McLIAVALIAN TERROIR IN DEEP WILD SOUTH

HISTORIC TASTING IN GREG TROTT'S HALF-FINISHED LIBRARY AT WIRRA WIRRA  ... THERE'S A PLASTIC FAKE WOOD WALL WHERE THE BOOKS SHOULD BE ... L-R DREW NOON, JAMES HOOK, PAUL CARPENTER AND CHARLIE SEPPELT photo PHILIP WHITE

 Top Joint Starts Detective Movie

Rockhounds Get Licks In Line

New History Way Down South

by PHILIP WHITE

One of the true tasting pleasures of recent years was the McLaren Vale winemakers' initial testing of whether their tentative plan of sub-district boundaries bore any reflection in the glassware.

The Barossa winemakers recently held their fourth annual tasting of this sort.  Both districts invite winemakers to enter barrel samples of one year old Shiraz.  As this is the most common variety in each district, and the best understood, it’s the most obvious choice to use in such comparisons. The idea is to store the wines in one-year-old barrels in an attempt to let them express themselves with minimal sophistry.  In the Barossa tasting, even the horrid wet vintage conditions of 2011 were not enough to overwhelm the flavours of the different terroirs: each sub-region – the Barossa calls them Barossa Grounds – certainly tasted different than the way they had in the previous drought years, but nevertheless each grouping of wines had characteristics unique to them which were not so evident in others. 

Not only were they different, but they're more differenter.

At the risk of being blasted for having vested interests in McLaren Vale, the region in which I happily reside, I’m obliged to say that the Vales Shiraz seemed overall to have weathered the wiles of the rampant moulds and mildews better than the Barossa did in 2011.  This factor reinforces my suspicion that vines which normally ripen in places of higher humidity seemed better able to handle the sloppy year.  Being adjacent to the Gulf, McLaren Vale is normally quite a lot more humid than the Barossa during summer, which is in turn marginally more humid than Clare.  I suspect this is the major reason for the Vales fruit to be softer of tannin than the Barossa, which is often softer than Clare.  Think of the Vales growing soft cherries-and-plums fruit, where Clare tends to be more olivine, like kalamata, with the Barossa dangling, to varying degrees, between the two.

McLaren Vale has now had well over a year to digest the confounding intricacies of its geology map, and has had a committee hard at work exploring how the terranes isolated there may influence the flavour of their Shiraz.  But where the Barossa will probably end up recognizing around a dozen distinctive Grounds, the Vales, which has the most complex geology I’ve yet seen in such a precise vignoble, anywhere on Earth, faces the fact of at least nineteen clearly-delineated geological groups, some of which reappear in many separate locations.

All this is further complicated by the Gulf on one side of the McLaren vale vignoble and the Willunga Fault and its escarpment on the other: a re-occurring geology will surely produce fruit of different flavours the further it appears from the Gulf, and the higher its altitude. 

RIVERINE (FRESHWATER) AND MARINE (SEAWATER) SEDIMENTS IN THE CLIFFS AT  PORT WILLUNGA, BELOW THE FAMOUS STAR OF GREECE RESTAURANT ... THE TOP LAYER IS THE VERY RECENT (PLEISTOCENE) NGALTINGA CLAY, A STICKY WATER-RETAINING FORMATION PUT ATOP THE MARINE LAYERS BELOW BY FRESHWATER ... THIS CLAY IS LOUSY FOR VITICULTURE ... NEXT LEVEL IS THE PALE BURNHAM LIMESTONE (2.6 MILLION YEARS), THEN THE CALCERIOUS FOSSILIFEROUS HALLET COVE SANDSTONE (JUST A LITTLE OLDER), AND THE YELLOW-BROWN PORT WILLUNGA FORMATION (23 MILLION YEARS) DIPPING GENTLY SOUTHWARD AT THE FOOT OF THE CLIFF ... WHILE LIMESTONE AND CHALKY GROUND IS SEEN AS GOOD STUFF BY WINEMAKERS WITH COONAWARRA AND CHAMPAGNE ENVY, SUCH MARINE DEPOSITS ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO CONTAIN SALT THAN THE RIVERINE LAYERS photo EMILY SHEPHERD

Imagine a bed -- the Willunga Embayment between the two faultlines -- made up with a mattress, underblanket, sheets, duvet, covers and whatnot.  You scrunch all these up together, then slice the top off with a laser and map it from above.  Bits reappear.  The Pirramimma Sandstone, for example, which you can see in the cutting around the Haselgrove tankfarm, re-emerges in eight other places.  The Kurrajong Formation appears in differing compositions repeatedly along the faultline from Sellicks to Kangarilla. An argument could be put to have this re-examined between Cactus Canyon and Willunga, south of Rogers Road, and also perhaps at its northern extreme at Kangarilla.  This amusing and complex rubble has long pleased me as a most promising geological feature for viticulture, regardless of its proximity to the ocean or its altitude.  

