REILLY'S RIGHT ROYAL BOYOS

Three handsome brutes

by PHILIP WHITE

Reilly's Dry Land Clare Valley Sangiovese 2013 

($29; 14.5%; screw cap) 

Dry and dusty as hot summer's day, with old horse tack swinging in the breeze ... here's a Sangio set to make Chianti jealous in the way it's unswervingly focused and determined to be Clare. Or Watervale, to be more precise. 

The palate follows that aromatic line straight and true. It's lean and puckery and pointed straight at that bistro/brasserie table with the big glasses. It makes me hungry as much as talkative. Don't talk with your mouth full, Philip. 

Any sort of rustic antipasto or tapas will swing with this fine, austere, deliciously appetising intensity. Ping! 

Reilly's Dry Land Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 

($38; 14.4% alcohol; screw cap) 

Similar in its lean visage and thousand-yard stare, this is classic Clare Cabernet wearing a stylish French oak couture. 

Something about that region - I suspect it's the very low humidity during ripening - grows fruit with less of the fleshy primary berry character you find in, say, typical McLaren Vale. 

At its very best, Clare seems to produce more savoury olivine flavour: it's more like pickled kalamata juice than blackberry or raspberry. Here's your example. It grew in the eucalypt country at Leasingham. Oh sure, there are sweet red fruits glowering in here, and the musky confectioner's sugar, violets and faint lavendar like other grand Cabernets waft about. But it's lean and athletic and while it's taking its time to start, it'll soon swing into that long-distance rhythm and run an easy decade. 

Right now, it's another guaranteed appetiser: bring on the dribbling pink cutlets!  Spinach with pine nuts. Potato and pumpkin mash with raw diced Spanish onion stirred in with the butter. Parsnips with properly caramelised tails. Or, dammit, a towering chevalburger with frittes. 

Reilly's RCV Clare Valley Shiraz Pressings 2012 

($65; 17% alcohol; screw cap) 

Brrrr. Dry-grown 91-year-old Shiraz from the Stolen Block at Watervale. 100% pressings. 23 months in new French oak. Seventeen alcohols! 

It doesn't smell like seventeen alcohols. It sure smells strong and aloof in its authority, but all that many? 

Nevertheless, honesty is unavoidable with a big mutha like this. You might well ingest it innocently and eagerly, but it won't take you long to realise what just went in there. 

With all that posh livery on the blacksmithed essence of old Clare we get this sweet royalty: in some ways a solid ingot of calmly reserved power, in others a felicitously-dressed scoundrel spilling ethanol all down its shirt. 

It does have some pretty minty edges in its intro, and then the spirit of great French trees that would have built a brutal navy moves into the field of sensory vision and you know you might just as well take your bottle to the hold, lie down on the sacks, and wait til the cannons go quiet. Suck your thumb. 

Ensure you keep half the bottle for the captain. It'll help you avoid the deserter's lashing. Otherwise, have it with slow-roast side of walrus. Or seriously, spooned stilton like Max used to have when the Granges got big. Ka-boom.

2018: TOO DAMN HOT THEN COOL, IN WAVES

Since veraison, when the berries turn red, we've had some blistering bursts of heat here in McLaren Vale. Fortunately these have always been followed by cool damp spells up here on the north-eastern ridges, and then quite stiff  breezes come on cue, to dry everything out.

I heard some truck business down by the kangaroo scrub yesterday and there was the Yangarra vineyard crew unloading the big rolls of bird netting to protect the ripening crop from our gourmandising feathered dinosaurs. In 2017, I photographed these nets going up on the 20th of February.

North-west-facing corner of Ironheart Shiraz Vineyard in foreground; that's a Chapel Hill vineyard on the fen behind ... totally different geology; different flavour ... Bernard hasn't taken his treadly for a fang since the dogs ate the Martians ... photos Philip White

below is looking south from the High Sands Grenache, across the top of Blewett Springs toward Willunga and Sellicks Hill on 30th March last year

IMPORTANT McLAREN VALE MEETING

PLANTS THAT REACH FOR THE SKY

This poor old introduced tree in my back yard can't live very happily with its roots hitting the slab terrazzo-like tennis court ironstone just a metre beneath. 

