LICKING THE PLASMA OF OLD SOLDIERS

Langmeil Jackaman’s Barossa Cabernet Sauvignon 2010
$50; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89++ points
The Barossa’s Old Vine Charter guarantees this wine came from vines over 35 years of age. It’s prickly and piquant like the smell of sun on stubble, with dense, tight layers of coffee, kalamata, blackberry vines hung with ripe fruit, figs and soft blackstrap licorice.  Oh yes, much bitter cooking chocolate, too. So what distinguishes it as a Barossa Cabernet? Probably those blackberry leaves more than the fruit, and maybe the coffee.  Call them the dark green hints amongst the berries and roots.  The palate is more lithe than that complex, compact bouquet would suggest: it has no jam or jello, and it’s snaky and slender.  The finish seems a little hot, but I suspect this may subside if you let it have a big breathe, or five years in your dungeon, and give that fruit time to swell.  The tannins are fine and dusty; the acid stiff and ready to help if you’re somebody who prefers to wait decades. It’ll probably last decades. [Same bottle tasted three days later: opulent, smooth, silky, much better assimilated and more harmonious; 92++ points]

Langmeil The Fifth Wave Barossa Grenache 2010
$40; 15.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points
The Barossa Old Vine Charter guarantees this wine came from vines older than 75 years.  James Lindner says some are over 90.  One of the king-hitters of the new generation of straight Grenache wines aimed directly at the top of the market, it’s nevertheless made in the old school manner, with leathery tones and hints of charry oak, in spite of the majority of its barrels being well-used old French.  Through all those rustic aggie aromas looms the classy Grenache fruit: maraschino, raspberry and red currant.  The palate disarmingly carries these fresh fruits high over the wafts of old timber and harness leather, and finishes with a dry rise of fine sandy tannins teasing the lingering remnants of that fruit. Interesting that while it is slightly hot from all those alcohols, the Grenache fruit seems to carry it better than the Cabernet. I’d be starting to nudge it in 2015; but it’s fine now after an hour or two in the jug. [Same bottle tasted three days later: smooth, gradually losing its zap; drink now – five years; 90+ points]

Langmeil Orphan Bank Barossa Shiraz 2010
$50; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
The Barossa Old Vine Charter guarantees this wine came from vines older than 100 years.  They actually came even further than that: these are the ones developer Karl Lindner dug up and moved, one at a time, so he could squeeze more houses into Tanunda. They seem a lot happier, now they live on the creek beside The Freedom vines, which seem certain to have been planted in 1843.  As with the other three wines in this remarkable set, this one is more slender and supple than its alcohol would normally indicate, perhaps a result of the kindly vintage conditions of 2010.  It has a certain genteel intensity about it, sometimes reminding me of a blueberry flan with the odd juniper berry tucked in to add piquant savour, sometimes just sitting there in the glass with the same smug attitude a cast iron pot of blackberry and mulberry conserve shows on the woodfire stove.  That’s the aroma division.  Drink the darling, and you will marvel at its cool sinuous attitude and slick silky texture: it is a thing of rare elegance but obvious determination and breeding, and of the three wines reviewed thus far, this is the one that really deserves a decade in the cellar. It does of course show its large alcohol in the afterbreath, but its polish, intensity and posture are of such class that this barely seems to be worth a mention.  It is like drinking a museum of gastronomy and agriculture. Stunning. [Same bottle tasted three days later: silky, plush, more juniper, less primary fruitiness … it smells a bit like grandpa’s rifle cupboard now.  94+++ points]

