, to merlot and riesling; and yes to a bright future for pinot noir as a table wine, especially in warmer seasons.

As an example of the latter, compare pinot noir usage in cool 1997 and warm 1998: only 23 per cent of 1997’s 1522 tonnes went to table wine; in 1998 70 per cent of the 2262 tonnes made the grade, largely because warmer weather produced riper flavours and deeper colours.

On average, though, carefully managed pinot noir vineyards ought to produce fruit suited to table wine production in most years. The key, various makers tell me, are careful clonal selection and restricting yields to not more than 6 tonnes per hectare.

With sauvignon blanc yields sometimes double that (and selling for around $15 a bottle), we may safely assume that Marlborough pinot noir will never be cheap. But it could be very good, judging on some of the wines tasted there.

Selaks, Cloudy Bay, Hunters, Babich and Montana all make good pinots, ranging from the delicate and fine-grained Cloudy Bay to more sumptuous styles from the warmer 1998 vintage (Selaks and Babich). What these wines show is that Marlborough captures the elusive but lovely aroma and flavour of pinot as few other areas do.

The reason appears to lie in the climate more than in any other single factor. Pinot noir, they tell me, develops its best flavours under mild growing conditions and cool temperatures during ripening.

Using ‘summation of day degrees above 10 degrees’, a broad measure of solar energy available to vines during the growing season, we can see that Marlborough sits at the lower end of the spectrum at 1101. Compare this to Coonawarra’s 1337, Canberra’s 1424 and Bordeaux’s 1392.

In fact Dijon, in the heart of France’s Burgundy region and home of the pinot noir grape, has a heat summation not dissimilar to Marlborough’s at 1164. And it’s mean daily temperature of 16.1 degrees Celsius in September sits close to Marlborough’s March daily mean of 15.8.

This is vastly oversimplifying a complex subject, but it supports the view of Marlborough as a pinot noir region.

Montana, New Zealand’s largest wine maker, with around 800 hectares of vines in Marlborough, embraces this view, having recently planted 100 hectares of pinot noir in its new Kaituna Vineyard, at the foot of the Kaituna Hills in the Wairu Valley.

This vineyard alone is big enough to transform the pinot noir market in New Zealand. And we can look forward to increasing quantities of Marlborough pinot noir arriving in Australia as Montana, Corbans, Villa Maria, Selaks, Cloudy Bay and others expand production and hone their skills with this delightful variety.

Pinot noir to follow sauv blanc as New Zealand’s specialty

23 August 1998WineChris Shanahan

When I first toured New Zealand’s wine regions in 1984, viticultural Marlborough was just eleven years old, yet its unique, pungent sauvignon blancs were already on the way to international success; crook wines were easy to find; and dozens of enthusiasts, reflecting the trend in California and Australia, were spreading the vine into every likely site on both Islands.

Visiting there two weeks back — as the biggest and one of the best vintages ever settled in bottle, tank and cask – Marlborough had overtaken Hawkes Bay and Gisborne as the largest and most important wine region; crook wines had been shoved aside by a broadening palette of exciting flavours; small makers continued their pioneering efforts (numbers are up from 131 in 1990 to 284 in 1998); and makers of all sizes prepared ambitious plans to take New Zealand wines to the world.

As New Zealand’s wine industry matures, the palate of flavours it offers continues to diverge from that offered by Australia’s wine makers. While we work largely with the same grape varieties, dramatically different climates, based largely on New Zealand more southerly latitudes, dictate a dramatically different mix of those varieties.

Hence, Australia’s wine makers work predominantly with chardonnay, semillon, riesling in whites and with shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and grenache in reds. Reds ripen and thrive in all but the most marginal of our wine-growing regions. Conversely, pinot noir, which needs a cool ripening period to bring out its best flavours, shines only in our most southerly or highest vineyards.

In New Zealand the pattern is different. Yes, the ubiquitous chardonnay sits comfortably just about anywhere. But shiraz and grenache perform poorly and cabernet shines only in a few select, carefully-managed locations.

Sauvignon blanc from Marlborough is arguably the best in the world. And pinot noir appears not only well suited to the climate but, in my opinion, may emerge as New Zealand’s second specialty after sauvignon blanc.

In fact it may well eclipse sauvignon blanc given the universally more appealing flavour of good pinot and the poor quality and high price of its main competitor, the red wine of France’s Burgundy region.

Gisborne, the ‘warmest’ of New Zealand’s big growing regions and source of its budget wines, lies at a latitude of about 39 degrees – placing it well south of Melbourne.

The region focuses almost exclusively on white wine production. Chardonnay, at 6,065 tonnes nosed ahead of hybrid muller thurgau’s 5,677 tonnes in 1998, followed by various muscat varieties totalling 3,610 tonnes, sauvignon blanc at 1,169 tonnes and semillon at 1,137 tonnes. Gisborne’s future probably remains tied to the fortunes of the small local market given the generally pedestrian nature of its wines.

Just south of the 39th parallel , Hawkes Bay, home of the vine since 1851, produces marginally less wine grapes than Gisborne (22,751 tonnes versus 23,649 in 1998) including the majority of New Zealand’s cabernet sauvignon (2,881 of 4,220 tonnes), most of which probably confirms Australians’ worst fears of New Zealand cabernet.

However, within a shale-soil area known as the Ngatarawa triangle, superb cabernets (Villa Maria was the best I tasted) are emerging. If it’s not the new Coonawarra or Bordeaux, Hawke’s Bay does have some similarity to those two regions in terms of solar heat available to vines during the growing season.

Time will tell if anything world class is to emerge from Hawkes Bay, but at this stage there’s outstanding drinking to be had from Villa Maria, Vidal, Trinity Hill and Te Mata reds.

South of Hawke’s Bay, around the Martinborough area (north east of Wellington, just below 41 degrees south) pinot noir (246 tonnes) and chardonnay (201 tonnes) dominated a local harvest of 804 tonnes of wine grapes in 1998.

Here, thanks largely to cooler ripening temperatures and wine-maker passion, we begin to see marvellous flavours from the notoriously difficult pinot grape. Hand-made products like Ata Rangi and Martinborough Vineyard pinot now attract high prices and sell out instantly in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. Dry River and Mulberry Hills appear to be building similar reputations.

A quick hop across the water to Blenheim on the south island takes us to one of the most exciting wine areas in the world – Marlborough, noted to date mainly for its sauvignon blanc (accounting for 10,286 tonnes of the 25,558 tonnes of wine grapes crushed there this year) but with tremendous potential, I believe, for pinot noir.

To be continued next week.