PARACOMBE SNUBS 2015 BUSHFIRE

Paracombe Holland Creek Adelaide Hills Riesling 2015 

$20; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points 

From the heart of the 2015 bushfire zone at Cudlee Creek, here's a splendid Riesling that shows no sign whatever of anything even vaguely resembling smoke taint. It smells all the world like a perfectly delicate type of grapefruit. Which was known as the forbidden fruit when it was first hybridised (Citrus x paridisi) in Barbados in the eighteenth century.

Smelling this made me wonder, for the first time in my life, whether grapefruit got its name because it smells like beautiful wine like this. On checking, it seems to have been named after the way grapefuits look like they're hanging in bunches on the bough, but you get my drift.

This smell makes me crave grilled flathead, even before I taste the wine.

Which is a task now accomplished. This is not a stern, stony Riesling like those of the Eden Valley or a lime-and-lemony brute from Clare. It has just the right balance of force and delicacy, in a texture that's very close to grapefruit pith as much as its slurpy, appetising juice. It's long, and dry and delightful.

There are references to other tropical fruits in here, but it also makes me think of the moist lickable mudstone of the Cudlee Creek gullies, one of which is home to Holland Creek.

While some parts of the vineyard were smoke tainted, winemaker Paul Drogemuller took a punt on this patch and here it stands, clean as a whistle.

"Whitey I got so excited about it that two days after bottling I took a few to Thailand with a mate and we had 'em with jungle food," Droggy drools. "I tell you four bottles wouldna been enough for the two of us." 

Droggie and the author ... jeez he's a friggin giant

Paracombe Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2015 

$21; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points 

While this lovely has some of the leafy lantana greens - even rosemary - that you might subconsciously expect of Sauvignons blanc, it has the extra business that has always set the Paracombe model apart: it's never overt, but there are bits of this wine's miasma that bring fleeting swirls of elderflower and lilac. Roses some years. Rosewater. Turkish delight. It's heady as much as refreshing and appetising. Wicked combo Mon.

She's singing about a sweeter version, but hit Youtube for Morgana King oozing Lilac Wine and you'll be on the note. Not exactly a drink for the chill of winter, this adventure is both ethereal and ephemeral, fleeting and sorta husky, like Madonna's Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy: "Aren't you gonna frisk me?"

It needs to be frisked in the summer, once again with the immediate hawker food you can imagine Droggy gutsing in the jungle. But Breathless Mahoney in the jungle? Yep. Having a smoke and a pink gin with Diana Palmer in the Phantom's Skull Cave after their honeymoon in Eden will do the pictures.

In the meantime, this line still enjoys such popularity that sales continue to boom after twenty years of growth. They're planting more Savvy-B as we drink.

"We can't keep up," the man says. I reckon you can lay a lot of the blame on Kath Drogemuller. She sells the stuff. Great families, see? 

Paracombe The Reuben Adelaide Hills 2012 

$23; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points 

Reuben 2009 was the highest-pointing wine in the entire Royal Melbourne Wine Show. I think this is better.

This is a top crystalline indicator of the gastronomic imagination and winegrowing intelligence of Paul Drogemuller.

Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet franc, Malbec and Shiraz swim happily around this glass. They do this royally, with the svelte elegance only the very shiny rich reliably display.

The aroma prickles gently and teases. It's not designed to be soothing in this its yoof. Oops. Youth. (Prince Harry flickered across the screen then, to be replaced by his beautiful Mum. Mercy. No sign of the Prince of Wales. Back to white noise and snow.)

This wine is so intense yet slender, sinewy and supple you could begin to yearn for a centimetre or two of puppy flesh. But then, after another long sniff, you realise that'd be silly. This wine is what it is. And it's beautiful.

Somehow, this form makes the wine ideal to drink at cellar temperature, or outside veranda temperature, right now in the winter chill. Juicy lamb cutlets and rosemary sort of thing.

Otherwise, put a case in a cool dark place for what, ten years? Open the first bottle in 2020 and I'll bet you wish you'd bought more.

In 2025 I'd be having it with thinly-sliced, barely-cooked veal liver and morels in a port-cream sauce.

