New Varieties for Australian Wine

Sure they make good wine here, but of the hundreds of different wine grapes grown and nurtured on Planet Earth, why have we only bothered with a handful of them? Given the amount of chardonnay, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon now planted on Terra Australis you’d think the French had truly got here first!

Without going to the ridiculous extreme of advocating large-scale plantings of the Bulgarian mavrud or the Russian rkatsiteli, life is indeed about to get very much more interesting for the drinker of Australian wine, especially for any presently somewhat numbed by the monotonous consistency or is that consistent monotony? of so many indigenous chardonnays and cabernets.

Despite the record areas now devoted to chardonnay and shiraz, there’s a new wave of planting going on right now which has more to do with diversity than volume, of character than consistency. Australian vineyards are gradually being infiltrated with grapes from the Rhone Valley and Alsace in France and from Italy’s Piedmont and Tuscany, grapes whose wines taste as different as they sound.

Pinot gris, known as pinot grigio in Italy, and viognier pronounced ‘vi-oh-nyah’ head this most subtle of white invasions, while sangiovese ‘san-jio-veh-zee’, petit verdot, barbera ‘bah-beer-ah’ and nebbiolo are making their way onto the labels of some of our most interesting red wines.

These new grapes suit the way we eat. The spectrum of fruit character from well-handled viognier, pinot gris, roussanne and marsanne creates new and interesting matches with an abundance of modern Asian and classical European cuisine. Their qualities sit easily with the modern demand for pure, expressive and mouthfilling flavour, even if some fail to evolve much beyond the primary.

Whether Italian, Thai, Vietnamese or even the fashionable French-cross-Asian, much contemporary cuisine involves the combination in an uncomplicated way of fresh, high-quality ingredients, with unashamedly striking, assertive flavours and textures. Fine dining has nearly been superceded by sophisticated cafe and brasserie style presentation, almost irrespective of the nationality of cuisine. Whether we’re talking about food prepared professionally or at home, it’s my experience that these new French and Italian varieties fit easily into the way Australians take to their solids in the late 1990s.


Barbera

Barbera is a spicy and frequently peppery red variety from the Piedmont region in Italy’s northeast, where it makes approachable medium-weight wines which occasionally reveal an unusual diesel/nicotine character. When made in more modern wineries, barbera makes easy-drinking, fruit-dominant wines with pleasing cherry/berry flavours. Montrose has released a plush, mouthfilling wine with tomato-like and red berry fruit, while the Barbera in Garry Crittenden’s exceptional Italian-inspired ‘i’ range is superbly fine-grained and marvellously expressive of the variety’s spicy personality.

Dolcetto

Another Piedmontese variety, dolcetto’s varietal characters tend towards the ripe and soft, with distinctive mineral, bittersweet and chocolate notes, dark liqueur cherries or truffly, earthy cocoa. It finishes fresh, almost tart, with lively acids. The trend in Italy is to move away from the traditional, earthy, leathery styles towards contemporary, pristine and clean wines that present a genuine, but slightly fuller, alternative to Beaujolais.

Garry Crittenden’s ‘i’ Dolcetto sourced from Great Western, Bests Vineyard is fresh, sappy and elegant, with spicy dark berries, plum and a hint of liquorice. Bests’ own wine is richer, smoother and rounder, often quite minty. For decades this wine was sold as ‘Malbeck’!

Marsanne and Roussanne

Since marsanne and roussanne, northern Rhone varieties both, were grown in the Yarra Valley more than a century ago, it’s stretching the envelope to over-exaggerate their newness to Australia. That said, it’s only until recently that they’ve been grown to any extent in this country outside Victoria and they remain somewhat enigmatic to growers in other states.

Marsanne is the backbone of the white wines of Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage. Its freshness and zest in youth, its ability to develop herbal, citrus and honeysuckle fragrances and its ability to mature over a medium term into a lingering, firm, toasty, honeyed and savoury white wine with richness and character make it the complete package. It’s for people who like their white wine young and old; it has personality and distinction. Great marsannes are released by Chateau Tahbilk and Mitchelton, while Botobolar and Cranswick Estate make interesting wines.

Roussanne is potentially more interesting, since its fineness and tightness make it a perfect blending partner with marsanne. By itself, roussanne has a characteristic herbal fragrance, spiciness, leanness and a soft finish with lively mineral acids. St Huberts’ Roussane is distinctly true to type and I recently tasted a trial wine by Rick Kinzbrunner from Giaconda which I could have sworn was a Rhone wine.

