Wine review — Brindabella Hills, Clonakilla & Meeting Place

3 September 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Brindabella Hills Canberra District Sauvignon Blanc 2006 $15
It seems appropriate that Dr Roger Harris — the scientist whose CSIRO colleagues identified methoxypyrazene compounds as sauvignon blanc’s pungent flavour source — should make such a wonderful expression of it. The 2006 is just delicious – fresh and zesty with juicy, refreshing tropical-fruit flavours to enjoy over the warm months ahead. It’s a bargain at $15, cellar door. And at $25 Brindabella Hills Shiraz 2004 offers the fragrant, fine-boned, savoury richness of cool climate shiraz. To my taste this is the best yet from Roger and Fay Harris’s vineyard on the lower, warmer Murrumbidgee Valley side of Hall.

Clonakilla Canberra District Shiraz Viognier 2005 $78
Canberra’s most celebrated wine easily topped a tasting of local shirazes at Chateau Shanahan this week. That it did so comes as no surprise. And it’s worth remembering, too, that like most style benchmarks Clonakilla is no overnight sensation. Shiraz from the Kirk family vineyard was blended with cabernet from the mid seventies until the first straight shiraz appeared in 1990. In 1992, Tim Kirk added viognier to the blend (from vineyards planted in 1986) and hit the spot with international critics consistently from the late nineties. What we see now is a highly perfumed, silky red of great intensity and remarkable finesse.

Meeting Place Canberra District Viognier 2005 $15
It’s grown on a new vineyard at Holt, it’s irrigated with grey water from the lower Molonglo treatment works and it’s already recognised as one of the best value viognier’s in Australia. If it lacks the restraint and depth of Clonakilla’s $50 version, it pleases with, pure, full, citrus/apricot flavour and thick, viscous texture of the variety — beautifully made at Kamberra Winery by Alex McKay. Alex believes that the wine will become increasingly intense and interesting in future vintages as the vines mature. While it’s probably best to enjoy the 2005 as a young wine, the 2004 is still remarkably fresh and enjoyable.

Shiraz and riesling emerge as Canberra’s top wine varieties

3 September 2006WineChris Shanahan

Talking to a few local winemakers recently led to a little flurry of samples arriving on the tasting bench. While far from a comprehensive review of what the district has to offer, tasting the wines confirmed a view that Canberra excels with shiraz, looks increasingly good with riesling and offers pretty good value at the cellar door outlets sprinkled around our large district.

Sipping through an impressive shiraz line up, word came through that Lerida Estate Lake George Shiraz 2005 and Lambert Wamboin Shiraz 2004 had both won gold medals at the recent NSW Small Winemakers Wine Show, held in Forbes.

Both missed my tasting. But on their gold medal performances would’ve added to a very solid line up.
Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2005 led the charge (see Top Drops), but that’s no surprise for a wine that’s been in the making for thirty years and in its present style, more or less, since 1992.

While there’s considerable variation in the local shirazes, there’s a consistent thread dictated by our comparatively cool climate. This means varietal expression built on fragrance plus peppery, spicy, savoury flavours and fine-boned structure.

For those choosing, like Clonakilla, to include a portion of the white viognier in the blend, there’s an extra floral lift to the aroma and suppleness to the palate. In some wines, however, the viognier weighs in a little too heavily, throwing things off balance.

But as Tim Kirk found at Clonakilla in the mid nineties, getting the right balance is a matter of time and practice – at the rate of only one vintage per year.

Kamberra’s Shiraz Viognier 2004 goes close to the mark although I’m sure the ever-restless Alex McKay has even better wines on the way through. Bryan Martin’s Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier 2005, after a few months in bottle, seems to have tilted a little too far in viognier input although it’s still an appealing drop.

Of the straight Shirazes tasted, Meeting Place 2003 (from Kamberra) offers solid, tasty value at $15; Brindabella Hills 2004 is a standout (see Top Drops) and Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2005 (from nearby Young) is also outstanding, albeit in a considerably more robust mould than the Murrumbateman wine.

