Over recent weeks I have published plenty of words concerning the state of Australian wine and the plight it faces to survive. I have written that Australian wine has largely forgotten why it exists and what its quality is all about. Our producers have acted as if in isolation, content to ignore international perceptions of style, quality and value. Instead, they have followed the constant, transient, fashion-derived changes preferred by local influencers, often ignoring in the process the very buyers that helped create their brands and businesses.
Rather than pursue such trends to craft ‘new Australian wine’ intended to please the chorus of gatekeepers, there are still proprietors of Australian wine companies able to ignore such noise and focus on their own ambitions and aspirations. One such owner is Jeremy Muller, whose Peccavi Estate in Margaret River has already created a track record of excellence which, sadly, is recognised more strongly in overseas markets than in its own.
Given that so many producers, large and small, are today wondering which way to turn, here is a current and little-known story that might both inform and inspire.
Think Margaret River and a bevy of names will leap to mind, including Moss Wood, Cullen, Vasse Felix, Cape Mentelle, Leeuwin Estate, Woodlands, Voyager Estate, Deep Woods and Larry Cherubino, to name but a few. Congratulations to you, if the word Peccavi made your list.
But before I dive a little more deeply into Peccavi and its story, I need to disclose that Jeremy Muller, Peccavi’s owner, has been a friend of mine for many years. Despite this, for the first five years we knew each other I had no idea he owned a vineyard, good or bad. We became friends in Singapore, where he ran a foreign exchange desk and road-tested one of Asia’s finest restaurants each and every night, or so it appeared to me.
It was after lunch one Singapore Sunday that Jeremy shoved a glass of red wine at me and asked what I thought of it. I told him that it was a very good Western Australian shiraz, but I had no idea whose it was. So he said it was his – which I didn’t believe a word of; a message I endeavoured to convey as politely as possible. Until then we had attended countless of the same wine dinners and tastings without his own wine ever coming up in conversation. How our mutual friends kept this secret for so long still escapes me. However, after a time, he actually convinced me he was indeed the proprietor of the label in question and had even directed the making of its wine.
Still incredulous, I asked why he hadn’t told me about Peccavi, and his response explains why we’re still friends. He said he never wanted to put me under any pressure to write about his wine. In my line, that’s a rare path for a wine producer to walk.
And so my relationship with Peccavi began. Not to mention that from that very moment I saw Jeremy Muller in an entirely different light…
Peccavi is perhaps the greatest secret in Australian wine. It’s a single vineyard brand, but from some vineyard! The highest in Margaret River and one that is typically refreshed each late summer afternoon by a breeze that takes cooler air over the rise from the Indian Ocean to Geographe Bay. So despite its northerly location near Yallingup, it’s anything but one of the region’s warmer sites. But within the boundaries of that single site exist a diverse collection of aspects, elevations and rolling slopes that have enabled a matching of individual vineyard block with variety. Despite these variations of slope and aspect, the entire site is remarkably consistent in its soil type – a classic regional loam overlying a granite-derived bed of gravel that was stony enough for part of it to have been used as the shire gravel pit.
The vineyard’s inherent diversity of slope and aspect enable Muller to have planted cabernet sauvignon facing every direction, all on hillsides. Consequently, different parcels contribute different elements of complexity and texture, and Peccavi is superbly equipped to maintain a consistent house stamp from season to season.
The property’s 110 acres comprise 42 acres of vineyard and about that again of original tall native forest. It’s such a pretty and picturesque site that an image of the vineyard adorned much of Western Australia’s wine publicity over recent years. But a pretty site doesn’t guarantee a great-tasting wine in the bottle; far from it.
And just because a vineyard site has genuine potential, there’s no certainty its wines will be anything special. It pays not to discount the human element of terroir.
So let’s now touch on the human element, a key factor behind Peccavi’s quality and a significant reason why so many other winegrowing projects fail to deliver on their potential. In this case, it’s a combination of an innate understanding of international quality, an ambition to create certain wines at that level, an ability to identify a site that can deliver this ambition, plus the means and the attention to detail to make it all happen. Not unsurprisingly, that’s a repeating pattern amongst most of the New World’s elite wine producers.