 2nd February I looked from my veranda to see this bushfire blooming to the NNW ... "Paracombe!" I thought ... while some growers had real bad damage, I think in retrospect it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been, thanks to Fireys ... photo Philip White

JERICHO: NEW FAMILY FIRM TO WATCH

The Jericho family after dinner at  Mum and Dad's: Andrew (left) and Kim, standing; Neil, Kaye, Steve and Sally, seated ... photos Philip White

 

Cool wines from a hot family:

how to start a new wine company

in a time of upheaval and chaos

by PHILIP WHITE

David Wynn, for decades the driver of the great family wine company, hired Melbourne winewriter Walter James to write the annual Wynn Winegrowers' Diary, 1970 edition.

Reading it, and remembering fondly my mentor David, who died in 1995, I can hear their conversation as they discussed the nature of making money.

The successful business operator "will arouse the admiration, and the envy, of a vast army of men who have had similar aims," James wrote. Then he added a critical non sequitur:

"Should you set out not to make money but to make something really worthwhile in itself, your success will with equal certainty be rewarded with the admiration, and the goodwill, of men who really matter - men of category."

This came to mind last week as I dined at home with the Jericho family.

In the two years since they launched their new wine company, this family has proven that in the chaos of an overcrowded wine world it is still possible to release a new product which arouses envy, admiration and most importantly, goodwill amongst many.

They have done this with a suite of wines which are of outstanding quality, backed by a good honest news story about hard work and co-operative skill.

The packaging is fashionable but timeless; the prices beautifully modest.

I first encountered Neil Jericho at Brown Brothers' Milawa winery in the mid-'eighties. In those years there was a buzz about Browns. They were reputed to run the most profitable cellar door in Australia, offering a vast array of experimental wines of the sorts of varieties that are only now becoming commonplace.

Amongst other winemaking roles, Neil was in charge of what was called the Kindergarten Winery, which was a radical new installation where small batches of wine could be given the most forensic attention.

He'd jumped the fence from his previous role, making much more rustic types of wine at Campbell's Rutherglen on the hotter river flats to the north.

The Jericho family swimming hole in the old gold pit at Eldorado, up in Milaway/Beechworth territory ... below is the old cork oak the kids played in

 

The first Australian Jerichos arrived in Port Adelaide from Germany in 1854. Neil grew up in the South Australian Riverland and went off to Roseworthy to study winemaking. He was in the first class to undertake the new marketing course.

After Brown Brothers he was chief winemaker at Taylors of Clare for 16 years.

He met his wife Kaye at school in year 11. "Kaye's spent over thirty years being a vintage widow; raising the three kids," he says. "And now here we are, finally running a family business."

Family business indeed.

"All our kids grew up working hard during their school and uni holidays," Neil said, "doing a lot of vineyard work: pruning, trellising and general vineyard maintenance. They all know their vineyard management."

Daughter Sally Pavic now does all the administration. She has marketing and accounting degrees from the University South Australia and worked for a time on export compliance at Wine Australia. With her husband Steve, a builder who races motorcycles, she has three kids under six.

"Steve is passionate about his work and sport," Neil says. "He doesn't have a role in the wine business but loves his food and his wine. He's a good critic of our wines."

As is son Kim, who cooked us a brilliant dinner. He's worked vintages at Killikanoon in Clare and Sumac Ridge in Canada but studied graphic design at UniSA and now runs a successful design business. With the keen input of the rest he  developed the distinctive Jericho logo and branding.

While it's easy to suggest references to, dare I suggest Penfolds and Coca Cola, that happy Jericho brand is more a clever mixture of the euphoric fonts of the federation era: think Bests Great Western, Wendouree and May Gibbs' Gumnut Babies. With its enviable dash of humour and carefree confidence, it's the sort of logo you can recognise on a table right across the other side of the street. Through an ice bucket.

"Restaurateurs seem to like having it on their tables," Kim said. "People like looking at it. It's very easy to recognise. And as you say, it looks pretty cool, but it's not modern enough to go out of date."

That logo didn't come easily. It's certainly not another of those Mum and Dad get the biro out for a bit of design on the kitchen table after dinner jobs. He showed me page after page of trials, months of work showing gradual increments of evolution as this Virgo-rich tribe offered their advice.

Similarly, the entire family has input into the winemaking, which is otherwise the territory of Neil and Andrew, who works full-time now as winemaker at Maxwell Wines after years at Mollydooker and a vintage in China.

They select distinguished parcels of fruit from vineyards they respect around McLaren Vale and through the Adelaide Hills and make the wine at their mate  Goe de Fabio's beautifully-equipped winery at McLaren Flat.

"We have a great test for every wine we make," Neil says, laughing about being a textbook Virgo, "with three very precise objectives.

