Without going there it’s hard to imagine how serious they are about their own wine in WA. With a tenacity reminiscent of the way the Japanese have taken to golf, which they have also applied successfully to the matter of winning our football competitions, Western Australians are totally committed to making the best wine in Australia. Only a fool would doubt they could do it, if indeed they already haven’t. Despite the attention it now commands, Western Australia produces only around one percent of Australia’s wine. Although its first important area was the Swan Valley near Perth, most of its recent development has centred on the cooler southern regions, especially the Margaret River and the Lower Great Southern. Drive for just over three hours south of Perth, towards the south-west tip of the coast, and you arrive at Margaret River. It’s a windy, exposed pastoral area almost as popular for its surf, but its early cabernets and chardonnays in the 1970s and ’80s first ignited the modern enthusiasm for WA wine. The area is known for its ability to develop strong varietal flavours in most grapes through its sunny, maritime and very equitable and moderate climate. East of Margaret River, amid tall cedar and karri country, is the newly-emergent wine region around the towns of Pemberton and Manjimup. Pemberton is marginally cooler than Margaret River and its deep loamy soils are far superior. The Lower Great Southern area is further south and well east of Pemberton. WA’s coolest region, it encompasses a wide area, namely the scattered subregions of Albany, Mount Barker and Frankland River. It doesn’t seem so long ago now that I tasted my first Cape Mentelle cabernet sauvignon. It was 1978 vintage, rich, concentrated and with a grip like Andre the Giant. Big enough for two bottles and certain to live longer than I. Some WA wineries, Moss Wood, Cullens and Vasse Felix in particular, were seeking and finder a finer, more elegant style, but most of the Margaret River reds of the 1970s were modelled around the chunky, steroid-pumped style that Cape Mentelle started with. You no longer need a solid sparring session prior to a good grapple with a Western Australian cabernet. Paul Lappsley agrees, and he should know. He’s the winemaker for Houghtons and if he doesn’t make the lion’s share of Western Australian wine, he at least sees the share of a very large and well-fed cat. ‘Back in the old days we tried to make big, tough, tannic reds and didn’t really give a stuff what people said about them in the eastern states. We thought we’d make an answer to the richer, more powerful wines from places like the Barossa and in doing so missed the point of balance, elegance and finesse’, he says. ‘In the Margaret River we’d sometimes leave reds on skins for up to a month after fermentation to modify tannins, but that way we actually put more tannins back into the wines.’ ‘Today we’re all maturing – our vines and the people in our industry. We’ve taken a more international perspective towards wine and it’s reflected throughout our grape growing and winemaking.’ Over the last five years the Margaret River has cheerily let the rest of Australia go its own way. We’re popping the pills today, pumping iron-clad muscle into our reds, while out west they’re now chasing elegance. Somebody must have realised that in all wine-producing countries bar ours, the most highly-regarded red wines are the most sophisticated and refined. Think about it. Look out Coonawarra, look out Yarra Valley. Based on his experience with some old Margaret River cabernet sauvignon vines planted in the mid ’70s, Paul Lapsley describes the regional style as fine and austere, with typically chalky, gritty tannins. They’re frequently characterised by dark berry characters and an ever-present light herbaceousness, even if taken from vineyards which are never over-cropped or shaded. This grassiness is found in many of the Houghton Margaret River cabernet sauvignons and especially those from Cape Mentelle and Cape Clairault – which I rate very highly – and most vintages of Leeuwin Estate. The cabernets of Cullens (which were one of the first in Australia to be regularly blended with merlot) and Moss Wood are usually slightly less grassy; but are wines of great finesse with pristine small berry flavours supported by outstanding oak. Although he concedes it’s possibly too early to say, Lapsley doesn’t find much difference between the cabernet fruit from Pemberton and Manjimup, which is presently undergoing an identity crisis something akin to the early Padthaway-Keppoch stand-off of the early 1980s. Why they presently register it as the Warren Valley escapes me. Does it have something to do with rabbits? Anyway, Houghton are keeping the names separate for now. Paul Lapsley is clearly excited about the area’s potential. When picked early to avoid bird damage, its cabernet sauvignon produces light cherry flavours, while fully ripe fruit at 13.5 degrees Baume has a ‘rich ripe dark red berry cabernet smell with cassis, cherries and no herbaceousness’. These are classic cabernet flavours, according to Lapsley, who says the wines display a long-grained tannic structure similar to Mount Barker, good pH and acid balance. ‘Every dog and his man are now trying to get hold of some of this fruit’, he says. For the time being, it’s too early to easily find cabernet-based wines sourced exclusively from Pemberton-Manjimup fruit on Melbourne shelves or wine lists. Much of the region’s fruit, from the large Smithbrook vineyard especially, is sold to an extraordinary number of wineries, even to the eastern states, contributing richness and flavour to blends. The Lower Great Southern area, which comprises Mount Barker, Frankland River, Albany and Denmark is, according to Lapsley, one of the few