The recent OnWine Experience provided a large number of people in four states with the opportunity to measure up some of the best pinot noir made in Australia today with a number of international benchmarks, including a substantial number of the finest Burgundies made at all levels of classification. As expected, the events provoked some very interesting discussion, which highlighted yet again the diversity of views concerning what pinot noir should actually be, and how its makers should get there. Most alarming, as far as I could follow, was that despite the huge gains made by some makers in Australia over the past decade or two, the gap between Australian pinot noir and Burgundy is widening again. In a nutshell, with only a few exceptions, the Burgundians are now leaving us for dead. What has happened? Is it a case of us slipping further behind, or have the Burgundians begun to reinvent themselves? Where is the confidence in Australian pinot that was so evident not so long ago? Where are the wines of world class? An Optimistic Beginning Fifteen years ago Australia was about to knock Burgundy off its perch. People were planting pinot noir everywhere, provided they could record with some degree of truth on the back label that the site had a cool climate. James Halliday arrived in the Yarra Valley, determined to lead the charge. We were engulfed by a plethora of pinot tastings, pinot conferences and pinot dinners. All you had to do, so it seemed, was to find somewhere cool enough, find a consultant to tell you it was possible to crop the thing at five tonnes per acre, taste a few Burgundies so you could interpret your style to its waiting multitude of admirers, and fame and fortune would surely follow. Shortly after, a wave of thin, greenish, over-cropped, under-ripe and over-oaked pinot noirs made its way onto the market. The wines were badly grown, badly made and expensive. Joy was hard to find, yet the true believers persisted. Winemakers began to find solace in the concept that pinot noir lived up to its reputation as ‘The Heartbreak Grape’, consoling themselves that they weren’t the only New World makers of the variety finding life rather more difficult than they first imagined. I don’t take the heartbreak stuff seriously. It’s an excuse. You can visit every failed maker of pinot noir and see clearly why it never worked. Vineyards were badly set up, wrongly trained and trellised, cropped too high, planted to inappropriate clones or should never have been planted at all. Winemakers with little experience in any winemaking, let alone with the most difficult grape at all, received nil or bad advice. People began with unrealistic financial expectations, or without any business plan whatsoever. Expectations lost all sight of reality. People who only discovered pinot noir a few moments before suddenly became convinced they knew absolutely everything about it. Wine regional marketing groups suddenly declared their backyards to be at least as good, if not better than Burgundy. At various times the Yarra Valley, the Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland in Victoria, Western Australia’s Great Southern and Pemberton/Manjimup regions, Canberra and the entire state of Tasmania have made that ambitious proclamation. The fact that a small number of makers in several of these regions can and do perform well and with some consistency has greatly raised the expectations of many of their neighbours – not to mention the prices of their wines – who are simply not prepared to go the hard yards needed to make world-class pinot noir. A maker in the Mornington Peninsula, whose wines are amongst the few from that region I really respect, once confessed to me how bewildered he felt (putting it politely) that other pinot makers were charging the same wholesale price for their wine as he was, yet cropping at least twice as much per acre. To put it mildly, it showed in the bottle. Now that shiraz and other largely warm region varieties are experiencing the same sort of adulation that greeted Australian pinot around a decade ago, the public gaze has shifted away from this grape. Pinot is now regarded with as much scepticism as a claim from McDonalds that their food is healthy. Customers have been burned; their optimism and confidence taken a beating. It’s still happening to a lesser extent, but a pinot noir no longer sells out simply because it’s new. Classifying Australian Pinot Noir From amongst this mayhem just two makers have emerged as genuinely consistent producers of first-class pinot noir. Neither is an accident or fluke; each has been the result of several years of fastidious learning and sheer hard work. The second group have shown themselves capable of exceptional pinot noir, but have yet to show the consistency or track record to be admitted to the first group, although at their best their wines can be as good. Third and fourth levels can each produce exceptional pinot noir but are typically less consistent. Each has the potential to move up the scale by at least one level. I make the point that each of the wineries listed even in my fourth level has proven capable of making pinot noir of gold medal standard (18.5 points). Bannockburn Geelong, Victoria Bass Phillip Gippsland, Victoria Coldstream Hills Yarra Valley, Victoria Diamond Valley Yarra Valley, Victoria Freycinet East Coast, Tasmania Giaconda Beechworth, Victoria Main Ridge Estate Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Mount Mary Yarra Valley, Victoria Stonier Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Wantirna Estate Yarra Valley, Victoria Yeringberg Yarra Valley, Victoria Bindi Macedon, Victoria Domaine A Coal River Valley, Tasmania Domaine Epis Macedon, Victoria Grosset Adelaide Hills, South Australia Lenswood Vineyards Adelaide Hills, South Australia Massoni Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Mount Gisborne Macedon, Victoria Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Prince Albert Geelong, Victoria TarraWarra Yarra Valley, Victoria Ashton Hills Adelaide Hills, South Australia De