CONSTELLATION'S REYNELLA PLOT SICKENS

CONSTELLATION'S AUSTRALIAN HEADQUARTERS AT OLD REYNELLA. JOHN REYNELL'S PIONEER HOMESTEAD IS AMONG THE TREES, CENTRE. HIS 161 YEAR OLD VINEYARD IS CIRCLED. THIS IS THE SITE OF PIONEER HOMES' PROPOSED 41 BLOCK INTENSIVE RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT: A PIONEER YUPPIE GHETTO ALREADY IN THE FESTERING STAGE...

Savvy Council Buys Time At Reynella
In Come The Heavy State Ministers
Meanwhile, Up Shit Creek With Karlene ...
by PHILIP WHITE

“The Stony Hill Vineyard is the jewel in Australia's viticultural crown,” reads the text on the back of the bottle. “Importantly, it is the birthplace of one of Australia's most famous wine houses, the oldest in South Australia, Chateau Reynella. Today Chateau Reynella, the home of John Reynell, the man who planted the first commercial vineyard in South Australia and who is recognised by many as the father of the State's industry, is again producing quality wines from Stony Hill Vineyard. Stony Hill is the first commercial vineyard planted by John Reynell on his Reynella Farm back in 1839, only one year after he founded the farm and three years after the proclamation of South Australia.”

But that was then. Here’s the latest about that same priceless vineyard from the same crass mob.

“Constellation Wines Australia (CWAU) has entered into an agreement to sell a block of land on the north west corner of Reynell and Panalatinga Roads, Reynella, opposite the main winery grounds. This site is part of the original 32 hectare area purchased by John Reynell in 1839, around 16 hectares of which was sold by John Reynell in 1854 to create the township of Reynella (now Old Reynella).

“Known as Stony Hill vineyard, this block comprises 1.24 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon vines planted in 1990 and 0.89 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1968. These 18 to 40 year old vines are affected by leaf-roll virus and another disease known as ‘Eutypa dieback’. These grapevine diseases have compromised grape quality and reduced yields, to the point where many vines do not have bunches even though they have shoots and leaves. These diseases, combined with the inferior soils of the Stony Hill block, have resulted in poor quality grapes, compared with those grown in the vineyards located on the main winery site.

“The high quality of fruit grown on the main winery site has formed the backbone of our awarded Chateau Reynella McLaren Vale range for many years, and includes the highly valued Reynell clone of Cabernet, named in honour of John Reynell, and now widely used throughout Australia.

“The main winery site is an important part of the Reynella township heritage and highly valued for its historical significance to our company, the region and the South Australian wine industry.

“Sale of the Stony Hill block will enable further investment in the ongoing maintenance of Reynell’s heritage buildings and the surrounding landscaped gardens, which remain open to the public for self guided tours during business hours.

“Details on what is proposed for the Stony Hill block will be a matter for the new owner and the Onkaparinga Council following settlement, which is expected to occur in the next few weeks.”

This statement is from Sheralee Davies, Group Public Relations Manager, 0407 004 959.

The Onkaparinga Council, now beset by complaints about this plan, bought itself some time at Thursday night’s meeting by insisting it needed more advice and information from Pioneer Homes, the developer.

BIGNELL
Leon “Biggles” Bignell, the ace Labour Member for Mawson, the adjacent parliamentary seat, told DRINKSTER “Whitey, do you realise this is History Week? You know what these people are doing? Like Constellation, Pioneer and the Onkaparinga Council? They’re making history history!”

Biggles has written to Patch Conlon, a dead serious wine lover, and Minister for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure, explaining:

“Last night Onkaparinga Council deferred a decision on the subdivision application pending approval by DTEI of a full range of access from Reynell Road to the new development; i.e. left and right access in and out.

CONLON

“I would like you and officers within DTEI to be fully aware of the large community opposition to this proposal and call on DTEI not to grant approval for any access.”

Biggles will meet Planning Minister Paul Holloway on his return from overseas on Tuesday. Holloway promised in November that there would be no more significant housing developments in the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale. Reynella is within the official McLaren Vale Geographical Indicator.

