Wine, to its makers, is a baby, and I’ll never tire of the twinkle in a winemaker’s eye when they know they’ve created something special. The tall, gangly Tim Adams is a partner and winemaker for the eponymous Tim Adams, one of the leading small wineries in South Australia’s Clare Valley. Arthur O’Connor is a shorter, quieter guy who makes Seppelt’s Victorian range of table wines for one of our largest producers, Southcorp. You just have to watch them pour their new shirazes to feel their excitement for their work. Even though its profile lags behind many inferior but significantly more expensive wines, Tim Adams’ flagship, The Aberfeldy, is one of Australia’s finest shirazes. Sourced from a small, low-cropped vineyard planted in 1904, The Aberfeldy is a finely balanced, tight-knit wine of leanness and breeding. Its tautness and astringency bring to mind some of the better modern Tuscan classics. It’s not about the notion that more is better; here’s a wine of delivery and style. Recently released at just over $50 per bottle, the 2002 Aberfeldy is the labels’ finest yet. Like many South Australian wines from this vintage, it’s more restrained and approachable in its youth than is typical, but thanks to the brilliant intensity of its fruit, plus its length and balance, it will live for as long as any of its predecessors. Exotically perfumed with nuances of musk, violet and peppermint beneath its vibrant and tightly focused dark berry and cherry flavours, it’s long and silky-smooth, finishing with lingering flavours of sweet fruit, mint, dried herbs and licorice. Unlike many other Australian shirazes to have been matured in American cooperage, this wine reveals a rare and seamless integration between fruit and oak-derived influences. Tim Adams holds back the use of any new oak for the first year, before then giving it eleven months in brand new oak casks. Although they’re made from American oak, these casks were manufactured in France after four long European winters of seasoning. As an approach, it’s both clever and effective. Like Tim Adams, Arthur O’Connor believes oak should play a supportive role. But unlike Adams he selects fine-grained French oak to enhance the exceptionally spicy, peppery flavours of sour cherries, mulberries and cassis produced by the cooler climate shiraz vineyards owned by Seppelt in the heart of Great Western, Western Victoria. First released from the 1998 vintage, the St Peters Shiraz is steadily evolving into a benchmark Australian wine that marries together some of the exotically spicy elements of Northern Rh̫ne shiraz, the understated and fine-grained tannins of Burgundy with the savoury, sour-edged fruit expression of finer modern Chianti. Great Western, which is part of the Grampians region, has long been rated amongst the best of Australia’s shiraz regions. However, with the comparatively small scale of its traditional century-old plantings (which have been augmented by several major new vineyards) and the recent focus on warmer climate shiraz, it somehow remains undiscovered by many shiraz devotees. That is sure to change. While he’s only been at Great Western for a few years, Arthur O’Connor has already made significant improvements to the company’s flagship red. But he’s far from satisfied, saying that he’ll only ever relax if he sincerely believes the wine has reached ‘Grand Cru’ status, and will reliably cellar for twenty-plus years. In my view, he’s perhaps closer to his goal than he realises, for the recently released 2001 wine sets a news standard, which incidentally is surpassed by the silky-smooth 2002 vintage that will be released in mid 2005. Only 500 cases of the 2001 St Peters Shiraz were made, and it retails around $50. Like the 2002 Aberfeldy, it would put a large number of more expensive shirazes to shame. Laced with sneezy aromas of black pepper, it’s a supremely elegant and harmonious shiraz whose pristine and penetrative flavours of small dark berries are underpinned by vanilla/chocolate oak and nuances of forest floor. While, like the Aberfeldy 2002 it’s ready to enjoy now, it really needs at least a decade in the cellar. While there’s a place for the bigger, juicier Australian shirazes, it’s always a pleasure to revisit wines like The Aberfeldy and St Peters, and to appreciate their tightly approach, from vineyard to bottle. If only there was of them, and more like them!