Australian areas able to produce very good Bordeaux-like cabernets. They’re frequently austere, closed and tight and require substantial time to open up, as the wines of Alkoomi, Goundrey, Plantagenet and Howard Park confirm. Frankland Estate’s Olmo’s reward, a regional blend of Bordeaux varieties from an isolated vineyard surrounded by miles of grazing land, is an emerging cellar style of substance and intense flavours. Given the complex flavours it develops, I would expect more shiraz to be planted in WA. Although the earliest I every struck was the traditionally earthy Evans and Tate’s Gnangara Shiraz, a well-priced and spicy red from the Swan Valley, the real action is south of Perth. On the way south to the Margaret River you drive along the Mandurah sands, where Will Nairn makes a firm, earthy shiraz with superb tannins. Further south and you drive past Killerby, whose shiraz is becoming a real Rhone Valley lookalike – fleshy, spicy and gamey, with a more restrained French oak treatment instead of the excessive American oak usually dolloped into much Australian shiraz. Cape Mentelle and Evans and Tate champion the variety at Margaret River. The former’s wine is powerful and spicy; the latter’s ripe and brambly. The Lower Great Southern is developing a fine name for its shiraz. Paul Lapsley and I agree it tends towards the Rhone-like: very peppery indeed with a touch of ripe redcurrant and earthy flavours. Houghtons have released Frankland River shiraz from time to time, but most of it ends up under a Gold Reserve Shiraz label for export. Lucky Poms. Still, the excellent shirazes from Alkoomi, Patterson, Frankland Estate, Chatsfield, Plantagenet and Jingalla will make you look twice. Throughout the early days of pinot noir’s presence in Australia, the Margaret River wines of Cullens and Moss Wood were rated as amongst the country’s best. Vanya Cullen has since decided not to persevere in working towards a Burgundian direction, for the region’s warmth creates excessively chunky richness and middle palate weight for these styles. Instead she’s just trying to make the best pinot she can. The results, as revealed by the 1993 vintage, are her finest yet. Moss Wood’s pinot’s remain elegant and fleshy, with piercing fruit flavours. Although wine show judges laud them one minute and shun them the next, the best WA pinot noirs are both from the Lower Great Southern and are both made by John Wade. The Wignalls wines are restrained, spicy and gamey and relatively fast to develop great complexity and softness. Those of Karriview are firmer, with a greater accent on cherry and red berry fruits and could be expected to take longer to develop. Its vineyards are still very young and its early wines relatively straightforward, but the signs are clear that pinot noir from Pemberton-Manjimup, especially those of Salitage and Smithbrook, could steal the show. John Wade expects them to become known as WA’s best. East of the Nullarbor we have planted chardonnay like a weed in the emerging cooler regions. Wait, they said, for what will surely come from the Yarra Valley, the Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills. Today they have fight on their hands. Australia’s best chardonnay was never meant to come from the Margaret River, yet much of it does. WA is now doing things we never thought possible. Could any wine region outside France or California match the decade of wares made by Pierro, Leeuwin Estate, Moss Wood and Cullens throughout the 1980s and early ’90s? The best Margaret River chardonnays reveal remarkable concentration and viscosity, with a fruit flavour profile more suggestive of grapefruit and tropical fruits than the peach/nectarine/ quince flavours frequently developed in the best of the cool climate regions in the eastern states. The chardonnays I have seen so far from Pemberton-Manjimup are more restrained, tighter wines without the Margaret River opulence and middle palate richness, but certainly with intense grapefruit and tropical flavours. It remains to be seen how long they will cellar for, but the early releases of Smithbrook and Salitage look quite spectacular while young. As far as WA is concerned, there is only one place to grow riesling, the Lower Great Southern, which now deserves its place at the top of the tree with Clare and the Eden Valley. The wines are restrained and long-living, with intense lime-lemon fruit and a herby fragrance supported with excellent acids and backbone. Check out Chatsfield, Goundrey, Howard Park, Castle Rock, Alkoomi, Scotsdale Brook, Jingalla and Frankland Estate. Something very different happens to semillon in the south-west corner of Western Australia, making a wine that is quite distinct from Australia’s other great semillon style, from the Hunter Valley. As it does in Bordeaux, the marriage of semillon and sauvignon blanc also creates a pleasing synergy at Margaret River, where on occasions a shot of chenin blanc is also tossed in. There are two distinct extremes of south-western WA semillon. Some wineries, Evans and Tate, Pierro, Cape Clairault, Sandstone and Killerby being a few, direct their energies towards the nurturing of white burgundian-like wood-matured styles. Others fashion a fresher, earlier-drinking dry style made entirely without oak – either as straight varietal semillon or in a semillon-dominated blend with sauvignon blanc. Cape Mentelle, Moss Wood (which has sadly dropped its wood-aged style), Ribbon Vale (which does make both styles) and Chateau Xanadu excel with these semillons or semillon blends. Other than that, I can’t think of a single reason why you should bother with Western Australian wine! Retail outlets which specialise in WA wines: Agostino Chaucers D’Anna Brothers KM Lynch (Warrnambool) Phillip Murphy Sutherland Cellars Winebins