“Because they’re wine regions, also significant tourism regions, it would not make sense to have urban encroachment to a significant extent into those areas,” he said. “So we’ll avoid those areas and the areas that we’ll be looking at for future expansion are those areas where there’ll be less impact on the important tourism and economic areas ... why would you want to encroach on areas that are important to the economy because of the significant contribution that they make to the state’s economy through the wine industry and the tourism industry? Clearly that would be put at threat if we allowed rampant urban development within those areas."

HOLLOWAY

As for Cunstellation’s claim that the vineyard’s sick, well. Deary me. The biggest premium wine company on Earth can’t keep one of Australia’s most significant historical vineyards healthy? How can they be trusted to keep the rest of Reynell’s magnificent estate shipshape? Is Eutypa dieback – aka Dead Arm – the end of the world? Chester Osborne has made a healthy profit and a great deal of public favour from his lovely d'Arenberg Dead Arm Shiraz. How many of the oldest McLaren Vale vineyards don’t have some dead arm in them? Duh.

As for the insinuation that the vineyard has no historical significance because it has been replanted? The poppies of Flanders Fields are sacred and revered, not because they're the same ones that were there a century ago, but because of what happened there. And what happened at this sacred site of Australian viticulture, this site which has been under vine for 161 years, makes it absolutely essential that it should remain a vineyard.

SHARLEY
Which leads me to the little matter of Banrock Station. That's the “Help Us Help The Earth – Supporting Global Conservation” Constellation property up the buggered River Murray. Years ago I warned David Woods, CEO of BRL-Hardy before the Constellation invasion, that Banrock was a deadly PR trap unless the vineyard itself was an environmental triumph, and the vineyard most certainly was not, as it was your basic high-tonnage arid land petro-chem sprayed speculation watered by saline water from a River which was obviously not going to last.

Mysteriously, suddenly, Constellation last week “let go” Tony Sharley, the brilliant research scientist and conservationist who managed the swamps below the vineyard.

MAYWALD

The Riverland is abuzz with rumours about Sharley’s relationship with Karlene Maywald, the Minister for the River Murray and Water Security. If these have substance, it should be very good for South Australia and the River, as Sharely will be much more influential advising Ms Maywald than he ever could have been working for the retreating Constellation.

And, believe me, Karlene needs better advice than any she's had so far.

It's just a pity that Constellation hasn't taken better counsel. The four or five million bucks it might get for this act of barefaced vandalism is peanuts compared to the permanent international disgrace this whole thing has brought down.

Help us help the Earth, indeed. Support global conservation? Yes, please! And Banrock Station? Isn't that up shit creek?

Click on George Grainger Aldridge's cartoon for the ancient history:

STATION BIT OF BANROCK DRYING RIGHT UP

Constellation Repackages Its Green Hero

No Mention Of The Death Of Our River

by PHILIP WHITE

Constellation, the genius transnational which decided to do away with the Hardy’s brand which was much beloved by Australians for generations, is using Australia Day to relaunch its Banrock Station brand in Britain.

The accent will now go more on Banrock and less on Station, probably indicating there will be less dependence on the tired old Murray Valley sheep station for fruit.

Constellation says the new bottle frocks “will reinforce the eco credentials of this top ten UK wine brand”.

The new design shows a tree growing from a wine bottle to reinforce the slogan ‘Good Earth - Fine Wine'.

The bottle image will also be featured on Banrock’s three litre bladder packs.

Today’s British press reports that the £63million brand “supports over 95 global conservation projects worldwide and has donated £2.3million from sales of Banrock Station over recent years”.

One can only wonder what the eco-conscious purchasers of Banrock would think if they saw the utterly decrepit state of the Murray Valley this summer.

Not a lot of green going on in our biggest valley, which has been gutted and hung out to dry by over-irrigation as growers struggled to supply the likes of Constellation with ever-cheaper grapes for products like Banrock.

While the entire Murray estuary dies, rendering former wetlands to poisonous sulphurous saltpans, Constellation continues its determined withdrawal from Murray Valley viticulture and winemaking, yet masquerades as an environmentalist hero in the Old World.

