There are around two thousand wineries in Australia today, most of which are competing for a tiny share of the market that remains outside the bounds of the country’s ten largest wine producers. A small number of these brands have already reached iconic status, or have else cemented their place in the market, either on the basis of outright quality or their ability to respond to the fashion demands of our time. At the cutting edge there are dozens of emergent producers, each vying to achieve a level of quality and a point of difference or recognition that will establish their place in the scheme of things. Here, out of all this number, are five, selected because I believe they stand as great a chance as any of becoming tomorrow’s icons. Any selection of such a tiny number from such a large pool will be considered to be controversial or provocative, and I hope this is no exception! Andrew Thomas Having cut his teeth making a decade of first-class red for Tyrrell’s, it’s little wonder that Andrew Thomas has stepped straight into the top bracket of modern Hunter winemakers. It took but a sniff of his 2003 ‘Kiss’ Shiraz, one of the best wines I tasted in 2004, to put me on full alert over this tiny, but hand-crafted label. With the moderately full palate weight that the Hunter does best, this wine is so astonishingly drinkable that I fear that very little, if any, will actually be around at its likely peak in around a decade’s time. Its spotlessly presented sour cherry, dark plum and cassis flavours are tinged with nuances of iodide and earthiness. Its layers of deep, brilliant fruit easily cope with its smart, fine-grained oak. A native of McLaren Vale, where his father, Wayne Thomas, creates red wines of finesse and balance, Andrew Thomas has gradually gained more confidence in what the Hunter does best. He no longer makes a wine from chardonnay, instead focusing his white wine energies towards the tangy, dry and powdery ‘Braemore’ Semillon, a wine of vibrant lemon rind and honeydew melon flavours. He also produces two regional blends: a shiraz sourced from both the Hunter and McLaren Vale, plus a white blend of Adelaide Hills sauvignon blanc with Hunter Valley semillon. Also a contract winemaker with around a dozen clients, Andrew Thomas made the first wines under his own label in 1997. The ‘Kiss’ Shiraz only dates from its first vintage in 2001. This is a journey that has only just begun. Castagna Castagna is a small vineyard in the Victorian region of Beechworth, high in the foothills of the Australian Alps in Northeast Victoria, which in 2002 convinced me that it would deliver handsomely on its promises. Having come from the advertising and film industries, Julian Castagna operates at a different speed to many whose working lives have been entirely around wine. He’s a confident promoter and marketer of his wines, but at the same time deserves great credit for focusing his wine business on anything but mainstream styles. Castagna’s principal wine is its ‘Genesis’ Syrah, a silky, spicy and elegant, fine-grained shiraz unashamedly and effectively made in northern Rh̫ne fashion. Its ‘La Chiave’ Sangiovese is a charmingly peppery expression of this Tuscan variety, delivering in its signature 2002 vintage layers of sour cherry and plum-like flavours, with the fine-grained astringency so elusive in Australian sangiovese. To my mind, it’s the best expression yet released in this country. It’s early days yet for the ‘Ingenue’ Viogner, especially given the difficult nature of the heat-affected 2003 vingage, while Castagna’s ‘Allegro’ Ros̩ is surprisingly powerful and spicy, if perhaps a little spirity. Given the youth of the now fully biodynamic vineyard and the fact that its maker is learning as he goes, there’s as much to anticipate in Castagna’s future as there is admire in what has been accomplished to date. If the groundbreaking reds can maintain something around the 2002 quality mark, you’ll have to place your orders quickly. Epis Only a small number of vineyards in Victoria’s cool-climate Macedon Ranges region deliver internationally recognisable elements of style and quality. Invariably located in heat trap-like sites that are able to reach full physiological ripeness in most seasons, the best vineyards can produce distinctively Australian wines of an uncanny French-ness. Bindi is one of these, but has become too well known to be a subject in this story. Epis, however, is right on brief. Combine the abilities and passion of the Odd Couple-like pairing of winemaker Stuart Anderson and viticulturist Alec Epis and you have an irresistible recipe for tiny amounts of high-class Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Merlot. Humorous and irascible, Epis is a former premiership-winning player for Essendon in what was then the Victorian Football League. Founder