Category Archives: Vineyard

Canberra’s vintage from hell, or vintage of a lifetime, turned out to be both, and bit in between as well. Canberra vignerons wrote off swathes of diseased fruit, adding to shiraz crop losses caused by poor fruit set early in the season. But by carefully handpicking healthy fruit, and in some cases weeding out diseased berries in the winery, the district now has its generally sound, albeit much reduced, 2012 vintage in the vat.

Riesling specialist Ken Helm, hopeful but apprehensive during February’s pre-vintage rain, emailed triumphantly on 16 March, “We are finishing our Riesling today. The fruit is outstanding and it is the vintage of my lifetime.”

A month later, the voice at the other end of the phone says, “It’s still the vintage of a lifetime. The wines are finished [fermenting] and they’re incredible. We will have a reserve riesling this year, but the crop’s down 50 per cent”.

Helm attributes the crop losses to berry splitting, caused by rain, followed by outbreaks of the mould, botrytis cinerea. However, the cool season, recording just four days over 30 degrees, encouraged steady flavour development and good acid retention in riesling grapes.

Helm says riesling achieved flavour ripeness at low sugar levels and exceptionally high acidity of 10.5 to 11 grams per litre. During fermentation and subsequent cold stabilisation, however, acidity dropped to a more palate friendly 7.5 to eight grams a litre – ideal numbers in dry wines of 10.3 to 10.5 per cent alcohol.

Helm expects to release his 2012 Classic Dry and Premium rieslings in August or September. And for only the second time in 40 years, he made a botrytis-infected sweet riesling. He says the 3.5 tonnes of fruit yielded just 800 luscious litres.

Helm’s other specialty, cabernet sauvignon, suffered less than shiraz in the adverse conditions. Nevertheless, he anticipated a 30 per cent drop in the coming crop from neighbour Al Lustenburger’s vineyard.

Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk says he’s “astonished at how it’s turned out. The fortunes of Clonakilla, and Canberra in general, hang on shiraz. We were worried botrytis would explode and lead to big crop losses. We saw this in some vineyards, which were unpickable. Not so in Clonakilla vineyard”.

Kirk recalls in the comparably cool, wet 2011 season leaving half his shiraz on the vine. The fruit had set with thin skins, making it vulnerable to disease. In 2012, however, the vines produced a small crop of disease resistant, thick-skinned berries – all successfully harvested.

Kirk believes the shiraz “may prove to be extraordinary, but we’ll wait and see”. Pressing the wine after three weeks post-ferment maceration on skins, Kirk observed, “very dark colour and fantastic flavours”. It’s high in acid, he says, but malolactic fermentation (a secondary fermentation that reduces total acidity) is yet to occur. Kirk believes cool seasons like 2012, where fruit struggles to ripeness but gets there, are potentially the greatest.

Kirk picked riesling early, ahead of the rain, looks to be “a very fine, bony style along the lines of 2011 – acid driven, fresh and appley, but delicious”. He held back unfermented juice which can be added back after ferment should the wine need rounding out.

Cabernet and merlot ripened fully but nevertheless show the herbaceous character of the cool year. Viognier developed good flavours at low sugar levels. There’s not much of it, says Kirk, and it’s definitely suited to Clonakilla’s elegant style – far removed from the syrupy versions made in warmer climates.

Sauvignon blanc and semillon, picked early to avoid disease, look a little on the green side, says Kirk, but a tiny pinot noir crop produced good looking wine, driven buy its tannin structure.

At Lerida Estate, Lake George, Jim Lumbers reports big drops in quantity. Merlot yielded better than last year and despite botrytis infections, “we have some very good fruit”, he says. “The whites are great, especially pinot grigio”.

“Pinot noir looks glorious. We’re pressing it, it looks fantastic, and so does the 2011. But we never would’ve dreamt it”. Lumbers say he picked pinot very early, hoping to beat diseases, but feared green, unripe flavours in the wine.

His team used sorting tables to eliminate diseased berries. The juice appeared very pale at first, but after fermentation the wines show good, if not deep colours, delicate violet-like aromas and amazing ripe fruit flavours.

The much-reduced shiraz crop, says Lumbers, looks very good and should make the cut for Lerida’s flagship shiraz viognier blend.

Up on the Lake George escarpment, Lark Hill’s Chris Carpenter reports a reduced but healthy crop with no losses to disease. The family’s Murrumbateman vineyard, however, suffered extensive hail damage. The Carpenter’s lost all of the shiraz from the vineyard, but harvested sangiovese and small amounts of the Rhone Valley white varieties marsanne, roussanne and viognier.

From the slopes of Mount Majura, Frank van der Loo reports that after a long wait for reds to ripen, they did, showing “fantastic deep colours but very low quantities”. Crop losses resulted from a combination of disease and weather-related poor fruit set.

