As mentioned in the last blog, two of my four summer Financial Times pieces have been on Australian topics, and I resume these in edited form below. (The other two were on old vines in Mendoza and Terrasses du Larzac: those are now posted in the ‘Articles’ section).

‘Diemenology’ is a little Tasmanian overview. As already intimated, I’m an enthusiast for Tasmania and feel certain that it will produce some of Australia’s greatest still wines one day, as well as its best single-site sparkling wines (what the French might call mousseux de terroir). Here’s the piece.

Diemenology

Every new vineyard is an enigma. Rock, soil, slope and climate change unceasingly on our planet’s land masses; the farmer’s challenge is to turn that matrix to best use. What elevates wine growing to an agricultural art form is the fact that grapes, sensitively vinified, unravel the mysteries of place more articulately than any other crop.

The view from the Apsley Gorge winery at Bicheno

Given time. Although vines have been planted in Tasmania since 1823, it is only since 1972 that efforts have been underway to give its land a distinctive wine personality. That was the year that Andrew Pirie, Australia’s first viticultural PhD, climbed off a plane after a year in France, clutching temperature graphs for Dijon, Bordeaux and Epernay. Using European models to explore an island adrift in the Great Southern Ocean is understandable and even logical, but the last 37 years have shown the limits of the approach. Nowhere else is quite like this.

Climate, as always in the early stages of wine exploration, plays the key role. “We have the temperatures of the Loire, Burgundy or Alsace,” he told me, “but the sunshine of Northern Spain.” If you add profoundly leached soils, capricious frosts, nail-bitingly high winds at flowering time and a colossal rainshadow effect (west drenched, east parched), spoiled once in a while by the tail end of a tropical storm spinning down from Queensland, you begin to realise why a definitive answer on the Tasmanian puzzle is some decades away.

Australia’s biggest wine companies are in no doubt what they want from Tasmania: sparkling wine. A third of the crop heads north in unfinished form each autumn to be turned into fizz on what Tasmanians call ‘the big island’. Often by extraordinary journeys: many of the grapes for Hardy’s graceful Arras, for example, travel five hours from southern Tasmania to Pipers River to be pressed, after which the juice makes a three-hour tanker journey to Devonport before sailing nine hours to Melbourne across the Bass Strait, then being trucked another twelve dusty hours to Adelaide. Only then does fermentation get underway. That the journey is imperceptible in the finished product is a tribute to the power of refrigerated transport and Australian technology. Yalumba’s sappy Jansz is made further north still, in the Eden Valley, and Domaine Chandon’s deft Tasmanian Cuvée a little nearer to the ferry, in Victoria’s Yarra. Leading sparkling wines wholly made on the island include the challenging, cellar-seeking Kreglinger, textured Clover Hill and Andrew Pirie’s own finely sculpted Pirie. Fruit flavours are the enemy in great sparkling wine, and Tasmanian producers have done a fine job over the last decade in keeping them in check via greater precision in harvesting, more use of oxygen in the fermentation process and the use of older reserve wines in non-vintage cuvees. These wines are now genuinely competitive with much Champagne.

Steve Lubiana's vineyards, Derwent valleyThe subtlest site research, though, has been accomplished by smaller growers for their still wines. Swiss winemaker Peter Althaus of Domaine A sprung the biggest surprise in proving what Andrew Pirie thought he had disproved years ago: that you can actually get Cabernet Sauvignon ripe on the island. He does so via a warm, sheltered site in the Coal Valley, hard vineyard work, and an unwavering style focus on the Bordeaux model (including the dispatch of less successful parcels into the ‘Stoney Vineyard’ second wine). The best vintages (which for me include the 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2003) are shapely and textured, with poised, limpid fruits which subside gracefully into a rosy maturity. As in Bordeaux, though, there is substantial vintage variation.

There’s little doubt that Tasmania will produce some of Australia’s greatest Pinot Noir, though like Burgundy it won’t do so either regularly or easily. The most accomplished Pinots so far strike me as being those of the talented Steve Lubiana (structured and pure), Frogmore Creek (whose Reserve level is made via Amarone-style techniques) and the single-minded Brian Franklin at Apsley Gorge. Ex-abalone diver Franklin has rendered himself half-Burgundian with annual work immersion in Gevrey, and his courageously restrained winemaking combined with a warm, dry East Coast site results in Pinot of unusual breadth but great subtlety and allusiveness too.