For up-to-date audio reportage of the state of the Murray's estuary, hit Bush Telegraph, the invaluable Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National country issues program. Scroll to Thursday 29 January 2009, and listen to the first half hour, or download it to your poddie.

It's very scary and very very sad.

Woe, horror and rage

by PHILIP WHITE - This was published in The Independent Weekly in November 2007

Where once ran water, only woe, horror and rage now flood down the Murray. Suddenly, furious blockers picket our parliament like only the violent French would. Desperate to recall what it was like to manage a winery in hard times, the transnational grape refineries struggle to juggle their diminishing returns. Big family wineries are forced to pay their suppliers on delivery. Overhead, sprinklers squirt mindlessly.

“The wine industry will never be the same”, Peter Dawson, Hardy’s senior vice-president of operations, murmured at a party at Paxton’s in March.

It’s a lot worse now. Last week Dawson announced his company’s retreat from its refinery on the River in Victoria, to regroup this side of the border at its Berri Estates, where fifty new jobs might be created.

Never pleased with my thirty years of preaching that Murray Valley viticulture could not be sustained as it was, and that smart wineries should be concentrating their efforts on making better wines for more profit with less environmental and social destruction, Dawson finally announced that his company needed to shift its focus to more profitable wines. But he said “higher-priced”, not “higher quality”.

“The wine industry is not globally competitive at lower price points”, he said. “We should be striving to get all of our Australian wine into higher-priced bottled products.”

Hardy’s have always been prickly at my Banrock Station scepticism. While they market their award-winning property as an environmental triumph, one might ask whether it’s a broadacre big-cropping industrial grapeyard where slightly salty River water is pumped onto an ancient dried-out seabed full of much stronger salt. The little bags of sugar that grow are processed and refined to become what I imagine the senior vice-president of operations would call lower-priced softpack products, until they put it all in bottles.

Use some profit to take the sheep off an old station, and reeds and redgums return to the riverbank. An environmental triumph. Let a swamp develop, call it a wetlands. Another triumph. Then empty the wetlands to put more water in the River, when it gets really crook. Another triumph. 100,000 admiring visitors a year walk the trails, admiring the rejuvenated scrub and riverfront, but the reality of the vineyard is never made quite so clear.

Last week also saw the release of another of the endless scientific reports on the River. This finally put a dollar value on the natural filtration effected by one hectare of working wetland – a higher value than one hectare of productive irrigated land. That is a triumph.

The River has always washed itself. But because there’s been so much poison to be filtered and broken down by the reeds and the weeds and sedge, wetlands which are now being deliberately dried out may never recover. While the dirty water kept them alive, the concentrates now drying in their crusty beds may be too harsh for regrowth.

The whisky bottle was beginning its conciliatory wink when, miraculously, a bottle of O’Donohoe’s Find Tom’s Drop Mourvèdre Shiraz arrived. On its label is an 1896 photograph of the O’Donohoe Brothers’ Hillen Grove Condenser. Michael O’Donohoe’s grandfather, Tom, and his six brothers lobbed on the Kalgoorlie goldfields from County Cork. Traditionally, Irishmen knew how to turn cloudy weak ale into clear powerful poteen in a copper pot still. But O’Donohoes built a desalination business by distilling salty bore water. During the day, anyway. Scouring their photograph, I suspect tradition may have returned at night. Nice marketing.

The vineyard responsible for Tom’s Drop is an environmental triumph. Not only do they need less water, but Michael and Jan are probably cleaning river water by running it through their organic vine garden. “The vineyard is part of a polyculture of trees, vines, plants and creatures” their back label explains. “We endeavour to mimic nature, maintain diversity, and focus on the relationship between soils, plants, and animals.” The living soil below their organic mulch has not been disturbed by machinery for 26 years. They won their Level A Organic certificate in 1990. The crop is always below two tonnes per acre.

And where is this? At Berri. So there’s three examples of nice marketing. Which has the truest ring?

One acre of dirt can never produce more than one acre of flavour. You can squirt on plenty of water and spread your acre of flavour over twenty tonnes of sultana, or chardonnay, seasoned with pesticide, fungicide, and herbicide. Or kill the hose and the poisons, get that mulch going, and squeeze your acre of flavour into a tonne or two of living essence like Tom’s Drop. And guess what happens? You get better wine. For which people are prepared to pay more, because they’re not stupid.