A couple of local merlots looked above average, if green in comparison to the supple, ripe shirazes – but that seems to be the case generally in Australia. I rated the Gallagher 2005 a nose ahead of the elegant Brindabella Hills 2004.

The very pleasant, vibrant, cedary/leafy Brindabella Hills Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 won’t challenge Coonawarra but, to my taste, delivered more appeal than Helm Cabernet 2003 or Premium Cabernet 2003.

Canberra’s 2006 rieslings offer great excitement. Although I rated Gallagher 2006 a touch ahead of Helm Premium 2006 at the top, it was a close call — with another four wines in hot pursuit: Ravensworth 2006, Brindabella Hills 2006, Clonakilla 2006 and Helm Classic Dry 2006, followed by another appealing wine, Dionysus 2006.

Meeting Place Viognier 2005 is a full, tasty example of this Rhone grape variety. But it was outclassed by the amazingly deep, fine, slippery Clonakilla 2005.

The sole sauvignon blanc tasted, Brindabella Hills 2006 (Top Drops), is a ripper and Kamberra Tumbarumba 2004 (30) is a lovely example of complex, cool-grown, barrel fermented chardonnay.

While these wines provide a tasty snapshot of what Canberra produces, there’s lots more. We’ll look at these after the regional show in late September.

Wine review — Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot & Tyrrell’s

27 August 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 1996 $180-$240
In today’s salute to Len Evans it seems fitting to include two contrasting luxury Champagnes from the great 1996 vintage. The all-chardonnay Taittinger Comtes de Champagne – sourced from top-ranking vineyards in the Champagne district’s Cotes de Blancs sub region – has Champagne’s elusive combination of intensity and delicacy. Without pinot noir in the blend the colour is a deceptively pale lemon, belying its ten years’ age. But that prolonged bottle ageing prior to release added a subtle patina of aromas, flavours and textures that simply enhances the wine’s extraordinary vivacity and freshness. This is about as good as aperitif style Champagne gets.

Veuve Clicquot La Grand Dame Champagne 1996 $220 o $260
Veuve Clicquot’s luxury Champagne is a more traditional blend of two-thirds pinot noir and one-third chardonnay. The high pinot content gives the blend its deeper colour and assertive backbone but this is mollified by the more delicate chardonnay. La Grande Dame’s great flavour intensity comes from the quality of the grapes – all sourced from top-ranked vineyards: Verzenay, Verzy, Ambonnay and Bouzy for the pinot noir; and Avize, Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger for the chardonnay. While power with elegance is always the keynote of La Grande Dame, the 1996 seems particularly elegant though, from experience, the assertive pinot character tends to grow with bottle age.

Tyrrell’s Reserve Belford Hunter Valley Semillon 1999 $29
The Elliott family planted the Belford vineyard in the Hunter in 1933 and a fourth generation still controls it. However, Tyrrell’s lease and manage the vineyard which is source of some their best semillon. Typically these are very pale, minerally and delicate as young wines, gradually taking on a fuller, honeyed character with bottle age. Fortunately, Tyrrell’s hold small volumes back for later release, giving the majority of drinkers without cellars a chance to taste the glories of aged semillon. The 1999 is a lovely drop that’s just beginning to show some of the classic maturation characters while retaining great freshness. Cellar door phone 02 4993 7000.

Goodbye Len Evans, the world will miss you

27 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Len Evans, Australia’s greatest wine man died suddenly of a heart attack on August 17th, just two weeks shy of his 76th birthday.

Len crammed a lot into those years – perhaps too much his cardiologist might say. But nothing was ever going to mollify Len’s ebullience, creativity, energy, love of great wine or commitment to the Australian wine industry.

When I look back over thirty years in the wine industry – about the time that’s elapsed since Len’s first heart attack – I cannot recall any other figure of such influence.

