Tim Adams Wines

Tim Adams is anything but your average winemaker. He has increased his plantings, but only so he can further reduce his yields. He doesn’t like the results produced by wine shows, so he doesn’t enter his them. He doesn’t want his wines to get priced beyond the range of those who presently enjoy them, so he’s leaving the wine auction scene well alone. He’s got virtually everything he wants, so he doesn’t want to ‘get greedy’. Tim Adams just wants to make really good wine that people can drink and enjoy. And he is.

There has been absolutely nothing spectacular about the steady rise to prominence of the Tim Adams label. While the first Tim Adams wines date back to 1985 and a previous business partnership, his bandwagon began to roll around 1987, a year after leaving a winemaking post with the Stanley Wine Company in Clare. It was then that he really went out on his own. Adams had joined Stanley as a cellarhand in 1975, but after some extracurricular study at Charles Sturt University and the support of Clare winemaking legend Mick Knappstein, had risen to winemaker by 1982. I first met him as a tall, gangling Stanley winemaker, full of infectious enthusiasm, a year later. Nothing has changed since.

With Pam Goldsack, his partner in business and marriage, Tim Adams bought the site in Clare that has since become the winery and cellar door in January 1988. It began operating as a winery two months later. The winery now processes around 500 tonnes of fruit, about half of which goes into to Tim Adams’ own production of about 15,000 cases. The rest is contract made for other Clare Valley brands. While the company sources fruit from eleven local growers, much of its own production comes from the vineyards owned by Tim Adams and Pam Goldsack in conjunction with Grant Crawley. A new export-specific venture at a newly established vineyard on a site formerly known as the Stanley Sharefarmers Block that was ripped up during the vine-pull scheme of the 1980s will gradually see another 250 tonnes from around 90 acres going into Adams’ winery, which will peak at around 750 tonnes capacity around 2006.

The first Tim Adams wines to see the market are the ever-reliable Riesling and Semillon, the Clare Valley’s best-performed dry whites. The Riesling is only made from free-run juice, while the semillon is partially barrel fermented. He is optimistic about the prospects for recent plantings of viognier and pinot gris. Adams’ reds include a Shiraz, a Cabernet a blend of sauvignon and franc varieties, The Fergus Grenache and The Aberfeldy, the company flagship. Approachable, finely crafted and packed with vibrant briary fruit, The Fergus now surely sits amongst the best Australian grenaches. Tim Adams is looking forward to when some dryland malbec and tempranillo come into yield and also makes late-harvested and botrytis-affected dessert white wines from semillon and riesling.

If there’s an over-riding feature of Tim Adams’ wines, it’s their tightness and balance. No matter how strong the trend towards ultra-ripeness in Australian red wine – which some of his neighbours in Clare have been happy to embrace – he’s steadfastly sticking to his guns. ‘Mick Knappstein preached to me a million times that if it isn’t balanced when it’s young, a wine never will be’, he says. ‘He was right twenty years ago and he’s right now.’ Similarly, Tim Adams whites are typically fine and stylish, with a taut, sometimes chalky structure framed by clean acids. Like his reds, you can take to them young or much, much older.

While the Aberfeldy is made from ancient and low-yielding shiraz vines and is matured principally in American oak, it’s a finely balanced, tight-knit wine of leanness and breeding. It often expresses a tautness and astringency that bring to mind some of the better modern Tuscan classics. It’s not promoting the message that more is better; instead it’s all about delivery and style.

Tim Adams reckons he gets all the fruit, shape and structure he’s looking for by harvesting red grapes before they go past 14 degrees Baume. He likens some Australian reds made with alcoholic strengths of 15.5 and above to dry vintage port and finds he is able to build enough tannin and structure by a protracted skin contact, and without pressing the daylights out of the skins.

Cropping between 1.5 and 2.5 tonnes per acre and focusing more than ever on matching soils with varieties, Tim Adams has been able to steer clear of the extremes of vintage variation that have affected many other small South Australian makers in recent years. While others have done well to tread water over this time, Adams has powered ahead of many. As for his future? I’m predicting yet more steady unspectacular refinement, more wonderful value for money and no bad surprises. Please login to post comment