Langmeil The Freedom 1843 Barossa Shiraz 2010
$100; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 96+ points
The Barossa Old Vine Charter guarantees this wine comes from vines older than 125 years; the Lindners believe they were planted in 1843, and can produce documents of the age to show that Christian Auricht planted his vineyard to Shiraz on this site in that year.  There’s nobody around who can recall whether or not Auricht’s garden was replanted in the first half of the 1800s; but it does seem highly unlikely.  They’ve certainly never been replanted since.  Those old Lutherans weren’t big on pulling things out once they’d got ’em in.  I recall visiting the unkempt vineyard in the ’eighties (that’s the nineteen eighties) just before the Lindners decided to buy it and rejuvenate it.  Its canes were wildly running across three or four rows: Karl Lindner grinned and suggested they had a big change of attitude once he’d waved his axe at them.  Instead he used der schnipses.  Once they got reinterested after their first haircut in years, he got the shovel out and moved the Orphans right in there beside them.  Karl’s left Langmeil to concentrate on his business with Dandelion Wines.  Langmeil's run by other Lindners: Richard, who sold his slice of Rockford and bought the Langmeil partners out.  His sons, winemaker Paul and sales and marketing manager, James run the show.  They rock.  These wines rock.  We rock.  To poke one’s nose into a glass of this marvel is almost the act of a pervert: it's like licking the plasma of a very old soldier, and feels strangely rude and intrusive until you remind yourself that these incredible plants have lived there all those years for one purpose alone: to make you happy.  So, proceed with impunity.  First, the wine has been given the sort of right royal oak that fruit of such provenance deserves: it’s like a gingernut biscuit.  Second, it’s obvious that this pitch fruit will simply suck that wood up and digest it without leaving so much as a splinter.  Third, the fruit is stunning in its intensity, elegance and lissome athleticism.  That’s right: athletic.  It’s like Serena Williams’ forearm.  Go on: bow deeply, then lick it.  Silky, plush, polished to a slightly sweaty sheen, it has that impossible balance of muscle, sinew and comforting flesh that very few wines can boast.  Things like acid and tannin simply do not enter the vocab once you’ve got this in your system; even that gingernut oak quickly disappears into the past.  Easily the best wine I’ve yet seen from this priceless garden, it alone is loud evidence that South Australia’s Phylloxera regulations should be tightened, and not relaxed in the way the big refineries and the vine nurserymen desire. Which is another good reason for you to procure a bottle or two and tuck them away.  It’ll be vines like these that the dreaded louse will first behead should it ever cross the border. These vines are unique on Earth, and should be protected and conserved with the same determination and endeavour we show the Koala and the terrible Tasmanian Devil.  I’ll drink to that. [Same bottle tasted three days later: the wood seems to have been distilled to the perfume of a brown shoe polish; the rest has barely budged.  Amazing.  96++ points]

A THOUGHT ABOUT FORM

.

On form
for Black Caviar



I have never seen you
not watched you shred the rest
I live out here
listening to stories of you on the wireless

I talk to Elsie
busted in the hips
too many kids and a car prang

I give her carrots and hay
while the vet bills stack up
she licks Roussanne from my fingers
soft wet secrets from that enormous head

would you send her a signed photograph?



Philip White
with thanks to Max Allen 

CHRIS CARPENTER IN McLAREN VALE

Hickinbotham Vineyard at Clarendon, McLaren Vale, South Australia ... photo Maynard

Another winemaking Carpenter
Name of Chris of Cabernet tops
From way up the Napa mountain
by PHILIP WHITE

Chris Carpenter makes expensive mountain Cabernet sauvignon wines for the Jackson Family in the Napa Valley in California.  Expensive Mountain sounds like a brand which would perfectly fit his brief and the portfolio, but in fact the wines come from various mountaintop vineyards above the Valley rather than from the valley floor, which they call a bench, and some of them are more expensive than others.  Since the Jackson Family bought the famous Hickinbotham Vineyard at Clarendon two vintages ago, Carpenter’s been visiting to make Cabernet and Merlot wines from its lofty slopes, and now has two vintages in oak at Yangarra Estate, where I live.  I have no financial interest here, but intense curiosity. And reasonable awe.