And Len’s influence was wide, deep and prolonged stretching from the early 1960s when he wrote his regular Bulletin wine columns right up until his death.

Len could sing, joke, entertain, judge wine, write, play golf like a champion, sculpt, make ceramics, build houses, found restaurants, bottle shops and wineries and perhaps, most importantly of all, see an international future for Australian wine.

He helped popularise wine drinking in the sixties and seventies, showed us the rollicking side of the industry in his Weekend Australian Indulgence column in the late seventies and early eighties, then urged the industry towards ever better quality for the rest of his life.

That urging took many shapes, from hard-hitting public comments to enforcing high judging standards to mentoring hundreds of talented industry people.

For example, we could credit some of the recent advances in white winemaking with Len’s constant urging a decade earlier. At a NSW Wine Press Club lunch following the Sydney Show in 1995, Len observed, not for the first time, “The reds emerging are far better than the whites”, Then slipped into a joke, “A fellow said to his mate, ‘I bought a new kind of hearing aid.’ ‘What type is it?’ his mate asked. ‘5.30 he answered’”.

When the laughing stopped Len suggested perhaps Australian wine makers had bought the wrong kind of hearing aid — because they were not hearing the message that our whites were not as good as our reds.

Perhaps the key to Len’s wide influence lies not so much in his public pronouncements but more in his ability to connect with so many people at all levels. He had an extraordinary ability to remember names and positions of people with whom he came into contact.

For young people, it was always flattering and memorable to be publicly greeted by someone of Len’s charisma. But it could also be intimidating, because Len loved to call upon new contacts to stand up and speak, totally unprepared, sometimes in front of hundreds of people.

A constant theme for Len, publicly and privately, was the need for Australia’s wine industry to be outward looking and built on quality. ‘Complacency is our enemy’, he once said, ‘And if we’re not complacent we’ll be a great wine producing nation. If we’re going to get there, our wines will have to keep getting better. We should make the best $10, the best $20 wine and so on – but we’ll have a fight on the $200 ones’.

This theme of quality and internationalism drove the establishment of the Len Evan’s Tutorial – a weeklong intensive seminar held each year for young, accomplished wine people seeking entree into Australia’s show system.

Len believed passionately in shows as a force for good. And he saw the need to bring forward a new generation of wine show judges with an appreciation of international benchmarks.

Len is gone. But the show will go on.

Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 1996 $180-$240
In today’s salute to Len Evans it seems fitting to include two contrasting luxury Champagnes from the great 1996 vintage. The all-chardonnay Taittinger Comtes de Champagne – sourced from top-ranking vineyards in the Champagne district’s Côtes des Blancs sub region – has Champagne’s elusive combination of intensity and delicacy. Without pinot noir in the blend the colour is a deceptively pale lemon, belying its ten years’ age. But that prolonged bottle ageing prior to release added a subtle patina of aromas, flavours and textures that simply enhances the wine’s extraordinary vivacity and freshness. This is about as good as aperitif style Champagne gets.

Why the 2003 rieslings are so good

24 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Shortly after keying last week’s column on the glories of the 2003 rieslings, I received a note from Petaluma’s Brian Croser. Like the other makers referred to in the column, Brian expressed excitement at the quality but, at the same time, was aware of what scepticism might attach to claims of two consecutive vintages of a lifetime in 2002 and 2003.

Writes Croser, “I know you are looking sceptically at these words and are probably thinking ‘good spin’ to follow the unfollowable, the wonderful 2002 vintage”.

As usual, Croser’s press release carried more meat than most. His analysis of ‘heat summation’ (a measure of solar heat available to vines during the growing season) for the past three vintages sheds considerable light on vintage 2002 and 2003 quality.

“The heat summation from October 2002 to the end of January 2003 was just short of a record set in 2001”, he writes. Now, as riesling gives its best aromatics and flavours under comparatively cool ripening conditions, we immediately begin to wonder what’s so good about such a hot vintage.

