Recently I had the opportunity to take a close look at the forthcoming Giaconda releases. While I will present detailed tasting notes in Volume 5, Issue 9 of the newsletter (which will be available shortly on the website), I thought I’d make some comments in the light of the frenzied rush made for the 2001 Giaconda Chardonnay through the Australian Wine Exchange. It’s a remarkable wine, underlining yet again the place that Giaconda occupies at the head of Australia’s chardonnay pack. Somehow it’s both opulent and delicate, combining extraordinary unctuousness and power with surprisingly delicate aromas and a wide spectrum of palate flavours. However it’s not as wild, funky or mealy as previous vintages, with rather less obvious bound sulphide and lees-derived complexity than Giaconda drinkers are used to seeing. The Aeolia Roussanne 2002 reveals some spirity warmth, but exhibits some delightful lemon blossom, mineral and wilder, funky qualities, and some racy brightness of fruit. I’m not as excited by the 2002 Nantua Les Deux combination of Chardonnay and Roussanne, which comes across as rather thick and oily, lacking the elegance you’d expect from Giaconda. That said, this wine was made from young vines experiencing another stressful season. While there’s presently some rawness and herbal quality about the 2001 Pinot Noir, I expect it to mature over a long period to become a very good, perhaps even great expression of this label. There’s already some suggestion of smoked meat, duck fat and typical Giaconda spiciness. Having watched it closely over a two-day period, I believe it will continue to build. The Warner Vineyard Shiraz from 2001 is a terrific wine, easily the best I have tasted from the emerging Beechworth region. It’s already incredibly expressive of earthy, spicy, gamey animal hide flavour, which lends wonderful complexity to its concentrated, briary dark fruit. There’s not the slightest hint of anything likely to become excessively dominant or unstable, and the many winemakers who believe you need a level of brettanomyces to achieve these qualities should taste this excellent wine. Perhaps the best new Giaconda has been left to last. The 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon is a majestic, long-term claret that entirely vindicates Kinzbrunner’s change in style of barrel to thinner-staved oak that imparts its influence more quickly to the finished wine. It has been bottled with a profound depth and intensity of dark-berried cabernet fruit with a hint of herbal character. Its dusty, vanilla and cedary oak qualities are perfectly integrated. The slight rawness around the edges of its tannins will doubtless have become velvet-like and smooth by the time the wine is approaching its peak something over a decade from now. Again, my hat goes off to Rick Kinzbrunner for another excellent collection of wines, especially given the harsh, dry conditions that Victoria’s northeast has dealt with for several years.