Before his death, founder Jess Jackson made a habit of buying mountaintop vineyards.  He acquired them with the same fervour he showed the procurement of great racehorses.    The story of how Carpenter, this giant jazz-loving Chicago barman who also worked as a scientific equipment and lab machinery salesman became the rockstar king of Jackson’s suite of California’s mountain vineyards is confounding and entertaining and even picaresque, but let’s just say it involved a lot of revolutionary saxophonist John Coltrane, some blindingly good luck, and a stint working for the Marchese Piero Antinori, the winemaking king of Tuscany.  Antinori is also the actual King of Tuscany, as his modest title indicates.

Like Carpenter, Antinori is the master of delicious understatement in conversation.  I once asked him what his family did before they got their winemaking license in 1385.  “We made wine without a license,” he said.  Carpenter hasn't yet laid claim to such a timeline, but that combination of the earnest sincerity of Americans, his friggin size, uncommon gastronomic intelligence, love of good meat pies and that velvety baritone gives him the air of someone who is well versed in the halls of royalty, where a rare combination of confidence and humility is what’s needed for comfortable survival if one is indeed not quite your actual king.

 
Chris Carpenter left, with Scott Zecchin, wrangler of everything in the Yangarra winery, with the last bin of fruit to go through that door in 2013.  It's Clarendon Cabernet sauvignon for Chris's new king-hell crown of creation. 

Chris hasn't inherited his crown.  He worked for it in the gladiator yards.

While he slid his wines across the table to me, Carpenter sang a song of altitudes, aspects and geology very similar to what you may hear whilst tasting at a premium Barossa upland winery, like Henschke or Mountadam.  But he applied extra precision to explain that the Jackson Family philosophy is tailored to suit the USA market, where it would be difficult to launch a brand like Penfolds, where various Bin Number wines are blends and others true to certain estates, covering such a wide range of flavours and styles, but all under the same livery. 

“Jess always stressed that everything should be kept separate, stylistically and geographically” he said.  “I oversee four different brands in two wineries.  Each of those brands has a precise idea behind it and that idea doesn’t stray.  I specialize in the mountains.  I think I have a lot more flexibility there than say I would operating inside the Penfolds Bin system.

I kept thinking of Penfolds scientist Ray Beckwith explaining how he convinced the Penfolds regional wineries to work together and cease competition after the war.  These histories entwine like vines from afar.

“Aussies can see through the brand hierarchy of say, Penfolds, and they accept it, but when Robert Mondavi tried a similar structure in California he proved Americans couldn’t grasp it.  Everything Mondavi tried to sell at premium prices suffered – like everything above US$12,” he said.

The four exquisite Cabernets Carpenter showed me are well above US$12.  The Mt Brave is US$75, the two Cardinales US$250; and the Lokoya US$350.  I can't work it out, but it seems you can just about double those prices for Australia.

“These wines are about intensity.  I struggle to get that intensity.  There’s a lot more reward in that process.  That sustains me,” he says, reminding me of the great Coltrane.The wines are not quite like Australian Cabernets, but close.  The Mt Brave (with fruit from Mt Veeder) is from a lofty vineyard which gets morning sunshine while the valley below is still under fog.  Like the rest of the wines, it shows little oak, but gets plenty.  It also has a few percent of Merlot (2%) and Cabernet franc (2%) to add a little floral and tease away at some of the Cabernet’s austerity.  It has a wondrous, confident intensity without showing any over-ripe jam, overt alcohol, or sap.  It seemed to me most like the similarly-blended reds of Frankland Estate at the bottom of Western Australia.  And then it sometimes pointed me at the olivine tightness of Clare reds.

“This one’s orchestra music,” the big man said as he poured the Cardinale 2009.  Like a typical Barossa or McLaren Vale blend, it’s a carefully-composed mixture of various vineyards and appellations around the Napa. 