"First, our wines must show distinct varietal and fruit expression. Second, they must be in balance: All the characters that make up the wine: fruit, oak, tannin  (for red wine), acidity, extraction and alcohol etc etc should all be in balance with not one ’spike’ sticking out.

"Third? Drinkability. Get the first two right and you have drinkability: the structure and the texture of the wine produces a lovely product that we all like to drink."

Amen to that. From their very first release these wines have immediately impressed me with their honest vivacity and purity: not one has failed to earn a glowing review on these pages.

We mulled over the nature of family wine companies, how some disappear while others grow so huge as to become almost meaningless.

Neil, after all, has worked for three of them: all booming still. One doubts, however, that any of those started out with the levels of vision, confidence, care, and keen respect of the customer that these Jerichos show.

"There's always the danger of not having a good succession plan," Neil said.

"Some can't seem able to let other family members into the company - there's no consideration of each member's level of skill. Then, sometimes there's simply not enough industry knowledge. One day the family firm finds it did not have the skills to run a successful business.

"And then, of course, some become so very successful that they're offered a great deal of money to sell out."

There's no talk of either travesty at the Jericho table. Rather, a slightly feverish, sightly tentative buzz of pride at their achievement and the potential of their future.

Which brings me back to David Wynn, and his conversation with that crusty old doyen, Walter James.

Their conclusion pretty well summarises far too many of the ill-conceived, half-hearted brands that clutter today's shelves:

"In some fields of productive endeavour, of course ... it is only a little sad that so many men of ability as they reach for success and meet it are beguiled into allowing the means to submerge the aim and in the end are content to do, adequately enough, no more than a hundred others around them are doing equally well. Their obituaries describe these people as successful businessmen and they pass promptly into oblivion."

You won't see any of that going down with this new Jericho family endeavour.

This lot is here to stay. They're building something which is "really worthwhile in itself."

Drink up.
.

Another two great wine families here: David Wynn, left, with his brilliant sparkling winemakers Hurtle and his son Norm Walker. Norm's son, Nick carries the Walker family standard high at the formidable O'Leary Walker in Clare. Hurtle was trained by the French master, Edmund Mazure. Wynn's legendary Oven's Valley Burgundy came from Milawa territory ... everything goes round and round

  

THE SEMILLONS OF CHÂTEAU TANUNDA

A highlight of the 125th anniversary of Château Tanunda back in February was the amazing range of Semillon wines which the owner John Geber presented. 

I have finally got my nose more forensically into this selection as another installation in this casual but ongoing series about Semillon, a misunderstood and much overlooked variety.

There are three ranks in the Château Tanunda collection. The Old Vine Semillon is $24; the 100 year old vines $49; and the very rare 150 year old vines $100.

To get the gist of the whole glorious direction these wines are headed, I blended equal proportions of Old Vine 2009 to 2014 vintages; 100 yo 2012-13 and 150 yo 2014.

Starting at the top, this most unofficial of drinks has an edge of dusty, acrid hessian, and dare I suggest, a whiff of the sun on the stubble.

Below that, you hit the dairy products: the comforting butter and cream. This butter varies from the smell of a pat left melting in the sun at a picnic, through fresh butter whipped with sugar and lemon, to other sorts of buttery confection like butterscotch and maybe even cinder toffee.

Another step in you may hit a gentle vegetal waft, sometimes like celery, sometimes like petiols, the stems of the grape leaves, sometimes a tiny bit like fresh, uncooked asparagus. It's a fresh verdant fragrance.

All these inflections of aroma are reflected with more precision in the flavour. They form up as appropriately modest upholsteries around a very shiny and rigid racing chassis of steely acid.

To do a really silly thing, I'll take a stab and say the result is somewhere between Burgundian Chardonnay and Clare or Eden Riesling. 

It is a splendid thing indeed, partly distinguished, I believe, by the winemakers' preference for the old clone the locals call 'red semi' - the skins are pinkish.

Local historian Don Ross, speaker of Barossadeutscher, explaining the history of the area on the cricket ground at Ch Tanunda ... these Semillons come from vineyards on the alluvial piedmont of the Barossa Ranges, just across those flats in the gap  ... photos Philip White

Château Tanunda Old Vine Semillon 2014 

$24; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points 

Immediately alluring, this lovely Bethany-grown wine reminds me of the smell of a fresh-washed bubby. Beneath some heady lilac blooms it's all pudgy, milky flesh. To put that closer to food, think fresh unsalted Paris Creek butter whipped with sugar so it's still just minutely crunchy. Garnish with very thinly-sliced lemon. Then add a whiff of the leaves of the vine, and the faintest whiff of oak, as if the wine had been merely stirred with a new wooden spoon.