Croser continues, “Then the autumn arrived, a full five to six weeks early. February and March were cooler than average and March and April were significantly cooler than the same months in 2002 which was the coolest summer on record. This early heat blast up to veraison [when grapes begin to change colour and soften], followed by chilly ripening and fruit flavour development phase, has sculpted an unusual and enchanting wine”.

He concludes, “The table actually proves there is very little difference between the long term average heat summation and vintages 2002 and 2003 for the February to April critical ripening phase”.

Now, heat summation is measured as ‘the number of degrees Celsius by which the average mean temperature for the period exceeds 10, multiplied by the number of days in the period’.

Croser’s figures for Petaluma’s Hanlin Hill vineyard in the Clare Valley reveal heat summation for October to February for 2001, 2002, 2003 and the long-term average as 2074, 1569, 1924 and 1773 respectively. Clearly, 2001 and 2003 were hot and 2002 cool.

But the figures for the February to April ripening period – 805, 746, 755 and 759 – show a still hot 2001 vintage with 2002 and 2003 slightly cooler than but very close to the long-term average.

Heat summation for October to January show where the real blast of summer lay for 2001 and 2003 and just how unusually cool was vintage 2002. The figures are: 1269, 823, 1169 and 1014 for 2001, 2002, 2003 and the long term average respectively.

While these exact figures apply only to one vineyard, the general trend, I believe, may be extrapolated across the Clare and Eden Valleys. They tend to support the view that wines from the cooler 2002 vintage tend to be a little more restrained in the fruit department and possess more assertive acidity. This suggests good cellaring potential

In contrast, the 2003s seem to offer more up front aromas and fruitiness than the 2002s did at the same age. This, too, is consistent with early heat followed by cool ripening. However, the wines have reasonable structure, too. So there are bound to be some long living examples amongst the 2003s, too, even if the general trend is to early drinking pleasure.

The figures also tell us a little of why these two legendary riesling areas are not so hospitable to chardonnay. Chardonnay, like riesling, develops its most intense flavours under comparatively cool ripening conditions. However, it ripens earlier than riesling and in Clare and Eden that means before the onset of suitably cool autumn weather. Both regions make workmanlike chardonnays, but you’ll look long and hard to find anything in the league of riesling.

And what of the so-called ‘riesling renaissance’ still being talked up in the press? From what I can see, there’s no such thing. In the bumper 2002 harvest, Australia’s total harvest was just 28756 tonnes compared to chardonnay’s 252166. By 2005 the tonnages for each variety are tipped to reach 302000 and 36000 respectively.

Clearly, riesling is and is likely to remain a niche variety. But that’s very good news for those tuned into it because it will continue to deliver more quality and flavour for your dollar than any variety, white or red.

Annie’s Lane Clare Valley Riesling 2003, $14 to $18
This is just one of many absolutely delicious, early-release 2003 rieslings beginning to hit the market. As a major, widely distributed product (it’s part of the Beringer Blass group), Annie’s Lane is frequently discount fodder. Hence, the wide gap between ‘normal’ retail and ‘special’ pricing. I saw this in a line up of 12 other 2003’s and liked its rich musky/floral aroma and similarly generous, very fresh and zesty dry palate. The screw-cap seal guarantees pristine, fruity freshness now and should protect the wine for many years if you prefer the rich, honeyed flavours that come with age.

Wine review — Helm, Gallagher & West Cape Howe

20 August 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Helm Classic Dry Riesling 2006 $25 & Premium Riesling 2006 $39
Ken Helm’s been out of the blocks quickly with his 2006 rieslings having hit a gold-medal score for the Premium Riesling at the recent Winewise Small Vignerons Awards and winning bronze medals for both in the 2006 Melbourne Show – where the cheaper Classic Dry outscored the Premium. This is not unusual as the softer, slightly sweeter Classic Dry has strong drink-now appeal where the more austere, slow-evolving Premium blossoms with a few years’ bottle age. Unquestionably to me the Premium is the better wine in the long run. Both are to be released on September first at cellar door, phone 6227 0555.