The whites, says van der Loo are “good to excellent, showing the vintage raciness – long, steely acid, even in pinot grigio [a notably low-acid variety]”. He says the reds will be lighter bodied but deeper coloured than usual.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012 First published 2 May 2012 in The Canberra Times

As I write in the opening days of autumn, a potentially great Canberra vintage hangs in the balance – threatened by a massive band of rain moving across southeastern Australia. If it hangs around too long, mildew and botrytis could threaten the crop; if too much rain falls, berries might split, increasing disease risks and reducing yields. Should mild, clear weather follow the big wet, however, the district may yet produce some of its best wines ever, say several producers. By the time you read this, we’ll have some idea of the outcome.

Never short of enthusiasm, Murrumbateman’s Ken Helm sees beyond the steady rain and drenched vineyards. “It’s a once in a lifetime season”, he declares, “and we still have a chance. I’ve seen nothing like in 40 years. We’ve had only four days over 30 degrees”.

Mild conditions leading up to the rain favoured flavour development at low sugar levels, report growers across the district. Helm says, “riesling in particular is outstanding. Even at nine Baume [a measure of sugar content] it tasted ripe. Normally your face would be like a chook’s bum. There’s a green tinge about riesling berries, like they have in Germany, and no sign of sunburn.”

Helm’s other specialty, cabernet sauvignon, still appears disease free and set for a normal crop. Helm says because it buds late, cabernet missed the poor weather that disrupted flowering in many shiraz vineyards around Murrumbateman.

Fellow Murrumbateman vigneron, Greg Gallagher, said rain and windstorms around flowering time resulted in “loose” shiraz benches ­– meaning less grapes to the bunch and lower yields overall. Perversely, laughs Gallagher, those loose bunches make the weather-hardy shiraz even more disease resistant.

A couple of days before the rain, Gallagher’s chardonnay, destined for sparkling wine, looked in beautiful condition. But he now waits anxiously for the rain to end. He says pinot noir for bubbly, harvested from Pankhurst vineyard, Hall, before the rain was spectacular.

At Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman, Garry Parker, described a wait-and-see, edgy situation. Until the rain, everything appeared perfect, with good yields expected for all varieties – except shiraz, because of its small bunches. “Richard [Garry’s son and winemaker] said pinot gris and riesling will be the first we pick. He looked at them in fear and trepidation, but so far they’re unaffected by the rain”, says Garry.

With both white varieties close to ripening, a seven-day withholding period means no more spraying, even if disease appears, says Parker

At Jeir Creek, Murrumbateman, Rob Howell reports a savage hailstorm two weeks before the rain arrived ripping through several vineyards. It wiped out a quarter of Jeir Creek’s grapes and damaged the neighbouring Ravensworth (Bryan and Jocelyn Martin), Dark Horse (Carpenter family, Lark Hill) and Nanima (Wayne and Jennie Fischer) vineyards.

After the hail, Howell “went into drying-out damaged berry mode. But the rain’s not helping now”, says Howell. He expects to harvest chardonnay and pinot noir for sparkling wine immediately after the rain and says overall fruit quality appears very high. “Viogner looks superb, shiraz is down and cabernet’s looking good, because of its thick skin”, Howell says.

Winemaker Alex McKay (Collector and Bourke Street brands), owns no vineyards but sources grapes from growers across the district. He’s distinctly upbeat about the vintage, despite some similarities with last year’s cool, wet conditions.

He recalls lots of nervousness about the outcome this time last year. But despite some disease-related crop losses, Canberra enjoyed a fantastic vintage. McKay reports, “better disease control this year, with very little botrytis [botrytis cinerea, a destructive fungus] and vineyards still looking very clean”. He attributes lower expected yields across the district in 2012 to the lasting effect of last year’s wet conditions.

To date he sees, “Excellent vine health and berry size, very good flavour building, still natural acids and attractive tannins developing in the reds”. He expects to harvest Rhone Valley white varieties (the viognier looking very good) late in the first week of March and shiraz from mid March. He says Nick O’Leary’s began picking very good riesling in mid to late February.

McKay believes the healthy vines should resist disease pressures from the present rain. He believes mildew presents a greater risk earlier in the season as new foliage emerges and that botrytis outbreaks are more likely.

Heavy rain followed by warm weather also presents a risk of berry split as vines suck up water and grapes swell. But McKay believes the risk to be lower this year thanks to previously well-watered vines.

Jennie Mooney, an owner of Capital Wines and its Kyeema Vineyard, Murrumbateman also sees berry split as less likely this year. She says, “In 2010 we came out of drought into a massive downpour, followed by hot sun. The vines transpired heavily, took up water and the berries split”.

