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.

New Zealand winemaking heads south

26 July 1998WineChris Shanahan

New Zealand’s wine industry has undergone profound changes in the last thirty years. Forced by a shift from fortified to table-wine production, its centre of gravity has moved south away from Auckland.

Unlike in Australia — where major growing areas like South Australia’s Riverland, the Barossa and McLaren Vale were able to shift fairly easily from fortified to table-wine production — New Zealand wine makers virtually abandoned the Auckland area to expand or establish plantings in more suitable climates to the south.

In 1998 Auckland’s vineyards contributed just 866 tonnes of grapes to a national crush of 76,536 tonnes, ninety four per cent of which came from just three regions: Gisborne (23,649 tonnes), Hawkes Bay (22,751 tonnes) and Marlborough (25,558 tonnes).

Gisborne, local wine maker Denis Irwin once told me, is New Zealand’s easternmost vineyard. It’s vines, near the shores of Poverty Bay, are the first in the world to see the sun each day.

Gisborne’s reputation rests largely, as Michael Cooper writes in ‘The Wines and Vineyards of New Zealand’, on its ability to produce big volumes of table wine at the right price.

Vines were established at Hawke’s Bay, on the west coast, several hours’ drive south of Gisborne, in 1851. Although the landscape is periodically re-arranged by cataclysmic earthquakes, the region remains an important quality producer and — though it goes against Australian pre-conceptions of New Zealand wine — Hawkes Bay produces some very good reds.

I have fond memories of touring New Zealand in the early eighties, savouring Vidal and Te Mata Cabernet Sauvignons after weeks of nothing but sauvignon blanc.

Important as Gisborne and Hawkes Bay are, New Zealand’s international reputation rests predominantly on wines made from one grape variety from a region that was not planted until the 1970s.

Montana established broad-acre plantings on the gravelly Wairau River Plains in the vicinity of Blenheim, Marlborough in 1973. This sunny but cool region burst onto the international scene with sensationally pungent, fruity sauvignon blancs within ten years of those early plantings. And in just 20 years it overtook Gisborne as the country’s largest wine producing region.

I think it was a 1980 Montana Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that caused a sensation at Canberra’s National wine show in 1981. It set the scene for New Zealand’s continuing dominance in the sauvignon blanc class.

A few years later it was Selaks (albeit with a Hawkes Bay sauvignon blanc under a Farmer Bros label) carrying off the Canberra trophies.

Then David Hohnen of Cape Mentelle, Margaret River, established Cloudy Bay, Marlborough. Hohnen showed his competitors, if not how to make Sauvignon Blanc, certainly how to take it to the world. He also head hunted Selak’s winemaker, Kevin Judd.
But there’s more to New Zealand wine than three big vineyard areas and sauvignon blanc. And the industry shape is markedly different from what we have in Australia.

In 1998, premium white grape varieties made up about 36 per cent of Australia’s total grape crush and premium reds 31 per cent. And the premium white/red gap is narrowing rapidly. By 2000 the combined red/white should increase to 72 per cent of the total from today’s 68 per cent.

In New Zealand, premium wine grapes make up a larger proportion of total output than in Australia (84 per cent versus our 68 per cent in 1996) and whites totally dominate the quality landscape: premium white grapes accounted for 66 per cent and reds 18 per cent of the total crush in 1998.

New Zealand production has been rising rapidly. It leaped from 55 thousand tonnes to 78 thousand between 1986 and 1998. Given New Zealand grape yields varying 8.2 to 12.2 tonnes per hectare in recent years, total crush on 2000’s 8,700 hectares should be between 71,300 and 106,100 tonnes .

If sauvignon blanc dominates our consciousness of New Zealand wines, it’s not the only variety drawing international acclaim. Cool ripening conditions, abundant sunshine and a wide variety of locations suggest a particularly bright future for riesling, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot-noir-chardonnay-based sparkling wine as well.

In the 1996 Canberra National Wine Show two New Zealand wines outclassed all that Australia could throw at them. Corban’s Amadeus Brut 1992 carried off the Kit Stephens Trophy for best bottle-fermented sparkling wine. And Martinborough Vineyard (located near Wellington) took the Rydges Hotels Trophy with its 1994 Reserve Pinot Noir.

The latter wine enjoys a cult following globally as do Tim and Judy Finn’s Neudorf Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc and the Rieslings and Gewurztraminer of Weingut Seifried, the Finn’s neighbours at Moutere, near Nelson on the north western side of the South Island.

