Finding a Southern Hemisphere Pinot Noir

First it was California. Then it was the Yarra Valley. Next: Oregon. Today: New Zealand. The search for the Holy Grail continues apace, as winemakers in worlds both Old and New seek out the scared sites where they will not see, but actually create for themselves the most desperately sought-after icon in wine: truly, honestly, really Burgundian pinot noir.

But, like all quests, this one has its imperfections. For starters, there’s a sort of underlying implication that all Burgundy is i good wine, ii has a consistent taste and style and iii that we unanimously agree which Burgundies make the best role models.

Len Evans, who has drunk more top Burgundy than most living Australians, wonders what all the fuss is about. He gives Burgundy a success rate of about 5, and asks who on earth would want to emulate the remaining 95?

Burgundy – or pinot noir – is almost empirically inconsistent. Of all the red wines, it doesn’t just require hands-on winemaking techniques, it demands them. It’s the most labour-intensive wine you can make and the range of techniques available to its makers, in both the vineyard and the winery, is almost infinite. How close do you plant your vines? How do you manage the canopies? Do you remove leaves during the ripening season to reduce herbaceous flavours and expose grapes to the sun? When do you harvest? How hot and for how long do you ferment? How many individual batches do you make in an endeavour to create the most diversity of flavour and texture when the components are assembled into a single wine? Which oaks, which coopers and for how long is the wine left inside the casks?

No two makers will have the same set of answers. They have different ideas in mind for their finished wines, many of which are dictated to them by the type of fruit they can best achieve in their vineyards. Is their ideal pinot noir a fully ripened, sumptuous, powerful wine in the Bass Phillip, Tarrawarra or Fromm La Strada style? Is it tightly crafted into a refined, subtle and delicate wine like a Mount Mary, a Diamond Valley, a Prince Albert or an Ashton Hills? Or perhaps the winemaker is set on the ultimate ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ concept, as the wines of Bannockburn, Ata Rangi and Martinborough Vineyards are beginning to approach.

Pinot makers must live with the reality that the variation in climate from vintage to vintage actually dictates more about the wine style than any personal decision they could ever make. It’s a fact that the best pinot noirs are borne of cooler climates, those most likely to lack consistency from one year to the next.

This is where New Zealand’s Martinborough district is streets ahead, according to Clive Paton, winemaker and part-owner of Ata Rangi, one of the New World’s latest pace-setters with pinot noir. ‘Martinborough is far enough south to give us great fruit flavour and enough ripeness for strong natural alcohols to create wines big enough to be called great wines’, he says. ‘If you look at our wines over the last ten years, very few have been adversely affected by poor weather conditions.’ In fact, the two hardest years in Martinborough were a direct result of the eruption of Mt Pinitubo and the reduction in direct sunlight it caused.

So disparate are the opinions concerning what is and what is not the true taste of pinot noir and Burgundy that a group of tasters will never agree on the most ‘Burgundian’ wine in a line-up of quality wine. All depends on which Burgundian benchmark is adopted by each taster.

At a recent industry tasting of the remarkable New Zealand pinot noirs from 1996, featuring wines from Martinborough, Canterbury and Marlborough, opinion was evenly divided between wines like the Ata Rangi 1996, the Martinborough Vineyards Reserve 1996 and the Fromm Reserve 1996. Excellent wines all, but each a different and individual expression. No doubt a similar result would emerge when comparing a collection of the top Australian pinot noirs from 1996, featuring wines from the Yarra Valley, Adelaide Hills, Geelong and Gippsland from this superb but low-yielding vintage.

So, even though we can’t agree on what it really means and we sincerely doubt its consistency, Burgundy is, for better or for worse, the benchmark against which we rate our pinot noir. Only our sparkling wine receives anything like this degree of comparison with a European benchmark. Our Coonawarra cabernets taste nothing like Bordeaux. They are far too ripe and fruit-driven. Similarly, our chardonnays are simply too forward and lacking in the underlying drive of flavour and finish of acidity to compare with white Burgundies. Who cares? The best have the flavour and concentration the French would simply kill for. Our shiraz, today our most feted wine, has absolutely nothing to do with the best from the Rhone. Its sweetness, smoothness and creamy use of smoky American oak has no rival and no peer.

Should we be comparing our pinot noirs to Burgundy, or should be be looking for our own expression of the grape? Or is it simply inevitable that the better we get with pinot noir, the more Burgundian we will become? Most Burgundian makers simply deny that any grower of pinot outside their holy ground can make a wine which in any way at all resembles their own. Five years ago I would have agreed.