But as insurance this year, says Mooney, husband Mark encouraged weed growth under the vines. When the rain stops they expect the weeds to compete with the vines, limiting water uptake and risk of berry split.

Mooney says, “The fruit’s a bit like 2011 – flavours arriving at low Baumes [sugar content] with high acidity. Merlot’s the best Mark’s ever tasted. Merlot likes having its feet wet”.

Despite the rain and risk it poses, Mooney remains, “Nervously hopeful”. She says it’s a difficult year and in the end success will get down to good vineyard management. At Kyeema, she says, “we’ve done lots of canopy work, with disease management ongoing, all season”.

At Brindabella Hills, Hall (Canberra’s lowest vineyards), winemaker Brian Sinclair reports normal crops, even of shiraz, and “incredibly good” quality across the varieties. He says, “I haven’t seen sauvignon blanc or riesling looking as good as it is. It’s ideal. The riesling has no disease, a terrific canopy and no sunburn”. Sinclair believes, “things should progress well” despite the rain.

Up on the northern slopes of Mount Majura, Frank van de Loo reports 9.5 tonnes of a projected 52-tonne harvest safely in tanks. Mainly chardonnay and pinot noir for sparkling, van de Loo describes it as, “the best yet after five years’ experience [with sparkling material]”.

He says the cool season is producing light crops with exciting flavours and aromatics, arriving at low sugar levels. He rated one batch of chardonnay, pickable at a low 10.5–11 Baume – very rare in Canberra’s climate – and ripe-tasting riesling at 10 Baume. The red varieties, however, remain some weeks off.

Van de Loo rates berry split as the main risk, saying, “I’m worried about the duration rather the quantity [of rain]. If the vines are too wet for too long the berries could split”.

Jim Lumbers of Lerida Estate, Lake George, said “It was picture perfect until today”, “and now it looks like a re-run of 2011 – a ground hog day vintage”. Nevertheless, expects the early varieties to be fine – pinot noir for rose, pinot gris and chardonnay, despite “massive acids”.

He still sees the possibility of the vintage turning out really well. But even if disease takes it toll, Lerida has sorting tables. This allows us to take the hit of lower quantity while keeping our quality”.

Vineyard high up on the Lake George escarpment, opposite Bungendore, live in a different climate than most of Canberra’s other vineyards – some 300 metres higher than Hall, 200 metres higher than Murrumbateman, and more than 100 metres above Mount Majura and Lake George.

At Lark Hill vintage is still six weeks away, with the whites just through veraison [where the berries begin to soften] and the only red, pinot noir, just half way through.

Winemaker Chris Carpenter says 2012 may end up as the coolest on record at Lark Hill, having dipped below 1989, the previous coldest – though unlikely to match 1989’s 1000mm rainfall for the growing season.

He foresees a late vintage with intense fruit flavours and high acidity across the district. He wonders aloud what makers will do with high levels of malic acid in chardonnay – as fashion, in recent years, moved away from the secondary fermentation (malo-lactic) that reduced it, to more austere, high-acid styles.

At present, he says, Lark Hill remains disease free with good crop levels. The Carpenter’s recently acquire Dark Horse vineyard at Murrumbateman, however, lost half its crop to the recent hailstorm.

“It smashed fruit on the vine and defoliated one side, impairing their ability to ripen the remaining fruit”, says Carpenter. To encourage new leaves, the Carpenters have added nutrition and intend to bunch-thin if necessary. Bunch thinning matches the fruit load to the ripening ability of the foliage.

Carpenter says Lark Hill began trialling biological control of botrytis this year – spraying vines with bacteria that compete with the fungus. In theory, supported by producer trials, says Carpenter, the bacteria become established, providing long-term protection.

While that offers hope for the future, Canberra vignerons keep an anxious eye on the weather and remain hopeful of healthy crops in the weeks ahead.

It seemed like forty days and nights, but after almost a week the deluge finally ceased on Sunday 4 March. On Monday 5 March, Canberra vignerons woke to a mild, mainly sunny day.

At Four Winds Vineyard, Murrumbateman, John Collingwood harvested riesling, anxious to beat an outbreak of botrytis. “It was just starting”, he said. But in the end he cut out only about five per cent, delivering 18 healthy tonnes (a normal-sized harvest) to winemaking brother-in-law, Bill Crowe.

Crowe says the riesling’s looking pretty good, with high acidity and even lower sugar than last year’s fruit.

While the rain slowed grape development down, Collingwood remains hopeful of a good red harvest in three to four weeks. He says there’s a little botrytis in the denser bunches, so success depends on the weather. Warm, dry weather should contain the fungus; but it could get running if it rains.

