NOTES FROM A BROKEN SEASON

all photos (on Yangarra Estate) by PhilipWhite ... click images to enlarge

After such a scary long dry

the rains come just in time

and nature clicks right back on

by PHILIP WHITE

The season, as they say, has broken. Cracked. Smashed. Come a gutser. In mud. Beautiful gentle soaking rain is giving the ground round here a drink like it hasn't had since August. I can hear it slurping like a gummy drunk.

It came right on time. The underground tank ran out. I depend completely on rainwater. I'm more used than most to displaying a sharp parsimony when it comes to wasting water, having grown up on rainwater on the edge of the Mallee in a household of at least eight and often over the dozen, depending on the missionaries, alchies and orphans dropping in. That's probably how I learnt not to waste it by drinking it unless it was tea. You need it for everything else.

But lurch forward forty years. The tank dried out and I had to ask for water from the winery crew. Within four hours of draining 1200 litres off the truck and shutting the lid it began pissing down. And it's barely let up now for weeks. Bernard, my closest neighbour, who planted the dry-grown bushvine Grenache out the back in 1946 says my system for triggering rain is better than pegging the laundry out or washing the car. He reckons I should truck in more water.

I don't recall a vintage when the vine leaves hung so long after harvest. This usually indicates happy, balanced vines. Given the parched details of the 2015 vintage prelude, the odds seemed stacked against contented vines. But just look at them: the Shiraz at the front was picked two months back, yet only this last gusty week has it let its gilt leaves go. Normally, the leaves fall soon after harvest; sometimes before.

It's five years since the conventional petrochem vineyard regime of sprays and fertilisers was switched off here, to be replaced by a much more sensitive organic and biodynamic practice. I'm starting to think that it's taken all that time for the older vines to realise that they no longer have that industrial prophylactic. In retrospect, it's as if they'd got all wussy of nature when they were protected and coddled with squirts of this and that whenever they needed it, and now that they realise they've got to stand on their own gnarled feet they seem to be putting on more stiffening lignin. They're toughening up. Even the leaves are thicker: they were like chamois this year. Too thick for dolmades. And in spite of the parched spring and summer, that old Grenache delivered a record tonnage, along with splendid flavour.

I've seen some of the best wines ever from '15, although they'll probably be few and far between. The more unfortunate wineries filled up too fast in the early heat, forcing them to leave much fruit to over-ripen.

When leaves from vines like these that stare at me all day do finally hit the bumfluff sward in persistent winds like we've had, they lure many bugs and grubs to the surface. Which makes the large families of magpies very happy. They suddenly snub my scarce parings of leftover cheese, instead offering me amusement and delight with their intent bug-hunting skills.

In fact, the whole world out there seems like one huge savage restaurant. The foxes are breeding, expecting the sheep to lamb. Which they will. And the ravens gather in great mobs, anticipating the same feast. Brutes.

All the birds are on the move. An unusual swarm of noisy miners invaded the garden the other day, chasing all the wrens away, and giving the kookaburras hell. Then the air was suddenly full of ravens that seemed to come from nowhere. I went out to investigate, and found that the men had just moved the first lot of ewes from the ram paddock into the vineyard beside me, where they'll eat the weeds through the winter. There are no lambs yet, but the ravens know they're coming.

They're very smart, the ravens. They know what a shotgun looks like. If I walk out into the vines with a shiny black broomstick and point it at them, they freak, and disperse. Which they did. And then three pairs of currawongs, which are scarce here and very furtive, appeared as if to thank me. I reckon they hate being confused with crows: they're much better mannered and when they trust you, more amusing. Currawongs don't eat lambs. They harvest bugs from the cracks in the eucalyptus bark.

