Pinot Noir in Australia

The more we learn about it, the more difficult it becomes to agree what good pinot noir should taste like. Some outstanding pinot noirs have already been made in Australia’s infancy with the grape. Wines from Diamond Valley, Mount Mary, Bannockburn, Hickinbotham, Mountadam, Moss Wood, Dromana Estate and Coldstream Hills come to mind. All have some aspect or other of what we beings who are supposedly ‘in the know’ call ‘pinot noir character’. But what on earth is that?

Most winemakers agree that the role model for good pinot noir dry red is Burgundy, but that’s about as broad a comment as saying you want to record a track that sounds like the Beatles or that your favourite car is a Toyota. French burgundies are about as variable and as inconsistent as any wine can be. Many are ordinary, thin and diseased. A small proportion are unquestionably, but inconsistently brilliant.

Ian Hickinbotham of Hickinbotham Winemakers suggests that the judges at wine shows, who have the power to influence the direction taken by winemakers around Australia, might have their sights set a little wrong. “They give gold medals to wines which they compare to burgundies when they aren’t like them at all. Their ideas of great burgundies seem to be those made in warm years.”

Bannockburn’s straight-talking winemaker Gary Farr recognises that you will get at least five hundred different sorts of pinot as you move northwards in Burgundy from Santenay at the southern tip to the Cotes de Nuits, the segment of Burgundy north of Beaune. He predicts the same sort of variation will happen in Australia. Farr is critical, however, of those who say that lighter, thin pinot noirs are the best expression of the grape variety, suggesting that the same people might not have experienced the richer wines of the Cotes de Nuits. “They probably only drink Cotes de Beaune and Mercurey”, which generally grow lighter styles of pinot noir.”

Lindemans’ Chief Winemaker Phillip John believes that top pinots have a complexity of different flavours and associates their quality with the presence of savoury cinnamon, nutmeg aromas and complexity.

David Lance of Diamond Valley in Victoria’s Yarra Valley says there is some single element of ‘Frenchness’ missing in our pinots, but can’t put a finger on it. “It’s like an intense sweetness on the nose and palate, and we’d dearly like to get it in our wine.” He seeks to achieve intense, voluminous flavours of cherries, stewed plums and strawberries in the Diamond Valley Pinot Noir, which he argues should be relatively light in body, but not in structure. Lance emphasises that pinot noir should not be so delicate that it quickly falls apart.

Hickinbotham looks for the flavour of plum above all others, along with the characteristics of strawberry and cherry preserves. “Pinot should be full and round, with a soft middle palate, finishing with velvet-like tannins.”

These flavours and qualities haven’t appeared in Australian pinot noir overnight. Until quite recently, it was treated in the vineyard and winery just like any other red grape. However the traditional Australian winemaking techniques that were fine for cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, were found to be lacking for pinot noir, and resulted in thin, insipid light dry reds without much varietal character. Colour problems were often straightened out with the addition of up to 20 shiraz or cabernet sauvignon, the legal maximum in a wine labelled as ‘pinot noir’.

As one would expect, the pinot noir Gary Farr makes at Bannockburn, near Geelong in Victoria, is one of the fullest and most powerful in Australia. It is also and example that most resembles a northern Burgundy, but Farr isn’t satisfied he has got there yet. His Bannockburn 1987 Pinot Noir is a statuesque wine, modelled unashamedly after the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, the most pricey and sought-after of all burgundies, which happens to be as different from most French pinot noirs as Bannockburn is from most Australian. Its deep red colour, rich cherry and strawberry fruit, floral perfume, excellent use of new oak and its complexity are all favourable qualities – but they have also been evident in other Australian pinot noirs. The difference is in structure. This Bannockburn wine has the integrity to stand up and laugh at most Australian pinots – it will just be reaching middle-age as they’re checking into the retirement village.

The Diamond Valley Pinot Noir 1987 red label has a fresh cherry nose with a hint of eucalypt, which stamps it as an Australian native. It is fresh and sappy, restrained and quite lean, but should open up attractively in two to three years. It doesn’t rate quite as well as the excellent 1986 Diamond Valley Pinot Noir.

The Coldstream Hills Rising Vineyard Pinot Noir 1988 has a remarkable record on the wine show circuit. It has good complexity and varietal qualities of cherry and strawberry fruit, floral perfume and elegance. Its subtle herbaceous nature and lightness of body make it unlikely to be mistaken for a Burgundy. It should develop well over the next two to three years but has a questionable long-term future. We will have to wait and see.