Sangiovese shows a little more fruit split than shiraz, says Collingwood. But the loose, open shiraz bunches are proving resilient. Tough-skinned cabernet looks in good condition, he says, and merlot’s travelling well.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012 First published 14 March 2012 in The Canberra Times and The Sydney Morning Herald

At a regional shiraz dinner a few years back, Garry Parker told me he approached wine marketing as he did building a career as a barrister from 1963 – on the belief that good performance would attract a following.

And that’s exactly what he’s achieved at Long Rail Gully Wines – a deep respect among his winemaking peers and well-informed consumers, if not yet with the wider acclaim his wines deserve.

With wife Barbara and son Richard, Parker established Long Rail Gully at Murrumbateman in 1998 as a serious business investment, capable of standing in its own right.

Richard Parker managed the venture from the outset. As a science graduate from Sydney University, he’d helped manage the family’s wheat, sheep and canola interest out west. But he recalls resisting a move into vines – concerned about the instability of the market.

However, Hardy’s move into Canberra, with the promise of a fixed-term grape contract, settled the argument and underpinned the family’s new venture in the short term. At the time Richard was half way through an agricultural science degree at Charles Sturt University.

“I was able to flip this into wine science”, he says, recalling how his mates said he’d not have to worry about viticulture as he’d know more about vines than the lecturers by the time he’d finished planting.

The family established the bulk of the 22-hectare vineyard, one of Canberra’s largest, in 1998 and in recent years replaced some of the cabernet sauvignon with pinot gris.

The vineyard now has seven hectares of shiraz, four of riesling, about three hectares each of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot gris and one of pinot noir. These are rounded figures

While the grape contract with Hardy’s underpinned the early years, Long Rail Gully planned its own brand from the outset, making its first wine in 2001, just three years after establishing vines.

The business now has several strands – grape sales to other makers (including Clonakilla, Capital Wines, Eden Road and a couple of Hunter producers), contract winemaking for other grape growers and making the Long Rail Gully Range (current releases reviewed below).

Wine making demands considerable capital investment, so the Parkers now have on site a very large, insulated winery, all the right winemaking gear and even a bottling line (most Canberra producers use a mobile bottling contractor).

The Parkers are about to export to China. Exports will include purpose-made wines, now in barrel, as well as the Long Rail Gully range. Richard says the standard wines are to be cork sealed to meet market demands. But the premium wines will be screw-cap sealed – emphasising the quality benefits of the seal.

Long Rail Gully wines are available at selected outlets and cellar door. See www.longrailgully.com.au for details.

Long Rail Gully Riesling 2011 6-pack $17 ($92 for 6) Pale straw to lemon colour; lime-like varietal aroma with a floral lift; intense lemon and lime varietal flavours on the palate, carried by the delicate, tart acidity of the cool vintage, with a touch of musk in the dry aftertaste. The wine continued to drink well for days after opening, suggesting a long cellaring life. It’s blended from the two clones in the vineyard: Geisenheim, contributing leaner lime and spicy notes; and McWilliams Eden Valley clone, lending lime and musk.

Long Rail Gully Pinot Gris 2011 $ 20 ($110 for 6) Winemaker Richard Parker sees this as his stand-out white of the vintage – not surprising for a variety that thrives in cool ripening conditions. Although it’s only slightly more alcoholic than the riesling (12.1 versus 11.5 per cent) it’s considerably fuller bodied, with a rich, silky texture. This reflects the making technique: a component tank fermented to capture fruit flavour and aromatic high notes; another portion fermented and matured on yeast lees in old oak barrels, to build body and texture. The result is a vibrant, fresh wine, leading with a pear-like varietal aroma and flavour, with layers of succulent stone-fruit flavours adding further interest – all of this embedded in the rich, silky texture.

Long Rail Gully Pinot Noir 2010 $30  ($162 for 6) A cellar door favourite and the priciest wine in the range, Long Rail Gully pinot noir challenges the notion that the variety doesn’t suit Canberra. This is a class act, certainly not reaching the heights of our best shirazes, but delivering the real pinot experience. The initial impacts are of fragrant, vibrant, varietal red berries with a stalky note – probably derived from whole bunches included in the ferment ­– and a smooth, velvety texture. With aeration, more savoury “umami” flavours arrive – layering the fruit with an earthy, beef-stock note. There’s drinking pleasure galore in this wine. A tasting of the 2005 vintage confirms its keeping ability.

Long Rail Gully Merlot 2005 and 2006 $22 ($119 for 6) Is bottle age part of the marketing plan, we ask Garry and Richard Parker? Alas, no, they say. Merlot doesn’t sell; it seems to be giving way to pinot. But the almost-sold-out 2005, and 2006 that follows, offer delicious drinking – and a great opportunity to experience the extra flavour dimension that comes with bottle age. These are highly aromatic, plummy wines with the deep, sweet, earthy, chocolaty notes of age, a pleasant leafy edge and plush, juicy tannins.