The result is a wine that's very light on its feet, but still very forceful in its bone dry swirl. Any hint of chubby infancy disappears as this athlete hits the stage with a spring.

So in this its youth, the wine is a tease of soft then taut. With time, and this'll cellar beautifully for well over a decade, you'll see the butter and lemon burnish and mingle, and that sprinter's muscle relax into a golden honeyed glory.

If you flame-grill a snapper til its skin begins to caramelise and crunch up, and serve it with a sprig of fennell and a thinly-sliced dill pickle, slices of spud pan-fried with butter and parsley and sliced lemon, you'll be on this one's money, honey. 

Château Tanunda 100 Year Old Vines Semillon 2013 

$49; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points 

Recall all the abovementioned nuances and add a pinch of fine white pepper to that prickly burlap topnote. Also, these much older vines, from Vine Vale, are giving less butter but more of that petiol aroma ... somewhere along the lines of the white root vegetables, just dug and washed.

Rather than rich yellow butter, the fatty aromatic bits here are more curds-and-whey, leesey-and-cheesey stuff. In that sense, it's a whiter wine.

The flavours take me to Soave country, in the hills around Verona. Delicate and breezy, and full of those fresh upland meadows, green and lush. We'll call this The Sound Of Music Semillon.

You know that smell of freshly-ironed cornflower blue seersucker?

This one needs lighter, more delicate fish, like pan-grilled garfish or whiting. 

Château Tanunda 150 Year Old Vines Barossa Semillon 2014 

$100; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points 

From the Cirillo single vineyard at Vine Vale, from vines planted 25 years before the Château was built, this is a very rare treasure.

Atop varying measures of all the above, it has a more glowering, even sinister whiff of cordite about it, like a bluestone quarry right after a blast. Below that, the usual burlap and lemonbutter is all slightly burnt and toasty.

The flavours are fluffy and ethereal at first, then that staunch acidity kicks in and the wine changes gear, leading out to a long, tapering, grainy lemon pith  dryness that triggers dangerous hunger.

Damn thing makes me yearn for the salt-and-pepper eggplant at Wah Hing, bowl of chilli oil glowering on the side.

Owner John Geber at the front of Ch Tanunda durig its 125th vintage

AUSTRALIA'S BIGGEST APPELLATION

The mouth of the River Murray at the Coorong and the Southern Ocean in the 1990s ... hardly flowing at all after draining over a million square kilometres of south-eastern Australia ... and irrigating quite a lot of it, too ... this basin is just a part of the giant Australian appellation recognised internationally as South-Eastern Australia ... it's basically all the land south-east of a straight line from Ceduna SA to Rockhampton Qld

Big Rivers barely rolling but

$11 billion Basin spend makes 

no leeway for climate change

by PHILIP WHITE

this was first published on InDaily 23/06/2015

It was February 1996 when John Howard delivered the election campaign speech that led to the shredding of the government of Paul Keating. The electorate seemed to like Honest John's promise to flog one third of Telstra to develop the natural heritage trust of Australia, put $1 billion in its bank for starters then spend $16 million beginning the rehabilitation of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This was the beginning of an extraordinary 20 year process during which the Basin's importance as a producer of Australia's cheapest wine could, or should have been forensically examined, particularly its use of water, how long that water will last and what that water realistically should cost, not to mention the number of fair dinkum jobs and income each litre provided its community. A lot of people depend on that river.

Or, for that matter, the many billions of community health costs incurred when the resultant wine is irresponsibly consumed and stuff goes twisty. We're talking about a bit under half of the country's entire wine production.

The millions of hours and many billions of dollars squandered in that twenty years is a devastating indictment of our communal dishonesty.

The Murray at Echuca

Since I mentioned this here last week, South Australian treasurer Tom Koutsantonis delivered the state budget. This budget abolished South Australia's Save the River Murray levy.

While Premier Jay Weatherill explained the levy had been designed to 'lead the charge to save the River Murray' he guaranteed 'The specific measures funded by the Save the River Murray levy will continue to be delivered but we now have a national plan to support and improve the health of the River.'

Although you don't hear much about it on Master Chef, some of us in the drinks business regard potable water as a reasonably significant gastronomic item. Especially in a community like ours, languishing here at the arse end of the food and wine basin the world's driest nation depends upon.