Gallagher Canberra District Riesling 2006 $17
In a tasting of eight local 2006 rieslings Gallagher and Helm Premium drew my top scores with the victory finally going to Gallagher by a tiny margin. This is a lovely, fresh, citrusy and delicate drop sourced from Graeme Lunney’s Four Winds Vineyard, Murrumbateman. The previous vintage, from the same vineyard, won gold at last year’s local show and this one seems to be of a similar quality, if a little more full flavoured. The pale, bright, colour, varietal purity and fine structure all suggest a long and interesting flavour evolution in bottle. Cellar door phone 6227 0555.

West Cape Howe Western Australia Tempranillo 2005 $19
This is a delicious, drink-now red made from Spain’s tempranillo – a thick skinned, dark coloured, early ripening variety. It’s widely used in Spain to give backbone to blends and is especially well known as partner to garnacha (grenache) in the Rioja region. This version, sourced from the warm Perth Hills region, shows little of the variety’s backbone and more of its ripe, slurpy berry flavours with a pleasant spicy edge and sufficient soft, easy-on-the-gums tannin to give structure and satisfaction. The winemaker note suggests a two to four year drinking frame, but I doubt it will ever be better than it is now at its freshest and fruitiest.

Canberra wine region — a boutique affair

20 August 2006WineChris Shanahan

After the decade-long, tenfold expansion described here last week, Canberra’s wine industry remains – from a drinker’s perspective, anyway — principally a boutique affair.

While the announcement of Hardy’s Kamberra project in 1997 encouraged several large vineyard plantings and delivered us one quite big and outstanding winery, the district’s identity still comes primarily from the wines of small producers.

If their numbers approximately doubled in that ten-year period – from about twenty to forty – the scale of individual operations remains tiny. According to the Australian Wine Industry Journal thirty-two of our forty-odd local vignerons own twelve hectares or less of vines each – and nineteen of those have less than five hectares.

Of the older, established operators, only Doonkuna touches the still modest twenty-hectare mark, thanks to a substantial expansion in the late nineties under Barry Moran.

The Journal also tells us that between 1998 and 2000 – at the peak of Australia’s vine-planting boom – we gained four substantial new vineyards that subsequently developed their own wine brands as well as selling grapes to other winemakers.

These were all established between Hardy’s announced arrival and the opening of its Kamberra winery, Watson, in 2000. By that time Long Rail Gully, Four Winds and Shaw Vineyard Estate at Murrumbateman had commenced planting twenty-two, twenty-one and thirty-two hectares respectively.

At nearby Hall, Wily Trout planted fifty hectares and at Holt, Kamberra, in a joint venture with Alan and Helen Anderson, established eighty-three hectares that deliver the core of Kamberra’s local intake.

But because the Journal records only winemaker plantings, it doesn’t reveal the extent of plantings by those purely in the grape supply business. Of course, these are of less direct interest to wine drinkers.

Canberra’s mainly tiny vineyard plots and cellar door outlets are scattered across a vast landscape, stretching from Yass to Murrumbateman to Hall to Holt to Mount Majura, to top of the Lake George Escarpment and down to its western foreshore,

These vineyards lie in a variety of soils and aspects and — probably more importantly in terms of wine style — cover a variety of altitudes from a little over five hundred metres on the Murrumbidgee Valley side of Hall, through the mid six hundred metres at Murrumbateman, to the low seven hundreds along Lake George and into the eight hundreds at the top of the escarpment near Wamboin and Lark Hill winery.

As the area under vines and the number of vignerons expanded over the last decade, so too did the district’s winemaking capital – in both physical and human terms. The new talent and new equipment, added to the previous quarter century’s learning, saw a marked increase in the number and quality of our very best wines, if not the elimination of all winemaking problems.

