21st January, 2011
by
db_staff
Australia is still rightly proud of its big, bold classics, but a new breed of fine Oz wine is stealing the limelight, says Sarah Ahmed.
Rolling out the big guns (wines valued at more than AUD$40,000), starting with Penfolds’ Bin 95 Grange 1955) created a palpable sense of excitement at the Landmark Australia Tutorial masterclass, “An Historic Perspective”.
The bold classics upon which Australia forged its reputation have been, and remain, very effective ambassadors, but even more inspiring was an emerging generation of “quieter” wines.
A new era
Masterclasses on Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and sparkling wines reinforced the alacrity with which Australian winemakers are ratcheting up quality and complexity by successfully embracing new regions, varieties, clones, techniques and philosophies.
In his Pinot Noir masterclass, Yabby Lake’s Tom Carson captured the zeitgeist when he referred to a new way of working “with an intuitive feel for what needs to be done and, more importantly, what shouldn’t be done”.
It’s affecting classic regions like the Hunter Valley too. Tyrrell’s red wine maker Mark Richardson told me “in the last 20 years we tried to follow the market and make bigger woodier styles, but there’s been a sea change”.
The outcome is a return to the so-called “Hunter Burgundy” medium-bodied style of old, which, with lower alcohol and a region-wide campaign to improve cellar hygiene, has helped eliminate brettanomyces spoilage.
In the Grampians, Mount Langi Ghiran’s Dan Buckle reckons Australia’s Pinot Noir phenomenon has had a knock-on effect – “consumers are not looking so much at power and weight, which allows you to explore medium-bodied Shiraz in a way previously not possible”.