But it never gives up, and galahs and parrots and cockies love roosting in its wired dead hair. They are fascinated by me pegging my laundry there on the ancient Hills Hoist, and discuss it with me as I go.

Sometimes, rarely, magpies sit there and watch. They are faster to dismiss me: the Cacatuidae are more amused and curious.

The postfarm beyond the fence is a lovely boot hill for the old industrial Perma-Pine mentality. Since that went in, Yangarra went all bushvines (no trellis posts) or stainless steel posts (if one must have posts). So these posts will be extracted and sold. No vines have been planted there. It'll be good when all these old-fashioned toxic teeth have been removed and they plant new chewers! That's premium geology under there.

I reckon there are several acres of solid slab tennis court terazzo ironstone here under this cottage and the Ironheart Vineyard. There are no handy boulders or cracks. Just a dusting of sand or loam on top of acres of this. Tough titties. Every baby grows at least one perfect bunch. This 400mm vine already provides tiny dollops of serious gastronomic heaven ... photos Philip White

MODERN WHITES AT A PRICE IN Y SERIES

Yalumba's Y Series: a clean slice through the modern white shelf
by PHILIP WHITE

The cool old family image of Yalumba is a coveted advantage on today's crowded shelf. One expects it to do a bit better than its rivals. Which I see it does below the $15 per bottle zone. 

Bottled wine under $20 is our biggest-selling sector after the bladder pack: on the other hand, those fabulous expensive glories that captivate columns like this are really a tiny part of the whole, which is what you generally expect of the best of anything. 

At the bottom of this jellifluous pyramid, the bladder pack sector is shrinking slowly, as more of that wine goes into cheapo bottles. Which is probably the sort of behaviour you'd expect of the worst of anything. 

When Keith Richards told a Finnish reporter in 1988 "The ratio of good stuff to bad stuff doesn't change: ninety-seven bad; three good" he was speaking of music but I've always found that a handy rule in this wine racket. 

Anything launched at a recommended retail of $15 in broadacre volumes like these are likely to be discounted. The Y is not too hard to find around - even below - the $10 mark. Can anything in that price bracket be at least cool and fairly good, even if it misses catching the fancy three per cent train? 

Well, sort of. 

I thought a good scouring of this famous five was deserved. Five sound well-regarded wines for a tenner apiece on discount. A cross-section of the hottest blondes. And typical of that cool the old family can sometimes ooze, these Ys are very modern. All are made with wild yeast ferments, which are the sorts of things that could eventually lead to dissolute fads like orange wine if you're not careful. Such a notion in a price bracket like this would have been outrageous just a few years ago. 

Yalumba The Y Series Barossa Riesling 2017 
($15; 12% alcohol; screw cap) 

Delicately fragrant, this baby, with an aromatic texture like the pale creamy flesh of the magnolia petal with the odd stray waft of jasmine ... 

That creamy thing is the key: this is not your simply austere lemon and lime juice Riesling. Maybe the acid is firm and limy, but this is a more sensual and gentle than most of our upland Rieslings. Its perfumes seem more fatty than herbal. Maybe that's the wild ferment. The texture of yeast lees. 

The label contradicts me. "Orange blossom and citrus fragrances complement refreshing flavours of lemonade," it says. Damn. So I go back in the glass. Maybe there's a tweak of smoky rind, like when Mum would put the mandarin peel on the woodfire stove to ease that hot croft of the smell of the six men she managed.  But overall, it's creamy, like cosmetics, like rambutan, ly-chee, or that lovely runny egg and vanilla custard the Chinese pinched from the Portuguese. 

Then there's that solid slab of acid in the basement. It is a Riesling, after all. To me this seems more Germanic than typically Australian. More precisely, it reminds me of the Rieslings of Pfalz, or some from over the border in Alsace. But I doubt that you'll find many Rieslings of this calibre anywhere at a price like this. 

Yalumba The Y Series South Australia Sauvignon Blanc 2017 
($15; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap) 

This time that wild yeast has whipped up an aroma like bienenstich: more than the mown green grass and gooseberry edge usually at the front of your Sauvignon blanc, this winemaking pushes toward the creamier, yeastier aromatic style of the Riesling. It's kind of homely. 

