A Tale of Two Tipples

Unfortunately we Australians don’t seem to acknowledge the quality of the things our compatriots create for us to wear, admire, eat and drink. Recent phenomena such as the Original Redback Beer, Gippsland and Milawa Blue Cheese, Tasmanian ocean salmon and the Bugs of Moreton Bay have begun to restore some enthusiasm for local foodstuffs. However, in the area of beverages especially, certain old favourites wait to be re-discovered, without taking our cultural cringe quite to the extent of a Cultural Binge, if you’re with me.

The most obvious is the wine that Australians make better than anyone else. In fact, the rest of the world hardly comes close. The liquid in question is Australian muscat and tokay. You know, the stuff you see in every decent licensed restaurant, but hardly ever buy. The luscious, intense fortified wine that is bought out at the end of a dinner only to signal the start of a long night.

I know it’s sweet. So is most Australian port. So is Benedictine, so is Drambuie. So, heaven help us, is Midori, Tia Maria and Creme de Menthe, or whatever they pour down your throat these days at our fashionable night-spots. But so is Sauternes – and what serious wine drinker worth his salt would not at least try to acquire a taste for Sauternes in the sad event it did not come naturally? Muscat. Don’t leave for home without trying it.

Muscat and tokay are concentrated, intensely-flavoured spiritous nectar, full of richness, texture and complexity, with a flavour that lasts so long the next glass only tops it up. It’s brilliant, goddammit, but no Australian seems to want to know. Once the Americans get into it, it could all be gone.

Muscat and tokay are usually made like a tawny port, from frontignan and muscadelle grapes respectively. Blends of several years, and aged in the winery until no further maturation in the bottle is necessary, they are ready to drink to moment you set eyes on them. Like tawny port also, they will survive intact in an opened bottle for several months until their flavour becomes noticeably stale and flat.

Both varieties, frontignan and muscadelle, are relatives. They’re members of a very large family of grapes, the ‘muscat’ varieties, and are identifiable as such for the unique taste they have in common – a combination of raisins, tinned pineapple and tropical fruit – which those in the know simply call ‘muscat flavour’.

Frontignan is the smaller grape and is the more intensely-flavoured of the two. Its taste is more concentrated and intense, whereas muscadelle produces a broader, richer wine without quite the same ‘attack’ of flavour. Tokays are generally lighter than muscat, with the same shape, if not quite the muscle. They are more oily and viscous, with a taste Bailey’s winemaker Steve Goodwin describes as ‘sardines and green olives’. Let not that description offput you.

Old and long-matured muscats and tokays can be nearly indistinguishable, although the muscats are generally deeper in colour. Muscats, which generally begin life a bright red-amber, become more brown and less intense in colour with age. Tokays start more yellow-green, also turning brown with time. The oldest tokay I am yet to experience wasn’t even a drink. Served from a teaspoon, this century-old Chambers Tokay was so thick and glutinous you couldn’t get it off the inside of a glass, so drinking was out of the question. More heresy? The youngsters of the Chambers family first become acquainted with this most precious and unique of heirlooms when barely able to walk, served instead of topping on ice-cream.

Debates on wine, like politics and religion, are never won or lost. Having said that, the best muscats and tokays are those from North-east Victoria, from the environs of Rutherglen, Wahgunyah and Glenrowan. Those made by Morris, Chambers, Baileys, Stanton and Killeen are full, round and intensely-flavoured. Campbells make a softer, lighter style and those from All Saints are marginally lighter in weight again. None lack for flavour.

Larger firms like Lindemans and Seppelt still release fabulous old Rutherglen fortifieds and an old-fashioned Melbourne-based company, Talavera, does the same on a tiny scale.

To throw in a worthy curve-ball, a couple of Western Australian wines are essential inclusions. Sandalford’s ‘Sandalera’ and Houghtons Liqueur Tokay are superbly-flavoured, mature and complex old fortifieds able to hold their own anywhere.

What about the rest of the world? There must be something to compete with these extraordinary Australians! Yes, but in quantities even smaller than ours. The wines that come to mind are the Amoroso and East India Sherries of Spain. Amoroso sherries are sweetened old Olorosos; that is to say thick, ancient and concentrated after-dinner fortifieds which do bear something in common with the wines discussed to date.

In the days when sail ruled the seas and most sherry was sweet, it was often shipped from Spain to the East Indies, around the Cape of Good Hope. That which was not purchased there was taken back to Europe, where consumers and makers alike noticed a remarkable change in the wine. It appeared that the sea voyage had actually done it some good, as the changes in temperature, long airing and gentle rocking motion of the ships improved and aged the wines.

Such was the improvement that the wine was given a regular and intentional sea voyage as part of its maturation. Casks of sherry and madeira were often put aboard the ships as ballast. This is the origin of ‘East India’ Sherry, a term some merchants still use for their best dessert blends. They’re old and black, very sweet and oxidised.

The sherry was shipped in specially reinforced hogsheads and scantling pipes for stowage in the bilges, under the other cargo. Anyone with experience of a long sea voyage will be familiar with the foul, putrid smell of bilge water, but it is extremely rare ever to have heard of an East India sherry to be badly affected by its time in the bilges, during which some of the barrels at least would have been partly submerged in the rank fluid. Perhaps there’s more to bilge water than we think! There’s an old saying that “the seasick wines of Jerez Sherry are worth double” and this could be the secret.

If theirs’ are worth double, ours are worth more. Muscats and tokays are Australia’s own indigenous wines, but people don’t seem to care these days. If we don’t drink them, they’ll die out. I’ve half a mind to alert Greenpeace!

At the Royal Adelaide Wine Show there is a crazy award which goes to the Best Exhibit of the Show, in which red and white table wines, sparkling wines and all manner of fortifieds are compared to find the recipient of this meaningless but very prestigious gong. The wine that broke the deadlock in 1989 was indeed a tokay – the Seppelt Rutherglen Tokay DP59. Maybe you should try one too, next time you can’t think what to choose. Please login to post comment