Tasmania’s East is also the source of some of its best Chardonnay and Riesling, in particular from the sensitive, attentive Claudio Radenti at Freycinet (Wine Glass Bay on export markets): both varietals here are nuanced and classically balanced. Apsley Gorge, by contrast, produces a deliciously baroque Chardonnay. Fully ripe Pinot Gris (as opposed to emaciated Pinot Grigio) is on its way in several locations, and the rejuvenated Moorilla is the source of a Trimbach-like dry Gewurztraminer whose flowers and spice glitter with a little shaved steel.

Botrytis-affected Riesling springs the island’s final surprise at present. Pioneer Pirie’s 2007 Clark’s Riesling, made from the Kayena site close to the Tamar Estuary, is one of the finest and most naturally articulated botrytis wines I have ever tasted from Australia, packed with luscious, almost salty orchard fruits, and Tamar Ridge Estates (which Pirie now runs) is currently keeping watch over a promising 9,000-litre stock of the same wine from 2009. The story, though, has many chapters to run. “We’re like kids in a candy store at present,” concludes Pirie, even after almost four decades of Tasmanian work. “Lots of new approaches, lots of new clones, lots of new sites. And lots of new possibilities.”

Tasmanian Surprises: some UK and US stockist information

Cabernet Sauvignon: Domaine A Contact Alliance Wine in the UK (01505 506060, www.alliancewine.co.uk) and Halpern Enterprises in Canada (416 593 2662, www.halpernwine.com)

Pinot Noir: Apsley Gorge Contact Justerini & Brooks in the UK (0207 484 6400, www.justerinis.com) and AOC Fine Wines in USA (1 866 262 6116, www.aocfinewines.com); Lubiana contact Whirly Wine in the UK (07821 968111, www.whirlywine.co.uk); Frogmore Creek contact Hathaway Trading Company in USA (310 505 0457, www.frogmorecreek.com)

Riesling: Freycinet/Wine Glass Bay Not exported at present

Botrytis Riesling: Pirie Clark’s Riesling The 2007 vintage is available in the UK from Noel Young Wines (01223 566744, www.nywines.co.uk) at £13.99 per half bottle. In USA, contact American Estates Wines (1 908 273 5060, www.eamericanestates.com). Tamar Ridge wines, by the way, can be had from Novum in the UK (0207 820 6720, www.novumwines.com). Look out for fine value Pinot from Tamar Ridge from 2007 onwards.

Gewurztraminer: Moorilla Muse Not exported at present, though other Moorilla wines are available in the USA via Wine Angel (212 627 0330, www.wine-angel.com)

Chardonnay: Freycinet/Wine Glass Bay In the UK, the 2008 Wine Society Exhibition Tasmanian Chardonnay is sourced from Freycinet (£11.95 per bottle, 01438 737700, www.thewinesociety.com)

On, now, to the cultureswop. The idea here was to hook up with a few of the Europeans who had chosen to head south to Australia to make wine, and gather some of their reflections. This is the piece.

Cultureswop

Hemisphere-hopping has become a badge of winemaking honour. The most celebrated consultants have every reason to be grateful for the earth’s axial tilt, since it enables them to double their earnings capacity. As the sap rises in the north, the grapes are harvested in the south. Fifty harvests once constituted a lifetime’s work; now that figure can be doubled.

Shaw & Smith vineyards, source of the Kanta Riesling

The most popular southern-hemisphere destinations for Europeans have been Chile (pioneered by Spain’s Miguel Torres) and Argentina (now championed by Michel Rolland and other Bordeaux proprietors). Climatic benignity, low-cost water and labour and a light bureaucratic touch were the initial draws. Qualitative lustre is now increasingly important.

Flights to Australia, by contrast, are more onerous than those to South America, and the pragmatic wine-making traditions there have felt less sympathetic to Europeans than the often Europhile approaches of Chileans and Argentinians. Some, though, have braved it. I caught up with three as the 2009 harvest unfolded.

Each had different reasons for going to Australia. The Rhône valley’s Michel Chapoutier chose Australia partly because of its long and happy relationship with the Syrah (Shiraz) grape, and “partly because I am a soil lover and Australia has the oldest soils in the world.” Bordeaux-based Englishman Jonathan Maltus of Le Dôme and other St Emilion properties initially scoured South Africa, his wife’s native country, but was dissuaded by its vine virus problems. “The oldest vines I found were 12 years old.