But then, just as Riesling's acid must shove its stubborn head up eventually, so too we see the blonde Sauvignon poke its thorny tips through here. Just consider them wrapped so they don't cut your lips. 

When you start pursuing spritely alcohols this low, the winemaker must be smart about wrapping those acids in something. Too much of today's Savvy-b has acid as crunchy as a smashed windscreen. The wild yeast seems to have taken some of that edge off this wine. And that softening leesy cream sure beats sugar. 

There are a few winemakers attempting these more cushioned Sauvignons at sensibly modest alcohols like this, but I don't know many good ones pursuing such modest prices. 

Yalumba The Y Series South Australia Pinot Grigio 2017 
($15; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap) 

"Don't plant Pinot gris (or grigio) anywhere you can't grow good Pinot noir" has been my tiresome mantra since Kath Quealy began her impassioned grigio/gris/grey campaign on the Mornington Peninsula in the early 'nineties. She was the pioneer. You can grow good Pinot noir down there. 

The grey Pinot is a mutation of Pinot noir. Their DNA is so close grape doctors think the colour of the skin is the only physiological difference. 

"They gotta have the right amount of slime," Quealy sagely advised me of her attitude to the new grey aliens. 

This particular one doesn't seem to bring too much good Pinot noir to mind. Like I doubt that if you tracked down its vineyards you'd find any memorable Pinot noir growing there. 

Neither does this wine, in spite of its wild ferment, have much slime. I imagine you could find quite a few Pinots grigio/grey/gris from many places, at prices and quality like this. Mainstream. 

Yalumba The Y Series South Australia Viognier 2017 
($15; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap) 

Closer to the target style, this wine's made the best job of that wild yeast, being scary plush with the sort of folds of flesh that got a lot of baroque artists deep in it. Like you could lay this wine on with a trowel. 

It is delightfully, calmly creamy to breathe, like slimy white peach slices in sabayon. Maybe a clove, a sprinkle of fresh-ground nutmeg. Just one fleeting zephyr of Mum's mandarin peel. Dried apricot soaking in water before it goes in the crown of a hearty struselkuchen. But mainly folds and folds of steamed white flesh-dough. 

The Birth of The Milky Way - Peter Paul Rubens 1637-7 (detail)

More than the above trio, this delight slides very smoothly from aroma to flavour to exhalation: one doesn't have to think up a new vocabulary for each step. 

And it all adds up to Viognier. 

Critically, the one bit of Viognier that so few Australian winemakers cope with - its dry phenolic tannin - is really well displayed here, providing a crisp macro focus to all that carnal pulchritude. It tidies up the mess. I don't know of any other Viognier of this quality at anything near this price. 

Yalumba The Y Series South Australia Chardonnay 2015 
($15; 13% alcohol; screw cap) 

I haven't said it yet, but most of the time the words 'South Australia' appear in place of 'Barossa' or 'Clare' or 'McLaren Vale' on a South Australian wine label, it usually means 'Riverland.' As Chardonnay and Pinot come from Burgundy, where it snows, it would seem unlikely that even if irrigated, the red sandy dirt of our hot desert could produce flavours similar to those French ones we presume our growers were intending to emulate. This wine does not smell or taste like Burgundy. Stylistically, it fits somewhere between the Riesling and the Pinot grigio, but with a fair shade of the Sauvignon. The Riverland tends to do this with the various white grapes: they can very quickly start to look the same. 

The Riesling is obviously not from the Riverland. And it didn't make me think of lemonade. That, and the Viognier are the ones to pick from this bunch. Especially at ten bucks each. 

To push even further into cool hipster territory, these wines are all 'vegan friendly,' whatever that means. I can't begin to imagine how vegans handle drinking all those trillions of poor little wild yeasts while they're still alive. The yeasts, I mean. If they're dead, you'd think that would be even more challenging. Not to mention what the poor bloody yeasts think of the deal.

But then, sensibly, for consistency's sake, these Ys have been filtered ... 