The decade also saw shiraz and, to a lesser extent, riesling step forward as our regional stars; the emergence of viognier as another outstanding performer; and promising debut’s from pinot gris, marsanne, sangiovese and tempranillo.

Chardonnay’s performance remained solid, if upstaged by those from nearby Tumbarumba; pinot noir hit several highs at Lark Hill and remains a contender in our higher, cooler sites; sauvignon blanc can be delicious as at Brindabella Hills; cabernet sauvignon has proven challenging; and merlot struggles for identity.

Importantly, the decade welcomed the arrival of several sophisticated, modern cellar door facilities, notably those of Kamberra, Lambert’s, Madew, Lerida Estate and Shaw Vineyard Estate – as well as food offerings at Pialligo Estate, Poachers Pantry and Yass Valley Wines.

Wine review — Tulloch, Coriole & Water Wheel

13 August 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Tulloch Hunter Chardonnay 2006 $14.99
After decades in various corporate hands the Tulloch label finally moved back to the Hunter in 2001 following Southcorp’s acquisition of Rosemount Estate. A syndicate consisting of the Tulloch family, Inglewood Vineyards of Denman and the Angove family now owns the brand and out sources the winemaking. Canberra-bred Jim Chatto made the wine at Monarch Winery using fruit from the Inglewood Vineyard, Denman, and JYT vineyard, Pokolbin. Jim’s lovely touch with winemaking shows in this delicious drop’s crystal clear, rich-but-not-heavy varietal character and a more-ish, brisk freshness.

Coriole McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004 $24 to $29
Coriole’s little amphitheatre of vines sits on one of the plum sites in McLaren and for decades now, under Mark Lloyd, has produced appealing, ripe, rich reds at reasonable prices. This particular sample stood out from a few other shirazes on the tasting bench then graduated to the kitchen table and disappeared – a sure sign of quality. There were no notes taken just happy little sips with a rich winter beef and mushroom casserole. From memory, the wine started with the particularly lifted fragrance of the 2004 vintage then offered ripe, round, sweet fruit flavours and soft tannins – all seasoned with savoury, earthy edge of McLaren Vale.

Water Wheel Bendigo Shiraz 2004 $14 – $19
After the extremely difficult 2003 vintage, Bendigo winemakers probably thought the worst as an extreme two-week heat wave hit in February 2004. Fortunately, the shiraz was some way from ripeness and survived the heat to ripen in ideal, mild conditions a month later. In this instance the little berries produced a modestly priced red of an extraordinary, don’t-spit-me-out succulence. It has the impact of an essence of juicy, super-ripe black cherries of great density and weight and one-more-sip appeal. While the oak flavour is reasonably assertive, it simply can’t outweigh such lashings of ripe fruit.

Canberra wine region consolidates

13 August 2006WineChris Shanahan

In 1997 when BRL Hardy Ltd (now Hardy Wine Company, a division of US-based Constellation Brands) announced ambitious plans for Canberra, the local industry, then twenty-six years old, produced about thirty thousand cases of wine annually from about 400 tonnes of grapes.

It was a time of great optimism for the Australian wine industry. Surging global demand for our wines, especially reds, had sparked a vine-planting spree that was to last until the end of the decade.

As supply struggled to keep pace with demand, grape growers and winemakers alike enjoyed unprecedented returns. In conjunction with generous depreciation provisions, this sparked further planting.

As result, the area under vine in Australia grew from 88,474 hectares in 1997 to 166,665 hectares in 2005. By 1997 annual plantings had grown to 8063 hectares (up from 1646 in 1991) before peaking at 16,048 hectares in 1999 and tapering off to 5,819 in 2004.

These new plantings fed export sales that grew from 172 million litres worth $687million dollars in the year to December 1997 to 726 million litres worth $2.8 billion in the year to May, 2006.

