As the Australian reds from 1998 continue to make their way onto the marketplace it’s becoming more apparent all the time what a great vintage it was. Irrespective, it would appear, from which region you took your red grapes, if you didn’t make a cracker in 1998 you’re perhaps in the wrong game. Yet, as great wine follows great wine, some alarming cracks are beginning to appear. For, just as this vintage could well go down in history as perhaps the best since 1962, it might also be the year that Australian red wine makers lost the plot. There’s little doubt that Australia made more top red wine in 1998 than in any preceding vintage. The best 1998s, and there are plenty of them, appear to marry the sheer concentration of another top warm to hot year in 1990 with the fineness and purity of fruit flavour of 1994, a later and cooler season. Essentially a vintage that constantly bordered on drought but just managed to receive sufficient rainfall to enable the vines to bring their fruit safely to near-perfect ripening, it was a season which began and finished early and whose wines show great potential for bottle development. It rarely happens this way but as far as 1998 is concerned, virtually all Australian wine regions had the opportunity to produce their best wine. Particular highlights are Coonawarra reds, especially merlot, while shiraz from the traditional South Australian regions of the Barossa Valley, Clare and McLaren Vale are exceptional. Crammed with typical richness and opulent intensity of fruit, the best manage a restraint and elegance which is totally beguiling. Never have Australian winemakers had a better combination of ripe fruit and tannin to work on. While some rain made life marginally more difficult for younger Margaret River vineyards, even the Hunter Valley had an unusually rain-free vintage that helped fashion some classic wines. The 1998 quality phenomenon is not restricted to the more expensive Australian reds. You don’t have to spend more than $20 per bottle to be entranced by McLaren Vale reds from Hugo, Tintara or Ingoldby, the Eden Valley label of Tollana, and other reliable and affordable brands like Trentham Estate, Brand’s and Crofter’s. They haven’t had it all their own way in recent years, but from 1998 the reds from Normans and Taylors are ripe, generous and vibrant, bursting with life and flavour. So, amid all this quality, excitement and value, what could possibly be going on to tarnish the wine industry’s sparkling chalice? The answer to that question is as much a philosophical thing as any particular physical aspect or process you could put your hands on, but it’s undeniable that outside forces are tampering with the headspaces of many of our winemakers. It all began a few years ago when, led by Penfolds Grange, several Australian wines began scoring major reviews in the American media, feting their density, ripeness, power and concentration. While most Australian winemakers would have merely raised an eyebrow at such keenly expressed preferences for exaggerated styles of red wine, packed with dense fruit, massive oak and tannins, not to mention alcoholic strengths well above fourteen percent, others were profoundly influenced by these remarks. Quickly shiraz became flavour of the month and the warm regions capable of making it into these steroid-driven styles, something I and many other consider to be little more than parodies of real wine, became the focus of attention. Small Barossa vineyards whose names had never meant anything to anyone suddenly sold most of their output to US markets at greatly inflated prices. The same thing has happened in the McLaren Vale and at Heathcote. Driven by the conviction that better equates to more, more and more, makers whose wines would previously be full-bodied but still finely balanced and made from ripe, but not-over-ripe fruit are doing nothing of the kind. Too many Australian red wines, especially those made as ‘reserve’ labels are made from over-ripe fruit whose flavours tend towards the jammy and prune-like. Their oak treatment is grossly exaggerated, their tannins are blocky and excessively astringent, their alcoholic strengths are ludicrously and unjustifiably high, and their balance and longevity are at very best merely questionable. Furthermore, by the time they’re put into bottle, too many have sacrificed any freshness or vitality. They might be rich, they might be mouthfilling, they might even be smooth, but they’ve lost that intensity or joi-de-vivre of enjoyable, stimulating wine. The justification used by many of these makers is that their wines are ‘more intense’ or ‘more complex’ by their time of release. Hard to argue with that, but they simply don’t cellar. If you can enjoy them young, do so, but don’t expect any return from patience in the cellar. Another danger signal brought home by a significant number of 1998 red wines is, if you like, the next logical phase of the problems I have just been detailing. Many winemakers, especially relatively young and inexperienced ones, are clearly attempting to imbue their young wines with the degree of complexity previously only anticipated from wines with substantial age. Seduced by several contemporary wine writers with a clear preference for wines which display ‘briary’, ‘undergrowth’, ‘barnyard’, ‘feral’ and ‘wet earth’-like flavours, many winemakers are doing far more than they need to do to instill them in red wines by their time of release, typically between eighteen and thirty months of age. These wines are indeed genuinely complex in their youth, but again will fail to stand the test of time. Additionally, given that many are made with scant regard towards the addition of sulphur dioxide as a preservative, are left ‘dirty’ after fermentation for many months longer than they should have been, and are bottled with so-called ‘natural’ pH levels significantly higher than practical, many are faulty, plain and simple. These conditions provide a perfect environment for excessive influence by the spoilage yeast of brettanomyces, whose tell-tale flavour indicators of ‘horse-hair’ and ‘used bandage’ are becoming more and more common in Australian red wines at all price points. Without in any way wishing to encourage a return to the sterilised and totally controlled red winemaking deployed by Australian winemakers in the later 1970s and early 1980s, the fact is that many have gone too far in the opposite direction. Cool heads and a more thorough understanding of the issues at stake are clearly needed if Australian red wine is to take full advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime global opportunity presented before it. While many of the best 1998 reds are yet to be released, the selection to date has been astonishing. From Coonawarra have come great cabernet-based reds from Petaluma, Parker, Katnook Estate, Majella, some of the best Australian merlots yet seen from Petaluma and Pepper Tree, plus silky-smooth shirazes from Zema Estate, Majella and Bowen Estate. The Barossa and McLaren Vale have turned out dark, savoury shirazes from Grant Burge (a great Meshach) and Coriole (a spectacular Lloyd Reserve), while the Tim Adams Aberfeldy Shiraz takes Clare Valley shiraz to a new level. Brokenwood’s Graveyard does something similar for the Hunter. From the cooler south eastern regions have come outstanding pinot noirs from Bass Phillip, Lenswood Vineyards, TarraWarra, Domaine A and Massoni, while some of the best-kept secrets in cooler-climate shiraz are the wines from Dalwhinnie (Pyrenees), Clonakilla (Canberra), Best’s (Great Western) and Mount Ida (Heathcote). And perhaps the best of them all? The outrageously elegant and silky Cullen Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot from Margaret River.