A certain signature cool: Yalumba's Signature Cellar set up for a tasting ... Yalumba photos by Philip White

PETILLANT NATURELLE APPLES AND GRAPES

Two glorious traditional pet nats, 
one of them made from grapes
by PHILIP WHITE


Pet nat, eh? 

When the French insisted through international trade law that Australia cease using terms like 'methode Champenoise' our marketers decided to call fizz made after the recipe of the sparkling winemakers of the Champagne region 'methode traditionelle.' 

Most people meanwhile seemed happy to keep calling the stuff 'champers' or 'fizz' and got on with drinking it. 

When makers of the new fashion pre-industrial unfined and unfiltered styles of wine began to copy the recipe the French name 'petillant naturelle' they called it 'pet nat' from the start. 

What they meant was 'bottle-fermented', with naturally-formed CO2  bubbles trapped in the bottle, like Cooper's Ale. Cloudy, not often fine. 

Perhaps our most accomplished cider-maker, Warwick Billings, sent me a bottle of his new Lobo Bodicea cider, appropriately made in a champagne-style bottle with a crown seal. 

"Sparkling cider in bottles pre-dated champagne," he says in a note, "this is one more sweet pet nat in the current talk, but without some of the distractions." 

Lobo Bodicea Cider ($15 750ml.; 6% alcohol; crown seal) is what Warwick calls "a little less fiesty than anticipated," reflecting on how infernally tricky it is hoping the yeast and sugar you leave working together in your sealed bottle produce a product that doesn't explode but stays politely fizzy. 

The damn thing smells disarmingly of, you guessed it, apples. Live, bright, fresh apples of the ancient traditional cider types which all but vanished as everybody hit the drive-in fridge and slurped up the sweet low IQ stuff made from excess Granny Smiths and the other two or three droll types you get in the supermarket. 

Lenswood apple grower Michael Stafford with Lobo cider-maker Warwick Billings 

Warwick has worked long and hard with grower Michael Stafford to cultivate some of the ancient varieties long used in the cider groves of old England: the result gives a healthy gingery top edge to the bouquet; the lower tones are autumnal and mature. I recall apples Mum and Nan preserved in the Fowlers Vacola that smelled like this, back in the Gippsland mountains in the 'fifties. The sacks of them stored in our old wood grange smelled like this, as did a jar of them opened after about six month's maturation. 

I want to pour fresh Jersey cream on it. 

The flavours are more modest than that character-filled aroma. More refined and tight. The sweetness has been well-managed to balance and fill the palate without overwhelming, so the cider finishes real neat and tidy and even dry-ish. And those bubbles are more lazy and caressing than feisty. 

"Following on from Christmas drinking," Warwick says of his homeland, "there is a solid tradition of post-Christmas wassailing in England, where the cider-makers and cider-lovers gather to celebrate and encourage a good harvest in the coming year: some cider-soaked toast in the branches of the trees, a bit of shotgun action to scare the bad spirits away, and some poetry and song." 

This is a real good drink, "bottled without sulphites, or anything else." Yum. 

Castagna Beechworth Pet-Nat Allegro 2017

($45; 12.5% alcohol; crown seal) 

"I made a pet nat," Julian Castagna giggled. 

Of course he did. From biodynamic Shiraz rosé. 

It smells like roses. Like nougat and turkish delight. Like maraschino cherries. Red currants. One little shave of curaçao peel. 

The wine has considerable weight. Like it seems heavy on the palate. Like some kind of burnished liquid gold. Then a cheeky, gentle, persistent fizz lifts that weight and turns the gravity off. Joy bounces off the top of your mouth, but  the good feels go straight on up through the mixing deck. It's magic. 

Unlike most of these bottle-fermented sparkling wines, this one is neither cloudy nor explosive. But it gives more Sgt. Pepper's Magical Mystery Tour per sip than nearly everything else I know. 

Natural? Like that moody, more wintry Lobo, this wine is the work of methodical, respectful, natural-born genius with an acute scientific curiosity. Genius? Sure. If it wasn't there'd be a helluva lot more of it.

Julian Castagna by Warwick Wood

WINTER OLYMPICS BY GEORGE