Interested in the first wine of the so-called Millennium? Will it be any good? Doubt it, very much. What will it cost? Rather a lot. Who made it? Who cares? Sherlock Holmes might have and Richard Smart certainly does. Richard Smart is one of the best-known, well-travelled and most widely respected of modern viticultural consultants. In December 1997 he planted 2.5 ha of chardonnay on a sandy rise on a cotton property near Bourke, NSW. In case you are wondering, there are no other vineyards at Bourke, a location adjacent to the Great Sandy Desert, perhaps better known for its pub, its flies and the saying ‘bakka!’. Smart chose chardonnay for its early ripening qualities and because he believed it was ‘also capable of making good quality wine under the conditions of Bourke’. He called the vineyard First Light Australis. But why? The idea was for the fruit to be harvested in the first moments of the year and for the wine made from these grapes to be the first on Planet Earth to carry the vintage year 2000. According to Smart’s estimates, since proven correct, it would only take 130 days from budbreak to harvest at Bourke, compared to up to 200 days for cool viticultural regions. ‘Uniquely, this area combines closeness to the International Dateline with a climate warm enough to ripen grapes naturally by January 1, 2000’, he said. ‘!this quite narrow sector of eastern Australia is unique – the one place in the one time zone where grapes for the first wine of the year 2000 can be grown successfully. There is nowhere else in the world where it can be done.’ After a hiccup over a NZ grower’s rights to the name ‘First Light’, the wine was renamed ‘Genesis’, creating in Smart’s words ‘a tangible expression of the end of one nominal millennium and the beginning of the next’. Furthermore: ‘Genesis Chardonnay 2000 should seize the imagination of anyone excited by the idea of a natural product that captures the essence of the time shift from 1999 to 2000.’ With a first-crop wine made from a two year-old vineyard next to the desert out bakka Bourke? Are we reduced to this, Dr Smart? Others entered the project, including Andrew Harris and his wife Debbie, who own and manage Andrew Harris Vineyards at Mudgee, providing a winery base for fermentation and bottling, and Sydney publicist Adrian Read. The consortium delayed the release of news of their project, fearing competition from other wineries. Similarly, it kept news of the Bourke vineyard secret until it was considered too late for competitors to get into the act. Ironically, the announcement was made by Richard Smart at the NSW Wine Experience in October 1999, an event at which one of the wine presenters was Bill Calabria of West End Wines, Griffith. Smart was aware that any attempt by an habitual maker of wines early into the New Year, namely Chateau Hornsby of Alice Springs, would happen in a time zone which dictated that it could only commence its vintage half an hour after any similar operation in New South Wales. Like everyone else, he was not aware that Bill Calabria had already begun working to give every possible assistance to a small block of chardonnay that it too should be sufficiently ripened by midnight, New Year’s Eve! Early in January came word from Bourke that Smart’s dream was becoming reality. Immediately after midnight on January 1, 2000, a team of 25 Romanian pickers wearing head-mounted torches commenced harvest. The first buckets (apparently amounting to one tonne of fruit) were rushed straight into a portable field crusher and inoculated with yeast to commence fermentation, while the other twelve tonnes were shipped 400km by a refrigerated truck to the Andrew Harris winery at Mudgee for processing. These grapes arrived just past midnight on the 2nd of January and were then mixed in the crusher with the fermenting juice inoculated the day before pressing. Some were fermented in oak, some in stainless steel. The Genesis Chardonnay was packaged into tapered blue bottles to be released in March and April. Numbered from 1-2000, magnums will cost $500 each (generating $1million in revenue) and single bottles will cost $150 apiece. More, in fact, than Yattarna and twice the ask for Giaconda. Magnums and bottles will be accompanied by certificates of authenticity, which provokes the interesting idea that if this wine is indeed counterfeited, it might represent the first instance in global wine history that the counterfeit product might actually taste better than the wine it is imitating! It must have been a startled Richard Smart who picked up the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) on January 3 this year to discover that a chardonnay made in Griffith actually claimed to have guzumped his Genesis project by several hours. Who made it? Bill Calabria from West End! Calabria, keeping his idea quiet and entirely oblivious to Smart’s