The Ngarrindjeri Curse

by PHILIP WHITE - this was published in The Independent Weekly in August 2008

“What does this mean for the image of the wine industry?” asked Tony McCarthy. The Baldies had woken me to discuss the continuing retreat of Constellation, the world’s biggest wine company, from South Australia. I didn’t really answer his question.

Constellation, which managed to absorb Hardy’s, which had absorbed Chateau Reynella before being absorbed by the big Riverland duet, Berri-Renmano, knows more than most the true value of green bucks.

These are the guys, remember, with the wetlands.

Banrock Station is a perfect example of how you use salty irrigation water on arid land to grow vines which produce little bags of sugar, from which you can legally make alcohol, which brings sufficient profits to fund a swamp along the river from which your humungous pumps took the water for the vineyard. Until it all goes cactus and you put your hand out to the government to help you keep it all looking tickety-boo for a little longer. Which can also be sold as a good news yarn for all concerned. Once or twice.

This is about tweaking the image of the true nature of your business. Green bucks. When John Grant, the President, yep, President, of Constellation Wines Australia, sent out his triumphant press release about how his winery closures and vineyard sales was a deft response “to the difficult global environment by taking steps designed to benefit the company over the long term and, by so doing, help strengthen Australia’s wine sector”, he mentioned the environment, but not Banrock Station. This is because the River is on the nose, but not yet sufficiently stinky to sacrifice Banrock, which might come in handy if the Murray gets better.

“World’s Biggest Wine Company Heals Aussie River”… I can hear it. “We’ll blame this hiccup on the Ngarrindjeri Curse: the disturbed dead of Ngurunderi taking their revenge. Storm Boy has prostrate cancer; old Gulpilil’s pissed in the cane grass; white man’s firewater saves sick river … just a touch more oboe behind the baby ducks, please Boris...”

But image-wise, internationally, the Murray, and its estuary, is quickly becoming our equivalent of the Amazon Basin. A posh pleasure industry based on the totally unnecessary luxury commodity, wine, doesn’t want to be associated with destroying the Amazon Basin. But that’s what it’s done.

In the same news bulletins that reported the Constellation retreat, Dean Brown was on, spraying big time about how us citizens don’t appreciate the hard work Mike Rann and Karlene Maywald are putting into the River. The Brown Man can flush red and lecture, believe me. But suddenly he was doing it for Robin and Catwoman.

Not long ago it was Premier Brown arranging some water rights for his mates in the wine biz who saw Langhorne Creek as a little Coonawarra conveniently close to Adelaide. The vineyards increased from 471 hectares to 4700 within a few years, and now there’s no water and many tears. This sudden lapse coincides with Mr. Brown becoming Mike Rann’s Droughtmeister, not to mention Chairman of Hillgrove, the miner who’s about to dig the biggest pit this side of Roxby at Kanmantoo.

But open pits are thirsty. No worries. Fill the sails of Mount Barker Council and The Courier with bumptious self-congratulatory bullshit about the mining boom being good for the Hills, thus justifying the construction of another one or two thousand villas to house all the lucky employees.

This presents a crisis: what are we gonna do with all this grey water this new Tupperware Tuscany has produced? Easy. Put in a nice little wetland to keep the kiddies and the greens happy with a few shags, coots and ducklings, and flog the overflow to the mine. An environmental triumph matched only by Banrock!

But this is where Dino becomes the Joker: riparian rights. Any effluent from Mount Barker should flow straight to Langhorne Creek, which has no water in the Brown pipes. This may help replace the water they took out of the river a little upstream to supply Mount Barker’s Villa Rash/Greywater Factory so they can fill the kiddies’ wetlands and keep the miners happy. Whew!

The hubris of prospective winegrape investors is similarly malignant: they’re doing soil tests at Langhorne Creek for new big plantings. Now. These, no doubt, intend to take water from one of the private pipes being run past the forthcoming Wellington Weir to catch the last drops of fresh water that managed to get past the Mount Barker pipe. Just think. A few years back it would have run down there to Langhorne Creek, through the Lake, all by itself.

