This is about a red wine region I’ll bet you’ve heard of. It lays a valid claim to be Australia’s premier red wine district, yet it crushes 50% more white grapes than red. And in this very same region, whose rhine riesling could best be described as pedestrian, it’s more profitable to grow rhine than chardonnay, which happens to do much better. And this same region has a well-known reputation for the quality of its red soil, yet, a surprising proportion is not red at all. Its name is so strong that many consider it to be a single brand, yet where it begins and ends is a vexing subject capable of raising the deepest emotions from even that most laid-back creation of all, the grapegrower. And while on the subject of grapes, the place in question has forged a name for its innovative viticulture that extends beyond our shores, yet it could be these very vineyard techniques that may ultimately lead to its undoing. It is a region that built its reputation for robust, long-living reds of surprising quality and complexity, but I’d not put the house on some of its popular wines lasting more than five years. And what is the name of this wine region, whose potential remains partially obscured by the too many of the wrong grapes, delineation disputes, dramatic viticultural departures and questionable wine styles? Coonawarra. The histamine scare of the seventies led to the grafting of many of Coonawarra’s best red vines to white, especially to rhine riesling. The imbalance remains. Coonawarra riesling is steely, thin, generally short on the palate and lacking in the intense citric, floral qualities that attract intelligent buyers to the wines of the Eden Valley, Clare and the rising Mount Barker area inWestern Australia. Yet, because it grows like a weed and can crop around ten tonnes per acre, Coonawarra growers make more money per acre by producing it than the lower-yielding chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Naturally, with an eye on the till, they’re loth to rip it out. All the time wondering how they’re going to find enough genuine Coonawarra red dirt on which to plant premium red varietals, where the region’s name, image and long-term security will clearly be won. Much has been written about where the famed red soil begins and ends, becoming the grey-black clay soils which surrounds it. Vic Patrick, viticultural guru for the Mildara group, once took the trouble to show me around the edge. But it clearly comes and goes, creating something of a patchwork effect around the fringes. And there are several outcrops of red soil surrounding the main cigar-shaped north-south strip, that runs from Terra Rosa wines about ten kilometres north of the Coonawarra township down to the Rosemount vineyard, just north of Penola, about ten miles south. So what happens when these outcrops are developed into vineyards? They have the same climate as Coonawarra, within limits acceptable in widespread regions like Bordeaux and the Barossa; similar soils, topography and aspect. Time is proving that when made in the same conditions, the wine is of comparable quality and style. Are they able to be called Coonawarra? No, say the Coonawarra Vignerons Association, an august body, it must be said, of which I was once, albeit briefly, its secretary. The vignerons of the Viticultural Council of South-East South Australia, which also comprises the recently-merged Padthaway and Keppoch wine regions, (the wisdom of whose recent conjunction may well have escaped the minds of the Coonawarra Vignerons), have drawn a line which excludes the highly-publicised development of Petaluma, overseen by the uniquely talented and ambitious Brian Croser. Croser is a touchy subject with many Coonawarra producers, to such an extent that there has to be another agenda in operation. Whatever that may be is not the topic of this discussion. However, Croser has invested a huge sum developing a vineyard across the road from where the Coonawarra Vignerons deem their region’s boundary to end, over the shire boundary of the Hundred of Comaum. There is no doubt that Croser knew he was planting in the Hundred of Joanna when he established the vineyard. The question is, did he know at that time that the locals would act to prohibit his use of the Coonawarra name? I doubt it, seeing the delineation was only made formal after his development had begun. The Coonawarra Vignerons don’t want Croser to call the wines from his northern block ‘Coonawarra’, but Croser, just as defiantly, is adamant that he’s going to. He claims the fruit from the vineyard is superior to that grown at Petaluma’s other Coonawarra vineyard, situated on the main drag, on undisputed terra rossa soil. Several of the locals reckon there’s no red dirt on Croser’s vineyard. But the vignerons say that sort of thing about each other all the time. He reckons there is. Your correspondent will walk every inch of it before the year is out. Watch this space. The last controversy, which may take years to work through, is the adoption of mechanical and minimal pruning techniques in the vineyard by the region’s large wine companies, Wynns, Lindemans, Coonawarra Machinery Company and Mildara. The vines, which in the case of minimal pruning are barely given a short back and sides, are shaped into a hedge-like vertical canopy, which encourages smaller bunches of smaller grapes, and many more of them, which tend to grow naturally on the outside of the canopy. The advantages are good fruit exposure, ease of mechanical harvesting and overall vineyard management, greatly reduced vineyard operational costs and the maintenance of healthy yields. On the flip side, detractors point to the greater spread of uneven ripening, which leads to the presence of sweet-sour flavours from the greater number of over-ripe and under-ripe grapes at harvest, a possible link with otherwise foreign greenish aromas in the wine, and general lack of acid balance. The big companies have basically adopted fully-mechanised viticultural techniques of varying natures for several years now, and the results are in the bottle. I, for one, am reluctant to condemn or condone. Coonawarra has experienced a remarkable run of excellent red wine seasons in the late eighties, namely ’84, ’85, ’86, ’87, ’88 and ’90. Yet, some of the wines which collected trophies by the handful, and which continue to do so in major wine shows, are clearly either not lasting the distance or are not about to. Other, more robust Coonawarra reds appear to have been made so with the significant additions of tannin after harvest, a hypothesis most of the winemakers in question deny. I am confident to say, however, that the region justly regarded as the producer of Australia’s best red wine, has an identity crisis in more ways than one. And, like many other isolated farming communities I could think of, it could use a dash or three of objectivity.