In brief, New Zealand now provides the world with one of its best value, most interesting and affordable dry whites — Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and through the work of small pioneers is making tiny volumes of quite exquisite, elegant dry reds and whites . I’ll report on those mid August after a flying visit.

South Australia — still the wine state

19 July 1998UncategorizedChris Shanahan

Despite the massive re-shaping of Australia’s wine landscape now under way, South Australia remains — and looks set to remain — not just our biggest wine producer, but our biggest premium-wine producer.

The massive explosion of vine planting and re-writing of our wine map shows in preliminary data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), indicating that 32,773 hectares (37 per cent) of Australia’s 88,474 hectares of grape vines in the ground at the end of 1997 had been planted since 1991.

There’s been unprecedented activity in all states, led by South Australia with 15,530 hectares or 47 per cent of those new plantings. Victoria comes in second with 7,881 hectares (24 per cent) followed by New South Wales with 6,986 (21 per cent), Western Australia with 1,543 hectares (5 per cent), Queensland with 583 hectares and Tasmania with 245.

New plantings since 1991 expressed as a per centage increase, not surprisingly, show big growth for the States starting on low bases: Tasmania up 103 per cent to 482 hectares, Queensland up 75 per cent to 1,359 hectares and Western Australia up 64 per cent to 3,958 hectares.

But we begin to see the scale of expansion with New South Wales up 55 per cent to 19,738 hectares and Victoria up 46 per cent to 25,102 hectares.

South Australia’s new 15,530 hectares bring its total to 37, 376. Given its high starting base, that’s a massive lift of 71 per cent in just 7 years.

But if they say you can’t be all things to all people, South Australia’s wine industry is not listening. An exceptionally diversity of geology and climate means that ‘The Wine State’ is just that.

It has the hot stretches of the Murray River producing bulk table, sparkling and fortified wines for the budget and middle market sectors.

It has Coonawarra, Padthaway, Langhorne Creek, McLaren Vale, the Adelaide Hills, the Barossa Valley, Eden Valley and Clare Valley producing (collectively) cutting-edge Cabernet, Chardonnay, Shiraz, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Grenache and sparkling wine.

Many of those same regions, plus the Adelaide Plains, back up with commercial quantities of high-quality, mid-priced table wines for world markets.

And it has world-class fortified material emerging, especially from the warm Barossa, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley.

Grape production figures confirm why South Australia is still ‘The Wine State” as we move into the era of high-quality, regional wines.

If we arbitrarily chop out the 192,275 tonne grape output of the warm Murray River and Adelaide Plains in 1997, South Australia’s remaining areas still produced 179,258 tonnes, equivalent to around 12.5 million dozen 750ml bottles. But we ain’t seem nothin’ yet!

The 150 year old Barossa-Eden Region, long the biggest-volume premium producer is about to lose its crown to the Limestone Coast, embracing Coonawarra and Padthaway.

In 1997, wine makers drew 57,983 tonnes of grapes (4 million dozen 750ml bottles) from Barossa-Eden and 48,512 (3.4 million dozen) from the Limestone Coast.

By 2002, wine makers estimate their intakes will reach 79,763 tonnes (5.6 million dozen) from Barossa-Eden and 99,630 (7 million dozen) from the Limestone Coast. In other words the Limestone Coast’s output will have doubled in five years, making it by far our most valuable premium-wine growing area.

By then total South Australian wine-grape production will have risen to 635,470 tonnes (44.5 million dozen), with the Adelaide Hills contributing 10,624 (0.7 million dozen); Clare Valley 28,946 (2 million dozen)); Langhorne Creek 40,381 (2.8 million dozen); and McLaren Vale 55,694 (3.9 million dozen).

South Australia’s five year grape projections from 1997 to 2002 reflect the massive global swing to red wine consumption (triggered partly by the ‘French paradox’ and other positive links between moderate consumption of red wine and health.

Figures released by South Australia’s Grape Industry Board and Grape Advisory Committee (based on wine-maker actual reported usage for 1997 and estimates for 2002) predict that while white-grape usage will increase 33 per cent from 205,950 to 274,135 tonnes, reds will explode by 118 per cent from 165,583 to 361,325 tonnes.

All those extra grapes have to be made into wine and the wine has to be drunk by somebody. The first part requires huge new investments in wine-making and storage equipment.

Assuming all goes well in that department, there’ll be one heck of a lot of wine splashing around the world (not just Australia) by 2002 — perhaps bringing a little price relief.

