East Coast Glossy Joins Mega Discount Plonkmonger To Shine Up Sunny South Winos

by PHILIP WHITE

Australia’s Gourmet Traveller WINE, a shiny gastroporn monthly, in association with the enormous Sydney-based liquor discounter, Kemenys, has awarded three South Australians in its annual Winemaker of the Year Awards.

The Winemaker of the Year 2008 award, “which recognises excellence in the Australian wine industry”, went to Louisa Rose of Yalumba in the Barossa.

The Kemenys Medal, which “encourages up-and-coming winemakers in the pursuit of excellence”, was awarded to Helen McCarthy of Taylors in the Clare district.

The Len Evans Award, “celebrating the importance of leadership in the industry” was presented to Robert Hill Smith, the owner and chief executive of Yalumba.

“South Australia is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to good winemaking, so it’s particularly fitting that all three winners hail from the southern state,” said Judy Sarris, editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE. "We’re absolutely thrilled to celebrate the outstanding creativity and hard work of these people who help make Australian wine among the very best in the world.”

Louisa Rose was selected for “impeccable quality of her flagship viognier, Yalumba The Virgilius, and Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling ... Louisa has been experimenting with shiraz – looking at the impact of site, variety and clone – and releasing some single vineyard wines”, the Gourmet flak said.

The Len Evans Award went to Louisa’s boss, Robert, for his “era of remarkable growth and innovation ... His highly assured leadership is what drives Yalumba and the other entities that fall within his reign, especially Hill Smith Family Vineyards and Negociants International. Within this large organisation, teamwork is considered vital and decisions are the result of consensus rather than being handed down unilaterally. The leadership shown by Hill Smith and Yalumba in releasing their Old Vine and Reserve charters in 2007 is all too rare in the industry. By entering the realm of practical philosophy, they sought to promote discussion and address consumer confusion that arose from the loose use of the terms.”

For DRINKSTER’S opinions on or discussions of any of the above, hit Len Evans in the search box above, read Reserved For Whom? or check the viognier file on DRANKSTER.

The Kemenys Medal went to Helen McCarthy, who worked at Barossa Valley Estate and Penfolds before becoming senior winemaker at Taylors.

“McCarthy has made an excellent start with wine judging too – she’s accurate, confident and ready to defend her opinions” said the flak.

The awards were judged by the magazine’s regular contributors, Huon Hooke, Andrew Caillard MW, Nick Bulleid MW, Peter Bourne, Sophie Otton and Peter Forrestal (Chairman).

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Shiraz viognier: gluggy dumb muck

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by PHILIP WHITE - This was published in The Independent Weekly on 26 September 2008

Something really scary is happening to shiraz.

Since vintage, I’ve tasted thousands of barrels, tanks and bottles of this great Australian staple in various stages of undress. The wines, I mean. Although I am guilty of conducting the odd early morning tasting without pants – the palate’s fresher sans culottes – the wines I’m discussing here are being prepared for market, and are still awkward, unfinished, and uncovered.

Suddenly, unbelievably, it’s really hard to get a taste of shiraz that has not been adulterated to some extent by viognier.

In the northern, cooler part of France’s Rhone Valley, the shiraz is often pale, lacks tannin, and resembles cranberry juice more than, say, a hearty Barossa or McLaren Vale job. So they add a little viognier, the white grape that was so unpopular its total world plantings were down to six footy grounds before Yalumba bravely chose to make it famous twenty seven years ago. Now viognier’s all over the joint. Not quite the weed that chardonnay became, but threatening.

Genetically, the French viognier is very close to that tannic red mystery from over the Alps, nebbiolo. Very few Australians have the pluck and nous to grow or make good nebbiolo, as its confounding raft of tannin seems somehow disconnected from its elegant cranberry/raspberry/strawberry fruit. Wisely, they avoid it.

So, since white is much more difficult to make than red, why the hell did these boofheads suddenly pretend fluency in viognier, the white nebbi?

When shiraz is on the weaker side of elegant, you can bolster it with the raft of tannin cool climate viognier supplies. You need only one or two per cent of co-fermented viognier to give the red finishing weight and extra aroma, often along the lines of apricot. Apricot and cranberry, see? Makes some sort of sense.

My scant biochemistry makes it risky for me to attempt to explain what the mealy viogner tannin does to the pale colour of such wines, but it’s safe to say it somehow changes the anthocyanins of the blend, enhancing the blues and purples of the wine. A dribble of viognier, or a night or two on viognier skins, makes pale shiraz deeper in hue.

But in Australia, where we can’t seem to pick shiraz below fifteen per cent alcohol, so it’s black, and stacked with natural shiraz tannin, and packed to the gunnels with dense-to-impenetrable blackberry, prune, dried fig, licorice, salt and whatnot, I simply cannot see why anybody would want to add apricot.

It gets worse. The really stupid add over-ripe viognier to over-ripe shiraz. Once it’s above, say 13.5% alcohol, viognier ceases to smell and taste of the almost-elegant apricot, and suddenly becomes the thick dull syrup you get in a tin of peaches. It loses its drying, savoury tannin. It’s gluggy dumb muck. The shiraz needs water and acid, not alcoholic syrup.

Now they’ve planted so much sicko viognier in the wrong places and finally realise they’ve fluffed it, they’re all tipping it in their shiraz, and hoping nobody notices. They think they’re hiding it.

Which leads me to fiano, the white from Italy’s Campagnia, where they make awful oxidised plonk and plug it with a piece of Portuguese bark. But at Coriole, in McLaren Vale, the new plantings produce an ethereal, vaporous wisp of a drink that seems to float off the palate like a cloud, leaving a neat little coating of powdery, mealy tannin on the tongue. This excites the appetite and turns on the epicurean quarter of the sensory tent. Try Coriole’s 2008 vintage, and you’ll immediately get my drift.

Mark Lloyd agrees with much of the above, sufficiently to show the whole damn lot of us that there are gastronomically intelligent alternatives. So when he pointed his Coriole team at its first serious fiano in 2006, they took the wine off its skins much earlier than the Italians do, in order to achieve that lighter, ethereal style. But the skins had enough of the right phenolic tannins and aromatics to set Mark thinking about how that would influence shiraz.

So the Coriole Shiraz Fiano 2006 has about three per cent of the latter in it, co-fermented, to stunning advantage. The fiano somehow brightens the lighter red fruit spectrum of the shiraz, enhancing the raspberry and strawberry aspects which are usually hidden in all that blackberry and prune. So you have this lovely intense shiraz prettied up and lightened with vivacious raspberry, musk and marshmallow sugar. It’s as cute as all get out. And then the mealy, powdery tannins of the fiano somehow render the wine’s finish a lot more entertaining and savoury than normal shiraz.

Not to mention all this highly abnormal, deformed shiraz that reeks of viognier, and which will be sold without any label even vaguely mentioning the v-word or its inclusion. These mugs are buggering the flavour of Australia's most significant red, hoping nobody will notice. Very, very stupid.

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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.”