So while it will take many years of consideration to develop reliable clarity, the plan for McLaren Vale sub-regions took a huge leap forward with this historical tasting, which involved Drew Noon MW, Charlie Seppelt (Tintara winemaker), Paul Carpenter (Wirra Wirra winemaker), James Hook (viticultural scientist at DJ’s Growers and winemaker at Lazy Ballerina) and yours truly.

Just as occurred in the Barossa, I approached this Vales tasting with one goal in mind.  Rather than pick faults in unfinished wines from a bad year, the trick is to examine each group, blind, seeking similarities from one wine to the next.  It’s a much more impressionistic approach than you’d normally adopt.

KURRAJONG AT CRADLE OF HILLS, A FEW KILOMETRES NORTH-EAST FROM THE VICTORY HOTEL AT SELLICKS photo PHILIP WHITE

The first group came from the piedmont of the hills from Sellicks, stretching about eight kilometers to the north.  These grow in stony alluvium which has washed down across the Willunga Fault.  They all had quite distinct cherry flavours with white pepper topnotes, quite precise acidity and fine-grained, velvety tannins.

THE TINY DEPOSIT OF KURRAJONG AT MARIUS, ON THE FAULTINE NORTH-EAST OF WILLUNGA TOWNSHIP, ABOUT TWELVE KAYS FROM CRADLE OF HILLS ... TYPICALLY, THE RECLUSIVE PROPRIETOR PIKE REQUESTED THAT I ADVISE THAT LIKE CHESTER OSBORN, HE DID NOT ENTER A WINE IN THIS TASTING photo PHILIP WHITE

On the same formation, but closer to Willunga and further from the Gulf, the tannins grew coarser and seemed to show more summer dust.  Dark charcuterie meats like black Iberian ham began to replace the cherries of the first group, adding to the sense that the wines were lighter in the middle palate, giving that hole-in-the-middle feeling common to Cabernet sauvignon.

The next section stretches north from Willunga, past Noons, to Pertaringa, and declines in altitude from the Penny’s Hill Road vineyard on the faultline to Penny’s Hill tasting and sales complex down the slope, where deep alluvial clays, some cracking, have replaced or covered the rubble. If there was any commonality in these wines, it was about a silky texture which rather abruptly finishes in very dry tannin which varied from soft and velvety to tea tin to red summer dust.  They also seemed to share a more metallic acidity.  The fruits, which were even less evident overall than in either of the preceding groups, came and went from one glass to the next, along with a breath of dark chocolate.  

The clays and calcrete which stretch in a band from Fox Creek to the coast at Blanche point came next.  These seemed to share that acetone black boot polish aroma that usually indicates Tempranillo.  Some had very sweet fruity bouquets, but again the wines showed that donut Cabernet hole-in-the-middle before simple dusty tannins took over. 

There were only three wines from the flats immediately south of the McLaren Vale township, which become more undulating as you approach the coast at Maslins. These had very black noses, with blackberries, licorice and star anise, but then declined rapidly in complexity, with fairly simple finishes.

The next region was a big stretch across the Onkaparinga Gorge, with the old rocks of Chapel Hill in the middle of its southern extreme.  The geologies here were many more in number than the wines, so it was little surprise that the latter showed very little commonality other than tannins which reminded me of chicory.

The following section spread from Kays and Oliver’s Taranga south to Maxwells, just on the northern verge of the McLaren Vale township.  Once again, the geologies are widely varied here and highly complex, but the wines seemed to show some similarities of style.  Several had a samphire swampiness (salt?) that I saw in the Eden Valley wines at the Barossa tasting; also common was the slightly acrid whiff of chicory and other dark green leaves, like blackberry.  The middle-palate fruits reminded me of jujubes and Medlar Gels, and the tannins were dry, but easy.  Most of these wines were reasonably elegant, tending to simple. 

