The week before last (during which a tentative spring exploded into summer in South Australia) saw me down in Coonawarra helping , as International Judge, to scrutinise the entries for the 2009 Limestone Coast Show. It was hugely enjoyable: well organised (by Pete Bissell and his team), friendly and relaxed.

Bin 707 terra rossa, high on the cigar

Huon Hooke is the Chair: calm, affable, avuncular and sure-handed. Listen out for those telling one-liners and single-word summaries: Huon has nearly always seen right through to the wine’s marrow while the rest of us are still fumbling with the x-ray machine. Andrew Wigan of Peter Lehmann, and this year’s Gourmet Traveller Wine Winemaker of the Year, led the other tasting group, and is another hugely experienced show judge whose steadiness of approach, and refusal to let any promising wine slip by without having squeezed out every drop of credit for it, was a lesson to us all.

I also got to taste with the hugely talented KT (Kerri Thompson); Kerri tastes not simply analytically but creatively, too, and was excellent at finding qualities in wines which the rest of us had missed. The fact that Peter Gambetta of Yalumba was one of our Associate Judges underlines the depth of the skills pool at this important Regional Show, and Paul Kernich from Angove’s completed the team with his own laser-guided analyses; his was often the last word on fault issues.

A serious contenderOne of the singularities of this Show is that the International Judge is unleashed – and allowed to nominate a Trophy of his or her own, which could in theory be a wine which had won no medal at all. I pulled out a field of 32 for re-tasting on the final afternoon. An unforgettable moment: the busy room now quiet and empty, the bright sunshine cascading through the windows, the wines silently exchanging their aromas. The 32 were whittled to 17, then to 10, then to four: hey, that’s fun, pushing the wines to and fro like a croupier on those purpose-built tables.

Everything was blind, of course, but those four included two wines from the 2006 Shiraz class, one wine from the 2006 Cabernet class and one wine from the 2006 Blends containing Shiraz class. 2006 was certainly the most liked of the red-wine vintages on show, and we had just completed the Trophy judging which saw top Cabernets fighting it out, so I was minded to reward the region’s often outstanding performances with Shiraz – or, indeed, a blend of the two. That blend was the ’06 Wynn’s ‘The Gables’ Cabernet-Shiraz: refined, fragrant, deep, sumptuous and balanced. The Cabernet was another Wynns’ wine: the ’06 single vineyard Wynns Alex 88. This was not a class I had judged, but when I tasted the definition and purity of this wine in the Trophy judging, it was impossible not to pull it onto my longlist, where it prospered. It’s hugely heartening to see the improvements brought about at Wynns by Sue Hodder, Sarah Pidgeon and viticultural renovator Allen Jenkins. One of my two Shiraz wines was one we had been calling ‘the Kerri wine’, since she rightly championed it through the class analysis: the cherry-fruited, fine-grained `06 Zema Estate Shiraz. But in the end the wine I went for was ... the other Shiraz.

This was a wine I had slugged for in the class, rousing enough support on re-tasting to crank it up to gold. It had the aromatic refinement of the best – but there was a width, a savouriness and an earthy quality to it which particularly appealed to me. Not just blackcurrant, either, but blackberry, too; satisfying, mouthfilling ripeness. So not a Cabernet, then, and when the results were revealed it turned out not to be a Coonawarra wine, either. Perhaps that width and that earthiness should have given us a clue. It was from Wrattonbully: the 2006 Hollick. The following evening revealed that it had got a gold medal the previous year, too, and was thus one of the dinner wines. Delicious.

Other remarks? Perhaps the easiest thing to do is provide an edited version of the speech I gave at the dinner. The medal tally was down a little this year, and my remarks about giving the creative fringe its head were made, too, in a different form by Huon in speech, which preceded mine. Regular followers of this blog will see some of the points I have already made on my site resumed for the audience I had on the night of October 29th, so feel free to skim and skip.

"I’m very happy be here – for three reasons.

First of all, the Limestone Coast and Coonawarra provides the national reference for structured, medium-bodied reds (along with Margaret River). That style provides the keystone of any national wine offer, so it’s a critical regional show to be involved with.

Secondly, I’m in Australia for a while to look at terroir, and this region (and especially Coonawarra) is perhaps the most closely associated with terroir in Australia.

Thirdly (and more personally), structured, savoury reds are in general some of my favourite wines. In other words, I felt I could get emotionally involved with many of these classes, which makes judging all the more rewarding.

I’ll talk about wine specifics in a moment, but first of all a suggestion for the Show Committee to consider for future years. This show groups together the entire Limestone Coast and its five sub-regions, yet the classes are entirely varietal and/or stylistic. As an International Judge, I'd love to see at least some sub-regional classes, in order to get a handle on exactly how each sub-region differs from its neighbours.

Undulating calcrete chez WynnThe show as presently constituted is perhaps also less than ideal as a sub-regional benchmarking exercise, since all the wines in the major classes have to compete with the dominant Coonawarra ideal. It would be great to see some sub-regional classes, even if they are small, with the aim of fostering and developing the sense of character from Padthaway, Wrattonbully, Mount Benson and Robe. We’re now into a phase in Australia where the regional should at least be given as much importance as the varietal and the stylistic, and this would be a way of developing those trends here.