Anthony Hanson, an MW and author of two cutting-edge books on the subject of Burgundy, was recently in Australia to judge at the Rutherglen Wine Show. While admitting he hadn’t possibly tasted the best of them, he said that those he tried hadn’t ‘specifically recalled Burgundy’ for him. ‘They have been vibrant, interesting pinot noirs in their own right, which don’t particularly take me to any village in Burgundy. As more and more of these wines get produced, they will surely acquire their own identities’, he said.

Len Evans agrees, saying that nothing we are producing today approaches anything of the glory of Burgundy at its best, in any way, shape or form. ‘Why would we want to be replicas of Burgundy instead of making glorious wines in our own right? Just as we make glorious cabernets and glorious shirazes in our own right, so we want to make glorious pinots in our own right which are nothing to do with Burgundy’, he argues.

In Hanson’s words, ‘In different countries which are now making a success of making pinot noir, we are now getting an expression of fruit which is lively and attractive with less denseness and a texture and a mouthfeel which recalls the silkiness and the balance we find in Burgundy. And in different countries and in different sites we are discovering the best places for pinot noir and the best clones for the production of these wines. But don’t let’s get impatient with it. There are many more really good pinot noirs made in Australia than there were ten years ago. That’s surely good enough, especially when your remember that the history of Burgundy dates back to AD 312 and that it was between 600 and 800 years ago that some of the best sites were being identified.’

As for the proliferation of ‘fruitless, weedy and brown’ pinot noirs which Hanson has unearthed on this trip to Australia, he says our winemakers are really missing the golden opportunity. ‘Grenache and shiraz are ideal blending partners with under-ripe pinot noir and would give middle palate, fruit and roundness and would help to keep them attractive and fresh. Australian blenders might be able to come up with something even more appropriate to create some very consumer-friendly wines from those I presently cannot drink with pleasure’, he suggests. ‘Nobody is better equipped to do this than Australians are.’

As for me? I now believe several makers in Australia and New Zealand are really on the scent for true pinot noir and can’t tell you how impatient I am to discover where it’s leading.

Jeremy Oliver’s Top Ten Southern Hemisphere Pinot Noirs

Ata Rangi

A superbly structured pinot with layers of fruit-derived complexity and concentration, finishing silky-smooth and supple. A truly magnificent wine from NZ’s Martinborough region.

Bannockburn

Sumptuous, spicy pinot noir from Garry Farr, who deploys a significant degree of whole bunch fermentation to achieve the depth of fruit and fine grade of tannins his wines are renowned for.

Bass Phillip Premium

Australia’s most statuesque and Burgundian pinot noir, capable of evolving extraordinarily complex gamey and autumnal flavours. About as hand-made as pinot can become, with a richness and mouthfeel reflective of the meanest of cropping levels.

Bindi

Stellar, full-bodied pinot noir with a dancer’s touch, grown in a heat-trap site near Gisborne. Suited to cellaring, with a core of spicy, wild cherry and plum-like fruit, revealing delicious musky undertones.

Dry River

Wild, spicy, full-flavoured and full-bodied pinot noir with wonderful richness and a firm, clearly-defined tannic backbone. Made by research scientist Neil McCallum with fruit from his cool-climate vineyard in the Martinborough region of NZ.

Fromms Reserve

Exciting, racy pinot with all the bells and whistles. Arresting, concentrated, low-cropped fruit is matured in the best oak money can buy, and plenty of it. This almost exaggerated and showy wine manages to keep an excellent balance. One of the very best.

Giesen Reserve

From the cooler NZ region of Canterbury comes this supple and crafted pinot, with wet earth and spicy wild berry flavours. Its firm, fine tannins and succulent mouthfeel of cherry/plum fruit are reminiscent of Volnay in southern Burgundy.

Giaconda

Very rare, very complex and spicy pinot noir with remarkably intense fruit flavours and a charming tendency to become complex and gamey after several years in the bottle.

Martinborough Vineyard Reserve

The benchmark Kiwi pinot noir, a full orchestra wine which epitomises winemaker Larry McKenna’s ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ philosophy towards the grape. There is no better southern hemisphere pinot noir to cellar.

Mount Mary

The benchmark Yarra Valley pinot noir, with a long and proven track record in the cellar. John Middleton’s vineyard of many clones provides pure, intense pinot noir fruit which develops wonderful richness and character with age. Please login to post comment