‘I wanted to do something tangible after 27 years in FX’, says Muller. “Each day I’d arrive at work with nothing and leave with nothing, other than the money I had made while I was there. But other than that there was no sense of satisfaction; I hadn’t actually created anything.’
After a few years of exploring possibilities in farming, he figured that having an appetite for wine, he should make it himself. But what wine? And from where?
Like many of us, Jeremy Muller had a father who fostered his affection for wine. In his case, while he was discovering wine with his father, white meant Burgundy and red meant Bordeaux. So, he says, having decided that chardonnay and cabernet were the wines he really liked, he began a truly global search for a site capable of making elite wines from each. Eventually it came down to two regions, but comparing vineyard prices with the Napa Valley, Margaret River looked more attractive, especially as during the 1990s Muller had met the region’s pioneers and had tasted their ground-breaking wines.
So, having purchased in 2005 a site which had previously sold fruit to the once-renowned Brookland Valley brand, Muller set to work at Peccavi Estate. Narrowing rows to provide higher density of plantings, removing vineyard sections that weren’t working and shortening rows to improve air movement, introducing a wide range of modern clones and tweaking anything he wasn’t happy with, it’s now an entirely different vineyard. For a start, it now has what is believed to be the first commercial planting of the stunning new 181 merlot clone, plus significant areas of the latest cabernet clones, also from Bordeaux. In all, the site now boasts properly yielding areas planted to cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec, petit verdot, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, semillon and shiraz. And it excels at each.
Muller has assembled a first-class team to manage his viticulture and winemaking. Colin Bell, an immensely capable and wine-aware viticulturist has looked after the vineyard since purchase. Winemaking has been handled by top local pro Bruce Dukes, in the company of the highly respected Brian Fletcher in Peccavi’s early years. The wines have never lacked in polish.
You can click here to see may ratings and tasting notes of all Peccavi wines, as well as seeing video tastings of them with Jeremy Muller (click the video icon on each card).
No single vineyard in Margaret River is doing a better job across the regional mix of cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, shiraz, merlot and sauvignon blanc (with a splash of semillon). Peccavi typically delivers depth of fruit and flavour, plus a structure that’s perhaps more typical of France than Australia today. Yet, because it has yet to be broadly distributed in Australia, there’s barely an Australian native that knows of Peccavi or its second label, No Regrets.
To my mind, only Woodlands can rival Peccavi’s Cabernet Sauvignon as the finest, most consistent and most classically presented of all Margaret River cabernet. It’s emphatically polished and regional but brings a fine gravelly structure and style that puts it into the big-time international league. Recent seasons have seen the introduction of the new Bordeaux clones and a more artful and seamless expression of the wine. Each year Peccavi’s is usually knocking around my three top six Australian cabernets, and it’s been my preferred choice more than once.
As a fascinating aside, Peccavi now releases a parallel ‘old clone’ variant of the same wine, under the Old Vines Cabernet Sauvignon label. The contrast is remarkable, but the quality difference is significantly smaller. The old vine wine is less perfumed and complex but more structural and gravelly. Maybe they will end up inside the same bottle one day…
Peccavi’s Chardonnay is sumptuous and unashamedly built around the richness and purity of its fruit. It’s an artful, complex, Burgundy-inspired wine that could hardly contrast more markedly with the stripped-out high acid styles that have even crept into Margaret River after their origins in the Yarra Valley some years ago. It’s typically in the top three of the region and can still look remarkable after more than 15 years of bottle age.
Peccavi’s Sauvignon Blanc, a barrel-fermented and matured wine that typically features a smidge of semillon for its length, focus and acidity, is one of the region’s finest expressions of this blend. While the current 2020 release is more fruit-forward, it is more typically a smoky, briny wine that brings to mind the Pavillon Blanc from Chateau Margaux.
Shiraz is anything but a natural fit at Margaret River, where too often it develops minty, herbal, tomato-stalk characters that distract from the rest of the wine. Perhaps because he has a stubborn streak, or perhaps just because he owns quite a lot of it, Jeremy Muller has persisted and today makes a wine I’m happy to call the region’s finest expression of this grape, which frankly isn’t saying a lot. However, having experienced it young and old on many occasions after that first afternoon in Singapore, I’m convinced this wine sits comfortably amongst the finest of Western Australia’s Rhone-inspired shirazes. Its ageworthiness is exceptional.