of the small Balgownie vineyard and a well-known connoisseur of the wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux, Anderson is a worldly and cultivated character who still enjoys making wine in France and is perhaps today making some of the best wine of his long life in the Macedon Ranges. Grown at Epis’ home vineyard at Woodend, the Chardonnay marries the concentration of low-cropped Australian fruit with a length, tautness and minerality suggestive of Macon in Burgundy. It’s unusually fragrant, with a palate of crystal-clear citrus and honeydew melon flavour. With the seductively sappy mouthfeel of pinot at its finest, Epis’ Pinot Noir reveals a heady, spicy perfume of musk, cinnamon and cherries, before a palate of sumptuous depth and fine-grained structure. From the old Flynn and Williams vineyard at Kyneton, the Epis and Williams Cabernet Sauvignon does perhaps vary more from season to season than the other wines. Warmer years deliver more flesh and substance; cooler seasons more mint and dried herbs. There is no intent, dream or even room to increase the production of these rare and distinctive wines. Ferngrove In 1996 Murray Burton mortgaged his family’s beef and dairy farm at Walpole to buy viticultural land in the north of Western Australia’s Frankland River region. He then developed the nearby Ferngrove Vineyard, a wine success in anyone’s language, two years later. The brand now sources fruit from three different Frankland River vineyards, plus the Karri Oak Vineyard at the more southerly location of Mount Barker. A top-class approach to viticulture under Wayne Barnett and some creative work in the cellar by young winemaker Kim Horton has helped Ferngrove fashion a well-priced brand hierarchy since its first vintage in 2000. From the very affordable ‘Symbols’ range of varietal wines to the flagship ‘The Stirlings’ blend of red Bordeaux varieties, Ferngrove’s hallmark is its presentation of bright, focused varietal qualities which it typically delivers with a combination of elegance and structure. There’s an element of chalky leesy complexity and minerality about ‘The Cossack’ Riesling, while exemplified by the minty ‘Majestic’ Cabernet Sauvignon, the reds typically reveal penetrative and pristine flavours framed by fine, dusty tannins. There’s not a single over-ripe or soupy red in sight. Perhaps the brand’s most interesting wine is ‘The King’ Malbec, a wine whose surprising quality has almost single-handedly restored the faith of many in this variety. Ferngrove’s philosophy has obviously been to build its market share by over-delivering on quality at every price-point. It’s early days for this emergent winery, and while there’s still plenty of refinement to be achieved, I’ve little doubt that given its present approach, it will forge a strong presence amongst the best we have. Kooyong Giogio Gjergja might own it, but Sandro Mosele is Kooyong. He’s a passionate, intelligent and well-resourced winemaker who thrives on the sort of attention to detail demanded by the creation of great wine. Today, with just three commercial releases under his belt, he’s already considered to be one of the genuine front-runners in Australian chardonnay and pinot noir. Mosele had a strong hand in the development of Kooyong’s 32 ha of vineyards near Tuerong, at the warmer and more reliable extremity of the Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. He also helped design one of the most versatile ‘small’ wineries around, equipped as it is with the ability to make and keep separate many different parcels of wine. One of the five vineyards that comprise the Kooying plantings is named ‘Mosaic’, and in this word is expressed much of Mosele’s philosophy towards wine. His approach is to deconstruct his wines into a matrix of different components that reflect different vineyard sites, different clones of chardonnay and pinot noir, plus different regimes of oak maturation such as cooper, source and age of French oak. Mosele’s ability to put into action the creative dreams of so many winemakers must leave them green with envy on their first visit to Kooyong. Then, Mosele’s ability as a winemaker really shows through. For not only has he shown in such a short time a rare ability to construct complete, structured and satisfying blends of pinot noir and chardonnay suited to drinking early or late in their lives, but he has already isolated several combinations of variety and soil type fully able to express distinctive site-derived characteristics at a very high quality level. The taut and minerally Mosaic Chardonnay 2001 and the more floral, nutty and fleshy Faultline Chardonnay 2001 share as many differences as similarities, while there’s no denying the Vosne-Roman̩e-like combination of suppleness, power and elegance presented in the Haven Pinot Noir 2001.
