The New White Wine of the Nineties

It came as such as a surprise I had to ask him to say it again. So he did. ‘It would be considered rather gauche’, said the snappily-dressed young blade to the left of my wife, ‘to order chardonnay at a restaurant. It would be too boring and predictable to be true.’

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Although I cannot entirely agree with every ounce of the sentiment, it was music to my ears and no doubt a Halleluiah Chorus to the likes of John Vickery, John Wade, Tim Knappstein, David Wynn and to the countless other winemaking champions of the unsung and unflattered noble variety of riesling.

Ever since the first large production runs of chardonnay by companies like Mildara and Wynns in the early ’80s, both from Coonawarra material, the writing was on the wall for riesling. The emergence of chardonnay in quantity also coincided with the birth of the modern wine marketer, exemplified by Mark Cashmore, whose tireless efforts in marketing the very oaky Richmond Grove how did he ever make that much of it? introduced the grape to thousands.

Caught up in the chardonnay hype, people were attracted to the concept of wood in wine, regardless of whether or not you could actually taste any fruit. There was the excitement of having something new to put on the table, a white wine without the tartness of young riesling or young semillon. The richness and roundness of the early chardonnays, which we now recognise were hardly made with any knowledge of the variety, presented a new, instantly appealing alternative to the Australian palate.

Riesling was ill equipped to deal with the tidal wave. If you’re going to conquer someone, it’s best to confuse them first and chardonnay’s onslaught certainly exposed how bewildering it had become to buy riesling.

What was it? A crouchen from Clare, a semillon from the Hunter, an unholy blend of doradillo, palomino, sultana or pedro or, perhaps the real McCoy, which in Australia was given a prefix which made it sound like a European generic? To buy a riesling it had to be called Rhine Riesling! That may have been OK for some of us in the trade, but you can hardly blame the public for voting with their feet and choosing chardonnay, which, most of the time, was actually what it claimed to be.

Even though the standard of average commercial chardonnay has doubtless improved from the over-ripe, fat and splintery bottlings of the early and mid ’80s, the wines are becoming more and more the same. We could solve a lot of export marketing problems by batching the whole lot together and bottling them off as required under whatever label is most successfully wooing them back in the Old Dart. Would anybody notice, provided the price was right?

Has commercial chardonnay had its day? Do we have too much of the stuff? What about the hundreds if acres of the stuff we are presently putting into the ground?

Whatever you think about it, Australia will always make commercial chardonnay and lots of it. It has a place. The reasons why we drink it have changed, but its ripe, tropical and stonefruit flavours; creamy grip and texture; vanillin and charry oak and soft dry finish are well suited to the taste of many of us and the foods we serve it with.

And provided we retain something of a quality edge above our new and all-too-frequently Australian-assisted competitors from France, Hungary, South Africa, Moldova, Spain, Chile, Argentina and Italy, our commercial chardonnays should be set for a long and successful reign in premium world markets.

Unlike many representatives from our larger wine companies, which either have their own winemaking ventures in Europe such as Southcorp Wines and BRL Hardy, or who are European-owned like Orlando Wyndham, I am greatly concerned at the long-term viability of the present drive towards wine export, driven by Australian chardonnay.

Around forty Australian winemakers helped to improve the standard of European wine during the 1993 vintage; some high-profile like Geoff Merrill, some unheard of outside their own circles. Each has the potential to train a dozen or more to adopt their techniques.

The standard of cheap Chilean, South African and Argentinian wine is improving at a pace. I have watched agape as aloof, head-in-the-sands Australians have dismissed their quality, oblivious to the fact that only twenty years ago we had hardly heard the word ‘chardonnay’, let alone knew it was something you drank.

Vines are in the ground for a very long time. Twenty years is nothing.

Cheap labour costs and subsidies still enable certain countries to export wine cheaper than we can bottle air. Workers in Moldova are paid weekly with what we would spend on a decent club sandwich and a boutique beer. Our interest rates are rising and so is our dollar. We are not alone in this world.

The Poms might be itching for a change. Recent and reliable word is that Australian wines are being taken off the shelves they have dominated and that it’s simply not enough for a wine to have an Australian label for it to sell any more. This is unconfirmed and anecdotal at best, but what it represents would only be ignored by a fool.

There is no reason why the wines to be released by Penfolds from their joint venture in Moldova and the south-west of France will not appeal to English consumers at least as much as the commercial labels sold there by Southcorp Wines. Should the Australian wines become more expensive, why shouldn’t the English wine buyers, whose consumption of Australian wine is second only to ours, prefer the Moldovan or French alternative? How will that affect Australian wine?

Whatever way you look at it, Australian wine has become popular overseas because of its edge in consistency, flavour, cleanliness, price and presentation. With Australian help, the Europeans are bridging most of these gaps, while the rest of the ‘New World’ is doing it by themselves. We must ahead of the rest, especially in quality. The alternative is that we Australians will be soon able to enjoy even more of our own cheap chardonnay at a price marginally more expensive than milk.

That’s one aspect of the chardonnay vs. riesling debate. At present, before the emergence of any potential new lake of Australian chardonnay, you have to question which of the varieties offers best value for money.

Ignoring the increasing number of truly brilliant Australian chardonnays exemplified by Bannockburn, Leeuwin Estate, Giaconda and Tyrrells Vat 47, which are made in a traditional fashion to acquire complexity and secondary flavours, I’d rather spend any amount up to $15 on riesling any time. Choose from the unbelievably aromatic wines of Tasmania to the limey styles of Eden Valley, the power and elegance of Clare, the sheer intensity of those from the Lower Great Southern in WA and the richness and roundness of the dozens of good rieslings from the warmer South Australian areas around the Barossa Valley and Southern Vales.

Stack these up against the sameness and soullessness of similarly-priced chardonnays and the chardonnays do not compete. Riesling’s lack of popularity has put true classics and bargains in the bottle for around $10. Just try the latest from Leo Buring and Mitchelton and see.

I would be happy to dismiss all but a few of the countless unwooded chardonnays to the scrapheap. David Wynn introduced them to Australia ten years ago, but most exist simply because of the exorbitant cost of new oak. Most are bland, boring wines whose shortness of the palate amply serves to confirm why the French gave them small new oak in the first place. Given that most cost between $10 and $15 per bottle, if you want to drink unwooded white, open a riesling instead.

Time, of course, will tell. All the devotees of riesling ask is that the grape be given a fair chance. And if recent industry-based moves to retain the use of its name as a generic label succeed, it won’t have a hope in hell. Please login to post comment