Grape production figures for Victoria’s King Valley (stretching thirty kilometres northwards up the King River roughly from Milawa at 170 metres above sea level to the Whitlands plateau at 800 metres) reveal the tiny scale of some the most interesting wines in the valley – tiny plots of Italian varieties like sangiovese, nebbiolo and arneis.

In the King Valley, as in virtually every region in Australia, some, or all of, shiraz, cabernet, merlot, pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc and semillon contribute the majority of output.

But because everyone, everywhere grows these varieties, we might be excused for not hanging a King Valley sign on any one of them – as we do, say, for Hunter semillon, Clare riesling or Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon.

No, the King Valley’s shingle, to date, hangs on Italian red and white varieties even if these make up only a small portion of an annual fifteen thousand tonne grape crush.

Although Brown Bros pioneered some Italian styles in its ‘kindergarten’ winery — designed for small, experimental wine batches — Mornington based Gary Crittenden took Italian diversity and quality to another level before local Italian-descended small growers made the transition from grape-growing to winemaking.

During a downturn when Brown Bros reduced its grape intake, cousins Fred and Arnie Pizzini and another grower, Guy Darling, established King Valley Wines at Whitfield. Fred says they built the winery because, “We all wanted a winery, but thought, why build three? We didn’t want our grapes going to distant places. And we wanted to maintain the premium image of wines, mostly whites at the time, coming out of the area”.

The switch from contract grape growing to winemaking gathered pace in the nineties. Certainly by the time I passed through with visiting Italian winemaker, Dino Illuminati, in 1997, Italian-descended farmers-turned-vignerons were setting the Valley’s wine and food direction.

The Italian flavour grew over time and was the real point of interest when the Valley’s makers visited Canberra recently. Sure, they offered shiraz and cabernet, chardonnay etc. But who cares? You can taste these varieties anywhere.

The excitement, to this palate anyway, lay in the Italian varieties — pinot grigio (ok, it’s French but it’s the Italian name and made in the Italian style), moscato, dolcetto, sangiovese, nebbiolo, verduzzo, arneis, barbera, marzemino and prosecco – and to a lesser extent the Russian saperavi and petit manseng from Jurancon, southern France.

These varieties provide a novel flavour spectrum: from the delicate, grapey, sweet freshness of Brown Brothers Moscato – at around five per cent alcohol — to the sappy, dry, pleasantly tart Dal Zotto sparkling Prosecco; to the bracing Chrismont La Zona Arneis or slurpy, sweet, red Marzemino Frizzante; to Pizzini’s dazzling verduzzo and profound, tannic Coronomento Nebbiolo; to the savoury dryness of several sangioveses and summer-berry freshness of the red barbera.

Many of these can be found in good liquor stores. But the individual wineries and the region can be easily Googled for more information or online ordering. Even better, with the King Valley just four hours’ drive from Canberra, a long weekend is all it takes to explore the wines on site and to taste them with local Italian food.

I wonder, too, if the King Valley folk might complete the Italian theme and produce varietal grappa – an obligatory touch in any Italian wine-growing region.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

A few years back, says Ross Brown of Brown Brothers, the Winemakers Federation of Australia discovered something startling: sixty per cent of Aussie wine drinkers enjoy a glass only infrequently. Asked why they didn’t drink more wine, the occasional sippers said they didn’t like the flavour. Shock! Horror!

The revelation floored the WFA. Why, they wondered, was the industry talking to just forty per-cent of drinkers? How could so many people not like the flavour of wine? But the finding didn’t surprise Ross.

Why would you be surprised, he asked last week in Canberra? Wine, he said, is so unlike the sweeter things that we drink all the time – everything from mother’s milk to fruit juice to soft drink and even beer – it’s little wonder that many people don’t like it.

Conditioned by decades of testing — via Australia’s biggest cellar door operation – Brown Brothers had long since cracked the taste code of the WFA’s reluctant sixty per-cent.

Located on the Oxley Plains, at the northern entry to the King Valley, near Victoria’s ski fields, Brown Bros hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. They literally flow from buses, cars and bicycles into a series of easy-access, spacious tasting bays.

For decades Browns have used the cellar door to test new wines, learn what people like and then give it to them. This approach treats both the wine savvy and the insecure equally seriously.

While cellar door sales constitute only a small fraction of output, says Ross, it provides continuing, direct feedback on what people like. And this, in turn, drives strategic decisions on grape plantings and wine production for the market at large.

This approach encourages a stream of new products that can be made in small volume in the ‘kindergarten’ winery, tested at cellar door, and then rolled out in volume if successful.

