The ‘A’ Eleven of Australian Wine

Give or take a few few arguments, most people would broadly agree on an Australian First XI of table wine; our best team. Their names are largely household words. When listed together it is almost impossible not to imagine them lined up along a sideboard, corks removed, awaiting their turn to pour from the pavillion end at a luncheon to end all tastings.

For openers: seductive, opulent chardonnays from Leeuwin Estate and Bannockburn. To test the conditions for red: the refined, sophisticated duo of Mount Mary Quintet and Moss Wood Cabernet. To firmly exploit any early inroads: Petaluma Coonawarra and Penfolds Bin 707 – two cabernet-based wines of penetration and persistence. To robustly challenge the middle order: the eclectic and not a little old-fashioned Henschke duo of Hill of Grace and Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon. Then, to pound any remaining enemy into submission, the heavy artillery: Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Penfolds Grange. Finally, to romance over a successful day’s play: the concentrated, unctuous and beguiling De Bortoli Noble One.

Try buying them and discover how scarce they have become. Plead with your retailer for a dozen Petaluma, beg him for a six-pack of Cyril and bribe him for a single bottle of Grange. Now that the rest of the world wants them too, they become scarcer than ever each passing year.

So which are the up and comers, the future claimants to a position in the front line? Which is the ‘A’ Team of Australian wine?

The ‘A’ Team of Australian Wine

Bass Phillip Premium Pinot Noir

Given that his sumptuous ‘Reserve’ wine is a mere – but especially admirable – matter of his best single barrel in certain seasons, it’s fair to judge the abilities of Phillip Jones by his second label, the Bass Phillip Premium. This shouldn’t trouble him, since it is becoming more concentrated and sweet with each passing vintage. The 1994 wine is typically complex and autumnal, with pristine delivery of fruit. If anyone in Australia looks like tossing the gauntlet down in front of the world’s serious pinot vineyards, it looks like Phillip Jones will. Made and grown near Leongatha in Gippsland, Victoria.


Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon

Hardly a newcomer to Austraian wine drinkers, the Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon is working a steady progression towards the top, with a style reminiscent of better Californian cabernet sauvignon. When experienced hands at wine options find subtlety of fruit reminiscent of Bordeaux, yet a firmness and ripeness more Australian, the preferred play is to guess Californian. The Mentelle wines are now finding more sweetness and fineness of tannins. You could say their quality today is more deserving of their reputation of the previous decade. One of several Margaret River cabernets worthy of top honours.

Cullen Reserve Cabernet Merlot

Silky smoothness meets incredible concentration and prominent, but balanced oak influence. She with the baton is Vanya Cullen, assembling an orchestra of perfect pitch and complex harmony. Sometimes a wine reminds you that to many, winemaking is art. Such is the Cullen Reserve Cabernet Merlot, a deep, alluring red of purity and longevity. Yet another brilliant wine from Margaret River, WA.

Domaine Chandon Vintage Brut

It’s high time a sparkling wine made it to top rank and my money is on this multi-state, multi-regional, multi-varietal blend fashioned by Wayne Donaldson, Tony Jordan and crew at Domaine Chandon in the Yarra Valley. Around 80 of this brand’s production finds its way under this label, which has improved almost tangibly every year since its first stand-out blend of 1990. I know it has met with considerable rapport in parts foreign, since every time I talk to Tony Jordan comes a comment through clenched teeth that yet another major export order has been turned down.

Grosset Polish Hill Riesling

The great strides taken by makers of chardonnay in recent years have seen it move to the top of the quality tree, but people like Jeffrey Grosset are finding ways of making riesling truly competitive again. The Polish Hill Riesling is an incredibly concentrated, pristine riesling with benchmark lime-juice and lemon flavours. Its acidity cuts like a rapier through rich, creamy cuisine and helps it to mature in the bottle for long periods. Australia’s modern-day riesling benchmark.


Henschke Mount Edelstone

With the rapidly escalating prices of Henschke’s Hill of Grace, it’s little wonder that more attention than ever is being paid to its red stablemate, Mount Edelstone. Originally made using fruit from several vineyards and with varying proportions of cabernet sauvignon, Mount Edelstone was historically judged and priced on a par with Hill of Grace. It has been a single vineyard wine for some years now, made exlusively with shiraz. As such, its style has developed to resemble a sweeter, more approachable version of Hill of Grace. The vines are seventy-eight years old, are not irrigated and are cropped at only 6.0 tonnes per hectare. Many consider it still equal in quality to the Hill.

Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot

If ever a wine was destined for greatness, this is it. Made by a master red wine maker, John Wade, who in a past winemaking life created the first Wynns John Riddoch red, the Howard Park red has performed at an exceptional level since its first vintage in 1996. Made from Mount Barker cabernet sauvignon and Margaret River merlot sourced from a small number of low-cropped vineyards, this deeply-flavoured, tannic red is given two years maturation a la Mouton-Rothschild in 100 brand new French oak cooperage, which its sheer quality of fruit handles with ease.

Jasper Hill Emily’s Paddock Shiraz Cabernet Franc

Another not inexpensive wine from a small and finite vineyard resource, this is Ron Laughton’s finest wine. Jasper Hill is one of a select few vineyards on 3.2 ha of ancient red Cambrian soils in Victoria’s Heathcote region. Shiraz – dominated, the Emily’s Paddock is an eclectic blend with about 5 cabernet franc, matured together in French oak. Jasper Hill’s other standout red, the Georgia’s Paddock Shiraz, is matured in American oak. Emily’s Paddock is sought after for it spicy, concentrated fruit and firm backbone of fine-grained tannins. It’s a cellar classic.


Parker Terra Rossa First Growth

Planted in 1985, the Parker vineyard in Coonawarra comprises 35 acres of cabernet sauvignon, 3 acres of cabernet franc, 4 acres of merlot, 4 acres of chardonnay and 3 of pinot noir. Of this yield, only around 12.5 is used for the Terra Rossa First Growth, making only 2,000 cases. The wine is not released at all if its proprietor, John Parker and winemaker Chris Cameron don’t believe it to be up to scratch, being ‘declassified’ to the vineyard’s second label, the Cabernet Sauvignon. No First Growth was released from 1992 and none will come from 1995. This sort of honesty and integrity makes a label easy to trust.

The First Growth is a fine, elegant red wine usually 85-87 cabernet sauvignon and given a large proportion of new French oak, which it handles easily. The wines have a clarity and intensity of flavour almost unrivalled on the Coonawarra strip and develop the complexity expected of a top pedigree.

Pierro Chardonnay

The benchmark operatic Australian chardonnay from the Margaret River, the Pierro Chardonnay is concentrated, luscious, creamy and spotlessly crafted, given the basic nature of the old-fashioned Burgundian techniques employed to make it. A statement in a bottle which many Australian winemakers have attempted to emulate, it’s the only true rival to Leeuwin Estate. With vintages like the 1992 and 1994 recently under his belt, winemaker and proprietor Mike Peterkin is still keeping plenty of space between himself and the pack.

Primo Estate Joseph Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Amarone

Joe Grilli has inherited the mantle of the late Steven Hickinbotham as Australia’s most innovative winemaker. The Joseph Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Amarone is a unique wine made with French varieties seen through Italian eyes; given its individuality through the typically Veronese ‘amarone’ treatment of fruit. After harvest grapes are left outside under shelters for around a week to continue to ripen and dry out before they are taken to the winery for crushing. This process fashions different flavours, suggestive of prunes and game, without compromising fruit integrity. It increases sugar concentration (and consequently, alcoholic strength) and also ripens grape tannins, creating the sort of fine-grained astringency reminiscent of the best wines of Veneto and Tuscany. The 1994 wine is a brilliant example.


Thankfully these world class Australian wines have yet to be fully appreciated by their own audience, let alone those overseas. Sure, some are more expensive than others, but with only a couple of exceptions, you can generally find them to buy and to drink. For the moment at least, we generally have most of them to ourselves.

Breakaway:

Hazel Murphy was recently presented with the 1996 McWilliams Wines Maurice O’Shea Award, the most prestigious award for an individual in Australian wine. Neither winemaker, nor grape grower, Hazel Murphy is hardly known by most Australians, yet her choice as this year’s winner has justly been greeted with broad acclaim.

As head of the Australian Wine Bureau since 1986, Hazel Murphy is the Australian wine industry’s face in Europe, which represents several of our most important export markets such as Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands. To give you an idea of her value, Australia sold 765,000 litres to the UK in 1986. By 1994/95 that figure had become 52 million litres, worth $182 million in our most important export market.

To put Australian wine directly before the UK consumer, Hazel Murphy’s office organises more than 50 major promotional events each year, including Australia Day tastings at the Lord’s Cricket Ground, the London Wine Trade Fair, the International Food Exhibition, the Hampton Court Flower Show, the Blenheim Horse Trials and a Taste of Australia magazine supplement which reached 680,000 UK readers. Hazel Murphy has also been instrumental in arranging several large tours by the UK wine trade and media to Australia.

Australian wine presently accounts for 7 of the UK market. By 2000, Hazel Murphy predicts it will represent 10. Don McWilliam, Chairman of McWilliams Wines, says that Australian wine would have to spend millions of dollars to create similar brand awareness to that developed by Hazel Murphy and her team at the Australian Wine Bureau. Please login to post comment