“We can tease out the sub-regions as we wish with this wine,” he said.  “The blend changes from year to year.  The vintages change, but it’s true to vineyard.  I build it around the best-performing vineyard each year.  This one’s mainly Spring Mountain, and I added 9% Merlot.”

Spring is right.  The damn thing leaps about.  It’s acrid, bright, nose-tickling red with a silky texture gradually enveloped by long velvet tannins and the masterly balance of components which is this maker’s trademark.

“Aussies prefer this one,” he said.  “Collectors will still be comfortable pouring this in 25 years, but right now it’s fine in the restaurant.

I teased him a little about his Cardinale 2006 being his Penfolds wine: it has a tickle of balsamic acetic acid about it, and it’s more complex and closed than the 09: a very different wine indeed. 

“I’m trying to keep the middle and the length constant in this one,” he said, “but other factors can change.”  It’s built around Mt Veeder fruit this year, reinforcing my theory that Mt Veeder is indeed like the very best of Clare.  

And then came the Lokoya, from Howell Mountain fruit. 

“This is no punches pulled California Cab,” Carpenter explained.  I could drink this beauty all day long, and wallow in it: it’s a silky, luxurious wine of amazing intensity and elegance.

“I make this wine for collectors.  All Lokoyas need time.  It’s all tannin management.  That’s my job.  Up in the mountains the tannins don’t develop like they do on the Valley floor.  I fined the Cardinale 09, but I never fine or filter Lokoya.

“Winemaking is 75-25,” he concluded.  “75 is science.  25 is – well it sounds kinda goofy but it’s spiritual.  It’s reflective of you and Mother Nature.  It creates a memory.  If you can express that in a way that resonates then you’ve done your job.”

Having watched this gentleman’s Clarendon Cabernets go through their business in the winery, I can honestly say there’s some resonance coming out of his Australian adventure.  The wines are not like McLaren Vale.  These ranges are barely mountains, but they're not like the Willunga Embayment, which is the geological name for the region we call McLaren Vale.  Clarendon is much more Adelaide Hills in location, altitude, geology, geography and spirit.  The wines are not quite Coltrane yet – the vineyard’s going through a major rejuvenation and renovation – but it’s teetering on orchestra music with a very determined and expressive soloist. 

And while I realise that Jacksons would be well within their rights to call the wine  Expensive Mountain, I’m sure its eventual price will be quite evident without rubbing it in. 

Just look at the size of this bin washer.
  

LOOK WHAT I FOUND ON MY PATIO TABLE

ADELAIDE MUSEUM OF ECONOMIC BOTANY

The Museum of Economic Botany is the proud centrepiece of the Adelaide Botanic Garden.  It was refurbished in 2009. First opened in May 1881, it has had "a continuous life dedicated to the collection and interpretation of useful plants." Such museums were once a common keystone in botanical collections around the world, but this is the only surviving example of its kind. I spent another mind-blowing morning there yesterday, this time with the Yangarra viticulture crew and Napa Cabernet maker Chris Carpenter, who's here making wine from the Hickinbotham Vineyard at Clarendon.

 

"None of those great brains had heard of Zeus, or Jupiter, the boss of the heavens, nor of his wife, the Goddess Mnemosyne, or Memory. They didn't realise the daughters of this couple, the cover girls of their day, were the official inspirers of all poetry and art. Cleo was the trigger of history, Thalia of comedy. Euterpe was the source of all music; Urania of astronomy, and so on. They were called the Muses, just like my much uglier lot's called the Whites. The Muses lived in the Museum."  From a speech the author made to the Australian Insitute of Urban Studies, 1999.

