TIM SMITH ROCKIN IT AT CHATEAU TANUNDA

TIM SMITH ON THE SHIRAZ HUNT

Quiet Triumph At Tanunda
Smithy Grabs Gold For Geber
And Makes One Personal Best
by PHILIP WHITE a version of this story appeared in The Independent Weekly
There is a mist and a wind-driven shoosh of sideways rain and up on the ridges where I prefer to be, the vintage is being scrubbed by brush and hose from tank and fermenter and people don’t know what to do because it’s over now and there’s not much of it left.

I kicked tanks in Chateau Tanunda this last week, which is on a sort of a ridge there above the cricket oval and Lot 1 Moorooroo, the first block in the Barossa to be surveyed. But it's really pretty close to the bottom of the Valley, topographically, while master winesmith name of Tim scours the upper ridges for the very best old Barossa vineyards. He has been known to do this on his classic Triumph Bonneville. He also plays drums in a rock band. He is also one of the best winemakers I know.

Of course there’s lots still to attend to vintage-wise: a shred or tonne or bucket of this or that are likely to emerge from here or there if the weather’s right. And then the wines which are finishing their ferments will gradually wriggle through the arcane twists and turns they persistently fizz, tick, or simmer through. There are barrels to wrangle and secondary ferments to steer, and fining and blending and polishing and whatever, but for a moment, the work is done.

Smithy was quite literally putting the last of the Chateau’s harvest through the fermenters. We sniffed and spat this and that, and I apologise to Joel Matchoss, who stuck his head out of the bottom of a vat with a brush in his hand and asked me to pass him a hose. I got a shock.

This is one of the very best vintages I can remember. I think that as individuals we can recall accurately maybe ten or twelve years of vintage reality: the essence of the flavours eventually fades from the vivid memory, and while one might still draw with great accuracy this and that from great old wines, and great old recollections, most people who were there when it happened forget the real flavours of the vintage before it matures. There is much braggadocio, and often remorse, but little true memory.

But I will remember the 2010 wines.

Some of the last fruit was Mourvedre. What we used to call Mataro, after the name of a town in the south of Spain where no Mataro grows. For some reason we didn’t call it Monastrell, which is its Spanish name, but now use the French name, Mourvedre. Amusing.

The prickly French stopped us using the name Hermitage for Shiraz, because they said we were passing the grape off as a French product. We respectfully called it Hermitage, like in Grange Hermitage, because our original cuttings came from the Rhone Valley vineyard of that name. But the Frogs have no qualms about us using their name for a Spanish variety.

As the Australian weather gets hotter, Mourvedre’s likely to be one major grape which takes some pressure from Shiraz, which seems to get too ripe and jammy far too readily with ordinary Barossa or McLaren Vale viticulture laziness.

In the south of France, in places like Bandol and Minervois, Mourvedre rules the roost, often blended with Grenache and Shiraz, but usually over-ruling them in the blends, as its flavour is more intense. In some cases, I think it’s far more interesting.

I saw great Mourvedre last year, in site of the blistering heatwave, and here it was again from a cool, polite vintage: one tank bright with the smell of Morello cherries, another with the sinister gunmetal glint of swarf and carbon. They will make a great blend, these two components. The former tank reminded me of the wines of the Mornington Peninsula wizard Sandro Mosele. It could almost be Pinot noir. I mentioned this to Tim. “I went through uni with him”, he said. “We sat together. He’s great winemaker.”

The second tank reminded me of the mindblowing wines Edouard Labeye helps to make in Mirnervois, near Sete, on the Mediterranean. “He’s awesome!” Tim said. “I’ve met him in France. He’s a great winemaker.”

This is how vintage goes, always reminding me of how few great winemakers there really are, and how the top of the great squishy wine pyramid, the pointy end, contains so few true heroes. Smithy’s got the touch. He’s in my top thirty Australians. To rub that in, we now have over 2,400 wineries. And as if show awards were something to boast of, the Barossa paper calls him Tim Goldsmith. He'll be a true local when they start calling him Goldschmidt.

He poured me the first of the finished - bottled and released - wines I’ve had from 2010, the Chateau Tanunda Barossa Tower Moscato. Eight per cent alcohol, $15, and perfect to settle that bleary vintage visage at about ten o’clock in the morning. It’s sweet and ripe and gently fizzing with estery banana, rose and musk. “It needs to be chilled”, Tim said, nose down. “And while people might think it’s a simple sweet thing, it gets all the proper respect. This is from thirty year old vines.”

Get your shiny bottom up to the astonishing Chateau Tanunda now, and buy a case of this delight. Then wrap your sensories around the new Terroirs of Barossa Shiraz wines: one from Lyndock, one from Ebenezer, and one from Greenock. Smithy’s golden touch is beginning to emerge in maturing Chateau Tanunda wines like these. At last John and Evelyn Geber’s multi-million dollar restoration of Sir Samuel Cleland’s mighty stone Chateau has some wines to match the vision and endeavour of such admirable capitalists.


