Sparkling Burgundy article

Back in March 1893, a French winemaker by the name of Edmond Mazure, resident at the time at Auldana in the city of Adelaide, made a wine from the Champagne varieties of pinot noir and pinot meunier which sparkled. But this was a wine with a difference: it kicked, it foamed and it sparkled; and it was red. Australia had its very own sparkling wine.

Hot on the heels of Mazure’s bombshell was another sparkling red, made by Hans Irvine at Great Western in Victoria. Irvine’s Sparkling Burgundy was given a commendation at the Melbourne Wine Show of 1894 in the class for Australian sparkling wine. Twelve months later a class had been initiated for ‘sparkling wine other than champagne’ at the Adelaide Wine Show, which was convincingly won by Edmond Mazure and the Auldana Wine Company.

More than a century later, now that more wineries make Australian sparkling red than ever before, the wine sells out like hotcakes, Yet somehow it’s still to establish broad-spectrum credibility as a serious wine. No other wine quite polarises a discussion like sparkling red, between winemakers, writers, retailers or customers. You either love it or you hate it; it’s as simple as that.

Its incredible difference from anything else works in the favour of sparkling red. There’s such a sameness found in so many wines made today. How much chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon can you actually drink? In different wine countries there’s a resurgence of interest in traditional indigenous wines. The US is rediscovering its zinfandel, South Africa its pinotage. The French are rediscovering their Rhone Valley varietal wines from shiraz and grenache, while Australians are electing sparkling red with the vote that really counts the most: from the hip pocket.

Like a brand-new Morgan sportscar which looks the same today as when it was first given four wheels in the 1930s, sparkling red is all about inherited knowledge. That’s the view of Robert Rocky O’Callaghan, whose Rockford Black Shiraz is right up amongst the very best of Australia’s sparkling red wine.

‘Black Shiraz is a living example of history’, he says. ‘My knowledge of the wine was given me by people who made it in the 1920s and who died in the 1960s. It was handed to them by people who made in the 1890s and died in the 1930s. My father worked for Seppelt and I grew up on the Seppelt sparkling red wines of the 1940s and 1950s.
‘This wine is a reflection of that. I’ve tried to capture a feeling, a spirit and a taste that belongs to wines and winemakers of another year.’

Fresh, well-cellared bottles of the great Seppelt sparkling burgundies from the late ‘forties, ‘fifties and early ‘sixties still provide an incomparable Australian wine experience. Their mousse has usually lost much of its effervescence, but there’s still a lazy bubble or two to meander slowly upwards from the bottom of the glass. Their appearance is usually a brooding tawny brown, their bouquet complex, earthy and ethereal, with mushroomy, tarry and spicy undertones. Their tannins soften and become finer and although usually bottled with a distinctive sweetness, the wines tend to dry out with substantial maturity. They acquire the charm and fascination of a lively, active senior citizen not only in possession of all the faculties, but a few minor eccentricities as well.

At release Rockford’s Black Shiraz is deeply flavoured, earthy and highly spiced, loaded with brambly blackberry flavours and chocolates and a youthfulness that belies its approximate age of five years at release. It’s made from a ‘rolling’ blend of base wines matured in Rockford’s large old 500-gallon vats for at least three years. After the second fermentation the wine is given another year’s maturation in the cellars. Other leading makers of sparkling red such as Seppelt begin the second fermentation with younger wine, before leaving the wine in contact with decaying yeast cells in the bottle for several years prior to their wine’s release. Some wines, like the Show Sparkling Shiraz from Seppelt’s Great Western vineyards, receive about a decade’s maturation with the dead yeast cells, contributing significantly to their creamy, earthy and often mushroomy flavours.

At last count, Rockford makes shiraz from 41 different Barossa vineyards whose crop might be anywhere between half and ten tonnes. Each batch, no matter how small, is made separately before those with the most rich and ripe flavours are set aside for future releases of Black Shiraz.

Ian Loftus, a Melbourne-based publicist, whose Australian National Sparkling Red Days have done more to focus attention on this wine than any other promotion, says: ‘Australian sparkling red has proven itself a great drinking style and a great food wine. It’s also one of the most adaptable wines of the world; it’s surprising what it can go with-all sorts of varieties and flavours, spices, odd things and eclectic things. It certainly matches traditional foods-there’s hardly anything it doesn’t match.’ From kangaroo to vindaloo, from shiraz sorbet to eggs Benedict, I’ve tasted it with nearly everything. And given a mixture of sound commonsense and just the right amount of adventure and risk, I certainly agree.

It’s such an individual drink it’s almost impossible to put Australian sparkling red into a box. Enjoy it the way your own palate tells you to, before, during or after a meal if you please, breakfast, lunch or dinner. You may prefer to chill it or to drink it at room temperature, although be careful not to chill the life out of more complex, older wines. It breaks all the rules, so it’s difficult to make them up for Australian sparkling red.

A selection of Australia’s finest Sparkling Reds:

All Saints Sparkling Cabernet Sauvignon $20
Rich, sweetly ripe and very approachable cabernet sauvignon from Victoria’s northeast.

Anderson Sparkling Shiraz $23
Fine-grained, spicy and leaner wine in a traditional style.

Charles Melton Sparkling Red $28
Thick and spicy, from low-yielding old Barossa shiraz vineyards.

Morris Sparkling Durif $17
Ripe and old-fashioned, earthy and very brambly, made from a traditional northeast Victorian red variety.

Mount Pleasant Sparkling Pinot Noir $16
Soft, lighter sparkling red with attractive earthy complexity, from pinot noir.

Peter Rumball Sparkling Shiraz $22
Chunky, tannic and thickly flavoured sparkling red perfectly suited to an English breakfast.

Primo Estate Joseph Sparkling Red $45
Innovative, complex and simply delicious if hard to find wine from ripe, warm area fruit and given complexity from old bottles of Australian dry red and vintage port!

Rockford Black Shiraz $45
Fresh, youthful, vibrantly flavoured and complex wine for early drinking or long-term maturation.

Seppelt Original Sparkling Shiraz $15
Fruity, complex, super-smooth and refined, drinking beautifully at release.

Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz $50
The benchmark sparkling red: a superbly matured treat of simply delicious fruit and earthy complexity.

The Wilson Vineyard Hippocrene $20
A rustic, earthy Clare Valley blend of shiraz with cabernet sauvignon and malbec.

Yalumba Cuvee Two Cabernet Sauvignon $22
Ripe, thickly textured cassis-like Barossa cabernet with just a splash of shiraz. Please login to post comment