IRONSTONE GIBBERS FROM YANGARRA ESTATE ... WIRRA WIRRA WINERY IS BUILT FROM YANGARRA IRONSTONE photo PHILIP WHITE

The large stretch of irony clays, ironstone and sand valleys around Blewett Springs, from Sue Trott’s Five Geese in the north, and south to the McLaren Flat, were the most varied lot of all.  They were perhaps finer of form, more slender and elegant, but really showed great divergence.  I suspect this is due to the moulds which ripped into some of the more sheltered vineyards here – perhaps the vintage was harder on these.

FRESHWATER-ROUNDED IRONSTONE MIXING WITH KURRAJONG AT YANGARRA photo PHILIP WHITE

The two wines from McLaren Flat had little in common.  One was simply far too woody to be tasted.

The sandstone ridges that reoccur nine times from the back of Wirra Wirra, to Haselgrove’s, and way north of Woodstock, were thin and nettley, with hints of onion weed, again hinting at an extremely difficult year.

Next came the wines from the rubbly Kurrajong Formation, which I have long thought to be amongst the very best terroirs in the district.  This alluvial fruitcake reappears in various forms along the faultline from Sellicks (where the map needs some adjustment) to Kangarilla, where it looks like the galet vineyards of the Rhone gorge.  In some spots, the stones are rounded and riverine, in others, they’re angular and sharp, from the grinding action of ice.  These were easily the most distinguished wines of all, with sweet aromas of Marello cherries and blackberries, and soft, plush palates of elegance, complexity and regal poise.  They were puckery without a hint of coarseness, and very impressive.        

Then, like a lonely soldier indeed, there was one offering from the old rocks of the Seaford Heights* fields.  A lovely, alluring, svelte cuteness, it opened with balanced mint, blackberry and blueberry, and finished with a tantalizing tweak of aniseed in its pretty tail. 

As this cool 2012 vintage so far looks a radical improvement over 2011, it’s vital that all growers with a barrel of Shiraz unique to one of the geologies shown on the geo map should begin to think about next year’s tasting.  Use neutral oak of a least a year’s age, and don’t muck about with it much.  Next year’s tasting will be even more fascinating, and the local knowledge it builds will be beyond measurable value. 
   
This tasting, by the way, had nothing to do with the Scarce Earths Shiraz project, which is a marketing scheme designed to increase the price of certain very young officially-approved Shiraz wines.  Scarce Earths has a different tasting panel.

The opinions above are all my own - Drew Noon is working on a summary of the entire panel's opinions for circulation to the participants and growers. DRINKSTER doesn't really want to see the list of makers.  That's simply not the point.  The little districts are the point. 

*FOOTNOTE - SEAFORD HEIGHTS

If there is any single reason to save this extremely rare geology from the mindless brutality of Labor’s ghetto, it is this wine.

Since Premier Weatherill is radically revamping his planning and development bureaucracies and fiefdoms, the truest test of his leadership, intellectual alacrity and moral responsibility looms huge now.  It’s not too late for him to listen to the outrage of this community and save this irreplaceable slice of agricultural land from the villa rash his predecessors regarded as compulsory.

This dormitoria should be stalled until a more complete plan is devised for the McLaren Vale vignoble, which includes Glenthorne Farm, where the University should be forced to conform to its deed and get on with the sort of serious viticulture research that could have avoided, say, a lot of the damage of 2011. 

There are many issues of viticulture vs. other land use which will inevitably arise as the realities of this map gradually sink in.  This process cannot be rushed.  But just as really fine vineyard country, capable of returning the maximum jobs and profit per litre of water used, for starters, should be preserved for viticulture or other appropriate farming, so could some of the land we discover to be poor for vineyard be devoted to other things, like swamp and bush, maybe interspersed with very careful green housing.

Much more pressing immediately is the rapid increase in traffic at the Aldinga Airport, which is raising concerns of phylloxera spreading into this phylloxera-free region.  There are planning issues like these which deserve more measured mental brilliance than anything we’ve encountered yet, and urgently.

With this tasting, and this map, the winemakers are well ahead of the planners, which is the way it should be.  Give them a chance to show their green credentials. 


HUMANS PAID TO REMOVE THE ONLY WINDBREAK ON SEAFORD HEIGHTS DURING HOLIDAY LAPSE OF FELLING LAWS photo JAMES HOOK