Bortoli Yarra Valley, Victoria Dromana Estate Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Gembrook Hill Yarra Valley, Victoria Moondarra Gippsland, Victoria Moorilla Estate Berriedale, Tasmania Pipers Brook Pipers River, Tasmania Seville Estate Yarra Valley, Victoria Region/Ranking State 1 2 3 4 Total Yarra Valley Vic 5 1 3 9 East Coast Tas 1 1 Geelong Vic 1 1 2 Beechworth Vic 1 1 Gippsland Vic 1 1 2 Mornington Peninsula Vic 2 2 1 5 Macedon Vic 3 3 Adelaide Hills SA 2 1 3 Coal River Valley Tas 1 1 Berriedale Tas 1 1 Pipers River Tas 1 1 Looking at the summary tabled above, it’s evident that the Yarra Valley is Australia’s best pinot noir region at this point in time. While other (largely Victorian) regions are host to the other wines in the top bracket, the region with the second highest number of entries is the Mornington Peninsula. Frankly I’m surprised by that, since if ever there was a wine region whose makers have a grossly over-inflated view of its own pinot noir, this region is that region. Its classic wines stand out like beacons over the vast majority of its production. Given that I have yet to include Kooyong and Yabby Lake in my list, new developments for which I have very high expectations, it’s entirely possible that the Peninsula’s standing will increase that little bit more in the next couple of years. If the best sites on the Peninsula were managed according to long-established principles of growing this grape, and its wines made with a little more expertise, the Peninsula would certainly close the gap on the Yarra that little bit further. Following the Yarra Valley and the Mornington Peninsula are Macedon and the Adelaide Hills. Then comes Gippsland and Geelong, the only other regions with multiple entrants at this level, and whose best pinot makers, Bannockburn and Bass Phillip, comprise the entire first rank. Gippsland is the dark horse in this crowd. We don’t know enough about it, and it could do anything. While I have included South Australia’s three best pinot noirs, I am not convinced that there is presently a Western Australian pinot noir of this calibre. And before a storm of protest flies my way from across the Nullarbor, I’d be placing each of Picardy, Batista and Plantagenet in my fifth level of pinot makers. The Burgundian Revival Pascal Marchand, Director of Wine for Domaine de la Vougeraie, the largest and potentially the most exciting development in Burgundy since the Second World War, had much to say while in Australia for The OnWine Experience about the way in which Burgundy has reinvented itself. Largely driven by the enthusiasm and expertise displayed by a new generation of winegrowers and viticulturists, Burgundy has undergone a major renewal over the last fifteen years. It’s fair to say that a complacency surrounded much of Burgundy’s activities throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The New World had yet to muster a serious challenge to Burgundy’s pre-eminence with pinot noir, and even if it had, many domaines were too inward-looking to take any real notice. Vineyards were given minimal attention and a sleepiness and laziness permeated the cellar practices of many domaines, whose wines were made with minimal attention to detail. With the New World’s awakening desire to craft classic wines from pinot noir came a broader international awareness of the variety’s strengths and qualities. New markets opened up as producers seized opportunities to increase prices. Burgundy’s strictly limited supply became subject to greater demand than ever before. Then, as families underwent generational change, their children entered the wine business with more skills than their predecessors. Usually qualified in viticulture and winemaking, their experience was often enhanced by travel and a genuinely international appreciation of what pinot noir was about. They were more aware of their heritage than their parents’ generation, aware of the unique terroirs of the Cote d’Or, and are expressing their determination to maximise the potential of the sites they have been blessed with. Like Pascal Marchand, many of this new generation have gone all the way back to the basics, which means the vineyard and its soil. Some of the greatest vineyards in which the Domaine de la Vougeraie has access have some of the most delicate soil structures in Burgundy. To correct the soil compaction that has occurred after decades of being used as a highway by over-vine tractors, Marchand has re-introduced the ancient practice of cultivation with horses. He estimates that about 25% of the total area of soil was affected in this way. ‘Those soils were dead. There was no activity, no worms, no nothing’, he says. ‘But now they have been brought back to life. Besides, it makes great postcards.’ Integral to the refocusing on the soils of Burgundy, many of which Marchand says had been left to degrade to the point at which the vines might as well have been growing in hydroponics, is a focus shown by many leading domaines on organic and even biodynamic viticulture. While I’m not yet in a position to deliver a definitive view on the merits of biodynamics, I do believe that any system that is able to focus a grower to nurture soils to this extent has to be a good one. Several years ago Anne Claude Leflaive, another champion of biodynamic viticulture in Burgundy, showed me around the vineyards of Domaine Leflaive. I will never forget the astonishing difference in the health of her soils and vines under different regimes of biodynamic and organic management, while those of other domaines looked inert and lifeless by comparison, even if they were just a few feet away. The major Burgundian domaines club together to develop and promote their own research, sharing the results. Through the Groupement d’Etude et de Suivi des Terroirs, a collection comprising most of the top-ranking domaines, Pascal Marchand has been involved with particular research projects, and for a period was responsible for the group’s efforts with compost. ‘I was the President du Merde’, he laughs. But today each of the soils