The goshawk that hunts along the creek is making itself scarce, but a shiny brown falcon has been clearing the sky above the vineyard on the flat, and I've seen a peregrine screaming past a few times at great speed. That's a first. By the time the smaller birds spot her and panic in a great flurry of warning skwarks, she's gone. Fastest bird in the sky, the peregrine. I found a pigeon from the dovecote with only its brains and heart pecked out: that'd be the perry. Such high energy raptors need all the sugar they can get, and hearts and brains are full of it. Next day the carcase was nothing but feathers blowing about a big dead tree stump a hundred metres off: that'd be a fox finishing the feast. To deter Mr Reynard setting up home and raising a family in that stump, the vineyard blokes  pulled it out like a big molar. That'll end up in the cellar sales fireplace.

It's like politics: Everything is connected to everything else.

Johnquills are appearing under the banksia, and violets beside the tank. They look so coy and fragile I can't face picking them for a salad, despite being overdue for a reminder of the bouquet of fresh violets before I next claim a Cabernet smells like them.

Which happens if you're lucky.

The sheep will get on doing what they do, turning the grasses and weeds into handy little pellets of fertiliser. Then they'll throw valuable lambs. Sure beats the old days of paying heaps for Roundup and ploughing. Makes me marvel why the whole industry took so long to realise there are better ways of doing things than squirting poison everywhere.

When the rains really hit and winter takes control, and the creeks run again and the dams begin to fill, the pruners will move in and cut the whole business back, ready to start again.

Fingers crossed.

WENT TO VISIT THE KIDS

After a wet windy week this five-year-old Grenache bushvine got up and boogied the Mantis Dance to celebrate another year of growth in a few inches of sand on solid slab ironstone, just outside my kitchen ... when the leaves blow off across the new sward, lots of bugs come up to the surface, making the magpies very happy ... this poor little struggler's nearly a foot high now, but that twelve-berry bunch it grew obviously did not impress the pickers ... all the leaves went in the last three days; the sheep will go in soon to mow that lawn ... and then the pruners will arrive, and expertly slice this poor little bugger back to its trunk ... fairly empty floor at this disco ... but sheesh the flavour's something you never forget ... photo Philip White

RIESLING? TWO ABSOLUTE CRACKERS

O'Leary Walker Polish Hill River Riesling 2015 

$25; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 95 points 

Guava. Lychee. Rambutan. Bosc pear. Rose hip. Lime blossom. Ripe Kingston Black cider apples. It's risky to attempt an estimation of the fruits from hither and thither, from the tropics in which we holiday to the bits of central asia that frighten the living shit out of us that are somehow entrapped in this German grape grown in the ancient geology of the Polish Valley, in the semi-arid uplands west of Clare, in the North Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia. It's like taking a slo-mo stroll through millions of years in an exotic fruit market. Facets and fruits and beautiful perfumes come and go as you progress.

Then there's the dusty, schisty, acrid smells of that ancient ground, reminding you that you're drinking something from the edge of the Austral desert.

Drink. Oooh aaah. Flesh and fruit and stone. Somehow married and harmoniously swimming round your mouth. How cool is this? Very cool. Put it in there and ponder. Roll it around. See how, when it leaves, it never leaves. Those fruits meld and mellow and very gradually retreat, leaving you with a mouthful of country that just sits in there and gently attempts to teach you something that's a helluva lot older and more unlikely than you yourself.

How does this happen? Get down on your knees and ask Bacchus and Pan. Beg knowledge of the Giant Snake. Think of what time was like before humans invented god. Travel with Gondwana as this  great country goes to the south pole and bounces back, inching us toward India at the pace fingernails grow, pushing the Himalaya up and wreaking perfectly natural, inevitable havoc.

I can't drink this exquisite wine without thinking of all of this. Like the wild apple and pear forests that impossibly survive in  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. How does this happen? How do these flavours come to this glass?

I probably shouldn't make such a claim, but I suspect this is the greatest achievement yet of that bold rebellious alliance of Nick Walker and David O'Leary, refugees from great big wine companies. They weren't listened to or valued properly so borrowed a lot of money and set up at Watervale, Clare, fifteen years ago, partly to show their previous employers how it should be done.

This is how it should be done.

Nyah nyah.

