Although a Martian visitor might be a little nonplussed by what appears to be happening in certain Australian vineyards, Dr Who wouldn’t be. All of a sudden, or so it would appear, we have been inundated by ‘old vine’ wines of shiraz, grenache and sometimes mourvedre which, since the Barcelona Olympics, it would appear, we no longer refer to as mataro. Where have they come from? Where were they before? And what does the reference to ‘old vines’ on their labels imply? Has somebody invented some sort of time-traveling vineyard spray? Or are they picking the crop into a kind of viticultural Tardis? Since they managed to survive the ravages of phylloxera in the 1870s, Australia’s oldest vineyards, dating back to 1860, carry an aura of wonder about them. Their gnarled and free-form shapes are rarely seen in other plant species of such age. Other wine countries, with the possible exception of South Africa with its rare, treasured bush vine vineyards of pinotage, simply lack anything remotely comparable. Include France, Italy and Spain in that statement, where it’s not unusual for their wines to be labelled as coming from ‘old vines’ if the vineyards in question are only forty to fifty years old. Mere pups, you can hear growers at Clare, the McLaren Vale, central Victoria and Barossa Valley quietly smirk. You can see the awe and amazement on their faces when overseas wine makers and growers visit our old centenarians. Depending on their taste, it’s like a visit for them to Disneyland, the Great Pyramid or Mecca. Given that we’ve only just begun to appreciate them, it’s a wonder our old vineyards have actually survived at all. Much of Australia’s recent viticultural expansion has been established on the basis that you can grow top-quality fruit at high tonnages, however much the combined global experience over the last two millennia might question that supposition. Yield has been the key, so our ancient vineyards and their sometimes inconsistent, minuscule yields have been threatened by the accountant’s pen. A vine-pull scheme encouraged by the wine industry and supported by the South Australian government in the early 1980s directly led to the replacement of much of this invaluable, but inefficient resource. Much of our heritage was uprooted for more productive vineyards of more fashionable varieties such as chardonnay with more efficient trellis designs, particularly suited to mechanisation and better irrigation systems. Sadly, it was those rare and ancient red vineyards that had developed a harmonious relationship with nature, but not with a winery purchase price, which were removed. It took the rest of the world to tell us how important are our old vineyards of shiraz and how much they were prepared to pay for their wines. So much so, it must be said that there is no danger of such a scheme ever being repeated. Finally, Australians are buying grapes from growers on the basis of quality, so our remaining old vineyards are at last economically secure. Whether they are able to survive in a physiological sense in another issue entirely. Our old vineyards are constantly threatened by the fungal disease, Eutypa, which spreads through large pruning wounds to causes dieback in the arms of older vines, causing the vine to slowly rot away and become unproductive. McLaren Vale maker d’Arenberg has made a feature of a similar condition, by labelling its premier old vine shiraz ‘The Dead Arm’. Dead arm is another fungal disease, Phomopsis viticola, which slowly causes one arm of the vine to die, leaving the other half to produce small amounts of deeply concentrated fruit. It is largely the low vigour and small, intensely flavoured yield of old vines which makes their crop so valuable. Low vigour is typically caused by the shallow soils in which many of these vineyards are planted and their poor nutritional status. Most of these old vineyards were left to grow without any trellis at all, remaining as free-form and self-supporting bush vines, without any real attempt at training into a more efficient and productive system. Some have been established on a low single or 2-wire trellises and then left to survive as best they can through dry summers with minimal weed and irrigation management. Many such vineyards are also planted in areas with poor summer rainfall and no real provision for irrigation. Vines develop their root systems in their first ten years, after which roots die and regrow, utilising the starch reserves built up over winter for new growth the following spring. The vine’s wood development appears to reach a maximum butt circumference around 30-40 years, after which time the live wood actually dies off. The butts of the oldest vines consequently have very little live tissue. Of a 20cm diameter butt, for example, only around a quarter will still be alive. Since viticultural practices such as machine harvesting requires flexibility in the vine trunk, they’re out of the question for old vine vineyards. Their inherent low vigour promotes low bud numbers and open canopies, low yields and often small berry sizes. Lower crop levels cause earlier ripening and increase the chances of achieving full maturity in cooler seasons. Low crops also enhance the vine’s ability to fully develop its extract and intensity of flavour on the palate. It is the sheer intensity and incredible concentration of flavour of old vine wines which stand them apart, which they regularly achieve without the appearance of tough tannins and excessive extract. This concentration moves down the palate in a manner simply not observed in young vine wines. The oft-heard term of ‘velvet tannins’ applies most of all with old vine wines from fully ripened grapes. Some of Australia’s old vine wines: Bests Pinot Meunier Bests Thompson’s Family Reserve Shiraz Birk’s Wendouree Shiraz Mataro Brands Laira Original Vineyard Shiraz Chateau Tahbilk 1860s Block Shiraz d’Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz d’Arenberg The Old Vine Shiraz Henschke Hill of Grace Henschke Mount Edelstone Kay’s Block 6 Shiraz Penfolds Old Vine Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz Richard Hamilton Old Vines Shiraz Rockford Basket Press Shiraz St Hallett Old Block Shiraz Tim Adams The Aberfeldy Shiraz
