A flick through any Australian telephone directory will rapidly confirm this: there is an Italian community in this country that is alive and well. I’d actually go a lot further than that and suggest that over the last twenty or so years it has become positively fashionable to flaunt any level of Italian heritage you might have, no matter how insignificant it might be. A number of friends I knew years ago as Richard or Claude today answer their telephone with a heavily accented: ‘Buon giorno, Ricardo here’, or ‘Eh, this is Claudio’, before the now-statutory farewell of ‘Ciao’, where once a simple ‘good-bye’ would have sufficed. On the other hand, the same investigation will confirm that there isn’t nearly as significant a representation of French living amongst us. So why are most of the wines grown in Australia made from French varieties? Isn’t this just a little odd, especially when so many of our best and most popular restaurants are based on Italian cuisine, and no wine happens to go with Italian cuisine like Italian wine itself? Simply put, we grow the grapes we do because they were the first introduced here or, like chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, Australians responded to a world-wide demand for them. To this point in time, most of the slowly-growing demand for wines from native Italian grapes has been satisfied by Italian wine itself, much of which is very price-competitive in today’s market. Most of the major Italian red grapes are now reasonably well represented on the Australian wine scene, but it would not be realistic to suggest that the Italian makers with good export sales to Australia should start getting worried. Just as Australian winemakers showed when pinot noir was first introduced here, you don’t go making wines with transplanted varieties that taste and feel as if they’re related to the original versions overnight. It takes time to track how the varieties perform in unfamiliar vineyard sites and then match them to the most appropriate terroirs. Then you need to absorb and deploy centuries of winemaking traditions and techniques in a matter of years, often doing things to fruit that you would never dream of if it were cabernet, shiraz or merlot. And then the fine-tuning begins, a process that really takes decades. Given all that, Australia’s performance is not so bad. Our table wines from Italian varieties tend to be fruitier, more forward, overt and obvious in their flavours than their Italian counterparts, which are typically tighter, drier, more reserved, savoury and complex. Here is a selection of the best Australian wines from Italian varieties: Best’s Vibrant, spicy Dolcetto Box Stallion Juicy, confectionary and spicy Dolcetto Brown Brothers Savoury, tarry, meaty and fine-grained Barbera Cape Mentelle Powerful, densely flavoured, alcoholic, spicy, meaty and savoury Zinfandel (now recognised to be identical to Italy’s native Primitivo) Cobaw Ridge Tightly focused, structured and savoury Lagrein Coriole Spicy, dry and dusty Sangiovese Garry Crittenden Vibrant, spicy Sangiovese, rather correct and astringent Nebbiolo, savoury Barbera, deliciously pear-like Arneis Jasper Hill Meaty, astringent, herbal and tarry Nebbiolo Maglieri Riper, softer and more juicy, approachable Nebbiolo (oxymoronic to the purists, I agree) Montrose Savoury, tangy, nicotine-like and sour-edged Barbera, herbal and maraschino cherry-like Sangiovese Pike’s Robust, earthy, meaty and structured Sangiovese Pizzini Savoury, tightly focused Nebbiolo, spicy cherry-like Sangiovese, nutty, mineral and savoury Arneis (white) Primo Estate Tropical, peachy and mineral Pinot Gris Seppelt Tangy, nutty, chalky and savoury Pinot Gris (Drumborg Vineyard)