Send money to Nepal. Australia pushed those mountains up. And then buy yourself a case of this, and try to make it last until the summer. I'm betting you can't. Send more money to Nepal. 

barr-Eden The Winemaker's Vineyard Eden Valley Riesling 2014 

$25; 12.4% alcohol; screw cap; 94 points 

Cream. If you could breed a cow that lived on limes and their flowers and milked them and made cream from their milk, it would be just like this.

While it loves and looks after the austere Rizza perves, this wine makes most Chardonnay unneccessary.

It's hard for me to avoid imagining Sound of Music stuff coming over the mountain when I drink it, on account of Big Bob McLean dying, leaving Wilma and Adam and Sarah to dance on up the hill into the sky above the bush vines they planted in them stones ... there you go. Up!

These vines are thirty years the junior of those in the O'Leary Walker, and there's lots more work to be done. They'll do it.

If you know them them like I do, you know it'll end up more Johnny Cash than Julie Andrews.

But Johnny Cash never smelt like this.

On his back label, Bob says this is 'the prettiest Riesling we have produced.' He was really proud of it.

When these baby (12 yo) bush vines get their roots (teeth) properly into that old mountain, they'll cut back on the puppy fat flesh and give you more of their barren stones.

It's a waft of mountaintop cloud that swoops over the palate as you drink, leaving your mouth swooning agape with slivers of citrus rind and lime and rose petals and then it dribbles that heavenly crême caramel that still eludes the chefs.

Tell 'em to forget it. Drink this.

No point in writing more.

It's time to swallow.

.

photos Philip White ... click to bigger

FOOD MATCH WINE: PARINGS

SCARCE EARTHS SCARCER, BETTER

Sydney wine merchant and writer Peter Bourne, the author, Serafino winemaker Charles Whish and Tintara winemaker Paul Carpenter discussing the unconformity at Kevin's Cutting where McLaren Vale meets the Onkaparinga Gorge near Chapel Hill. Beneath a thin layer of riverine rounded quartzite pebbles lies about 1.5 metres of Maslin Sands (40-56 million years old), which directly overlays the whiter, highly-weathered Tapley's Hill Formation (about 7o0 million years old) ... photo Sophie Otton

McLaren Vale's geological appellation changes gear:

tougher selection better result 

by PHILIP WHITE

At the risk of writing too much about the region I choose to live in, I must say my home patch gave me a warm flush of pride these last few days.

McLaren Vale's Scarce Earth project took a welcome lurch into the future.

With the release of fifteen specially-blessed Shiraz wines, this time from the 2013 vintage, it became obvious that the selection panel which chose them from 44 entries was much more brutal in eliminating wines which displayed too much winemaking sophistry to properly reflect their source location.

The idea is that winemakers with a vineyard on any specific geology from the region's confounding fruit cake, make a wine from it with the main intent being to let the site sing right through to the final glass: the opposite of cross-regional blending, or even multi-vineyard blending.

The opposite, in fact, to nearly all Australia's industrial winemaking practice.

The McLaren Vale vignoble lies on the water of the Gulf St Vincent, within the Willunga Embayment, roughly between the Willunga Escarpment and its faultline in the background, and the Clarendon Fault and Onkaparinga Gorge in the foreground ... photo Stacey Pothoven-Vice

Previous Scarce Earth selections had been cursed with too much oak, over-ripe fruit leading to too much alcohol, or too much fussy winemakers' intervention.

With the release of these 'thirteens it was also obvious that the winemakers are finally getting the idea, too.

Each entrant must be an approved member of McLaren Vale's brilliant Sustainable Winegrowing program, an ongoing exercise which assists grapefarmers to keep a forensic track of their environmental record.

A panel of three local winemakers and three independent experts taste the wines blind before and after bottling and again in the weeks before release when the final selection is made. Those awarded this unique quality appellation are released to market on 1st May, each wearing a dignified neck band declaring their elevation to the Scarce Earth league.

So I sat with a group of esteemed winewriters yesterday to appraise this year's lot, blind, and I must say they were spiffing: nothing like the traditional McLaren Vale reds of yore, which were lauded for being "the middle palate of Australia." Instead, these wines show a fascinating array of character, complexity and finesse.

