The Aberfeldy Tim Adams’ Red Masterpiece

Tim Adams is such an honest and open sort of a guy that it’s no surprise to hear him wonder out loud if he’s the one who’s lost the plot. He doesn’t make wines for the show circuit, so he doesn’t show his wine. He doesn’t actively participate in the auction market and he’s not interested in pushing up his prices to match those of so many of his peers. So are a number of people, but not many of them are making wine as good as Tim’s.

While Tim Adams’ ‘standard’ reds from 1998 reflect a gradual process of refinement and a tuning of style, it’s with his Aberfeldy dry red that Adams is making his most eloquent statement. For The Aberfeldy shares much in common with many of Australia’s most sought-after reds, since it’s made from ancient and low-yielding shiraz vines in the Clare Valley and is matured principally in American oak. But it’s for its differences to most premier Australian reds that I most admire this wine.

While so many Australian reds are hurtling towards an over-ripened and over-cooked expression of smoky shiraz and vanilla bean soup, The Aberfeldy is a finely balanced, tight-knit wine of leanness and breeding. Its tautness and astringency bring to mind some of the better modern Tuscan classics. It’s not promoting the message that more is better; instead it’s all about delivery and style. And then there’s that matter of price!

‘Even though it shows its high percentage of new oak while young, it’s almost horizontally opposed to many wines of similar price in terms of alcoholic strength, shape and structure. While it might have less immediate appeal than some, it does have great longevity’, Adams explains. ‘Mick Knappstein was dead right twenty years ago when he preached to me a million times that if a wine is not balanced while it’s young, it never will be.’

Adamant that shiraz should not far exceed 14 by volume alcohol, Adams picks his shiraz to peak in its physiological ripening between 13.5 and 14? Baume, harvesting then to make a wine in the high 13s to low 14s. ‘At that level I get all the fruit and shape and structure I am looking for, with adequate tannins from protracted skin contact and dark cherry and mulberry fruit depending on the time of year.’

Adams is concerned over the number of very full, fruit-driven wines that are terrific when young with alcohols around and above 15.5. ‘You wonder how much influence Robert Parker has had in promoting that style, and I wonder how much the Australian wine show circuit is following that trend. Some wines are clearly Parker-induced and taste like they have been reduced by 30 in volume, like super concentrated dry vintage port’, he comments.

Adams made his first Aberfeldy in 1988. ‘At the time we were processing shiraz from three vineyards and we discovered very minty and eucalypt overtones from about a third of the Aberfeldy vineyard fruit. The aromas from the top of the fermenter were like taking two handfuls of mint leaves and scrunching them up in your hands, such is the influence of eucalypts in the area. We thought we’d keep it separate and give it some older oak so we could watch it as it developed’, he says. ‘It was a freaky thing, a stand-alone wine.’

Today the 1988 Aberfeldy still has a future ahead of it. Its older oak has left quite uncluttered its spicy and lightly leathery development, its suggestions of cloves, asphalt and bay leaf. Its mintiness remains in a less assertive manner, while its firm, bony spine of strong tannins supports a persistent and savoury palate showing no sign of decay. It’s rated at 17.2.

1989 was too small a vintage to separate The Aberfeldy from the Tim Adams Shiraz, so in it went with the firm, but charming wine from this difficult vintage. According to Adams ‘it never was a stunning wine’, but the second Aberfeldy from 1990 is today a charming and smooth if uncomplicated and lighter wine whose sweet red and black berry fruit finishes savoury and fine. There’s some attractive chocolate and leather and its oak is more assertive than the 1988’s. I rate it at 16.7 and suggest drinking between 1998-2002.

The 1991 wine 18.2, drink 2003-2011 always had more weight and flesh, and today it retains its generous creamy texture. It’s showing some wild and spicy complexity, with musky, earthy scents of cloves, nutmeg and fennel. Tight-knit and fine-grained, it’s long, firm and savoury, with suppleness and refinement.

Still just a pup with a huge future ahead, the 1992 wine 18.5, drink 2012+ was the first Aberfeldy to receive around two weeks in total on skins, contributing to its excellent cut of firm, integrated tannins and some sumptuous, meaty expression of shiraz flavour. It was also the first to benefit from a significant level of new oak, contributing to the cedary chocolate and vanilla characters still present today. Exotically spiced and bursting with piercing small berry fruit, its perfume is nothing short of opulent and heady. It’s long, lively and minty, very refined and classy, and has a huge future ahead.