I know many of you think this column should be about wine. But Thirst is thirst, and water is an important gastronomic item. Constellation knows Adelaide is approaching the point where it must choose whether it wants water or wine. The whole world is watching.

Constellation clings to swamp

by PHILIP WHITE - This was first published in The Independent Weekly on 15 AUG 2008

“What does this mean for the image of the wine industry?” asked Tony McCarthy. The Baldies, from the ABC breakfast program, had woken me to discuss the continuing retreat from South Australia of Constellation, the world’s biggest wine company. I didn’t really answer his question.

Constellation, which managed to absorb Hardy’s, which had absorbed Chateau Reynella before being absorbed by the big Riverland duet, Berri-Renmano, knows more than most the true value of green bucks. These are the guys, remember, with the wetlands.

Banrock Station is a perfect example of how you use salty irrigation water on arid land to grow vines which produce little bags of sugar, from which you can legally make alcohol, which brings sufficient profits to fund a swamp along the river from which your humungous pumps took the water for the vineyard. Until it all goes cactus and you put your hand out to the government to help you keep it all looking tickety-boo for a little longer. Which can also be sold as a good news yarn for all concerned. Once or twice.

This is about tweaking the image of the true nature of your business. Green bucks. When John Grant, the President, yep, President, of Constellation Wines Australia, sent out his triumphant press release about how his winery closures and vineyard sales was a deft response “to the difficult global environment by taking steps designed to benefit the company over the long term and, by so doing, help strengthen Australia’s wine sector”, he mentioned the environment, but not Banrock Station. This is because the River is on the nose, but not yet sufficiently stinky to sacrifice Banrock, which might come in handy if the Murray gets better.

“World’s Biggest Wine Company Heals Aussie River”… I can hear it. “We’ll blame this hiccup on the Ngarrindjeri Curse: the disturbed dead of Ngurunderi taking their revenge. Storm Boy has prostrate cancer; old Gulpilil’s pissed in the cane grass; white man’s firewater saves sick river … just a touch more oboe behind the baby ducks, please Boris...”

But image-wise, internationally, the Murray, and its estuary, is quickly becoming our equivalent of the Amazon Basin. A posh pleasure industry based on the totally unnecessary luxury commodity, wine, doesn’t want to be associated with destroying the Amazon Basin. But that’s what it’s done.

In the same news bulletins that reported the Constellation retreat, Dean Brown was on, spraying big time about how us citizens don’t appreciate the hard work Mike Rann and Karlene Maywald are putting into the River. The Brown Man can flush red and lecture, believe me. But suddenly he was doing it for Robin and Catwoman.

Not long ago it was Premier Brown arranging some water rights for his mates in the wine biz who saw Langhorne Creek as a little Coonawarra conveniently close to Adelaide. The vineyards increased from 471 hectares to 4700 within a few years, and now there’s no water and many tears. This sudden lapse coincides with Mr. Brown becoming Mike Rann’s Droughtmeister, not to mention Chairman of Hillgrove, the miner who’s about to dig the biggest pit this side of Roxby at Kanmantoo.

But open pits are thirsty. No worries. Fill the sails of Mount Barker Council and The Courier with bumptious self-congratulatory bullshit about the mining boom being good for the Hills, thus justifying the construction of another one or two thousand villas to house all the lucky employees.

This presents a crisis: what are we gonna do with all this grey water this new Tupperware Tuscany has produced? Easy. Put in a nice little wetland to keep the kiddies and the greens happy with a few shags, coots and ducklings, and flog the overflow to the mine. An environmental triumph matched only by Banrock!

But this is where Dino becomes the Joker: riparian rights. Any effluent from Mount Barker should flow straight to Langhorne Creek, which has no water in the Brown pipes. This may help replace the water they took out of the river a little upstream to supply Mount Barker’s Villa Rash/Greywater Factory so they can fill the kiddies’ wetlands and keep the miners happy. Whew!