The other thing they have in common may appear obvious: the vintage. But a warning about the 2013s from the Vales: on first pour, the aromas seem much more complex and alluring than the flavours which follow. Typical of this is the beautiful Jericho Shiraz I recommended here last week. If you must drink them in this their infancy, you'll find that an hour or two in the decanter will see the form of the wines settle, smooth and bloom to better hint at the beauty they will display as they edge toward maturity. And in some instances, given the reliable precision of screw caps, that absolutely ideal moment may be well over a decade away; maybe two.

These are serious wines of a very high order. I offer brief descriptions of those I pointed at or above 93. My plus signs are vague indicators of each wine's potential to improve with time in the right cellar. 

Chapel Hill The Chosen House Block Shiraz 2013 ($65; 93+++) is a very finely-formed, elegant wine. It seems the common badge of 'thirteen Vales Shiraz is pickled Morello cherry; this has plenty. But while it has all that flesh and smooth opulence, below simmers a very firm basement of harmoniously balanced acid and tannin. And right at the top of its introduction lies a nose-tickling whiff of dried herb, almost as edgy as the Artimesia absinthium, or wormwood, which is common along the region's roadsides. (Geology: Tapley's Hill Formation; about 700 million years old; calcareous siltstone and sandstone; intraclastic and stomatolitic limestone; dark grey, very thinly laminated slaty siltstone) 

Coriole Old House Shiraz 2013 ($55; 93++) has the sort of characters I expect of a wine from a much taller, cooler climate than this one near the winery. The wine seems to tighten with time, promising a great future. It has a smooth, comforting cosmetic/face-cream fleshiness in its bouquet, with a bright hint of blood orange giving it edge. It's perfectly elegant wine: slender, taut and terrific. (Geology: Tapley's Hill Formation) 

d'Arenberg Tyches Mustard Shiraz 2013 ($99; 93+++) I don't know whether this site is peppered with grapeshot or pellet ironstone, but it displayed a powerful galvo reek to this nose. That solid aspect aside, the wine is in-your-face vibrant and audacious, with the savoury kalamata olive juice adding a Clare Valley like raciness to the wine's tight, tannic form. By which I mean more savoury than primarily fruity. This naughty baby needs years. (Geology: Blanche Point Formation; about 34-45 million years old; galuconitic, fossiliferous calcareous siltstone; hard cherty bands) 

The author on the beach at Port Willunga. Top to bottom you see the freshwater sediments of the Ngaltinga Formation (last 1,000,000 years) above the thinner white band of marine Burnham Limestone (about 2 million years old). Below the guardrail is Hallett Cove Sandstone (2.6 to 5.3 million years old) and at the bottom Port Willunga Formation (23-34 million years old) ... photo Emily Shepherd

Serafino Malpas Vineyard Shiraz 2013 ($45; 93+++) When I suggested this wine reminded me of a good year Coonawarra Shiraz I had no idea of its calcerious source. Although this grew amongst bits of calcrete rather than Coonawarra's limestone, the formations are chemically similar. This has much to do with the form of its tannins: fine, tight and langorous, and never far below the pretty eau-de-cologne or bergamot mint (Mentha citrata) topnote, as best displayed in the legendary 1963 Mildara Coonawarra Peppermint Patty. (Geology: Ngaltinga Formation; up to 1,000,000 years old old; grey and red mottled alluvial clay, commonly cappped with calcrete) 

Hugh Hamilton Black Blood III Shiraz 2013 ($70; 94+) gets that extra point for its stolid pyramid-shaped I ain't goin' nowhere attitude. Below its illusory last-minute smudge of lipstick flesh, it smells of hot tractor with a sump full of licorice. Cross-dresser? Typical of the Morello and iron you'll find right up through Douglas Gully and Blewett Springs, where the Maslin Sands have turned to ironstone. Black, sour, intense and clunky, this bugger will settle right down eeeventuuaaaaaally. (Geology: Maslin Sands; between 40-56 million years old; cross-bedded medium and coarse-grained riverine sand, iron-cemented when oxidised on surface; sometimes covered with æolian or wind-blown non-marine sand in last 10,000 years) 

