If, like me, you’re somewhat jaundiced by the sameness of the approach taken by so many makers of Australian shiraz, it’s not so easy to find a wine you’re going to find really interesting. There’s no doubt at all that McLaren Vale is the region of the moment, so from the Hunter to the Yarra to Coonawarra to Margaret River, there are makers desperately trying to make shiraz which wouldn’t look out of place in a McLaren Vale regional tasting. All of which tends to nullify the burgeoning interest inside Australia and out concerning the actual differences in flavours and textures from one region to another. That’s why I’m so interested in what one of the Rhone Valley’s leading winemakers, Michel Chapoutier, is attempting to achieve with shiraz from the new Mount Benson subregion of South Australia’s Limestone Coast region. Chapoutier’s wine, labelled ‘M. Chapoutier Australia’, is about as far apart from the standard McLaren Vale model as you could get. There’s no doubt it’s strongly Rhone-influenced, although you could hardly accuse Chapoutier of attempting to make Rhone wine from Australian fruit. The 1998 Syrah is the first release of any quantity and it was made at Cape Jaffa with the assistance of Derek Hooper and Alberic Mazoyer. It’s wild, brambly and very spicy, with a restrained length of musky fruit and a long, lingering spine of tight-knit fruit and oak with fine-grained tannins. Picked mid April and fermented and kept on skins for eighteen days in open concrete fermenters in traditional Chapoutier fashion, it’s been given what is, by modern Australian standards at least, a reserved handling in oak: just ten months in new fine-grained French oak barriques which were actually assembled in France to Chapoutier’s specifications. Marc and Michel Chapoutier purchased a 100-acre property with Domaine Wine Shippers’ Gary Steel already planted with 50 acres of established vineyard, which has since been managed according to Chapoutier’s biodynamic principles by the Hooper family of Cape Jaffa. Steel was successfully able to persuade the Chapoutiers that by investing in the southern hemisphere they could solve the practical issue of making wine in two countries. If this new release is anything to go by, I predict a long and happy future for M. Chapoutier Australia. It fits an ever-expanding niche in the shiraz market and should inspire other shiraz makers to consider other oenological alternatives to the wave of alcoholic shiraz jam and coconut essence that threatens to engulf us all.