A quick word on varieties, given that Cabernet and Shiraz are very dominant in this Show. This region does perform exceptionally well with Cabernet and Shiraz, as I’m about to describe, but that’s no reason not to experiment with other varieties. Great wines of place only begin to come into being once you have the right variety in the right place, and one of the things my nine months in Australia have taught me is that this story is far from over. Look for those varieties from which you can make the most natural wines, meaning the wines whose vineyard balances need as little correction as possible. You're lucky in the Limestone Coast to have a climate which leaves you lots of options: explore them to the full.

Everything begins with astonishment in the wine world. Maybe you take it for granted, maybe you don’t, but I’m still astonished at your raw material: the intrinsic quality of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz from this region. Fresh, striking, pure, pristine, vivacious, head-turning, commanding: there aren’t many places in the world, let along the southern hemisphere or Australia, where those varieties make wine this good. Wine like this will always command attention; what I would like to see it do more often is seduce. I would love to see the red wines of this region acquire more sumptuousness and more softness, and thereby give more pleasure. That means lower acid levels and richer middle-palate textures, with ampler, chewier tannic presences derived from ripe grape skins rather than oak casks, and extracted during unhurried macerations. Their regional character will still emerge effortlessly; indeed we will see it more clearly, as I'm about to describe. Too many wines, and I mean no disrespect by putting it in this way, are defaced or denatured with acidity. Too much acid ceases to be a backbone. It becomes a cage or an iron mask. The idea that you need acidity to age is a myth, as anyone who has studied the great vintages of Bordeaux will know. Much contemporary Bordeaux now has TA levels (expressed in tartaric) of 4.5 to 5.5 g/l -- and no more. It’s not just Bordeaux, either; the same is true of your key rivals in Mendoza, in Colchagua and Apalta, in Stellenbosch. I was in Mendoza last December and tasted 18 blending lots for a fine Cabernet-based red that will sell at over AU$70 a bottle. The pH levels varied from 3.67 to 3.91, and the TAs from 4.7 to 6.1. The world has moved on from acid profiles that were modelled on the often mediocre wines produced in Bordeaux between 1960 and 1982. (The average pH of Australian red wines has remained almost unchanged for the last 25 years, as the AWRI's Advances in Wine Science, 2005, p.127 shows.) If this region doesn’t also move on soon, it is in danger of appearing out-of-date internationally, even if it continues to please domestically.

There are two compelling reasons for moving on. One is simply that less acid wines will become more attractive to the international fine-wine consumers you need for long-term prosperity, and will therefore sell more swiftly and eventually command higher prices.

The second is that wines to which little or no acidity has been added reflect their place of origin most faithfully. Your region contains Australia’s best-known terroir. But the moment you start to change the chemical composition of grape juice is the moment you start to rob your wine of its terroir character and give it something different, which is a winemaking character. The differences between wines are what makes them so compelling and so fascinating. Try to respect those intrinsic differences by letting them be. The greatest efforts should go into growing and harvesting great grapes. History has proved that you can do that here. You have the tempered sunshine and cool nights that many of those elsewhere in Australia don’t. Deliver that to consumers in a limpid, naturally articulated, sensually appealing form and they will respond.

One of the criticisms made of the Australian wine industry at present is one of sameiness. It’s often an unfair criticism – partly because Australian wines are indeed diverse, and partly because Australia’s legendary consistency and reliability was a welcome response to the inconsistency and patchy quality of some much European wine in the past. In that sense, it was one of the secrets of Australia’s success. It was what we asked for.

But ... that was then, and now is now. As I tasted through some of the red-wine classes, I did occasionally feel in need of something … what shall we say? Weird, strange, challenging, mould-breaking, left-of-field, avant-garde. There were many wonderful wines, but they were all made with the same aesthetic models; they were all cast from the same mould.

It’s often younger winemakers who provide challenging wines of this sort, as the Southpack group are doing around the Yarra, or as younger winemakers are doing in the Adelaide Hills or in Tasmania. That’s more difficult in this area, and it’s especially difficult in Coonawarra, where the opportunities for a low-cost, garage-wine start-up are negligible. So my concluding plea is really aimed at anyone here with some kind of decision-making role at the larger companies in the region, or who owns a larger, well-established family company. Please insist that your winemakers do something different, something strange, something ambitious next vintage. Please insist that they indulge their creativity, and follow their wine dreams. It doesn’t have to be a large parcel. Don’t call it a gamble; call it R&D. The one proviso is that it has to be made from high-quality, carefully harvested and carefully handled grapes; it’s not a way to use up left-overs. If it doesn’t work, you won’t have lost much; if it does work, though, you may find it much written about and acclaimed, and your image may be a different one, you may find it’s the most profitable lot from the whole winery, and people will begin to look at Coonawarra or Wrattonbully or Padthaway in a new way."