Rick Kinzbrunner and tankWhereas in Australia I was able to buy four blocks of 120-year-old vines.” He also liked the ‘artisan’ approach of Australia’s Barossa-valley vanguard. “It was very much the vineyard equivalent of the garage movement in Bordeaux. The difference was that they hadn’t taken fine-wine making very far.” Most honest of all was the Saar valley’s Egon Müller of Scharzhof, who told me he came to make wine in Australia “more or less by accident” – via contacts he had made following a Slovakian wine-making sortie.

Chapoutier had a false start. He bought land in South Australia’s Mount Benson area, attracted by its sandstone-on-limestone soils. “But I quickly saw the limit of quality of the region, so I didn’t keep the vineyards.” Since then, he has concentrated on joint-venture work with two of Victoria’s finest winemakers, Ron Laughton of Jasper Hill in Heathcote and Rick Kinzbrunner of Giaconda in Beechworth, as well as another joint venture with the American Terlato Wine Group in the Pyrenees region of Victoria. “I had the impression that global warming was going against quality in South Australia, whereas Victoria had better climate potential. And the diversity of soils in Victoria is amazing – just like a second France.” The commercially astute Maltus targeted the Barossa – both Australia’s best-known regional name and the most instantly recognizable of its regional styles. Egon Müller looked at both the Clare Valley and Tasmania in his quest to find a suitable Riesling site, but in the end settled on the Adelaide Hills as having “the best combination of vineyards and logistics”. He buys fruit from the Adelaide Hills winery of Shaw + Smith, where he also makes the wine.

Both Chapoutier and Müller try to make their wines in as unforced a manner as possible – insisting on hand-harvesting, using wild yeasts rather than selected yeasts, and adding little or no acidity to the wines. These are unusual practices in much of Australia. Difficult? “No,” said Egon Müller; “it was necessary. I grew up believing in vineyards. Vineyards are what give you quality; they are what give you your style of wine. Whereas in Australia it’s the winemaker who decides on the style of wine. My idea when I came here was to find out if you could put trust in the vineyard.” Chapoutier agrees. “It’s all a question of attitude. I don’t want to make ‘the best wine possible’, because that is something subjective. Instead, I try to make the best picture of the terroir and the vintage that I can.” Maltus is more flexible, observing that local tastes are different to those back at home in Bordeaux. In particular, the tannic grip of a classic Bordeaux red is unwelcome: “the Australians seem to have a hatred of tannin and grip.” And, apart from his first vintage in 2002, he acidifies his reds. “The point is that it’s the taste of Australia – that belt at the end. When Australians taste European wines, they say it doesn’t taste like wine because it doesn’t have that acid belt at the end.”

Australia has, Maltus says, changed his Bordeaux winemaking practices. “Australia taught me about expression of fruit. We’ve done the last two vintages in Bordeaux at a lower temperature to give a purer expression of fruit.” Chapoutier says that learning about mulching to deal with “the brightness of light” in Australia may help him if global warming changes the Rhône climate. Müller, by contrast, seemed most impressed with the level of wine education in Australia. “The people who operate presses here are all trained winemakers who have travelled and probably worked in retail too.” And in Germany? “In Germany, the people who operate presses are the people who have been trained to operate presses.”

European sensibility, Australian soil: some UK and US stockists
Of the three voyagers, the wines of Michel Chapoutier strike me as most successful. Those he has made with Rick Kinzbrunner are unreleased as yet, but the cask samples are exciting. The two wines made in the Victorian Pyrenees with Terlato (a 2007 Shiraz and the 2007 single vineyard Malakoff Shiraz) are both astonishingly Rhôney, with perfumed currant and smoke scents and briskly poised flavours (contact www.mentzendorff.co.uk, 0207 840 3600 in the UK and www.terlatowines.com, 847 604 8900 in the USA). The 2007 Heathcote Shiraz La Pleiade is much richer and, unusually for Australia, magnificently textured and tannic (contact www.yapp.co.uk, 01747 860423 in the UK). Jonathan Maltus’s Colonial Estate 2006 Emigré, a multi-variety blend, is more sumptuously textured than most Barossa reds, and very sweetly fruited, with lavish oak; the 2006 Mungo Park single-vineyard Shiraz is an incredible hulk: awesome but indigestible (contact www.cultandboutique.com, 0208 948 9433 in the UK and for USA stockists contact www.maltus.com). Egon Müller’s 2008 Kanta Riesling is delicate, pure and fully dry, and typical of its Adelaide Hills origin in its pear-and-apple fruit spectrum (contact www.huntsworthwine.co.uk, 0207 229 1602 in the UK and www.northamericanbeveragegroup.com, 248 922 2890 in the USA).