"One or two of my friends have asked me what is meant by the term 'Economic' in connection with this museum.  My idea is that, as every botanical exhibit in the Museum has a use and value to mankind, the word is the most appropriate as they show what use can be made of various plants, and thus waste can be prevented."  Albert Molineux, 1881

"It would be well were every one to study how to prevent waste and make the most out of everything that comes in their way.  By 'studying economy', as illustrated in this Museum, they may in time learn to 'live like lords'."  Molineux 

Hand-painted papier-mâché mushrooms made for the Museum in the 19th century by Heinrich Arnoldi and Co, Gotha, Germany. There are many hundreds of these mushrooms laid out like a forest, right at the perfect eye level for children. It is wondrous to behold.

.

Mid-north grain grower Don Whiting devoted his life to investigating wheat. He had over 400 different wheat varieties growing on his property Rocky Glen at Barunga Gap from about 1970 to 2009.  He would grind flour from them, then compare the efficacy of each type by making these tiny bread loaves.

 

The collection includes a mind-boggling array of examples of the uses of plant fibre.  This exhibit displays various cloths made from bark.

1880s papier-mâché fruit by Heinrich Arnoldi and Co.  There are hundreds of apples and pears represented, many varieties of which have long gone from the planet.  Gardens Director Stephen Forbes says that when young folks see these stretched out before them, they inevitably remark that they've seen only three or four types of apple in their entire lives.  "But you walk out of the supermarket," he tells them, "and into the phone shop, and how many phones do you expect to be able to choose from?"

Prototype joinery system by local furniture designer Khai Liew 2009. Khai designed and built the modern exhibition display stands that make possible a continual series of specialised exhibitions in the eastern end of the Museum.

Keeper of the Museum Of Economic Botany, Tony Kanellos, left. Then Dan Mullins, chef of the original  Universal Wine Bar in Adelaide and Gay Bilson's restaurant in the Sydney Opera House, now assistant viticulturer and gardens wizard at Yangarra. Stephen Forbes, Director of the Botanic Gardens, centre.  Chris Carpenter, Cabernet king from the Jackson Family's mountain vineyards in the Napa.  Then Michael Lane, Yangarra vineyard manager and keeper of both the Yangarra Estate and Hickinbotham Clarendon properties for the owners, the Jackson Family.  Yangarra and the Botanic Gardens support each other's quest for making the most of what nature provides. Apart from this one, all the above  photographs are copyright Tony Kanellos, Santos Museum of Economic Botany, Botanic Gardens, Adelaide, South Australia.  Our sincere gratitude goes to Stephen and Tony.

FOUR MEGA COOL PIONEERS

Inkwell Road To Joy McLaren Vale Shiraz Primitivo 2011
$25; 14.9% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
You gotta love the sass down this Road to Joy.  Not quite abrasive, but certainly struttin’, it wears its alcohol like a stripey French sailor shirt.  The dude’s on shore leave.  And then the suggestion of cherry cola arises, which leads to L-O-L-A Lola, which is a bit too far left of the sailor for the wine in my opinion.  It’s not at all sweet.  Probly makes no diff in this part of town.  But if you gave me a glass blind, I doubt that I’d pick either variety quickly. Blackstrap licorice, bullwhip polish, Parade Gloss, star anise, all the alcohol-soluble aromas are here in martial wallops.  But then it’s bracing with sandy tannins and the sort of stiff acid bone-dry structure that makes me really hungry. Which is good. Blood orange.  XXX-rated chinotto. And them bitter morello cherries … no jam!  Savoury, strapping, intense … it’s a really good example of the new cutting edge of McLaren Vale, if a little hot. All of South Australia has to work out how to get these alcohols down in this New Heat – nobody seems able to pick early enough. I like the accurate reference to the geological group of the vineyard on the back – Pirramimma Sandstone.  To me this seems a lot more easy to understand than the sub-regional boundaries currently being discussed.  It’s not a marketing thing, it’s simply telling the truth in its most basic form.  The geology was here first.  Thanks for your help getting the geology map published, Inkwell proprietor/grapegrower/winemaker Dudley Brown.  And thanks for this smack-in-the-face wine! 