Long Rail Gully Shiraz 2008 and 2009 $24 ($129 for 6) These beautiful wines reveal the great strength of Canberra shiraz, albeit in contrasting styles. The almost-sold-out 2008 reveals a peppery side of shiraz not often seen in Canberra. In this instance we see both white and black pepper, the former normally associated with very cool conditions and sometimes with unripeness.

In Long Rail Gully it’s as if the grapes accumulated sugar (sugar ripeness), while flavour ripeness lagged behind – a common situation in warm Australia. However, ripeness, tinged with white pepper, seems to have just staggered over the line, giving a wine of 14.5 per cent alcohol and distinct, just-ripe white pepper flavour. This is a very pleasing flavour in one of our district’s better shirazes.

The 2009, however, moves another step up the quality ladder. Here, aromatic, floral red-berry varietal flavours stand at the centre – reminiscent of shiraz from France’s tiny Cote-Rotie region. The supple, sweet palate and savoury, spicy background flavours add to this impression. The wine’s delicious to drink now but should cellar well for many years. It’s phenomenally good – and undervalued. But don’t count on that lasting as it’s like to attract attention.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012 First published 25 January 2012 in The Canberra Times

We always want what we don’t have and value the scarcest things most of all. Australian winemakers value acidity – tasting berries anxiously as an ascendant sun pushes sugar levels ever higher as acid levels decline.

In the Mosel, it’s the opposite. There the winemakers value sugar, something Australia produces in abundance. At 50 degrees north only vines on the steepest south, southeast and southwest slopes, like giant solar panels, collect sufficient heat to ripen grapes fully. Acid levels remain high til the end and Germany’s quality system even grades wine according to the sugar content of the grapes.

English writer, Hugh Johnson, likened the impossibly steep slopes to toast held to the fire – though at this latitude the sun’s oblique autumn angle ensures a very slow roast, ensuring the intense but delicate flavours of the area’s unique riesling.

On the right slopes, proven over two millennia, the grapes do, indeed, achieve full sugar and flavour ripeness and retain high acidity. And because of the high humidity, botrytis cinerea flourishes, dehydrating the berries and further concentrating sugar and acidity.

However, not all of the riesling succumbs to botrytis, widening the options available to winemakers – from fresh, fruity dry wines unaffected by botrytis, through delicate, semi-sweet styles, to profound, sticky wonders made only of rotten, shrivelled berries (beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese).

After enjoying his wines at a stall in Bernkastel, we visit Heiko Fass, a small maker based at Neumagen-Dhron. A graduate of Geisenheim wine university, Fass took over the old family business from his father and brothers.

He operates the compact cellar single handed, receiving small batches of hand-harvested grapes – picked by the same Polish family that’ve worked for his family for 50 years.

Everything in the steep vineyards is done by hand, he says, meaning Mosel can only ever be about quality, not quantity.

In the cellar we see similarities with mainstream Australian riesling making, but also some notable differences. Like leading Australian makers, Fass transports small batches of grapes quickly to the cellar, separates the juice into free-run and pressings components, settles the juice and ferments it at controlled temperatures in stainless steel tanks, keeping the various components separate until final blending.

A crucial difference, however, is maturing batches of the higher quality rieslings in “fuder”, old oak barrels of about 1,000-litre capacity, used widely in Mosel. Fass also uses a couple of larger 1,800-litre and 2,000-litre oak vessels. He says his father made some of the fuder, including a couple bearing 1965 and 1969 date stamps.

These old vessels allow micro-oxidation, mellowing the wine, muting some of the aromatics and adding texture, without injecting woody flavours.

Upstairs in the living room, overlooking the Mosel, we taste a range of Fass dry, semi-sweet and sweet rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, near Dhron (hence “Dhroner Hofberger” or Dhroner Roterd” on the labels).

What makes riesling sweet or dry? In short, the winemaker – if she wants dry, she ferments all the sugar; if she wants semi-sweet or sweet, she refrigerates the wine, the yeasts quit fermenting and she then filters the yeasts out, just to be sure. So, the sweeter the wine, the lower the alcohol; the drier the wine, the higher the alcohol – all relative, of course, to the amount of sugar in the juice originally.

In the case of the Fass rieslings, the driest wine at an undetectable 3.5 grams of sugar per litre, contained 12.5 per cent alcohol; the half-dry version had 16.8 grams and 11.5 per cent of sugar and alcohol respectively; and the kabinett, spaetlese and auslese at 7–8 per cent alcohol, contained between 48 and 220 grams per litre of sugar.