Provided demand for premium wines remains buoyant, the new century offers a brilliant future for South Australia as it builds on its old strengths and develops the new. From a drinkers point of view it’s good to know that the best is yet to come from a totally renewed ‘Wine State’.

Redman elegant Coonawarra reds — relief from the inky, oaky monsters

14 June 1998Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

The enjoyment of two new-release, elegant, slightly-austere Coonawarra red wines (Redmans Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 and Shiraz 1996) has me pondering the direction of (some) Australian red-wine making.

Are too many Australian reds becoming too big, too bold and too oaky? Is regional and varietal character being swamped and blurred by oak, tannin and forbiddingly-high alcohol content?

Many of our mid-priced commercial reds — even some of our top-shelf products — seem headed in this direction — in utter contrast to the pristine varietal and regional character displayed by those lovely Redman wines.

This polarisation — from understated and elegant to the big, bold, international style pioneered by Australia — is not limited to our own shores.

The success of Australian and other new-world wine producers is at least partly responsible for the international style popping up in Bordeaux, France. Prior to a visit there in April, my travelling companion, London-based author and wine consultant Anthony Hanson MW, wrote,

“One can identify two distinct wine-making schools in Bordeaux at present. The first focuses on the well-established view that red Bordeaux wines are noted for elegance, fruit, harmony, longevity, trueness to geographical origin, faithfulness to the character of each vintage etc. The second uses new technologies and new-barrel ageing to the maximum, to produce wines each vintage which will impress by their depth of colour, their open immediacy of aroma, their richness on the palate from day one, and their mouth-coating, pungent tannins…”

Good wines exist within either style. Amongst these, perceptions of ‘quality’ depend on personal preference rather than on any objective measure. Equally, poor examples of each exist, too.

Within the ‘elegant’ style the worst wines tend be thin or, at the worst ‘green’ and astringent, where the worst ‘international’ styles, as Hanson suggests, tend to big colour, wih big oak and big tannins swamping grape flavour.

Looking at both styles from Coonawarra and Bordeaux, I think it’s fair to say that Coonawarra tends to be more even than Bordeaux and generally lacking the extremely bad examples of both styles with more highlights in the ‘international’ style and less in the ‘elegant style.

Another observation, is that the more alcoholic, tannic and oaked the wine, the more blurred its identity.

In Bordeaux, for example, an oaky, tannic, dense Chateau Canon La Gaffeliere might have come from anywhere. The fact that it was a Grand Cru wine from the commune of St Emillion may help sell it, but even the experienced palate might be challenged to place its origin.

By contrast, another Grand Cru St Emillion, Chateau La Tour Figeac, showed the region’s distinctive perfume, sweet fruit, and austere, drying tannins. It could hardly have been anything but St Emillion.

In a similar way, Redmans wines stand out as distinct, elegant examples of Coonawarra. There’s a deliberate philosophy behind their making; a clear understanding of what the alternative styles might be; and a long family familiarity with Coonawarra and its wines.

Bruce Redman intentionally makes the ‘elegant’ rather than the international style and says he approaches wine making much the way his father Owen — and before that Owen’s father — the legendary Bill Redman did.

The Redman’s 34 hectares of mature vines, towards the northern end of Coonawarra, are hand pruned and trellised to avoid the ‘hedging’ effect common with mechanical pruning.

Bruce says this gives his berries good sun exposure and hence a measure of protection against disease while developing ripe flavours a tad earlier than shaded grapes — an important factor in Coonawarra where autumn rain often threatens a late crop.

Timing of harvest is the key to the Redman wine style. Bruce says that in Coonawarra ripe flavours develop in grapes at comparatively low sugar (and hence potential alcohol) levels. Where some wine makers aim for grapes with an alcohol potential of 13.5 per cent or more, he picks on flavour backed up by chemical analysis.

Thus, the Redman wines often sit at around 12.5 per cent alcohol while delivering lovely, delicate, ripe-berry flavours.

In the winery, ferments are conducted in small open vats and the cap of skins is hand plunged three times a day to aid colour and flavour extraction. This gentle technique, combined with a warm ferment (20-25 degrees Celsius) gives good flavour, colour and tannin extraction without harshness.

Oak maturation plays an important role in mellowing grape tannins and adding structure to the wine, but a five year life cycle for each barrel and the use of just 10 per cent new oak in shiraz and 30-50 per cent in cabernet, means that oak flavour is always subservient to fruit in the Redman wine.

There are many other lovely expressions of Coonawarra. But in my opinion Redman provides a far more sympathetic treatment of the region’s grapes than the ‘international’ approach.