within the Domaine de la Vougeraie’s vineyards are carefully analysed, and particular organic or biodynamic composts are applied to each plot. The results are in the bottles. In Burgundy there is a tangible human link between the soils and the best wines. The winemaker is usually the one with the closest contact with the vines and their soils. While Australians struggle to break apart the disciplines of viticulture and oenology to suit our traditionally limited and essentially illogical job descriptions, so are the modern Burgundians revelling in their broader understanding of the entirety of the matter. They are still discovering the worth of some vineyards that are recovering their former fertility and quality, but they possess an acute understanding of their terroirs and what they can deliver. While they acknowledge they still have much to learn, they are 100% focused on using techniques in their vineyards to enable their wines to express those qualities. And that is what is needed to make great pinot noir. What can Australians learn? Everything. If the likes of Phillip Jones, Gary Farr, John Middleton, Nat White and Rick Kinzbrunner can make great pinot noir, why can’t others – and plenty of them? Look at these guys more closely and some things quickly become apparent. Not only do each of them have a very clear idea of what they’re doing, each is prepared to make the sacrifices of time, crops and money to ensure they get there. Each is intimately involved in their vineyards and their vines. Each has a realistic impression of the strengths and weaknesses of their vineyards, which they work hard to exploit and minimise, respectively. Each is in it for the long haul; neither is out to make an instant reputation based on a single wine. Given Australia’s size and diversity it would be a brave soul to suggest that we have already found our best sites for pinot noir. Part of the beauty of Australian viticulture is the constant opening up of new regions. On the other hand, in some existing regions like the Mornington Peninsula and possibly Gippsland, the best sites are still to be put under vine. Three very ambitious new pinot noir projects have recently entered the marketplace. Caledonia Australis is a venture near Leongatha in Gippsland, Victoria, owned by a syndicate of largely Melbourne-based pinot fanatics, whose first vintages were made by Martin Williams MW. The 2000 wines are now available, and while they reflect some promising fruit, their handling has been very deficient. None of the 2000 vintage releases reach 15.5, or bronze medal status. Another Victorian vineyard and winery, Curly Flat is located near Lancefield in the Macedon Ranges. Its first few vintages were made at Knight’s Granite Hills, but production moved to the newly-completed winery for 2002, which was overseen for the first time by Bannockburn’s Gary Farr. The 1999 vintage (17.3, drink 2001-2004+) is smoky, meaty and leathery, perhaps with a low-grade bret influence, although it delivers intense red cherry fruit and raspberry aromas. The recently bottled 2000 wine (16.7, drink 2002-2005+) is quite minty, more floral and sappy, while a barrel sample of the 2001 wine looked even more minty, but is better structured and savoury, with deep, vibrant flavours of red and black cherries. Time will tell how these wines handle the apparent mintiness of their youth. Incidentally, there isn’t a eucalypt forest in sight. Moondarra is another new Gippsland development covered in some detail on page 12. The most honest reflection of Terroir Pinot noir makes wine of unfailing honesty. It has a polygraph-like ability to reflect every deficiency involved in its making. Anything less than great sites will fail to make consistently great pinot, although they might produce very good pinot from time to time. Deficiencies in season, vineyard management and cellar handling tend to stand out like the dog’s bollocks of lore. Today it’s fashionable in Australia to pour scorn on the French term of ‘terroir’. The word is too detailed to define properly here, and books have been written about it. I’m convinced in it, and I haven’t suddenly become a Francophile by doing so. If any produced item is a sum of its component parts, the terroir concept attempts to understand these components. It can then explain why two pinot noirs, each made in identical fashion, can taste quite different even if grown just a short distance apart. Possibly driven by the media and the trade, there is a strong trend amongst Australia’s pinot makers to force their wines to express too much complexity too young. Too many want their young pinots to have too much ‘funk’ or ‘forest floor’ characteristics. Often made with high pH and with extended periods on lees in oak, an alarming proportion of Australian pinots are excessively reductive and disfigured by ruinous levels of brettanomyces spoilage characters. Then their makers tell the public that these faults are expressive of the wine’s terroir itself. Little wonder that wine drinkers are so sceptical over the use of the term. Nobody is making good pinot noir in Australia today without an appreciation of terroir. You cannot make a wine of a particular type or style if your site cannot produce the requisite raw materials. You can fine-tune, but you cannot change the fundamental nature of fruit in the cellar. If you don’t like the quality of pinot noir from your existing site and your vineyard is in balance, move to another one. Easy for me to say and to write, but adopt any other approach and you’re just kidding yourself. Those wanting to make great pinot shouldn’t even pay the starting price without a site that is likely, plus an approach in vineyard and cellar that is consistent with that of the proven performers. Fail to do this and they and their wine will sit atop the substantial scrapheap on which so many hopes and dreams have been dashed. For then, when they have shunned the historical fundamentals that Burgundy is presently re-learning, will they truly learn the meaning of heartbreak. And it won’t be the fault of pinot noir.
