For over twenty years there was Grange and only Grange. Then Hill of Grace doubled this club’s exclusive membership to two. Today the Circle of Premium Australian Shiraz is collecting well-credentialled new applicants at a rate that leaves the pinot noir devotee green with envy. It’s hardly a fair comparison. One of this country’s greatest viticultural resources is its significant, but finite, supply of old dryland shiraz vineyards, which through historical accident (or ignorance?) had escaped our winemakers’ attentions for too long. The indisputed low point of this madness was the Barossa Valley’s vine-pull scheme early last decade, which cost us all an irreplaceable resource. Today, just as the Rhone Valley is finally being recognised alongside Burgundy and Bordeaux, so are Australian winemakers finally coming to terms with the neglected potential often growing in their own backyards. In these more enlightened times one can put a case that shiraz is our most exciting quality wine. Modern classics, like Jim Barry’s The Armagh, Grant Burge’s Meshack and Tim Adams’ Aberfeldy Shiraz give the grape a chance to strut its stuff like never before. Low yields from old vines given new oak fetch high prices – setting the premium per bottle price for this level of shiraz well beyond all but the rarest and most expensive cabernet blends. ‘Shiraz creates a real stamp and regional style’, says Victorian grower and maker, Trevor Mast, whose Mount Langi Ghiran Shiraz is one of those at the forefront. ‘With other grapes such as cabernet you have trouble telling where the region is. Every shiraz is different – I love this about the variety.’ Mast believes the most important thing about shiraz is its length of flavour. ‘Shiraz is very different, for its flavour really lingers, whether made in the fruit-driven and more elegant and complex style like ours to the highly textured Penfolds style with incredible oak and fine-grained tannins.’ Like virtually all makers of premium shiraz, Peter Hall, Rothbury’s head winemaker whose forthcoming 1993 Rothbury Estate Reserve Shiraz is one of the greatest reds ever to emerge from the Hunter Valley, is adamant that vineyards dictate the outcome of its wines. ‘All the premiums are ultimately off low-cropping vineyards and other high quality vineyards’, he says. ‘Winemakers are really just a cog in the chain.’ Rockford is a well-known Barossa winery whose Basket Press Shiraz earns it a place amongst Australia’s best makers of this variety. Its boss and winemaker, Robert (Rocky) O’Callaghan, recognises the standard of the cheaper, more widely available shirazes, but reckons there’s a sameness about them. ‘There’s no stamp of extremeness’, he says. Peter Hall agrees, but says that for the time being at least, shiraz offers fantastic value around $10 per bottle. ‘Many are well-balanced, long-living wines. Some are not extractive and show finesse, but will live for a long time. Even many of the earlier-maturing reds currently about are of a high quality’, he says. According to Rocky O’Callaghan, premium shiraz must have an obvious distinction which stands it out from the pack; a distinctive quality mark or style. ‘Ours is difficult and expensive to grow and to make. It’s hand-made, traditional and grown from a finite resource’, he says. To create the special stamp for its Basket Press Shiraz, Rockford selects around 22 or 23 of the 27 shiraz vineyards available to it (which yield somewhere between half a tonne to ten tonnes depending on the vineyard size and year), making and maturing each batch separately in around eight different oaks, creating a wide and diverse pool of complexity. Full bodied and robust, its Basket Press Shiraz is nevertheless complex and refined, proving time and again that a rich, big-flavoured shiraz can be as sophisticated as the next cabernet.
