Riding on the Grape’s Back

There’s a song that says that you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone. Shiraz is a bit like that. Thanks to the chardonnay boom of the early ‘eighties, shiraz almost became extinct as a quality Australian red wine grape. Little did we know at the time – self included – the magnitude of the crime we perpetrated, as vineyard after vineyard fell victim to the jagged edge of the chain saw. Faithful gnarled old shiraz vines were lopped by the acre, to be re-grafted or re-planted with chardonnay, of which, oddly enough, we now have a glut it would take you days to swim across.

It has only just dawned on most people just what an irreplaceable loss shiraz would be. The point is that on a collective basis, Australian wine lost the plot. Instead of trying to win the world with wines of unique Australian flavour and style, we concentrated too long on imitating what other countries already have. Perhaps too much attention was paid to claret-like blends of cabernet sauvignon and merlot, sparkling wines based on pinot noir and chardonnay, and now dry red burgundy styles made from pinot noir, instead of Australian classics like shiraz, riesling, fortified muscats and tokays.

The advances Australia has made in these and other styles in indisputable, but what could we have been achieved if shiraz had only received its fair share of attention?

“It won’t sell in the States”, they said five years ago. With the gung-ho attitude of most companies trying to secure that market, it’s a wonder we sold anything there. But the Yanks are beginning to get a taste for it.

Top European palates have always rated Australian shiraz as one of the world’s most individual, most definitive wines. One of France’s best palates, Gerard Jaboulet, of Paul Jaboulet, the great Rhone Valley producers of shiraz, is convinced in the quality of our local version. He enthuses about its flavours, its fruit and its character.

Oddly enough, it’s possibly thanks to Jaboulet and those like him – including the English wine writers Hugh Johnston, Jancis Robinson and the like – that shiraz is now getting the attention it once had and currently deserves. It’s like the home-grown actor or singer who is never really given respect until having proved a success overseas. Shiraz is part of the Australian cultural cringe.

Having said that, shiraz is unquestionably the red wine grape that held our wine industry together for more than a century. Found wherever vineyards are planted, shiraz is used prolifically to make both red table wines and fortified styles. It is still the most widely-planted of the quality red wine grapes in Australia, even though its popularity took a severe beating with the ‘white-wine revival’ of the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties.

Uncompromising fruit, richness, spiciness and outright flavour typifies good Australian shiraz. Rarely a wine for wimps, they say, it challenges all but the richest, most intense foods. Old-fashioned shirazes may smell of cowsheds; central Victorian shirazes of sneezy black pepper. New-fashioned shirazes can be doctored with vanillin American oak; old Barossa shirazes endowed with the richness and softness of the finest velvet.

Made with new equipment and knowledge, modern shirazes are more elegant, stylish and restrained, although the grape’s unique red berry and spicy fruit flavours are both retained and enhanced. However Australian shiraz still has the fruit flavour, tannin and structure to demand at least a five year spell in a cellar to cool its heels prior to consumption.

Foreigners are finding these qualities, which we have taken for granted for years, attractive and to their liking. And now we Australians are taking a second look.

I’m now going to talk about my favourite shirazes, which I present in no particular order. First to mind comes the incredible, expensive, rare and aged Lindemans Hunter River Burgundy 1965, a wine which epitomises everything everyone ever smitten by a Hunter red lusts after. It’s perfect, with all the class possible in a mature red drinking at its peak. I recommend this wine without qualification, but its understandably exotic price earmarks it for special occasions only. In fact, the mere opening of a bottle signifies a special event.

At the more affordable end of the spectrum is the sensational Wynns Coonawarra Hermitage 1988, a remarkable wine not only for its almost insultingly cheap asking price. It’s richly-flavoured, superbly textured and supple, with the spicy berry fruit only possible from a top year at a great vineyard. We’re all lucky that seeing Wynns made so much of it they err every year towards the conservative side of pricing. I fear we’ll wake up one day and it will be twice as much.

Back to the premium end for a moment. Australia’s most feted shiraz is Grange Hermitage, of which the current release is the 1984 vintage, an exemplary Grange. Its intense, rich and spicy fruit has huge length and weight, augmented by the generous extent of creamy oak maturation characters. Typical Grange earthiness, chocolate and ripe berry fruit flavours are evident on the palate, with a perfectly-balanced complement of powerful tannin. It will live long and proud, for at least two decades. What a wine!

Those wishing for it but unable to meet the price required for Grange can be more than satisfied with Henschke’s Hill of Grace, a remarkable shiraz made from a vineyard in the north-eastern slopes of the Barossa ranges. It’s intense, jammy and full, made to last the distance. The Mount Edelston red, another Henschke shiraz, is marginally lighter, and more approachable while young. Both are wonderful reds, priced realistically.

Another full-flavoured shiraz is that of Cape Mentelle, from the Margaret River area of Western Australia. It’s big, brassy and alcoholic, with the depth and balance to last for decades. Big spicy, earthy fruit is perfectly handled by new oak, a treatment more commonly in our recent past reserved only for cabernet sauvignon. Shiraz has returned as a priority for our winemakers.

A medium-weight wine to try is made by Mitchells at Clare in Western Australia. It’s labelled Peppertree, form the vineyard of that name. Definitive spicy, peppery shiraz, it’s affordable and distinctive – full of uncomplicated, obvious pleasure. Put it with a rack of lamb and see what I mean.

In Australia’s cooler wine regions further south, shiraz makes a wine with far more spice and black-pepper character, epitomised by Jasper Hill, Mount Langi Ghiran, Craiglee and Knights in Victoria, and Houghtons and Plantaganet in the Frankland River area of Western Australia.

Some wineries are releasing special shiraz wines made from genuinely ancient vineyards. Chateau Tahbilk bottles their ‘old vines’ shiraz in a special label, a copy of their original a century ago. Laira at Coonawarra have their ‘Original Vineyard Shiraz’, a smooth, concentrated wine of power and finesse, and St Hallet in the Barossa Valley release a well-priced attraction called ‘Old Block’ Shiraz. If our pinot noir vines improve with age in the way these have, we may yet challenge the French!

I am unquestionably optimistic of shiraz’s future in Australia. Once the winemakers and the public believe that any inferiority complex is purely in their own minds, we can all get on with the serious business at hand – enjoying Australia’s unique and special red wine. Maybe there won’t be enough left to send overseas after all. Please login to post comment