Perhaps in its budgetary insinuation that the River's fixed, the State Labor government was buoyed by the fact that this, the driest state in the driest continent, now has a desalination plant we can turn on whenever the River dries up.

 Mildura drought 1930s

Whatever the fact, this state, so proud of its forerunning achievements in premium food and wine, seems by omission to think it may not have to return to dredging the mouth of the country's biggest river in order to keep it looking a bit like a viable stream.

There's a special information session tonight, just by the way, at the Lakes Hub in Meningie where folks can ask about the next dredging program.

At the retail end, in the ethanol sector the wheels of commerce are turning fluently. Being a mob basically designed to support the standard working family and its pensioners, this state's Labor lawmakers must be delighted that this morning in BWS their electors can purchase full-strength bladder pack wine from Berri Estates on our end of the River at the rate of $2.20 per litre.

Floods of very cheap alcohol are often followed by prohibition movements

One part of that incredibly expensive twenty year discussion of the matter of the dying River was the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which came into effect in 2012. Part of its duty was to ensure that no longer would we allocate too much precious water to agricultural purposes. Like the extravagent irrigation of wine grapes worth such a pittance to producers that their growers lose more money every year.

Communities collapse. People get sick, drunk and violent. Entire towns need help.

Murray at Renmark, 1915 ... all these old photographs were taken before the weirs, locks and barrages were installed ... these may slow the water down, but they don't make it rain

 

But yesterday on Radio National's Breakfast program, it was revealed that in its discussion of future water allocations, this lofty document does nothing to address climate change. A group of cranky scientists maintain that the $11 billion Murray Darling Basin Plan 'doesn't currently take into account the lower average rainfall patterns and more frequent and severe droughts predicted by climate models.'

On one hand we have Dr Rhondda Dickson, Murray-Darling Basin Authority CEO assuring us that her cutting the irrigation volumes by twenty per cent is 'going to enable the environments and also those communities who depend on those environments to be more resilient to future climate change.'

On the other hand sits the seething scientists. Professor Quentin Grafton, director of the Centre for Water Economics and Environment at the ANU, told Breakfast 'There's no way climate change has been accounted for in the current basin plan. So clearly we have got a problem here in terms of understanding facts.'

Digging irrigation channels in the Murray Mallee

The results of future climate change have been 'locked out' of the plan, Mike Young, professor of water and environmental policy at the University of Adelaide agreed. 'It assumes there's no climate change and none could ever happen ...

'The advent of adverse climate change on the amount of water that's available is very savage. A 10 per cent reduction in rainfall can result in as much as a 60 or 70 per cent reduction in the amount of water that's available for use ... It’s a warning bell; the single biggest problem in Australia's main food bowl is far from fixed.'

Heavy-duty scientists are lining up to complain.

John Williams, Wentworth Group scientist, asserts that while the Basin is responsible for 70 per cent of Australia’s irrigation, some calculations forecast  as much as 34 per cent less rainfall and more evaporation by 2030.

Right through the scientific community, there's a widespread sense of disbelief that the MDBA had made it quite clear that it did not incorporate climate change into its hydrologic modelling.

And it's not just scientists who are frustrated by the current regime's paranoid  hatred of merely the term 'climate change.'

Later yesterday we had Admiral Chris Barrie (ret.), former head of none other than the Australian Defence Forces, launching the Centre for Policy Development's new report, The Longest Conflict: Australia's Climate Security Challenge. 

This report is withering in its accusations that Australia's Defence Force is not prepared 'for climatic events like extreme heat, rising sea levels and more frequent natural disasters.

'Most of the people I work with in Defence actually get this; they understand about climate change, and they're very enthusiastic to get to grips with it,' Barrie said.

'The problem we've got is at the top level of politics in this country it seems to be a toxic term. That's bad news and they know it's rubbish so let's get real about it and start having a decent conversation.'

The beaches may be too well submerged for our landing craft; the uniforms may be too hot for the troops to wear; tanks and ships and choppers may be impossible to endure; extremes of climate and weather may well cut off most of the usual food supply; when the petroleum expires armies and navies and air forces might discover they're not quite set up to depend on wind and solar power ... goddam it, even our biggest river might once again cease to flow into the sea, but in this great desert country of ours we'll always be able to sit down to a lovely glass of bladder pack at $2.20 per litre.

That's obviously cheap enough to win our votes.