In the same period domestic sales of Australian wine increased from 346 to 430 million litres. In total, then, the decade saw sales of Australian wine increase from 518 million litres to 1.16 billion litres – with imports increasing by 310 per cent and domestic sales by just twenty four per cent.

Viewed against this massive increase, Canberra’s growth from around forty hectares (270 thousand litres of wine) in 1997 to perhaps five hundred hectares now (3.4 million litres) seems spectacular on a relative basis, if modest in an absolute sense.

But poking around amongst those mind-bending statistics, it’s apparent that not all of the development was driven by the export juggernaut nor was it all on a grand scale.

As broadacre developments (some of them ill-fated tax-driven schemes) proliferated, so, too, did the number of mostly small vignerons — growing from just under one thousand in 1997 to a little over two thousand now. This national doubling was mirrored in Canberra’s increase in winemaker numbers from perhaps twenty to the forty listed in the current Canberra District Wineries Guide.

A few more statistics illustrate the stark contrast between our larger makers and our smaller ones: in a national grape crush of 1.9 million tonnes, about seventy per cent of wine makers crush one hundred tonnes or less while just twenty one winemakers account for almost ninety per cent of branded wine sales.

On the export scene the contrast between big and small producers is particularly sharp with twenty producers accounting for eight-five per cent of sales and a little under fifty per cent of our winemakers not exporting at all.

The last figure suggests that perhaps the majority of small makers of the kind we have in Canberra focus entirely on a domestic market that grew just twenty-four per cent in a decade when winemaker numbers doubled and production skyrocketed.

If that sounds like a tough commercial environment consider, too, that all of this coincided with the intense retail consolidation now underway as Coles and Woolworths increase their market reach.

How Canberra’s small vignerons deal with this and to what extent our only winemaking giant – Hardy’s Kamberra Winery – show market leadership will be the topic for the next few weeks.

Wine review — Chateau Pato, Fox Creek & Mount Horrocks

6 August 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Chateau Pato Hunter DJP Shiraz 2004 $45 & Old Pokolbin Vineyard Shiraz 2004 $29
Chateau Pato, founded by the late David John Paterson and now run by his son, Nick, makes impossibly small batches – 160 dozen and 180 dozen respectively – of these classic Hunter Shiraz styles. The first, bearing David’s initials and from a family vineyard planted in the eighties, has a sweet, earthy aroma and a juicy and very concentrated but typically Hunter soft palate. The other, from an eighty-year-old vineyard, is leaner and tighter in style – slightly reminiscent of Chianti, though softer – with a lovely earthy, savouriness to it. Despite the style contrasts, each is stamped with Hunter earthiness and softness. Cellar door phone 02 4998 7634.

Fox Creek McLaren Vale Shiraz Grenache 2004 $17 & Reserve Shiraz 2004 $70
$70-a-bottle reds are more read about than consumed. But it’s reassuring to screw the caps off a small maker’s flagship and workaday red side by side and discover a credible quality/price ratio. Making good wines across the price spectrum is something Australian winemakers do well. Fox Creek’s $17 shiraz and grenache blend delivers the lovely perfume of the vintage and a really attractive medium-bodied palate for current drinking. In short, you get McLaren Vale richness at a modest price. The Reserve 2004, though, has real gravitas with its immensely powerful, ripe shiraz flavour and structure – a regional specialty to savour slowly.

Mount Horrocks Watervale Semillon 2005 $27
Poor old semillon barely gets a look in on its own these days. Blended with sauvignon blanc it’s going berserk. And in the best of these semillon is the key to complexity. Yet semillon enjoyed great popularity in Australia until generic labels like ‘white burgundy’, based on European place names, began giving way to varietal naming around twenty years ago. Thus hugely popular generically labelled semillons like Basedow of Barossa and Quelltaler of Clare faded from view. Inherently, though, as Stephanie Toole shows with this brilliant Watervale version, it makes a rich, vivacious white with the subtle nutty complexity – but not woodiness – of oak fermentation and maturation.