The hubris of prospective winegrape investors is similarly malignant: they’re doing soil tests at Langhorne Creek for new big plantings. Now. These, no doubt, intend to take water from one of the private pipes being run past the forthcoming Wellington Weir to catch the last drops of fresh water that managed to get past the Mount Barker pipe. Just think. A few years back it would have run down there to Langhorne Creek, through the Lake, all by itself.

I know many of you think this column should be about wine. But Thirst is thirst, and water is an important gastronomic item. Constellation knows Adelaide is approaching the point where it must choose whether it wants water or wine. The whole world is watching.

An environmental triumph

by PHILIP WHITE
This was fisrt published in The Independent Weekly in November 2007

Where once ran water, only woe, horror and rage now flood down the Murray. Suddenly, furious blockers picket our parliament like only the violent French would. Desperate to recall what it was like to manage a winery in hard times, the transnational grape refineries struggle to juggle their diminishing returns. Big family wineries are forced to pay their suppliers on delivery. Overhead, sprinklers squirt mindlessly.

“The wine industry will never be the same”, Peter Dawson, Hardy’s senior vice-president of operations, murmured at a party at Paxton’s in March.

It’s a lot worse now. Last week Dawson announced his company’s retreat from its refinery on the River in Victoria, to regroup this side of the border at its Berri Estates, where fifty new jobs might be created.

Never pleased with my thirty years of preaching that Murray Valley viticulture could not be sustained as it was, and that smart wineries should be concentrating their efforts on making better wines for more profit with less environmental and social destruction, Dawson finally announced that his company needed to shift its focus to more profitable wines. But he said “higher-priced”, not “higher quality”.

“The wine industry is not globally competitive at lower price points”, he said. “We should be striving to get all of our Australian wine into higher-priced bottled products.”

Hardy’s have always been prickly at my Banrock Station scepticism. While they market their award-winning property as an environmental triumph, one might ask whether it’s a broadacre big-cropping industrial grapeyard where slightly salty River water is pumped onto an ancient dried-out seabed full of much stronger salt. The little bags of sugar that grow are processed and refined to become what I imagine the senior vice-president of operations would call lower-priced softpack products, until they put it all in bottles.

Use some profit to take the sheep off an old station, and reeds and redgums return to the riverbank. An environmental triumph. Let a swamp develop, call it a wetlands. Another triumph. Then empty the wetlands to put more water in the River, when it gets really crook. Another triumph. 100,000 admiring visitors a year walk the trails, admiring the rejuvenated scrub and riverfront, but the reality of the vineyard is never made quite so clear.

Last week also saw the release of another of the endless scientific reports on the River. This finally put a dollar value on the natural filtration effected by one hectare of working wetland – a higher value than one hectare of productive irrigated land. That is a triumph.

The River has always washed itself. But because there’s been so much poison to be filtered and broken down by the reeds and the weeds and sedge, wetlands which are now being deliberately dried out may never recover. While the dirty water kept them alive, the concentrates now drying in their crusty beds may be too harsh for regrowth.

The whisky bottle was beginning its conciliatory wink when, miraculously, a bottle of O’Donohoe’s Find Tom’s Drop Mourvèdre Shiraz arrived. On its label is an 1896 photograph of the O’Donohoe Brothers’ Hillen Grove Condenser. Michael O’Donohoe’s grandfather, Tom, and his six brothers lobbed on the Kalgoorlie goldfields from County Cork. Traditionally, Irishmen knew how to turn cloudy weak ale into clear powerful poteen in a copper pot still. But O’Donohoes built a desalination business by distilling salty bore water. During the day, anyway. Scouring their photograph, I suspect tradition may have returned at night. Nice marketing.

The vineyard responsible for Tom’s Drop is an environmental triumph. Not only do they need less water, but Michael and Jan are probably cleaning river water by running it through their organic vine garden. “The vineyard is part of a polyculture of trees, vines, plants and creatures” their back label explains. “We endeavour to mimic nature, maintain diversity, and focus on the relationship between soils, plants, and animals.” The living soil below their organic mulch has not been disturbed by machinery for 26 years. They won their Level A Organic certificate in 1990. The crop is always below two tonnes per acre.

And where is this? At Berri. So there’s three examples of nice marketing. Which has the truest ring?