But because of the high acidity, the 48 grams-of-sugar kabinett remained delicate, clean and refreshing – definitely a three-glass wine; and the truly sticky sweet auslese, though luscious, remained light, buoyant and completely not cloying.

After the tasting we stop in Piesport to see the remains of an old Roman winery – a reminder of the area’s extraordinary winemaking history

If you’re visiting the Mosel, Heiko will gladly show you the cellar and wines by appointment. The visitor centre in Bernkastel has contact details for all Mosel producers.

A short walk out of Bernkastel, we join half a dozen young members of the Oxford University Wine Club for a “tasting and light supper afterwards” at Dr Loosen – one of the Mosel’s most visible, best and outspoken producers. Our host is owner, Ernst (Ernie) Loosen.

Loosen starts with a map of the middle Mosel’s vineyards, compiled in 1868 by the Prussian tax authorities. He says it still holds and became his basis for defining vineyard quality ever since he took over the family business from his father in 1988.

Loosen produces about 40 Mosel wines and takes us through a representative dozen. As we progress he explains, with exasperation, Germany’s confusing wine labelling laws, commenting, “We Germans really hate our customers. We want to make it as difficult as possible”.

Rather than a confusing matrix of regulations for Germany’s different regions, Loosen favours a system that ranks vineyards by their quality, then allows winemakers to choose how they make the wine and whether it’s sweet or dry or in between.

Loosen owns parts of some of the Mosel’s greatest vineyards, including Sonnenuhr, opposite the village of Wehlen; Wurzgarten, just downstream of Urzig; Pralat and Treppchen, opposite the village of Erden; and Lay, adjacent to Bernkastel.

We start with the two dry rieslings, relative newcomers to the portfolio and labelled simply Blue Slate and Red Slate, reflecting the different soils of the vineyards they come from.

But the delicate, sweeter, low alcohol wines from the great vineyards take centre stage. In the warm, sunny sitting room, we linger longer than we ought on the magnificent Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2010. Then with increasing pleasure we move through the sweeties, culminating in the profound Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel 2010 and Bernkastler Lay Riesling Eiswein 2008.

The tasting over, Loosen kicks off the “light supper” with a fresh, taut, bone-dry and delicate sparkling wine, based on a 1990 riesling auslese from the nearby Himmelreich vineyard at Graach.

The tasting finished at around six and we leave the light supper, Loosen and the Oxford mob at around two in the morning. By now we’ve sleuthed our collective our way through 18 mature mystery wines from Switzerland, the USA, South Africa, France, Germany and Australia ¬– the latter represented by the still excellent Coldstream Hills Reserve Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 1992.

The German wines came at the very end, with Loosen’s comment, “Now we will drink ourselves sober on Mosel”. The first, a still lively but mature Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1969, made by his grandfather, could’ve been 20-30 year old we thought, not 42. And the second, introduced as “a refresher”, had been put aside and never sold because of its searing acidity at the time. This was, indeed, a vibrant refresher. We guessed its age as three or four years. In fact, it was an Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1983.

While this demonstrates the staying power of Mosel in a good cellar, the main game for visitors to the region and shoppers in Australia will remain recent vintages. Current selections in Australia go back to 2004, and there are still some of the excellent 2007s around if you look hard.

MOSEL IMPORTERS

This is not a comprehensive list but should, however, lead you to some terrific Mosel rieslings.

Dr Loosen – www.drloosen.de

Imported by Cellarhand, Melbourne (www.cellarhand.com.au). Woolworths, through Dan Murphy, has an exclusive on Dr Loosen Blue Slate Riesling Trocken (dry). We tried and liked the 2010 vintage at Loosen’s cellars, Bernkastel.

Weingut Staffelter Hof

Imported by Canberra’s Lester and Adrienne Jesberg on indent. Winemaker Jan Klein (“one of a young brigade achieving great things”, writes Jesberg) sources fruit from the Letterlay and Steffensberg vineyard. Join the mailing list to hear of future indents by writing to Adrienne at adrjes@bigpond.net.au

Fritz Haag, A. J. Adam, Reinhold Haart, Knebel, Schloss Lieser, Willi Schaefer and Schmitges

Imported by Eurocentric Wines, Sydney (www.eurocentricwine.com.au). The website links to the producer sites.

J. J. Prum

Imported by Bibendum Wine Company, Melbourne (www.bibendum.com.au).

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt

Imported by Domaine Wine Shippers, Melbourne (www.domainewineshippers.com.au).

