When in 1971 former CSIRO scientist Dr John Kirk first planted what was then a typical mix of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz and riesling at his Murrumbateman property of Clonakilla, little did he expect that his vineyard would find a home at the cutting edge of Australian shiraz. Found on a warm and relatively flat site on and above the flood plain of a creek, Clonakilla has shown itself able to ripen shiraz very successfully in most seasons, cabernet sauvignon and merlot less regularly. Clonkilla’s spicy 1992 Shiraz provided an inkling of what was to follow from 1994 onwards. Infected by the idea of making wine suggestive of the Cote-Rotie he had come to enjoy, present winemaker Tim Kirk had encouraged his father to plant a small amount of viognier, which, with the tiny amount of experimental pinot noir also planted at Clonakilla, he blended into the Shiraz. Choosing not to crush the shiraz grapes, he gradually breaks up the berries during the warm, open fermentation by treading the bunches himself. It’s intense, hands-on stuff, but that’s the way he enjoys it. Naturally, given his Rhone-ish mindset, Kirk ages Clonakilla’s Shiraz in small French oak, without falling for the temptation to increase the proportion of new barrels beyond around a third of total. Another of Clonakilla’s secrets is that despite its reasonable depth of greyish alluvial loamy soils, its yields are controlled firstly by the Kirks’ own efforts at pruning time, and secondly by the hard spring frosts not uncommon to its site. The dense structure and deeply concentrated flavours of the exceptional 1998 vintage attest to the almost unbearably low yields of such frost-affected years. The Shirazes from the mid-1990s were fine, supple and almost ethereal in their expression of pure dark cherry and plum fruit. Laced with exotic must and spice, the vintages from 1997 onwards have produced wines of greater density and weight, without sacrificing any of their customary tightness and elegance. Like their predecessors they show every indication of being able to mature in the bottle over many years. Such is the quality of the interaction between the shiraz variety and his site that there’s little Tim Kirk needs to do in the risk-taking side of winemaking. His are fine, sound wines which can be cellared with total confidence. The best vintages to this time have been 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. Clonakilla’s second most important wine is its steely, austere Riesling, whose intense lime-juice and lemon flavours occasionally suggest connections with the Eden Valley. Tightly wound around a spine of tingling acidity, they have the intensity and balance to cellar well over a long period, as the surprisingly youthful 1993 vintage amply illustrates. Vintages to look out for are 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. With more merlot of ever-increasing maturity being introduced to the crop from its mature cabernet sauvignon vines, Clonakilla should be better equipped to produce a more consistently ripe blend from these Bordeaux varieties than the leafier, greenish wines with which it began in the late 1980s. The understated and refined wine from 1998 provides a suggestion of what we might expect from good vintages in the future from Clonakilla. Even though Tim Kirk is developing new vineyard sites above the existing Clonakilla vineyard, it’s too early to determine under what label this wine will ultimately be sold. For one, I’m confident that whether or not its pool of fruit is expanded or altered, Clonakilla will remain faithful to the style Tim Kirk has pioneered in Australia. While other new shirazes are already priced well above Clonakilla’s, although they don’t have a fraction of its track record, I firmly believe that relative to many super-expensive Australian shirazes Tim Kirk’s is priced at bargain levels. Sure it’s hard to find, but I’d leave no stone unturned to do so.