scheme, had pruned a row of his chardonnay vineyard in early May, forcing an earlier budburst than normal, managed to retain extra heat in the vineyard with sheets of black plastic along the rows of vines and, during the last six weeks of 1999, had lit the vineyard with halogen lamps to create more heat and light to accelerate the ripening process. With his family and vineyard manager he began picking right on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve and quickly collected between 8-10 buckets which he then rushed in the back of his ute over the two-minute journey to his winery, after which the fruit was quickly processed through a small basket press, before the relatively clear juice was inoculated. Calabria, his family and vineyard manager were back in their respective beds by 3 am. Ten days later the wine was stabilised and finished. By the 24th of January the Vintage 2000 Eternity No.1 Chardonnay was in bottle, just over a thousand of 500ml size, to be precise. And Richard Smart, judging from the tone of his media releases, was not a happy man. So, which is the true first wine of the year 2000? Calabria’s Vintage 2000 Eternity No.1 Chardonnay, which he says was not made for commercial reasons, despite the fact it will sell for $150 a bottle, but more for the novelty of the thing? Or the very slickly presented Genesis Chardonnay 2000, an obviously commercial operation with its own very extensive Internet site at www.firstlightwine.com.au? Both began harvest at the same time, although being a much smaller production, the Eternity No. 1 Chardonnay was clearly completed first. Both began fermentation about the same time, although again, the Eternity No. 1 Chardonnay definitely finished first. Only one part in thirteen of the Genesis Chardonnay began fermenting at the same time the Eternity No. 1 Chardonnay began in toto, the other twelve parts not until the following day. Calabria’s Eternity No. 1 Chardonnay was certainly bottled first. Calabria says that he finished making his batch very early on New Year’s Day, and that there’s not much point in starting a fermentation if you’re only going to keep adding to it later on. Not unsurprisingly, Smart has something to say about all of this, first of which is that at best, Westend Wines ‘can claim an equal first with regard to time of picking’. He goes on: ‘The essence of the Genesis 2000 project is to capture a natural expression of the shift from 1999 to 2000; to have nature work its magic in 1999, with humans taking over at the stroke of midnight. We believe an important difference between the two projects relates to natural ripening.’ Making the comparison between the natural ripening of the Genesis vineyard versus the interventionist approach adopted by Bill Calabria, he says that ‘the Westend grapes did not ripen naturally’ and that it is ‘significant’ that the Genesis Chardonnay 2000 vineyard was planted in 1997 specifically to make the wine, the ‘first wine of the year 2000, using naturally ripened fruit’. Richard Smart rang Bill Calabria on January 4th to discuss the situation, saying they agreed it was a ‘tie’ for the honours, a claim Calabria has since refuted to me. Frankly, amusing though it is, there is something rather sorrowful about one of the world’s foremost viticulturists becoming so involved in a scheme of this nature, only to end up by debating publicly whether or not his chardonnay from a two year-old vineyard in Bourke will assume more historical (and presumably financial) importance than a few bottles of chardonnay made from vines in Griffith whose ripeness was greatly assisted by its grower and maker. Incidentally, the first three magnums of Genesis Chardonnay off the bottling line are being donated to charity functions. Bill Calabria is donating about 20% of his production of Eternity No. 1 Chardonnay to charity. But there’s more. The acres of publicity which accompany the Genesis Chardonnay 2000 wine state that: ‘The unique set of conditions will make the GENESIS Chardonnay 2000 wine an unrepeatable, once-only, natural expression of a special time and a special place. An appeal of GENESIS Chardonnay 2000 to people anywhere in the world will be for those seeking a unique memento marking the end of one century and the beginning of another.’ But who would want to drink it? Despite these unambiguous assurances, Smart et al are doing it all again for 2001! So, in case you’re one of those like me who doesn’t accept that the Millennium actually rolls over until the end of 2000, you can put your money on this alternative memento! And they’re also doing it in 2002, 2003 and so on? Opportunistic? Perish the thought. However, this decision will doubtless fascinate wine connoisseurs the world over by providing a unique opportunity to evaluate different vintage conditions for young-vine chardonnay from bakka Bourke. I can hardly wait.