By 1993 Tim Adams was ready to make some definitive decisions about where Aberfeldy was going. He kept the wine for nearly four weeks on skins during and after fermentation and began to adopt his present oak regime of maturing the wine in year-old American casks before a ten-month spell in new oak which he conditions by first fermenting semillon inside. ‘The semillon ferment takes the pencil shavings characters out of the oak’, he explains. The 1993 The Aberfeldy 18.8, drink 2005-2013 is an astonishing wine from this patchy vintage. It’s retained a superb dark red colour and has developed almost a sweaty animal hide bouquet lifted by musky spices, dark pepper and briary fruit. Very complete and balanced, its plump texture of intense cassis, plum and minty licorice flavour is tightly wound around firm, tight tannins and fine-grained oak.

It was certainly a great vintage, but in 1994 Adams really performed, creating an Aberfeldy of supreme elegance and rare fineness. There’s almost a sour edge to its translucent wild cherry fruit, while its heady spicy aromas of musk, cloves and bay leaf are enhanced with cedary/chocolate oak and a suggestion of regional mint. It’s trim, long and taut, bursting with flavour and simply oozes class. Its fine tannins are the result of even longer skin contact. I rate the wine at 19.3 and suggest drinking between 2006-2014+.

The 1995 wine 18.0, drink 2003-2007 is an earlier-maturing style from a lesser Clare vintage. It’s quite advanced, rather more minty and fractionally hollow. Wild and very peppery, loaded with spices and coriander, it’s typically crafted and intense.

He didn’t make any conscious decision about it, but Tim Adams agrees that the 1996 Aberfeldy 18.2, drink 2008-2016 is a more smoky, oaky expression of the vineyard. If there is an Aberfeldy that pushes the oak envelope, this is it. While its fruit is deep and dark, with lightly minty plum, raspberry, red cherry and cassis qualities, the oak lends a pungent chocolate and smoky cedar aroma and the sort of fleshy, creamy plumpness you don’t experience in other Aberfeldys.

While Tim Adams usually makes two to three picking passes over the Aberfeldy vineyard, the 1997 season was so demanding that he ended picking it four times to ensure that each bunch was harvested as close as possible to optimal ripeness. Given the largely disappointing standard of South Australian reds from this, one of its most forgettable seasons, the 1997 Aberfeldy 18.7, drink 2005-2009 is little short of a viticultural triumph. It’s beautifully elegant, harmonious and clear, with a floral and musky fragrance that precedes a supple, refined palate just bursting with translucent cherry/plum/raspberry fruit and distinctive spiciness. There’s some fatness and texture from its unusually high 14.5 alcohol, but the wine carries this potential burden with ease.

Then comes the 1998 vintage 19.4, drink 2010-2018+, a masterpiece of modern shiraz. ‘I’m pretty happy with the wine’, says Adams, ‘but I’d never rest on my laurels and say I’m totally satisfied. But if we made a decade of 1998s we’d certainly be pretty happy.’ I’d reckon! This exceptional wine, one of the very best Australian reds from this very great vintage, marries the richness of the 1994 with a little a little extra, perhaps the slightly heady, wild aspect of the fruit character. The oak influence approaches that of the 1996 wine, but the concentration and impact of its fruit soaks it up easily. It’s a great pure, dark, brambly and harmoniously made shiraz built for the long term despite its obvious immediate appeal.

Top wines are of course made in the vineyard and Adams’ efforts to control foliage and to keep cropping levels around 1.5 tonnes per acre are certainly paying off, even in the more challenging seasons. ‘Our focus is on our dry grown vineyards and less yield’, he says. ‘We’re keen to plant vines on land geologically mapped as the right soils over the right limestone for both reds and whites. Although our total area under vine is increasing, we don’t have a long-term ambition to make any more wine. If we crop at lower levels our hope is to improve intensity, character and longevity over our whole range.’

He’s found for himself a site of thirteen acres of nearly a metre of friable red clay loam over a ‘massive slab of limestone nobody knew about’ and he’s rather excited about its potential. The new plantings involve 5,000 unirrigated malbec vines from Wendouree, cabernet sauvignon, pinot gris, viognier and even temperanillo, sited on a hot north-west slope with a foot of topsoil and no water. ‘I’ve a gut feel these grapes will work well in Clare’, he says.

Given its quality, perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Aberfeldy is its price, around $45 retail and a mere $32.50 at the cellar door. ‘It’s pitched for people to drink and enjoy’, says Adams. ‘While I recognise that a lot of people are accumulating wines to try to make money out of them, I don’t want to be involved in an auction system that pushes up prices. We don’t want more and we don’t want to be greedy. We have a good house and we own the winery. We want people to say that ours remains a good value wine. If the brief of the auction circuit is to increase the price of wine so it’s only sold to people who want to make money from it, we don’t want to be there.’

While the quantity made of The Aberfeldy varies each year, it averages around 1,500 packs of six bottles. Call 08 8842 2429 for your order. Please login to post comment