16 years of The Clairault

Back in 1989 Ian and Ani Lewis, surely the only married couple in the wine industry whose names are anagrams of each other, were visited by a Chinese lady wearing a white suit and white joggers. Their exotic guest wanted a closer look at a fermenting red wine, climbed up a fermenter, teetered on the edge for a moment and promptly fell in. Today she still has the pink joggers and a few remaining bottles of the 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon, the very same wine whose fermenting cap she helped to plunge. She pulls out the wine and drinks it on special occasions.
So do I, although my favourites from the cellar are the ’86, ’90 and ’91, typically elegant, refined expressions of cabernet sauvignon from a region perhaps more noted for its more powerful, concentrated claret styles.
While the 1995 vintage represents a step up in richness and palate structure, Cape Clairault’s principal wine has always appealed to me for its subdued, complex personality. Cellaring has nurtured wines like the 1986 vintage from youthful near-transparency to its present fleshy richness and mouthfeel, without sacrificing an ounce of finesse. Today labelled as ‘The Clairault’, the wine has since 1990 contained a portion of merlot and small amounts of cabernet franc since 1993. Lewis is pleased with the ‘riper, more perfumed and lush red berry fruit flavours’ contributed by cabernet franc.

Geologist Ian and specialist teacher Ani Lewis purchased the 66 ha block at Margaret River in 1976, making their first cabernet sauvignon pretty well by hand and foot in 1980. The 1982 wine, which Di Cullen persuaded them to bottle, won the trophy for the Best Dry Red Table Wine firm finish at the 1984 National Wine Show at Canberra, propelling Cape Clairault under the national spotlight. James Halliday was a member of the judging panel.

This significant wine was described by Halliday as having ‘great depth and strength of varietal cabernet aroma and flavour’, ‘beautiful balance and structure’ and generally as ‘an exercise in elegance’. I offer these notes since the bottle of 1982 Cabernet Sauvignon presented at this tasting was affected by cork taint, although it couldn’t disguise its excellent length of fruit and flavour. Doesn’t it only happen to the irreplaceable ones!?
As fate would have it, circumstances that year forced Ian Lewis to commence extended maceration with this wine since, caught on the hop by an early vintage, he had to leave the wine in the fermenter for longer than intended. He admits he made a mistake the following year by not doing so, but was back in harness with the 1984. Today he leaves the wine for anywhere up to 2-3 weeks after the primary ferment.
Having converted the vineyard to a split lyre trellis in 1990-1991, the Lewises invested in a new crusher which leaves fewer whole berries for the 1993 vintage and a new airbag press in time for the 1994 harvest. They’ve also chosen to increase the proportion of the wine whose fermentation is finished in oak. Only 5-7 of the 1995 wine was treated this way, but the outcome is impossible to miss.

‘We won’t sacrifice anything of our suppleness and fine structure by fermenting in barrel, but the new complexity is welcome’, says Ian Lewis. ‘We’ve begun fermenting 15-20 of the wine in stainless steel with pumping over to get more extraction to compensate for the softness of the barrel ferments. The rest is open fermented with plunging. It’s our intention to preserve elegance, but the market is demanding bigger wines.’

It’s wonderful to witness such commitment to quality and style as Ian and Ani Lewis still adhere to so strongly. And although they’re investing in big plans to increase their Cape Clairault operation, their premier wine, The Clairault, will never grow beyond its carefully nurtured limit of only 500-600 cases. You need no other guarantee. Please login to post comment