Will the real Vintage of the Century Please Stand Up?

Right now I’d hate to be doing the public relations for Wynns Coonawarra. “Coonawarra 1990: Vintage of the Century”, proclaims a press release of Wednesday March 10 this year, a date declared by Penfolds as ‘Wynnsday’, itself a clever marketing idea to introduce the new Coonawarra vintage.

Without questioning its status as a wonderful red wine year in Australia’s south-east corner, 1990 is now facing some pretty stiff competition if the outspoken claims of the wine marketing echelon are to be taken seriously. They need look no further than twelve months later, 1991.

Demonstrably an entirely different season to 1990, its successor’s claim to at least equal status rings louder as the number of 1991 reds to reach the market from such areas as Coonawarra, the Yarra Valley, the Mornington Peninsula, McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley increases daily.

Each new wine appears to make the marketer’s dilemma even more acute. How can you possibly have two Vintages of the Century, especially when they’re consecutive years? Who is going to believe it? The answer, no doubt, will be revealed on Wynnsday 1994, when such wines as the 1991 John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1991 Michael Hermitage strut their stuff for the first time.

Not that long ago there was never going to be a 1991 Michael. The 1990, always a very special shiraz, was released as a once-off wine, the first time since the previous once-off in 1955. Winemaker Peter Douglas receives my genuine sympathy when he asks what else he could have done with his 1991 vintage. “It’s a fabulous red,” he says, “of comparable quality to the 1990. We nearly blended it away, but in the end we couldn’t deny it. It will look rather funny, though…”

Through no fault of its own, Coonawarra is possibly facing precisely the same credibility problem endured by Bordeaux when the gods decreed that the unusual, but brilliant vintage of 1982 was to be followed directly by the spectacularly classic vintage of 1983. I doubt the debate of one over the other will ever end, but certainly the Robert Parker-inspired freneticism for the ripe, plummy, jammy wines of the sunny 1982 season has made life difficult for the astringent, slender classics of 1983 to receive their full due.

History repeated itself eight years later and twelve thousand miles away. In Coonawarra they thought they could never get it better than 1990. Everything went to perfection. “We had rain and sun in exactly the right amounts at the right times,” says Peter Douglas. “Ripening was early, and we picked everything when we wanted to, even to quite late in the exceptionally warm season.”

“When we saw the wines we knew they were extraordinary. We hadn’t seen anything like them. The epitome of Coonawarra, we thought. Perhaps better.” No arguments there. The best 1990s are distinctive through their sweet, ripe fruit, their fleshy structure and muscle. The usual Coonawarra herbaceousness and what Peter Douglas describes as its stalky-pepper character are notable for their complete absence. Different, unusual wines, and unquestionably to Coonawarra what the ’82s were to Bordeaux.

There was nothing about the season of 1991 to suggest its potential, says Douglas, a year seemingly so typical in Coonawarra that its wines have caught everyone by surprise. Cropping levels were higher, the weather threatened to break although it was no cooler than average and the sun didn’t appear every day; a standard cooler-climate season with no special expectation.

Now, the wines are doing the talking. They clearly have that typical grassy, stalky cool climate nature we expect of Coonawarra, but their strength of character, agrees Douglas, is quite amazing. More refined and unquestionably leaner than the 1990s, their elegance and suppleness is finished with classic astringency and austerity, straight from the Bordeaux textbook. While lacking the sweetness of 1990, their strength and depth of fruit is quite emphatic. A brilliant, classic year, that will cellar with the best of any from Coonawarra. Again, an uncanny similarity with the Bordeaux of 1983.

It was almost the other way around in the Yarra Valley. Although 1990 was warm and sunny, its ripening season was late to begin. Its wines are sweet, ripe and elegant, well-structured and balanced. Again at the time, considered one of the best of all Yarra vintages. Enter 1991; warmer, earlier and riper. And better?

“Certainly our best year since 1986,” says Dr Peter McMahon, whose Seville Estate vineyard has yielded some brilliant 1991 wines, shiraz included. “They have the edge over 1990, with superb balance and structure. It wasn’t so much the sugars or the acids we achieved, but berry ripeness, one of those technical imponderables. The chemical figures simply don’t account for the flavours the grapes achieved.”

Louis Bialkower of Yarra Ridge agrees that 1991 was clearly a better year, commenting that many Yarra vineyards ripened fruit to levels in 1991 they had never witnessed before, or since. “The Yarra wines from 1991 won more trophies in major shows than from any previous vintage,” he says.

Followers of Australian wine will understand the remarkable run of brilliant vintages the south-east of the continent has experienced since 1980, the year many consider as one of the greatest this century, and, until 1990, perhaps the best. Why, then, have we waited until 1990 for someone to pull out the big tag and officially declare the Vintage of the Century?

I believe the answer is multi-layered, found in both the vineyard and the winery. Australian red wines have quickly moved away from the spineless, tutti-fruiti light clarets of the early 1980s, seen at their worst in the lately fashionable genre of vegetative, gamey, berry-driven Coonawarra reds.

The best contemporary wines are less dependent of excessive forms of minimal pruning and are made from riper and lighter crops. In the developing areas, Yarra included, each viticultural development leads to a gradual overall improvement in wine quality, helped greatly by increasing vineyard age as their vines reach maturity.

Winemakers are now reaping the rewards of returning to traditional fermentation technology, such as warmer temperatures, extended skin contact and open fermentation, all of which contribute to the greater richness, flavour and integration of the best modern Australian reds. 1990 will certainly be remembered as the first year each of these influences worked together.

So, which is the greatest – 1990 or 1991? Peter Douglas doesn’t know how to rate them. “Although they look very different now,” he says, “who knows which will be considered the better vintage in ten years time?” He’s certain, though, that as more people discover the 1991s, its reputation as a vintage will soar.

For the time being, says Douglas, he’s glad that marketing them isn’t his problem. “It’s difficult to say Vintage of the Century with credibility more than once each decade, isn’t it?”

So now, to which aluminium-rich and rainy wine region do my thoughts now begin to wander? Please login to post comment