Petaluma’s Coonawarra Blend

It’s perhaps a measure of how far cabernet’s star has fallen in today’s wine market that I am frequently challenged to name ten outstanding Australian examples. While it’s not really that difficult a question to answer, I must fess up that it’s a far easier task for most of us to list ten classic Australian shirazes, rieslings or chardonnays.

Strangely, for I have been a fan of the wine since its 1988 vintage, Petaluma’s Coonawarra cabernet blend struggles to find a place in many peoples’ top ten. I get the feeling that despite the esteem in which people like hold the brand, that it’s a wine that many feel they ought to respect, but can’t quite bring themselves to accept. Here’s why I believe Petaluma’s Coonawarra might be worth a little more of your attention.

Back in the late 1970s, way before the modern ascent of shiraz as Australia’s premier red variety, cabernet was king. Lord of all cabernet was Coonawarra cabernet, Australia’s most prestigious red wine. Merlot was just beginning to be planted in this country and was years from making any real impact as a varietal wine or as a blending component. Yet Petaluma, the brainchild of the then winemaking wunderkind Brian Croser, made as its inaugural red wine release a Coonawarra red that was a shiraz-cabernet sauvignon blend.

Croser’s close friend and mentor, the late Len Evans, was a powerful influence behind this decision, which effectively flew in the face of all conventional wisdom at the time. Hardly the last time this would happen, for either Evans or Croser. The wine was launched with fanfare and expectation. It was a first-rate wine, and today, a quarter of a century later, remains a superlative wine in excellent health. Dusty and leathery, it’s elegant, complex and finely crafted, delivering classic cigarboxy qualities coupled with a still vibrant expression of lightly spicy berry and plum flavour.

Strangely perhaps, but in an accurate reflection of both Croser’s zeal and the emerging trend at the time to create distinctly herbal, restrained and slightly jammy wines from cabernet sauvignon, the wine from the following vintage was a straight cabernet sauvignon. From the outset, I never liked this wine, believing it to be excessively green and metallic. It hasn’t changed. Other less than stellar and less than genuinely ripe wines followed in 1981, 1982, 1984 and 1985, there being no release from the disastrous 1983 season. In retrospect, it’s hard to criticise Croser for these wines, for he was hardly alone. It was a very forgettable few years for Australian cabernet, and several potentially great vintages were well and truly wasted by a drive to emulate what Australian winemakers incorrectly thought Bordeaux red was all about.

Petaluma’s return to form began in 1986, with a rather riper and more assertive wine that delivered more flavour and structure. The trend continued in 1987 and led to a fine, complex and well-structured wine in 1988 and a truly spectacular release from 1990 that is frankly still something of a pup. This is an opulent, deeply fruited, handsomely oaked and tightly structured wine crafted around a firm, but fine-grained chassis. It was the first of the modern Petaluma reds.

From 1990, merlot began to play an increasingly important role in these wines. Petaluma grows perhaps the best merlot in Coonawarra, and its varietal merlot, first released from this vintage, is certainly one of Australia’s finest. This decade also saw the introduction of fruit from the very controversial but highly rated Sharefarmers Vineyard, which was after many years of bitter argument within the region, has finally been formally admitted – if not exactly with open arms by many of the locals – as part of the Coonawarra region.

To suggest that the decade of the 1990s was one of great achievement for Petaluma and this wine is almost to be guilty of a great understatement. The only dip was the 1993 wine, from a vintage that has seen a welter of ordinary wines from leading South Australian labels, Grange and Hill of Grace included. The great Coonawarra vintages of 1991, 1994, 1996, 1998 and 1999 have resulted in stellar wines, while the less feted years of 1992 and 1997 yielded wines of genuine excellence, well above most expectations. Personal favourites of mine are the sumptuous and stylish 1991, the supremely elegant and fine-grained 1992, the highly polished and smoky 1996 and the aristocratic 1999, a wine I have been guilty of under-estimating for some years.

The first few years of this millennium have been considerably more challenging from a viticultural perspective. The Coonawarras of 2000 and 2001 are good without being great, but represent worthy outcomes from such hot vintages. The stewed and minty 2002 wine reflects the coolness and meanness of this season, while the minty, menthol-like 2003 release disappoints for its lack of presence. All of which sets the scene for the 2004 wine – a beautiful, natural and effortlessly balanced claret of considerable finesse and longevity.

Without hesitation, I include Petaluma’s Coonawarra blend amongst the ten finest expressions of Australian cabernet. Mature vintages aren’t all that hard to find on the secondary market, so you have every opportunity to explore it in some depth and detail. And, if cabernet has remained your flavour, try not to miss the 2004 release.



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