One of the most individual pinots yet seen from Australia is Hickinbotham’s Geelong Pinot Noir 1988, which impresses for its remarkable depth of fruit and structure. Surprisingly powerful plummy, cherry flavours combine with an excellent complement of tannin and acidity creating a firm grip and mouthfeel and the expectation of a longer cellar life. Poles apart from the Coldstream Hills in style, it presents another set of pinot noir’s qualities.

In the end it becomes a question of which style you prefer – whether or not you buy pinot noir to drink young or to cellar. Both have qualities that resemble Burgundian wine, both are also distinctly Australian. In three years time, however, I think the Hickinbotham will be the better wine.

Mountadam’s 1988 Pinot Noir is another stunner. Rich, spicy and quite voluptuous, it has cherry/stewed fruit and gamey flavours. The palate is soft and super-rich, with great depth of fruit and charry oak, a rival to the Bannockburn and just as interesting. See how it cellars. I expect it to do well.

One particularly promising wine is the 1987 Pinot Noir of Wignalls, near Mount Barker, Western Australia. It has many attributes of quality pinot noir, with cherry/strawberry/spicy fruit, although its palate is marginally short and lacking in depth. However, seeing it is an early wine made from young vines, it represents quite an achievement. Look out for Wignalls in future.

Now that Australians have taken pinot noir seriously for nearly a decade, trends are beginning to emerge. Today you can buy roughly two types of pinot – cool-climate wines purporting complexity and elegance, or fruity, sweet jammy light reds that cost a lot less. Admirers rate the former as the most exciting of all wines, while detractors like myself rate the latter as nothing more than rather nasty alcoholic cordial.

One of the first Australian pinots to win renown and to be likened to a French burgundy by some, was the 1976 Tyrrells. Although superior to any Australian pinot noir made till that time, it would hardly get a glance amid the current crop of premium Australian pinot noir which with only the odd exception are made in the cooler southern regions of the country. It stands to reason- Burgundy is one of France’s cooler wine areas.

Some very fine dry red wines have been made from pinot noir in other Australian regions, some from warm climates like the Hunter Valley. Most are justly regarded as quality red wines; few however as classic examples of premium pinot noir.

Ian Hickinbotham says that perhaps we’re getting decent pinot onto the market just in time. He puts pinot quality down to where the grapes come from. “History tells us quite clearly that you can’t grown pinot noir in other than cool climates. Warm climates can’t achieve the colour and flavours – and what more do you want?”

Hickinbotham links warmer climates to wines of high pH, a wine measure of low acidity and a definite no-no with pinot noir. He argues that warm-climate Australian pinots are often similar in this respect to French burgundies in poor years, for in wet years grapes accumulate high levels of malic acid, which after a secondary or malo-lactic fermentation leads directly to decreased acidity.

Winemakers now concur that pinot noir clearly needs to be treated differently in the vineyard and in all aspects in the cellar. Australia’s best pinot noirs are now being made with a combination of traditional Burgundian techniques and contemporary Australian winemaking knowledge and practice, which is at least the equal of that anywhere. Winemakers are returning to harvest their pinot noir by hand, using some whole bunches of grapes in the fermentation, trying warmer fermentations and are applying a more critical use of various specific new types of French oak cask for the maturation and fermentation of their pinot noir. Their attention to detail, hygiene and the constant monitoring and evaluation of their wines in the laboratory remain.

Techniques of this nature are proving successful. More wine companies in Australia and the United States – in California and Oregon, are beginning to recognise it, and the standard of their pinot noir is steadily improving. Ian Hickinbotham believes that his son, Stephen, and John Wade, formerly of Wynns Coonawarra and now at Plantaganet in Western Australia, pioneered the use in Australia of another traditional French technique, of leaving the finished fermented wine in contact with the grape skins after the fermentation for an extended period. This greatly changes and enhances the tannin structure of the wine, creating the ‘velvet tannins’ that Ian Hickinbotham believes essential in premium pinot noir.

Gary Farr is adamant that yield is a key factor, saying that most Australian vineyards over-crop their vines and as a result fail to achieve the ripeness required to make a classic pinot noir. “Lots of people who crop four to five tonnes per acre can make better wine with lower yields.”

One hopes that pinot noir is here to stay. However, as happened with chardonnay, the enduringly fashionable burgundian white wine grape, it will be some time before most of our winemakers come to grips with it. “It’s inevitable that there will be made a range of pinot noir across the board in Australia. Nobody can say we can’t fit in somewhere”, says Farr.

The shortfall between those few wineries who have advanced with pinot and the majority who still fail to understand it is large indeed, but thankfully, is beginning to close. But the fact remains – in 1990 if you want to drink top pinot noir, Australian, French or American, then you are going to have to pay for it. Please login to post comment