Some growers in the northern Rhone like Paul Jaboulet love roussanne, using around 35 blended into their best wines, while others like Chapoutier both hate and reject it! That understood, Yeringberg’s Yarra Valley blend of the two grapes confirms that the blend can work here as well as in the northern Rhone. Today there are approximately 57 ha in Australian of marsanne and only 10 ha of roussanne.

Nebbiolo

Nebbiolo is one of Italy’s principal quality red grapes whose plantings are centred on Piedmont, but also in Lombardy and Valle d’Aosta. The classic wines of nebbiolo, sold as Barolo, are robust, taught and firm, with typical flavours of tar, ink, roses and burnt asphalt. Usually tannic, its wine have a well-integrated firm astringency, while its occasional leathery flavours are totally unlike the often sweaty, leathery characters of old Hunter reds.

Most of Australia’s present nebbiolo plantings are found in Victoria’s King Valley, which supplies the fruit requirements of Brown Brothers, Pizzini, Prentice and Garry Crittenden, whose ‘i’ Nebbiolo is Australia’s best to date; a long, powerful and spicy expression of true Nebbiolo varietal tarry, rose petal-like characters. Crittenden’s ‘Riserva’ blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera is perhaps the most extraordinary wine yet made from red Italian varieties in Australia.

Of all these ‘new’ red grapes now becoming more established in Australia, it’s perhaps wise to expect the most from nebbiolo although, as we have experienced with pinot noir, it’s certainly going to take our makers time to learn to adapt their techniques to imbue it with the qualities we will ultimately expect to see.

Petit Verdot

The fifth and by far the most minor of the Bordeaux red varieties, petit verdot can make a spicy, highly aromatic wine of startlingly bright and intense red berry fruits and an elegant, supple palate. Although makers like Mount Mary are already incorporating this variety into their cabernet blends, only Kingston Estate and
Pirramimma are presently releasing examples as straight varietal wines. Both are worth finding.

Pinot Gris

A pink mutation of pinot noir, pinot gris is a French variety best known for the wines its produces in Alsace, where it’s actually called ‘Tokay d’Alsace’. It’s also quite widely planted in some northeastern Italian regions, where it’s known as pinot grigio. You’ll find Australian wines sporting either name, depending on whether their makers have followed French or Italian role models for their particular version. There are around 20 ha of pinot gris in Australia, a number increasing fast.

Pinot gris is typically rich and dry, with mouthfilling peach and apricot flavours. Tokay d’Alsace is distinctively ripe, spicy and fleshy, and with its well-defined acids is able to develop for several years in the bottle. Harvested earlier, Italian pinot gris tends to drink better while young, while its tight, sometimes chalky texture and savoury flavours finish with bone-dry mineral acids.

Adina, Brown Brothers, Ermes Estate, Pipers Brook, T’gallant and Seppelt, which has just released its first wine from its Drumborg vineyard in western Victoria, make the best Australian wines from this variety. T’gallant, a small Mornington Peninsula maker, actually releases two wines from this grape, labelled as pinot grigio and pinot gris, so take your pick!

Sangiovese

Sangiovese is the major Tuscan red variety and the backbone of Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino. Highly spiced, with translucent, bright fruit and a fine-grained tannic backbone, it occasionally reveals tobaccoey, diesoleum flavours and is most widely planted in the King Valley and McLaren Vale in Australia. Again, Garry Crittenden’s ‘i’ label offers the best example and one so closely related to Chianti that the comparison is staggering, while Montrose, Coriole and Cherise release fine examples. A richer, rounder style will shortly emerge from Pike’s in Clare.

Viognier

An extremely scarce variety from Condrieu and Chateau Grillet in the northern Rhone valley, viognier has a sumptuous, round texture and an exotic perfume of apricots and citrus blossom with a typical spicy, lingering, chalky finish and soft acids. It fits neatly into either serious or alfresco dining, although it’s best enjoyed before excessive bottle-age. A small number of straight white viogniers are now made in Australia, sold under the labels of Elgee Park, Heggies, Clonakilla and The Heathcote Vineyard. Mitchelton releases a blend of viognier with roussanne.

Although it’s a low-cropping grape, viognier does offer some insurance to the grower since it can be considered a dual purpose variety, successfully married to shiraz in Cote-Rotie, where it typically represents one tenth of the finished wine. Clonakilla’s Shiraz and Yarra Yering’s Dry Red No. 2 illustrate just how well it can be deployed in Australian red wine. There are not many more than 20 ha presently yielding in Australia. Please login to post comment