Inkwell McLaren Vale Blonde On Blonde McLaren Vale Viognier 2012
$20; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points
I never thought I’d see this happen.  A Viognier that doesn’t smell like apricot syrup is a rare beast in Australia.  This smells like stone fruits about as much as Sly and the Family Stone did.  If indeed you can get more stone than Sly, this is more stone: it’s called Pirramimma Sandstone.  That’s what it grows in.  As far as its album name goes, it’s probably best drunk with Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat.  It’s that edgy, and has a similar bone dry sass.  Two batches, one riper than the other, were blended to keep that alcohol down and let the wine’s savoury, hunger-triggering lean meanness rule.  Without getting syrupy, the riper component has provided just enough viscosity to provide some padding to that brittle snarl.  The makers (Chapel Hill’s Bryn Richards working with grower Dudley Brown) have wisely bottled it unfiltered, to leave the sandy tannins intact: to me, one of the key aspects of Viognier is its unique tannin, which disappears in the lunge to over-ripe apricot syrup fruit.  Then winemakers tend to fine the life out of it anyway.  Wrong.  I’ll now commit a travesty and suggest that if one were to add Viognier to Shiraz, as was the short-lived fashion a few years back, this is the sort of tight, crunchy Viognier which would actually add some character to your typically over-ripe Shiraz. So what did they do?  They added over-ripe syrupy apricot to over-ripe, jammy Shiraz.  But that’s a travesty easily avoided.  Pick your Shiraz early enough and you won’t need Viognier.  Best to pick the Viognier this early and let the lovers of adult-level dry white wine enjoy it at its best: neat.  If I need to put a finer edge on that edge, this wine screams sarcasm at those fat apricot jammy jobs as precisely as the stuff Dylan builds into the bones of his song:   “Well, I asked the doctor if I could see you / It's bad for your health, he said / Yes, I disobeyed his orders / I came to see you / But I found him there instead.” Sounds like the Doctor knew his Viognier.  It’d be stunning with scallops on the half-shell or spaghetti vongole; don’t spare the fresh herbs.  Only 760 bottles produced.


The Willows Vineyard Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2009
$23; 14.7% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
On deep alluvial terra rossa amongst the mighty River Red Gums at Light Pass, The Willows has always been at the front of those South Australian vineyards whose red wines reflect the volatile eucalyptols of such watercourse ground; Langhorne Creek is another.  Sometimes these aromas project as straight eucalyptus – the volatile molecules come from the trees and the soil and settle on the berries’ matte blume, particularly in humid vintage weather.  The wines are better when they’re just a wee bit minty.  People unused to such Australiana might say this one too reeks of eucalyptus, but to me this wine is in that latter, less abrasive category: it smells slightly like Eau-de-Cologne mint.  But then it reeks of many other aspects of Old Barossa: dust and leather and stable, plum conserve, prunes, dried apple, hewn Red Gum, Balkan pipe tobacco – it’s a most Australian colonial Barossa smell.  Take a draught and you’re in even deeper: Cabernet actually begins to poke its elegant head through, and you’ll find yourself yearning for a juicy haunch of beef or dribbling pink lamb cutlets, with the parsnip tails properly caramelized and some raw onion chopped into into mash and the spinach.  PS: I was smuggled a bottle of a jewel which winemakers Peter and Michael Scholz seem to have uncovered a cache of, which they’re ekeing out at a modest price:  a 2006 Willows Semillon (12.5%; screw cap; 94 points) from the family’s priceless seventy-year-old vines.  To my frank open face, this blows most Hunter Semis clean outa their water. It’s classic gentle lemon-butter honesty and grace, blessed by the smell of summer dust. Perfect drinking for autumn.  Go beg.

4th CENTURY WINO'S JEAN POCKET

BASKET WITH GRAPES Fourth century, Pushkin Museum, Moscow; inventory No 5818 [Coptic Textiles : Kybalova] purchased in Egypt by V. S. Golenishchev