Like a good heart, as the song goes, a good Australian gewurztraminer is hard to find. So hard it’s verging on the oxymoronic, but at least it’s not quite extinct. Over the years Pipers Brook’s Gewurztraminer has consistently been the country’s finest, ahead of a small and slightly erratic group that includes Delatite, Knappstein, Moorilla Estate, Straw’s Lane and Lillydale Vineyards. I recently opened a bottle of 1998 Pipers Brook and it knocked me for six. By five years of age, Australian traminer is typically overblown and oily, having replaced lost its youthful intensity and freshness with advanced toasty, honeyed and keroseney characters. Nothing could have been farther from the truth with this joyously vibrant and zesty wine, whose bright core of spicy rose water and lychee flavours expressed itself the entire length of its sumptuous, but marvellously restrained palate. It finished long and virtually dry, with lingering powder/musk influences and a hint of chalkiness. While I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that every Tasmanian should immediately rush out and plant the stuff, it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves every now and again that traminer exists, and it does play a worthy role in much contemporary Asian fusion cuisine. Gimme a wine like this Pipers Brook gewurz ahead of most of the snazzily packaged, snappily priced but under-achieving whites from viognier, pinot gris or roussanne any day. But they don’t grow on trees.
