Mark Gifford in the Blue Poles Vineyard at Margaret
River. With fellow geologist Tim Markwell, Mark drilled holes around Western
Australia to find a patch of geology which most closely matched the cream of
Pomerol, where the world's best Merlot grows in Bordeaux. If the quality of the
Blue Poles wine is any indicator, they've got very close!
Merlot: much misunderstood
A demanding and tricky grape
But perfectly blissful at its best
by PHILIP WHITE
"My name is Sue! How do you do!" roared Johnny
Cash at the dirty, mangy dog of a Dad that named him. If I was Merlot, I'd
feel the same about whoever gave me that wussy moniker. Not that it was meant
to be an insult. In Merlot's case, the name was more of a warning to the
grower. Because it's a soft-skinned, mould-prone, early-ripening member of the
Cabernet family, it seems Merlot got its name because the Merle - the Blackbird,
or its Thrush-family songbird relatives - ate it first.
The Blackbird has good reason to have the irrits about being
called Turdus merula. While it does
play in the manured end of the garden, its voice is prettier than Johnny
Cash's, if not quite in the class of Australia's Grey Shrikethrush, which is
even more prettily called Colluricincla harmonica.
One big reason for searching the honky-tonks and bars to
kill the man who gave it that awful name is that somehow, in the United States,
Merlot became a synonym for mellow.
Which to me would be more insulting than Sue. Sure, you can make Merlot
mellow, but you can do the same with Coke if you make it sweet and dumb enough.
It's fitting that when Johnny met his old man dealing
stud he was in an old saloon on a street of mud.
While Merlot doesn't like to have a wet canopy, it
thrives best with cold wet feet, provided the water doesn't sit: it must drain;
it must move. Which may be why I thought that one of Australia's best
Merlot patches was in the clay at the bottom of the Jud's Hill vineyard in
Clare, where all the moisture of that boney hill funnelled through. When he
bought the vineyard from his uncle Brian, for sensible economic reasons Peter Barry
removed those vines. Merlot, let's face it, was on the nose in the premium
marketplace because few Australians grow or make it well. But as Uncle Brian's beautiful wines proved, that was one patch of king-hell Merlot.
Brian and Jud Barry sharing a beautiful Jud's Hill Merlot 1998 with the author at Brian's 84th birthday in February 2011
If the leafy, tannic, austere Cabernet sauvignon hadn't
somehow evolved from the more entertaining Cabernet franc, Merlot may never
have been seen to be mellow, in name or mood. It's all a matter of contrast.
Cabernet often smells good, but apart from the likes of Wendouree, most of it's
as amusing as John Calvin, and it probably wouldn't have proliferated to
anywhere near its current extent if it didn't grow like a weed. Its profusion
to me has much more to do with its thick protestant skin and its resistance to
disease than anything to do with gastronomy.
Cabernet sauvignon is really easy
and cheap to grow.
Merlot's thinner skin gives it softer tannins. It has
little of the harsh green methoxypyrazine which distinguishes its siblings,
Cabernet sauvignon and Sauvignon blanc. The methoxypyrazines are natural
insecticides and repellants which deter predators until the pip of the berry is
ready for germination, at which point the vine ceases producing its own version
of Pea Beau and suddenly turns the sugar on, the acid off, changes colour and
becomes an alluring attractor for the same predators it had been trying to
deter. Bird or fox eats grape; shits out germinating seed; plant survives.
I like to think Merlot evolved without so much
methoxypyrazine so humans would find it more sexy and ensure its perpetuation
by growing its cuttings for ethanol in its most luxurious and sensual form. To
suit our anxious impatience for intoxication, its thinner skin would ensure it
ripened first. It would be the first in the bacchanale jugs, and the first past
our purpling lips. Without birds or foxes, humans have made Merlot the world's
third most prolifically planted wine grape: there was over 260,000 hectares of
it growing a decade back, and I'd suggest there's a lot more of it now.
By what I see on the shelves, of our 11,000 hectares,
there are about twenty hectares of really good Merlot growing in Australia.
Too
much of it's the wrong vine planted in the wrong places by wrong people for
wrong reasons.
We have nothing quite like Château Petrus, which is in
the Pomerol part of Bordeaux. This small (11.4ha) vineyard is usually regarded
as the world's best source of Merlot. Petrus is hardly mellow. But in place of
that sharp leafy edge of Cabernet, when mature, it has layers of mushroomy, ferny,
mossy earth: deep soulful characters that seduce with their hint of damp, cool
ground. All over the top is a wholesome mess of fruit that to me seems like
dried figs stewing in Pinot with a few black cherries, a good dose of fresh
plum and maybe a dribble of quince juice.
Petrus IS tannic: sometimes boisterous, sometimes tending
a little toward the more juniper tannins of Cabernet, and the best of it has
wondrous acidity. But these two sharp ends of the wine are usually swamped by
that remarkable mix of vegetal earth and huge, complex fruits which sits in the
middle.
I've been hunting for the best Merlots Australia has to
offer, and tracked down the following beauties. We'll never make Petrus, but a
few are getting closer, and deserve recognition.
Blue Poles Reserve
Margaret River Merlot 2010 (sold out;
13.2% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points) has become a moody, shady sort of
wine since I recommended it fourteen months ago. Now, it seems to watch you out
of the corner of its eye. It has a dark plum perfume, some very dark
bittersweet cherries, a tidy hint of cedary oak, and a great base of that mossy
earth. After a couple of days, it came back to look me square on, and took on a
more heady whiff of perfume which reminded me of the hookers on the Madelaine,
soused in Soir de Paris, the fragrance created by Ernst Beaux, who went on to
create Chanel No. 5. It gives zephyrs of violet, amber, and the tiny flowers of
the Linden tree. I can hear the rub of black satin as she sashays past in the
dark. The flavour is more homogenised than that cinematic bouquet, being smooth
and modestly viscous, and mainly plum and moss until that limy Linden
re-emerges in the bright, savoury tannins of the finish. It's sublimely refined
and elegant, gentle and beautiful, but hardly mellow.
