If another person complains to me that they don’t think Salinger tastes like Champagne I will rip their arms off. You don’t hear people bemoaning that Australian crayfish is inferior to European lobster, that Victorian lamb can’t shine a candle to Greek, or that South Australian olives are simply no alternative to Italian. If anything, the reverse applies, as we appreciate the quality growing in our own backyard and come to understand what makes our own produce different and worthwhile. Yet the very opposite still applies to sparkling wine; a phenomenon definitely not helped by the obstinate and frankly gutless refusal of some of our makers to be done once and for all with the false use of the term “Champagne”. Although the wine industry is clearly not helping itself to overcome this remaining aspect of oenological cultural cringe, it really is time for us to recognise that our makers of sparkling wine are demonstrably not attempting to duplicate the taste of Champagne in Australia. Why on earth would they, and how on earth could they? To start with, to compare our Salingers and Crosers with vintage Champagne is simply unrealistic. To buy three bottles of these Australian wines costs the same as just one vintage French. But coupled with our excellent understanding of the winemaking process, the Australian sun has put us at the focus of world wine. The rest of the world is now trying to copy us. In Europe today are wine labels claiming their contents to be made in an “Australian style”, or else with the assistance of passing Australian winemakers. The rest of the world wants flavour, and we’re in the best position to give it to them. So why on earth would we want our sparkling wines to taste like their European alternatives at around the same price, many of which are frequently thin, tart and greenish? Perhaps the greatest single point of difference in the making of premium Champagne to the majority of the best Australian bubbles is the extraordinary diversity of blending material available to the major French houses. The country of Champagne is divided feudal-style into thousands of strip vineyards, largely unfenced, but precisely plotted, classified and monitored. Individual families own much of this land, a plot here, a plot there, from which they can either sell fruit to the large houses, join forces with others and turn it to wine in local cooperatives, or vinify it themselves in beehive-like cellars under their village houses. The popular non-vintage blends of Moet et Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Mumm Cordon Rouge, not to mention the multitude of Buyers’-own-Brands (BOBs), are sourced from dozens upon dozens of different vineyards, from different villages, different aspects, from different varieties. The pool of diversity, from which the wines draw both their complexity and consistency, is unmatchable anywhere in wine. It is logical, therefore, that two of the Australian sparkling wine projects most likely to achieve and maintain a level of quality consistently comparable with French non-vintage, are based on achieving a Champagne-like spread of fruit sourcing. Domaine Chandon’s ‘1’ series and Seppelt Salinger are both made by companies with fruit resources that enable their winemakers to construct their base blends in a fashion similar – if not on quite the same scale – as their French counterparts. When parent Moet et Chandon established Domaine Chandon in the Yarra Valley, it was considered as important for the winery to be founded in a geographic location central to other cool climate areas, as it was for the Yarra Valley to be suitable for growing the traditional Champagne varieties itself. Although Domaine Chandon has planted 40 ha of its 120 ha property at Coldstream, much of its fruit comes from elsewhere, underlining Moet philosophy that wine complexity is in part produced by blending across varieties and vineyards. “The name of the game for us is complexity and balance, not so much consistency,” says Moet et Chandon’s senior blender, Richard Geoffroy, an affable Frenchman regularly invited by Dr Tony Jordan, Domaine Chandon’s managing director, to assist in the assemblage of Domaine’s base wines. The number of vineyards used by Domaine Chandon for its base wines is 36 and increasing as opportunities arise. Jordan says he looks for distinct and traditional aromas in his base wines, for a harmony between varieties without dominace by either. In addition to the wines he sources from Coonawarra, Mansfield, Macedon, Tasmania, the Mornington Peninsula and the Strathbogies, Jordan wants fruit from Geelong and, as soon as he’s able to, will buy some from Gippsland. “And this may sound crazy,” he says, ” but I can’t wait for some from the Great Southern area of Western Australia.” Geoffroy says his real challenge is to impart Moet style into the Australian wine, which he translates as to build a creamy richness onto the palate, increase its length and its persistence of dry finish. The big issues, he says, are timing the harvest right and the blending itself. “I don’t want to taste green flavours in the fruit”, he says. “I want to move into the first ripe flavours, but not the too ripe. The timing is critical.” Jordan says that Domaine Chandon’s wines will reflect changes in seasons. “You either evolve into a monocru (individual vineyard) wine, which are themselves valid styles,” he says, “or else to a highly blended style that allows us to produce a fuller wine, in which consistency from year to year is less important than palate structure”. Comparing his situation to that of his French owner, he says “With our flavours and our climate, we get a vintage wine every year,” he says. “The French can’t. We’ll never suffer a total write-off year. We can’t go off the air.” I was stunned by a recent tasting of a selection of Domaine Chandon’s base wines, and indeed quite unprepared for their diversity of flavour and structure. An exercise in blending also revealed that only a minuscule change of 3-4% in the nature of the blends can significantly alter the wine’s ultimate flavour profile. Such are the benefits of fruit diversity. Seppelt’s Salinger is a similarly fine-tuned wine, assembled since 1990 from a number of base wines so extensive Seppelt needs an entire page to list them. Although this wine has received thirty months’ maturation on lees, it is a less creamy and autolytic wine than the Domaine Chandon style, retaining instead more emphasis on the freshness and elegance of fruit. The 1990 Salinger, clearly the finest yet released, is 88% in roughly equal parts from three cool-climate regions: Drumborg, Tumbarumba and Tooma (the latter two being new developments in the Snowy Mountains). Remaining fruit is sourced from the Yarra Valley, Partalunga, Barooga, Piccadilly, the Strathbogie Ranges, Great Western and even a small proportion is from New Zealand. According to Seppelt Chief Winemaker Ian McKenzie, not only has the 1990 vintage set the standard for future releases of Salinger, but it has created a uniquely Australian style of sparkling wine. Quite true; you could never could confuse it with French. McKenzie is far more interested in creating a Seppelt hallmark with elegance and consistency of style. So, are we really getting closer to Champagne? No. Yet the gradual adoption of Champagne experience and philosophy will surely make and blend Australian wines of international class that will truly reflect the diversity of our own vineyards and the expression of our own indigenous fruit.