Egon Muller

Imported by Negociants Australia (www.necociantsaustralia.com)

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 12 October 2011 in The Canberra Times

We’re a die-hard lot us riesling lovers, clinging to a great variety that appeals to few. We talk it up. We pore over the results of Canberra’s annual International Riesling Challenge. We admire Frankland Estate’s International Riesling Tasting. Then Coles liquor executive, Grant Ramage, reveals the sorry truth, “Riesling’s just not going anywhere. Nielsen data says sales are down nine per cent year-on-year to the end of August”.

In more gloomy riesling reality, the press release accompanying today’s wine of the week crows, “Sales of pinot gris/grigio have now overtaken riesling in this country”. Depressing news about a variety that more often than not produces ordinary wine.

We’re fishing for good riesling news, high on the variety after eight days in the central Mosel, Germany’s riesling heartland – source of the world’s most delicate, most profound rieslings.

We’ve carried these aromas and flavours in our head for over thirty years – memories born in the late seventies from tasting wines from the great 1976 vintage. What unforgettable wines they were, even if we knew little of the regions or names at the times.

The wines did the talking – gently fragrant kabinett and spaetlese rieslings, poised softly, ethereally on the palate, delivering intense flavours and a unique, perfect, thrilling balance between sweetness and dazzling, fresh acidity. Even the profound, sweet ausleses, beerenausleses and trockenbeerenausleses sat delicately on the palate, never cloying, never too sweet, but filling the room with their fragrance.

You can’t forget wines like that, and we didn’t. Though the selection included wines from the Rhine River, a few Mosel wines in particular etched their peculiar names in our minds – Bernkasteler Doctor, Wehlener Sonnenuhr and Graacher Himmelreich.

We were new in the trade at the time, but studied the vineyard maps, gained a basic understanding, and over the decades, enjoyed other vintages without ever losing the thrill of first discovery. These were great and unique wines.

But even then, long before the chardonnay or sauvignon blanc ages, selling German riesling in Australia proved difficult. It took years for Farmer Bros to move the 400 cases of 1976 it’d imported. David and Richard Farmer and staff probably drank more than they sold (I’m still grateful).

And nothing’s changed, says Grant Ramage, quoting the Nielsen year-to-August figures again. Sales of all German wines increased by 2.5 per cent in value but declined in volume, accounting for just one thousandth of wine sales in Australia.

Even in Germany, it’s not easy to find these home grown glories. In east and west Germany, in the weeks before arriving in the Mosel, we search supermarket shelves in vain. We find long lines of bland wines, German and imported, mostly priced between two and four euros.

At a tasting with renowned Mosel producer Dr Loosen, a German-based, English wine distributor confirms what we’ve feared. He tells us, “The Germans have no appreciation of what they’ve got. That’s why Ernie [Loosen] exports 70 per cent of his wine to America”.

But if sales of German riesling disperse in little wisps to admirers around the world, here in the central Mosel, up and downstream of Bernkastel, riesling rules, accounting for 60 per cent of the area’s 9,000 hectares of vines.

We didn’t come here for the other 40 per cent. However, because we’re there and we can, we taste a few examples of muller-thurgau (rivaner), elbling, pinot noir (spatburgunder), dornfelder and pinot blanc. But they’re not wines you’d travel 20,000 kilometres to taste.

We didn’t come to try the increasingly popular dry (trocken) rieslings either. But we do and conclude that the classic, delicate, semi-sweet versions – with their unique balance of acidity and sugar – remain the region’s great specialty.

Our visit coincides with the middle Mosel wine festival, so we taste dozens of wines simply by wandering from marquee to marqee strung along a riverfront road at Bernkastel. It’s an annual event, held each September shortly before vintage, and worth attending.

There we savour old friends, like J. J. Prum’s exquisite Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2007 at three euros a glass or 17 euros a bottle – amazingly modest prices for a wine of this stature.

We enjoy unfamiliar wines, too, and stop to chat with young winemaker Heiko Fass. Later we drive up to his underground cellars, built by his father in 1969, at Neumagen-Dhron. There we learn more about Fass rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, Dhron – and his recent access, through his wife’s family, to the great Goldtropfchen vineyard at Piesport, around the next bend of the Mosel, down stream.

Over the next days we drive upstream to the old Roman provincial capital, Trier, and downstream to Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine. Our constant travelling companion, Hugh Johnson’s wonderful World Atlas of Wine, with its detailed contour maps, allows us to identify the great vineyards on the Mosel’s impossibly steep south, south east and south west facing slopes.

Our other constant companion is a desire to drink those beautiful rieslings, which we do in buckets. What we’re not expecting, though, is to taste, alongside those rieslings, an eclectic and great range of perfectly cellared whites and reds from Switzerland, Loire Valley, Washington State, Corton-Charlemagne, South Africa, Aix-en-Provence, Yarra Valley, Volnay, Charmes-Chambertin, Pomerol and St Estephe.

