The Forgotten Grape

Now as the calendar approaches seasons festive, it’s time for the buyer of quality sparkling wines to make the annual choice between Australian and French. Ten years ago it was easy – French all the way. It wasn’t much more expensive, then, than a decent bottle of red, around $15 per bottle. We Australians rose to a lofty third on the per capita list of global Champagne drinkers. No wonder the Champagne houses adored us!

There wasn’t much of a local alternative. Australian makers of sparkling wine were just getting enough of the classic champagne varieties of pinot noir and chardonnay through the pipeline to put out some early trial batches, of which Seaview’s Edmond Mazure was a leading light, as were a number of experimental Seppelt vintage wines. From vine cutting to sufficiently matured bottled fizz takes around eight years minimum, so whatever was on the market at that time had to have been planted in the mid-seventies, when most Australian makers of sparkling wine were determined to prove the rest of the world wrong with the insouciance and magic of our home-grown sparkling ondenc and trebbiano.

Four years ago the choice was becoming a tough one. You could still buy Champagne for around $25-$30 from some aggressively-promoted brands, but for about $15 less than the average French, quality sparkling wines were beginning to appear under names like Seppelt Salinger, Wilson’s, Hardy’s Classique Cuvee, Yalumba ‘D’, Croser and Chateau Remy Vintage Brut. France was still streeting the field for quality, but Australia was putting together a score based on genuine value for money.

Today the equation has shifted again. You won’t see a decent bottle of French for much under $45 unless someone is quitting stock or else using it as a door-opener to a bottleshop. Champagne sales – by which I am referring to the real thing – have slowed to a dribble where once they frothed away almost unabated. Today the top Australians are priced in the $20-$25 area, and where once they tasted like poor cousins to the average French, now they barely need the comparison.

To think that the tables have turned to this extent in just a few years speaks mountains for the ability of the Australian wine industry to perform. One wonders just how good Australian sparkling wine might just become if the rate of improvement continues like this for another couple of decades.

I have yet to meet the maker of Australian sparkling wine who has said he is out to copy Champagne. The more you know about Champagne, the less the point of it all. Yet by learning from the Champenois techniques, especially relating to handling and blending, we will make better Australian sparkling wine. And occasionally, just occasionally, something will pop up from Australia that looks more French than the Arc de Triomphe.

Let’s spend a moment examining each of the dozen leading examples of Australian sparkling wine.

The Adelaide Hills and nearby High Eden Valley and Barossa Ranges are home to four of the best. Petaluma’s Croser deserves to be the most highly rated of these, interestingly enough because of all the leaders, this is the least French and most Australian. Croser is a delicate, fine style, in which the nutty, floral chardonnay is generally dominant. Croser uses pinot noir to contribute length, balance and persistence. The currently-available 1990 is the best yet, stronger in structure than its predecessors, with typically crackly effervescence and a perfect ‘crown’ on pouring.

Wilson’s Pinot Noir Chardonnay, which should continue after the tragic death of its founder, Ian Wilson, is a more generous, fruity wine than the Croser, with good length and acidity. It is characteristically creamy, yeasty and fresh. Yalumba’s ‘D’ is very different, with a rich creamy/buttery malolactic character which stands it apart from most in Australia. It also boasts exemplary yeastiness, loads of interesting characters and excellent length. Definitely a food wine.

But the most individual of the Australian premium sparkling wines is unquestionably the Mountadam Pinot Noir Chardonnay. It’s given even a greater malolactic influence than the ‘D’, is distinctively toffee-like, incredibly rich and complex. More aldehydic than any other Australian premium, it is an immense wine that you will either warm to or not. There are no inbetweens.

Katnook Estate’s Chardonnay Brut Coonawarra, SA is a fine and refined blanc de blancs style; elegant and restrained, and given its age of five years, nicely rounded, toasty and developed. The other blanc de blancs straight chardonnay to watch for is Chateau Remy’s 1986 Vintage Pyrenees, Vic, a significantly more powerful, rich and meaty wine than the Katnook.

Apart from Heemskerk’s very fine Jansz, a complex, complete wine with brilliant integration between fruit and yeast, grown and made in the Piper’s River area of northern Tasmania, the other leading Australian sparkling wines are Victorian. Jansz’ quality owes much to Louis Roederer’s shareholding in Heemskerk and the present 1990 vintage – a fine wine – is merely an indication of what is likely to emerge in the future.

Based in the Yarra Valley, Domaine Chandon is an immense project dedicated to producing premium methode champenoise. It turned the corner with the 1989 wines – the 89.1 being a classy blend of pinot noir and chardonnay, the 89.3 a terrific straight pinot or blanc de noirs. Chandon’s approach appears to first imagine the perfect sparkling wine, to source or create the requisite components of the blends, then to construct the blend itself. Things are shaping very nicely indeed.

Cope-Williams is a small operation based at Romsey, Victoria. Like the other wineries nearby, it labels its sparkling wine with the regional name of ‘Macedon’, giving it a plausible and unique name other than ‘Champagne’ to promote. The Cope-Williams style is long, restrained and elegant, making the most of the intensely flavoured regional pinot noir and chardonnay. Much of the winery’s early potential is realised with the excellent current release. Although its present production is minuscule, the first release of Hanging Rock’s own Macedon only furthers the district’s cause. It is the nearest Australian drink this critic has seen to Bollinger.

And to complete the journey – the flagship sparkling wines of two of the industry’s major producers, Seppelt and Yellowglen itself part of Mildara Blass. Seppelt’s Salinger settled into a more elegant style with the 1988 vintage and now appears headed along a very successful international course. Its popularity in Europe is all the confirmation of its quality you could require.

Yellowglen’s Cuvee Victoria was entirely made from fruit grown at its own Smythesdale vineyard near Ballarat for the first time in 1988. A gorgeous wine given a suitably romantic look, it’s pure strawberries and cream. The 1989 vintage, shortly to appear, is allegedly as seductive as its predecessor. Please login to post comment