Successful rollouts can mean anything from cool-grown, bone-dry pinot gris for enthusiastic wine drinkers to innovative sweet styles for the unconvinced. And whatever the new style is, ramped-up production means big investments in vineyards and considerable lead times.

Ross says that consistently over the years sweet, fruity table wines – in a range of styles — have been the winners and remain the biggest selling styles at cellar door.

The current cellar door favourites, for example, are the red Cienna and white Moscato – both sweet wines weighing in at a modest 5.5 and 5 per cent alcohol respectively.

Cienna is a new variety which, like Brown Brothers successful Tarango, was bred by the CSIRO. And the Moscato, a delightful frizzante style, is modelled on the fruity, crisp, low-alcohol styles of Asti, Italy.

These are seriously good, innovative wines that join a long line of other sweeties, including the red Dolcetto (a normally dry Italian variety), as consumer favourites.

And the people who buy them love them fervently, often driving hundreds of kilometres to stock up. Don’t ever believe that only experts are prepared to go out of their way to buy cases of wine, laughed Ross.

Of course there’s nothing new in people being attracted to sweet and fruity wine. It’s been a constant theme in Australia since the release of Orlando Barossa Pearl in 1956.

The difference now seems to be that most winemakers don’t take these styles seriously — and it shows in their mediocre offerings. What Brown Brothers have demonstrated is that occasional wine drinkers become enthusiastic wine drinkers when you give them what they want.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

As far north and as coastal as it is, the lower Hunter Valley ought to be too warm, too wet, too humid — and with Sydney so close — too expensive to make wine. But it’s done so for 170 years and is today probably more varied and more innovative than at any time in its history.

The first grapes were probably planted there in the late 1820’s and vines were certainly part of the agricultural mix by the early 1830s, with six growers listed in a report of 1832, according to James Halliday in The Wines and History of the Hunter (McGraw-Hill, 1979).

The name of one of those growers, George Wyndham, lives on today in the Wyndham Estate brand, owned by the French controlled Pernod Ricard Pacific.

And readers of my vintage might recall ‘Dalwood, a now defunct Penfolds Hunter Valley wine brand (named for George Wyndham’s property) and ‘Kirkton’ as a once popular Lindemans label named for a Hunter property acquired in 1825 by vine pioneer James Busby.

But that’s the old days, before the Hunter boasted even one resort or golf club. Despite many setbacks, its winemaking survived and grew through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and prospered into the twenty-first.

Today, according to one wine industry database, the Hunter has about 160 winemakers with the greatest concentration in the lower Hunter near Cessnock rather than in the upper Hunter in the vicinity of Denman.

Despite the significant quantity of grapes grown in the upper Hunter, it’s the lower Hunter that produces the region’s two great and idiosyncratic specialties: semillon and shiraz – styles revered by Australian and foreign connoisseurs but with little popular currency beyond the Sydney market.

but the lower Hunter’s proximity to Sydney and Newcastle provides a big flow of tourists happy to explore a range of wine offerings that goes well beyond the two traditional specialities.

It’s a mix of big, small, old and new from the large McWilliams Mount Pleasant to tiny Chateau Pato to glamorous Tempus Two to seventies’ boom star Brokenwood to family oldies like Drayton’s and Tyrrell’s.

In this varied landscape, semillon, shiraz, chardonnay and verdelho lead the charge. But if you seek Little’s Winery at Broke you’ll find former Canberran, Suzanne Little, and husband Ian, making delicious, aromatic Gewurztraminer.

Just down the road, Robin Tedder’s Glenguin blends the exotic tannat with shiraz while Andrew Margan puts a friendly drink-now face on the traditional shiraz and semillon but also makes a delightful red from the Italian variety, barbera.

Quite a few wineries, including Reece and Garth Eather’s Meerea Park now produce that wonderful white, viognier and pinot gris is on the radar.

The latter generally fares better in cooler climates, so it’s not surprising that Tempus Two looks to Victoria’s King Valley for this variety. And makes a very good wine from it.

Nearby, in the Lusby family’s tiny Tintilla vineyard, the Italian variety sangiovese grows beside the time-proven specialties. It’s promising. But will it still be there in 100 years? Could be!

And innovation need not be limited to introducing new varieties. The greatest wines emerging from the Hunter, in my opinion, remain the traditional regional specialties, semillon and shiraz. And these are being polished to a new gloss by both new and old makers, notably McWilliams and, perhaps a nose in front, Tyrrell’s.

Like most complex wine areas, the best way to understand the Hunter is through its wines. And there’s no better way than to hop in the car, go there and wander amongst the vines for a few day.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007