Chateau Tanunda 100 Year Old Vines Eden Valley Shiraz 2008

$95; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points
It’s a bit silly putting points to a wine of this provenance in such an infant stage, but we do it. This is mighty. It has Tempranillo-like Parade Gloss bootpolish tones in its confounding depths. If its vineyard was not quite so venerable, it would fit perfectly in the $48 Terroirs trio, as it’s not like any of those. It has posher French-coopered oak, because it deserves no less. Between that spicy decoration, and the schisty, stony tannins which glower below, there’s layer upon layer of fleshy, intense, devilishly seductive Barossa Shiraz of the highest calibre. Cellar.

Tim Smith Barossa Mourvedre Grenache Shiraz 2009

$28; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
This is Tim Smith’s best wine yet, which is saying something. It pulls you up. Great noses which generally sweep over glasses are suddenly brought to a dead halt when they hit this one. It’s harmonious; perfectly formed and alive, with all the right stuff in abundance: the nightshades, the carbon black, Smithy’s forge, prunes, Morello cherries, dried fig … buy some quickly, but drink it slowly: it needs a decade of dungeon or a day with the top off. Forget Bandol and Chateau-Neuf: this new Australian sets a standard that renders your regular GSM null and void.

The best recipes

by PHILIP WHITE – This was published in the Independent Weekly in December 2006

“I cut my teeth at Yalumba. I dragged hoses for Charlie Melton. I worked at St Hallett and Tatachilla. I do vintage every year in Portugal, making dry reds from Touriga and Grenache for Azamor in Alentejo. This year I’ve worked as a grunt for Ralph Fowler at Chateau Tanunda. And I make my own wines at various sheds throughout the Barossa.”

So explained the intensely quiet Tim Smith over a duck at T-Chow. It tasted so good it must have anticipated what it would finally swim in: his supple and elegant Tim Smith Wines Mataro Grenache Shiraz 2005 ($27; 14.6 per cent alcohol; 93 points).

“I’m finding I like Mataro more and more”, he said, “like the Bandols of southern France, where it’s called Mourvedre. I’ll be using more of it in this blend in the future. Bugger this obsession with GSM. Grenache Shiraz Mataro? Why should it always be those three in that order? Whose idea was that? I’ll probably end up dropping the Shiraz from the blend altogether.”

Tim’s exquisite wines are a lot about texture. I mean this blend shows amazing fruit intensity, freshness, and depth of flavour, but its texture, its silky smooth viscosity, gives it elegance and form, and what Max Schubert used to call warmth. At the risk of being gender specific, it’s feminine.

“If you want big firm extracted red, drink Stonewell”, he says, respectfully, of one of Peter Lehmann’s macho flagships.

Hot ferments and plenty of stirring of the yeast lees in barrel is the trick to the Tim Smith Wines fleshy, silky style. “That leesy slime is essential”, he continued. “A lot of people can’t sell their wine because they don’t have a point of difference. Their tanks are full of ordinary wine. Attention to detail must be absolutely mercenary when it comes to quality decisions. It’s those one per cent decisions that give you a point of difference.”

So to his Tim Smith Wines Barossa Shiraz 2004 ($33; 14.5; 93), which seemed even softer, sweeter, and more opulent and silky, in spite of its velvety tannin. This wine was fermented with complete bunches suspended in the must, and had daily lees stirring for a month.

“And pigeage”, he says, referring to the old French method of gently agitating the ferment without bruising the uncrushed bunches suspended in it. “Great form of relaxation. Buy yourself a six-pack of beer, wash your feet, and walk up and down in your ferment for a while.”

We chewed over a barrel sample of his 2005 Shiraz (94 points; for Christmas release). This had a tiny proportion of the white, firmly tannic Viognier in it, which seemed in a sense to reverse some of the silkiness which is his trademark, but this will soften with time. “It’s okay. Just a trial”, he shrugged, when I suggested the French put the tannic white Viognier in their Shiraz to make it bigger and drier, especially in the simple, raspberry and cherry Shiraz of the cooler north Rhone.

In sunny Australia, where the Shiraz is already tannic, the questionable tendency is to let the Viognier get too ripe before the addition, and you end up losing its tannin and replacing it with a most unwinelike canned peach syrup.

“Yeah”, he continued. “In a way, Shiraz Viognier is a waste
of time in the warmer Australian districts.”

Thence to the majestic reserve Shiraz 2005 (95 points; release next year), which includes a touch of McLaren Vale Shiraz to further soften its structure. “I won’t live long enough to see this in its full glory” he murmured into his glass. His recommended food match? “Bloody rare haunch of Bison.”

So why the Barossa? There was no pause.

“Location, location, location” he said, finally approaching animation. “It’s fifty minutes from T-Chow. It’s a five minute blast on a Triumph Bonneville to the top of Mengler’s for the world’s best sunsets. It’s ninety minutes to the southern beaches. And it has all this amazing loamy soil with plenty of ironstone.

“Then, of course, there’s a really good vibe of camaraderie amongst the young winemakers now”, he continued, almost raising his voice. “Winewriters call me a young winemaker, but I’m forty-four years old. There’s a whole new generation rising. They’re on fire. Look at their surnames: Henschke, Glaetzer, Teusner, Lehmann, O’Callaghan.”

He went back to his original hush for the last line. “But Whitey, you know, the real Barossa heroes are the unknown hosedraggers and steel fitters who make it all happen and are happy to tell us pompous winemaking pricks where to get off. They’re always the ones with the best humour.” And then in a whisper: “And the best recipes.”