Few Australian wineries have threatened to promise as much as Clarendon Hills. Roman Bratasiuck, a former medical biochemist, has only been making wine on a commercial basis since 1990, but today his reds sell well above the $40 mark. I was, until I tasted the 1994 Clarendon Hills reds, a profound sceptic. An over-worked jamminess and lack of balance constantly troubled me with several early vintages. But, credit where it’s due, for instead of changing course, Bratasiuck stuck to his guns, refined his approach and made others like me believe. The release of the 1995 reds simply proves it to a tee. Key aspects to the Bratasiuck style are low and concentrated yields, an absence of irrigation, extended periods in contact with gross lees and in oaks casks and a shunning of filtering or fining. Although Robert Parker has gone into paroxysms over the 1994 Astralis – a seven-barrel selection of the densest shiraz in Bratasiuck’s cellar – which roughly equates to being the heaviest pachyderm in the herd, it has never shone out in the several comparative tastings in which I have seen it. Statuesque, concentrated, sure… but able to develop into an international classic? If I’m a jury, I’m still out on that. My highest score for the Astralis is 18.3 (drink 2006-14). But Mr Parker awared it 97/100 in a recent issue of The Wine Advocate, something that doesn’t happen every day. I’m far more taken with the sheer completeness of the 1995 range of Clarendon Hills reds, although I have yet to taste a yet-to-be-released Astralis of that year, still smouldering, no doubt, in the smokiest new oak Bratasiuck could get his hands on. There’s a Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Merlot and two different Grenaches, labelled ‘Clarendon’ and ‘Blewitt Springs’ respectively. The core of Clarendon Hills fruit comes from its own vineyards which, although grafted relatively recently to chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, is founded on stocks with an average of 75 years of age. The vineyard is a dream come true, ‘an accident waiting to happen’, according to Bratasiuck, capable of low yields of spectacular concentration and intensity, able to match sheer power of fruit with massive, integrated backbones of fully-ripened tannins. Clarendon Hills’ total production is a mere 1,500 cases. The 1995 Pinot Noir has less to do with the grape variety than Bratasiuck’s own interpretation of how his vineyard reacts to the red grape of Burgundy. It’s no Burgundy, but a wonderfully idiosyncratic third cousin, with incredible complexity and flavour development. Both variations of 1995 Grenache were made in identical fashion, but they express themselves quite differently. The dark, sweet wine labelled ‘Blewitt Springs’ is the natural successor to the 1994 Old Vines Grenache, while the ‘ClarendonVineyard’ wine comes from a new source of unirrigated 75 yo vines. The 1995 Shiraz is the best yet, highly spiced with aromas of game and fresh cigars. It will repay the time you can give it. However the best of the new crop from Clarendon Hills is the 1995 Merlot, already evolved into a multi-dimensioned essay on the variety with a depth and variety of flavours that is simply explosive. I’m less convinced that Bratasiuck’s approach adapts to white wine. The Unfiltered Chardonnay, of which the latest I have tasted was from 1994, has an unstable, over-oaked nature to it, finishing tough and hard. You can’t expect a single winemaker to have a Midas touch for every grape variety. But there’s no doubt at all in my mind, Clarendon Hill’s bite is now at least as big as its bark.