Typical of Muller, he had to have a side project at Peccavi. In this case it all had to do with two things: the sourcing of the latest Bordeaux clones of merlot and cabernet sauvignon from Bordeaux plus Jeremy Muller’s long-term friendship with Stuart Watson, the top-drawer winemaker who family owns Woodlands. The arrival of these new clones triggered Muller to make separately, in a small, thoroughbred micro-winery on the Peccavi Estate the first vintages of what he has called The Estate reds, being varietal expressions of each grape.
It doesn’t do justice to The Estate Merlot to merely suggest it’s the finest merlot from Australia. It’s actually one of the finest from anywhere and is regularly compared by genuinely respected palates to the finest from France and Italy. To suggest that it has pushed the boundaries in Australia is an understatement.
Peccavi’s The Estate Cabernet Sauvignon bucks the Australian trend for a ‘reserve’ level wine, since it’s based on quality and purity of expression rather than additional ripeness, oak or extract. Stylistically located somewhere between the left bank of Bordeaux, the Rutherford Bench in the Napa Valley and Margaret River itself, it should stamp itself as a sumptuous but elegant, finely balanced long-term classic. Its depth of perfume and flavour are exceptional.
Add to these wines a punchy and profoundly varietal Petit Verdot plus a second ‘No Regrets’ label comprising a cabernet-merlot blend that would rival the first wines of many regional producers plus a contemporary, fully ripened flavour bomb of a sauvignon blanc-semillon blend, and you have the Peccavi catalogue.
As for recognition, Peccavi basically has a mortgage on the International Wine and Spirit Competition in Hong Kong, where its Cabernet Sauvignon is regularly recognised as the best Australian wine in the show. On more than one occasion it has also collected the trophy for the best international cabernet at the event. Peccavi regularly scores high at the Decanter World Wine Awards and boasts top restaurant listings in Asia’s premier capitals. It is also one of the nine wine producers around the world to be commissioned to make a home brand wine for Harrods in London.
So, the site is exceptional and its wines are terrific, but what about the consumer proposition? Given Peccavi’s (overseas) profile, are its wines priced beyond the reach of the Australian buyer? Quite the opposite. Even the premier The Estate wines, which retail for $150, represent remarkable value against local and overseas competition, while the Peccavi and No Regrets wines can be bought for well below their true value in this market. And to conclude, in a spirit of full disclosure, most are available at Oliver’s Wines, on nothing other than pure merit. Test me – you won’t regret it.
To double back to a key reason for writing this article: what does the Peccavi story say to producers who are wondering why their wines are neither sufficiently purchased nor respected? Peccavi’s quality begins with a vision and a focus, plus a prior recognition that the ultimate quality factor is the site. Always.
Then, once isolated, the site is worked upon and continually improved. The global wine market is a competitive one and to stand still can be to go backwards.
Top professionals are undertaking the growing and the making of the wines, as directed in a style sense by the proprietor. Peccavi is Jeremy Muller’s project, just as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is Aubert de Villaine’s. Neither are the winemaker, although Jeremy enjoys mucking in with the ferments of The Estate wines under the guidance of Stuart Watson. All involved in the project are focused on growing and making the wines that Jeremy Muller wants to bottle, and to drink.
Jeremy Muller’s style direction is driven by his awareness of world wine, world trends and world markets, which he lives and breathes. To him falls the responsibility of determining how his Margaret River wines fit in with both regional expectations and qualities, plus his conception of the totality of the global market for wine. It’s an interpretation that is ongoing and it’s constantly being tested and re-evaluated. It’s how he can identify the customers for the wines he hasn’t even made. Nothing at Peccavi is either accident or fluke. It’s the culmination of a long-term plan.
Take any of these factors out of Peccavi and its quality would not be the same. Take more than one out, and you would begin to see the vanilla so common in Australian wine today. Travel the wine world and you will register it’s the conviction and knowledge of the owners – or lack of such – that plays such a pre-eminent role in the quality and character of their wines.
There’s a message in there somewhere for Australian wine.
