At last the hype and publicity are turning into sales, for there’s no doubting the quality of the cause. Like an old juggernaut, stripped back and rebuilt to take on the modern road train that chardonnay has become, riesling is back in town. Well, sort of. One of the wine companies with most to gain with riesling’s return to popularity is Orlando Wyndham, which was there when Australia’s affair with riesling first began. For a company of its scale, being one of the four largest wine producers in Australia, it bottles but five rieslings: two under the Richmond Grove label and three as Orlando products, maintaining the historical connection between Orlando and Germany’s premier grape variety. The three Orlando rieslings are the budget-priced Jacob’s Creek Riesling, the mid-market value brand of St Helga and the upmarket Steingarten brand, made in tiny volumes and sold at a premium. While the Jacob’s Creek wine regularly surprises everyone from riesling enthusiasts to wine show judges, it’s a mystery to me why St Helga and Steingarten are not more sought after by the born-again riesling sect. Perhaps it’s an image thing, but Orlando’s wines certainly stack up against the rest. Orlando Wyndham prides itself on being at the cutting edge of riesling technology. In the early 1950s managing director Colin Gramp became aware of the techniques of using pressure tanks for fermentation then being used in Germany, which gave the winemaker total control over the escape of carbon dioxide. Gas pressure is increased if it is retained, thereby slowing the rate of fermentation, resulting in livelier, fresher and more aromatic white wines. The equipment arrived in time for the 1953 vintage, creating a remarkable wine that revolutionised white wine making in Australia, and initiating the now famous series of Orlando Special Vintage Barossa Riesling. After early setbacks in the marketplace with the revolutionary Barossa Rhine Riesling, its acceptance was universal and other Australian makers began to emulate the style. It didn’t take Orlando and other makers long to realise that refrigeration was a better and more efficient means of achieving this result, but Orlando maintained its status as the country’s leading riesling maker until a genius by the name of John Vickery began in the early 1960s to create a remarkable legacy of riesling under a welter of different Leo Buring labels. In 1962 the Gramps took another step into the unknown by planting a vineyard high in the East Barossa Ranges on a site virtually without soil. ‘Steingarten’ was gouged out with machines and explosives from a slope of decomposed schist rock in the hills high above Rowland Flat. Its vines were close-planted in classic Mosel fashion, each vine individually staked and trellised accordingly. From its earliest days Steingarten’s wines were noted for their inconsistency. As you’d expect from such a vineyard, seasonal variation was rather an expressive thing. At one extreme the wines could be tight and austere, at the other ripe and made into a sweetish ‘spatlese’ style. Today the windbreak which provided some relief to the exposed Steingarten site in the 1970s and 1980s is being replaced, but for the last seven years it has severely lacked water, creating tough-skinned grapes whose wines are too phenolic without being blended to lighter and more supple material. So Steingarten, which remains Orlando’s flagship riesling label, has become a multi-vineyard blend incorporating between 10-20% of fruit from the Steingarten vineyard. Each vintage it is viewed as the best riesling its makers can create, and comprises between 1,000-2,000 cases. Company chief winemaker Phil Laffer says he is looking for ‘purity of definition and restraint on the palate, creating a wine with sufficient staying power to cellar for twenty-plus years’. One of the best buys in Australian riesling has for years been Orlando’s St Helga. Largely sourced from the company’s own vineyards at altitudes between 400-450 metres, about 200 metres above the Barossa floor, its makers have resisted the temptation to beef it up into a more expressive wine in its youth – which might have made it easier to compete against young rieslings from Clare – and have retained its more fine and restrained Eden Valley qualities. ‘What it’s costing us in sales right now will win us friends over the longer term’, says Laffer. ‘We’re sticking to our guns.’ Phil Laffer has said on the public record that of all the Orlando Wyndham wines, those which give him the most satisfaction are the Jacob’s Creek range. Count the Riesling amongst his favourites, for given its price and volume, it’s a pretty fair proposition. ‘People shouldn’t be surprised at how good it is if they knew where the fruit comes from. They’re all good regions and the wine is only made from free run material. We bottle early to retain its natural carbon dioxide levels and look for that vibrant green colour’, Laffer explains. Beating the Millennium Bug A poor flowering in the wet 1999 spring season was always going to reduce the 2000 riesling crop in Eden Valley. Much of the vines’ growth potential was then redirected towards canopy growth, which might normally have posed a problem. Fortunately the larger vine canopies were able to protect their fast-ripening crops against the sunburn which might otherwise have fried them under the extreme heat of the hottest February since last century. The vines were able to produce good flavours at lower sugar levels than usual, resulting in a fine collection of intense, but taut, bony wines with austerity and more limey flavours than you tend to find in cooler years when lemon flavours typically predominate. There’s some phenolic grip in these young wines, but fining before bottling should polish them up nicely, leaving classic Eden Valley chalk and dry alum textures.