But we did. And that’s part of the continuing Mosel story next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 5 October 2011 in The Canberra Times

Early in August, Lark Hill Winery bought an established 3.6-hectare vineyard at Murrumbateman. The purchase coincided with the release of Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 and Viognier 2011 (top drops today), both sourced from the vineyard.

Chris Carpenter commented, “We purchased the vineyard in order to secure our long-term supplies of these varieties, and have renamed it ‘Dark Horse Vineyard’. We will be converting this vineyard to biodynamic and organic farming this year”.

Carpenter says the vineyard comprises about 1.2 hectares each of shiraz and sangiovese, about 0.8 hectares of viognier, 0.4 hectares of marsanne and a small patch of roussanne (part of the Rhone Valley white family, along with marsanne and viognier).

The purchase increases the Carpenter’s vineyard holdings to about 10 hectares – the balancing being on their original vineyard, planted in 1978, on the Lake George escarpment, overlooking Bungendore. At 860 metres it’s Canberra’s highest, coolest vineyard.

Over the years David and Sue Carpenter pared back varieties that didn’t work on this cool site. As a result they now focus on the proven winners – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir and, from 2006, Austria’s specialty white variety, gruner veltliner. By this time their son, Chris, had joined the business and shiraz had entrenched itself as Canberra’s standout variety.

The site being too cold for shiraz, the Carpenters sourced material from lower, warmer Murrumbateman for several years before taking the plunge and buying their own vineyard this month.

The vineyard was one of two blocks in the Ravensworth operation, associated with Bryan and Jocelyn Martin and other business associates over the years.

Martin says the Ravensworth name belonged originally to Brendan Ryan and an American partner.

Later, Michael Kirk, brother of Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk, bought Brendan Ryan’s section of the vineyard and converted Ravensworth from a partnership to a company, with Kirk and the Martins as shareholders. Kirk leased his section of the vineyard to the Martins.

In this month’s transactions, the Carpenters bought Kirk’s section of the vineyard and the Martins bought Kirk out of Ravensworth, to be become sole owners of the name as well as the other section of vineyard.

Martin says he planted the vineyards and knows every vine by name. But he’s relieved to be managing only one vineyard from now on. While the Carpenters vineyard includes the marsanne vines behind Ravensworth’s highly regarded dry white, Chris Carpenter says they will sell the fruit to Martin.

The Carpenters intend to convert the Murrumbatemen vineyard to certified biodynamic – an expensive process, expected to take about five years.

Chris Carpenter says they made no shiraz from the vineyard this year but expect to produce a shiraz viognier under the Dark Horse label in 2012. Lark Hill produced sangiovese from the site in 2007 and 2009 ¬ – the latter, still being offered at cellar door.

The Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 reviewed below came from the vineyard but had been bottled and labelled before the purchase, so doesn’t have the Dark Horse name on the label.

Lark Hill Canberra District Shiraz Viognier 2010 $40 Grown at Murrumbateman and made at Lark Hill, this wine combines shiraz and the white variety viognier (six per cent of the blend) fermented together. It’s a highly fragrant combination, inspired by the wines of Cote-Rotie in France’s northern Rhone Valley. In the 2010 vintage the floral, spicy and peppery aromas and flavours come with a marked savoury streak and quite firm tannins. That’s firm in a slinky, elegant, medium-bodied context. It builds in interest over time – always a good sign.

QR codes – smarties are onto them

Lark Hill introduced QR codes to their back labels with the release of their 2011 vintage whites – riesling, gruner veltliner and viognier.

QR stands for “quick response” code and refers to a little, square white-on-black pattern, readable by special scanners or smart phones. They’ve been a big deal in Japan for yonks and now seem certain to spread in Australia with the rapid uptake of smart phones – including Apple’s iPhone and other brands, such as Samsung Galaxy, using Google’s Android operating system.

Free scanning apps for the phones read QR codes, which can be encoded with a variety of data, including a link to a website. This is what the Carpenters use in their codes.

Chris Carpenter writes, “I believe we are the first Canberra wine to use QRs. Our aim is to provide what amounts to after-sales support for people – so if a bottle is picked up in a bottle shop, restaurant or similar, anyone with a smart phone can find out more about the wine including its RRP, reviews and our tasting notes.

We will be keeping these links as permanent pages on our website and continuing to add reviews and tasting notes as the wines age – so the QR codes should be useful even if somebody picks up a bottle in their cellar in 10 years (or 20!)”.

Using Bakodo (a free app) we zapped the Lark Hill codes on the Chateau Shanahan iPhone – and bingo, strait through to the detail on the website.

If you have a smart phone try scanning the QR code on Lark Hill Gruner Veltliner back label, pictured.



Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 17 August 2011 in The Canberra Times