Moss Wood Ribbon
Vale Vineyard Margaret River Merlot 2011 (just released; $40.50; 14% alcohol;
screw cap; 91+ points) shows its alcohol more with the passage of
each day. It has all those plums, in a conserve rather than a jam, with an
extra lash of morello cherry. It is primarily fruity, with not much sign of my
beloved moss after a day of air. It's
the most austere of the team. Its tannins are more chalky than the bright ones
of the Blue Poles - it actually smells a little chalky - partly because the
wine includes seven per cent of Cabernet franc, and its oak projects a little
charcoal and tea tin. Maybe it's a Merlot for the Cabernet lover. The wine is
not mellow. It's at its best about a day past the snap of its screw. Juicy pink
lamb with a sprig of rosemary sent it to heaven with my sensories panting along
in its wake.
Oakridge Vineyard
Yarra Valley Merlot 2012 (recently
released; $26; 13.3% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points) is the bright little
darling of the set. It is closest to the Blue Poles in style, but is more
primarily fruity, and, like the Moss Wood, adds morello cherries to its pool of
plum. Its oak is somewhere between lemon and ginger, and twists the end of the
bouquet up cheekily. It does have underlying moss, which will rise slowly with
a few years' dungeon. And that rindy lemon - which I suspect may end up like
the amber/Linden in the Blue Poles - keeps the finish bright and perky well
into the third day. It is another elegant and understated wine, captivating in
its delicacy, with tannins closer to the franc chalk of the Moss Wood. I'd be
pointing myself at a really zippy Amalfi saltimbocca (capers!) if I was close
to that funky temple of Italianacy. Like the restaurant, this wine is not
mellow.
Highbank
Coonawarra Single Vineyard Merlot 2012 ($49;
$39 at the cellar; 14% alcohol; cork; 93++ points) is dedicated by his
family to the memory of my sweet buddy Morgan Vice, who fiercely loved the
Merlot in the Vice's pioneering organic vineyard in the heart of Coonawarra.
The Highbank '94 was previously the best Australian Merlot I'd tasted. This
one's ripe, and the first of my selection to have some blackberry in there with
the cherries and plums. It's bigger and riper and more boisterous than the
others, with no moss, but it's still not like ordinary Cabernet. It's a good stretch
away from the determined and wondrous Highbank Cabernets (big Medoc style
organic Coonawarras; go, buy). It too has a whiff of something approaching Soir
de Paris, and it has some twisty soft licorice, violets and lavender. Again,
the tannins are chalky. Until, at the very end, they take up that amber/Linden
citrus. This one's freshest of the lot on day four, so in spite of the cork,
it'd be my suggestion if you're talking about serious dungeon. Those large
alcohols are never too evident, but they help add this up to a bigger wine than
the rest. Like Morgs, this drink never heard the word mellow. Call it mellow,
and the Vice family will sue.
Which almost gets us back to the top. Before that,
however, I should mention a drink which is only seventy percent Merlot.
Blue Poles
Margaret River Allouran 2010 (just
released, $28; 13.2% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points) is the climax of the
many years of dreaming, planning, money and blood, not to mention rare
gastronomic nous, that geologists Mark Gifford and Tim Markwell have thrown at
their future pleasure. And ours. As they endured their dongas and campfires at
mining camps way out in the West Australian desert and Africa and everywhere,
they planned this vineyard from the base rocks up, dreaming of Pomerol and
Bordeaux's Right Bank. Which is spiritually and politically the left, of
course. Then they went looking for that geology for their vineyard. Unlike many
famous peanuts who've done it all round
the wrong way, they drilled their holes first. Seems they found what they
wanted at a very specific spot in Margaret River. Merlot (70%) and Cabernet
franc (30%) add up to just about my favourite idea of a red wine of elegance
and tease. Like more tease than poke. The absence of the jerky Cabernet
sauvignon is essential. Instead we have the creamy mossiness and white fungus
soil aromas that I expect of proper Merlot, with the acute electric blue smells
of the Cabernet franc. It prickles my nostrils, then smoothes them with the
most beautifully-perfumed cosmetic cream. Its texture is creamy, too, until
that gently cheeky velvet tannin rises up to dry everything off and leave you
screaming for real veal, as in the best saltimbocca. It is a delicious, rare,
slender drink. But is not mellow. Stack
some away. This very generous price can't possibly hold. If you insist on
buying 2010s, the Allouran is AU$4,300:00 cheaper than Petrus.
I asked Mark Gifford to explain himself. So ever so
gently he bit off a piece of my ear.
"Personally," he said, "to make great
Merlot you need to love it in your heart of hearts. You need to know it makes
great wine and you need to set that ambition every vintage. As a winery we are
only just surviving, with my professional work having to take up every hour
outside of the vineyard work. But I don't care about the hours. I care about my
family, friends, colleagues, vines, wines and my role, however little it may
be... my family, and greater family, planted them based on my 'science' and
'feel' and to them I am most grateful."
This drinker is most grateful to you, Mark. And Tim. And
your burgeoning tribe. Take a bow.
International readers who don't understand Australia's relationship with Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles might like to click here. This dissolute Long Island ramble is not about Merlot, but it's about geology, Gatsby, Blue Poles and a ripper Pinot grigio.
.