One acre of dirt can never produce more than one acre of flavour. You can squirt on plenty of water and spread your acre of flavour over twenty tonnes of sultana, or chardonnay, seasoned with pesticide, fungicide, and herbicide. Or kill the hose and the poisons, get that mulch going, and squeeze your acre of flavour into a tonne or two of living essence like Tom’s Drop. And guess what happens? You get better wine. For which people are prepared to pay more, because they’re not stupid.

my picks

Coates Organically Grown McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005
$30; 14.5% alcohol; diam cork; 93+++ points
Duane Coates’ third release from the organic Strachan vineyard on the Willunga escarpment proves the provenance of these wisely sensitive minds and some very special soil. Made with wild yeast and zilch intervention, filtering or fining, it smells earthy and wholesome, with the truffly, mossy forest floor aromas you’ll find in great Rhone Hermitage, like the 1978. Judicious oak – some Russian - has given it a fine layer of old spice box. It’s lush, but not too syrupy, with the sorts of velvety tannin and staunch natural acidity that can’t help but make you hungry. Uncommonly fine wine. Pork cutlets, lots of crackling. www.coates-wines.com

Lazy Ballerina McLaren Vale Shiraz 2006
$25; 15.5% alcohol; diam cork; 93+++ points
James Hook, vine scientist, wrangles this California Road vineyard, mostly for a local refinery which uses the fruit as a strengthening essence. Nothing industrial about James’ share: fanatical environmentally-conscious detail to growing, minimal watering, and on through all the traditional winemaking you can think of at Redheads Studio. I wonder how much that shagged dancer’s drunk: this sets MY feet tapping. It’s beautiful, wholesome, dense shiraz, and quite rightfully, the one per cent viognier adds only fine tannin, not the sickening peach syrup some boofheads insist on. A year or two of dungeon will see this glory really glow. Cassoulet. http://www.lazyballerina.com/

Mountadam Eden Valley Shiraz Viognier 2006
$25; 13.8% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
Con Moschos, formerly one of Croser’s valkyries at Petal, finally moved to a more impressive Valhalla at Mountadam, and has quickly set the cosmos rippling with this vibrant cracker. It breaks all my rules about this blend requiring only a few per cent of viognier: I couldn’t believe my sensories when Mosh smugly informed me this contains ten per cent! Mountadam’s so lofty and cool the slender vio adds only tannin to a lighter, cool climate shiraz. So much so, the wine’s more along the lines of a racy north Italian nebbiolo, whose DNA is almost identical to viognier’s, after all. It’s lovely, appetizing, crunchy wine. Hare, or venison. www.mountadam.com

Yangarra McLaren Vale Grenache 2006
$28; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
Jess Jackson, the patrician USA supermarket chain owner and grenache tragic, owns this amazing vineyard on the big Blewett Springs sands dune at the Kangarilla end of the Willunga Basin. 60 year old bush vines and canny Vales winemaker Peter Fraser add up to one of the best grenaches I know. In the world. These miraculous sands give burnished hints of Parade Gloss and Marveer, lavendar, rhubarb, cloves, anise, chocolate and nutmeg - an overall feeling that’s more your hot-blooded flamenco dancer full of tapas and tempranillo than your usual cherry and raspberry bomb grenache. Knockout! Tapas; Iberian ham; beef haunch. http://www.yangarra.com/

O’Donohoe’s Find Tom’s Drop Organic Mourvèdre Shiraz 2005
$20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ pointsMichael O’Donohoe’s vineyard’s been certified Level A organic since 1990. The soil below his mulch hasn’t been disturbed for 26 years. Infinitesimal watering, an absolute maximum of two tones of fruit per acre, and an obsession with maintaining a vineyard that’s “a polyculture of trees, vines, plants and creatures” gives us a hearty, characterful, beautifully balanced living red with a bouquet of cosmetics and cream as much as wild live berries. But they’re there: under that heady perfume, there’s a plump Christmas pudding of nuts and fruits. Sinuous, lithe, perfectly tannic: it’s a miracle. And it comes from the Riverland. http://www.tomsdrop.com.au/

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