Collected field ironstone formed when Maslin Sand was exposed to atmospheric oxygen and washed during extensive effluvia in ferruginous riverine water, above ... you can see this process underway in the sandstone gibber below ... exposed to the surface, loose Maslin Sand has become a pebble which gradually turned to ironstone as it was washed by constant ferruginous effluvia ... they're centimetres on the rule ... at the bottom you see solid slab ironstone at Ironheart Vineyard ... there are acres of it here outside my door, metres thick, with a thin layer of very recent wind-blown sand on the top ... somehow the vines love it, in spite of its incapacity to hold water ... all these photos taken at Yangarra Estate by Philip White ... click any image to enlarge

 

Cradle of Hills Row 23 Shiraz 2013 ($45; 94++) Below its acrid flinty topnote, with maybe a hint of bruised mint, this is pure bitter cherries, as in Morello juice.  It's one of the most elegant wines in the entire line-up, which is not to say it's an any way weak: uh-huh. This is incredibly tight, intense, focussed wine which will last a good decade, probably more. (Geology: Kurrajong Formation; about 1.5 to 2.6 million years since deposited along piedmont of escarpment; clayey sand and silica-cemented conglomerate of small rocks of 500 million to 1.6 billion years of age.) 

Kurrajong Formation on Peter's Creek at Yangarra, above, and below, the finer, more ferruginous version at Roger Pike's Marius Wines, Willunga ... photos Philip White

 

Wirra Wirra Patritti Shiraz 2013 ($130; 94++) is another wine highly typical of its source in the ferruginous sands of Blewett Springs. It has a pretty topnote of mint and, perhaps from very fine oak, lemons. But beneath that it's all Morello cherries and iron. It's tight, intense and sharp and will live a very long time. This is a famous old vineyard which first caught my attention in 1980. I have always expected somebody sensitive and clever would make a brutally determined wine like this from it - a true reflection of its grounds! (Geology: Maslin Sands)

Typical topsoil profile in Blewett Springs: calcrete crust atop wind-blown (æolian) sand atop a layer of shotgun/grapeshot ironstone atop sandy ferruginous clay ... go down further and you hit the ironstone capping atop the looser Maslin Sands that then stretch very deep below ... this photo at Tim Geddes Seldom Inn winery by Philip White

So there you go. After this lurch into a new realm of higher quality, the Scarce Earth project will probably inch even closer to heaven as the years creep by. I've written much about my disdain for the unpronounceable name and its confusion with the Rare Earths of the Periodic Table, which tend to radioactivity and reside mainly in China, so I'll let that slide today. Maybe in a year or so the name could take a tweak and the appellation be relaxed to include all varieties whilst remaining true to its geological bases?

Work is well underway to add topological and climate maps to the existing geology map. That'll be enlightening.

In the meantime, while us rocksters cannot yet empirically teach that certain flavours are specific to certain geological formations, some of us are gradually confirming very old suspicions. 

Winemakers tasting McLaren Vale Shiraz according to its geology at Wirra Wirra last year ... photo Philip White

 

BACK IN THE SADDLE, BY GEORGE

JERICHO: NEW RED TRINITY

Jericho Selected Vineyards McLaren Vale G.S.M. 2014 

$25;  14.2% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points 

Imagine Marilyn Monroe playing a Supreme Court judge. The Shiraz robe gives her the austerity and Darth-like authority; the Mourvèdre the shiny wig, which adds some spark and theatrical topping without removing any of the sombre effect of the robe. But inside, it's all Marilyn, capable of displaying more moods and facets of personality, judicial skill and perfume than most of us. Grenache.

Around the silk-smooth, syrupy Morello cherry perfume of this Grenache we have a foundation of darkening Shiraz (15%) adding sombre weight, then a sprinkle of the savoury Mourvèdre (8%) to add some glint and magnify the dark charcuterie tones which we often see in intense Grenache and Shiraz anyway.

And there's a hint of confectioner's musk.

The texture is silky-smooth and shiny and tastes much like the liquor in a jar of pickled Morellos. The Shiraz adds fine satiny basement tannins and darkens the mood; the Mourvèdre brings a little of the savoir and savour of pickled Kalamata juice and takes me to the charcuturie at Tony Marino in Gouger Street.

All these things have been assembled with a parfumier's forensic obsession with harmony. There are no holes in this delicious, langorous tincture.

A couple of short decades back, one would have to find an exceptional blend from the south of France and then paid a helluva lot more to match this.

Food? Provence-style pork belly and beans, just warm, with shallots and artichoke heart in a sublime porky stock; plenty of crusty bread and butter. You could replace the pork with a big free-range chook and add some peas. Keep the stock rich and don't spare the tarragon. 

Jericho Single Vineyard Adelaide Hills Syrah 2013 

$35; 13% alcohol; Diam compound cork; 93+++ 

From a first-class vineyard in the hills behind Willunga, this Syrah always offers a completely different experience to Shiraz from the Willunga Embayment below. That's the official name of the Willunga basin, otherwise known as The Vales. McLaren Vale. I'll never know how those Willunga hills became known as the Adelaide Hills according to wine industry appellation law; they're really the South Mount Lofty Ranges. Correction: I do know how it happened, but can't believe it was allowed to happen. What a mess.

We're a tad bitchy about appellation tonight. Not the winemakers' fault.

As for the Shiraz/Syrah confusion? Don't even think of bringing that up. It's like Pinot gris and Pinot grigio: same grape; different places. But forget this Earthly stuff.

Black roses would smell like this. There's an unearthly sinister glint to the fragrance. Earthlings might find anise and soft fresh blackstrap licorice with blueberries and blackcurrants - even currants; I prefer something from the nether realms of the Dark Matter. Earthlings might liken it to the impeccable Syrah/Shiraz of Castagna or barr-Eden; I'm off diving into the nearest Black Hole.

Sinuous, intense, slippery and sinful as a hatful of space vipers, this drink escapes all recent attempts at naming places and products. It's transcenmental. Oops! Just made another one.

After all the long shiny black stuff, we get a sort of a matte titanium glaze of tannin, all the better to see you slip smoothly through the timelessness. As I just did cheating a peek at my notes of the 2012, which are also full of serpents and hissies about our language of nomenclature. I know that's only one Earth year off, but not many wines make the brain really diss-emm as far as this.

It's truly spacy, beautiful wine of a very rare breed.

And dammit! Look at that label. It's just the coolest, most notable piece of class, and the Jericho family is being dead honest with their naming.

Those who eat would be well advised to drink this with the sort of spicy Tuscan sausages you get at Tony Sanso's Osteria Sanso at Kanmantoo. He calls them Salciccie tartufate con porcini. 

Six thousand light years and closing. Pass me a bag of worm holes, would you Chewie? 

Jericho Single Vineyard McLaren Vale Shiraz 2013 

$35; 14% alcohol; Diam compound cork; 90+ points 

This is very certainly a dead serious McLaren Vale Shiraz. It grew in a south-facing spot at Seaview.

It smells block solid. Blackberries, juniper berries, licorice, cast iron ... a lot more intense and ungiving a wine than the old McLaren Vale reds we called 'the middle palate of Australia.' This is the Chamberlain tractor of Australia. It will never break or fail.

It has some pretties and a severe nose-tickling acridity. It's got hints of old tea tin and then maybe dates. Dried figs. It unfolds.

The palate is much more slender than all that insinuates. It has a lovely syrupy form, with flavours less complex than the bouquet suggested. Slick, polished, irony tannins. It's like a particularly adult after-dinner liqueur chocolate. That's a bit of a trip in itself. The tractor has driven away, and suddenly I'm in Haigh's.

Pink steak in a proper pepper and cream sauce. 

PS: This wine makes much more sense after a couple of hours in a ship's decanter or jug.