Speaking as a Mexican, the Hunter Valley is quite impossible to understand. Even those who live there and make wine there freely admit it wouldn’t exist were it another hour’s drive from Sydney. Its soils are frequently poor to marginal, its climate almost entirely unsuitable for viticulture, and it’s struggling hard to create a modern identity. Quite in inverse proportion to these apparent and all too real difficulties is the reality that the Hunter has been responsible for some of the best wine ever made in Australia. It has also helped foster some of the wine industry’s most opinionated and outspoken mouthpieces, namely Messrs. Tyrrell, McGuigan, Lake, Evans, Halliday and Beeston, to name but a few. Of course they would have it that they shaped the Hunter, but would perhaps find it difficult to argue that in actuality, the Hunter did not play some role in shaping them. On one of my first visits to the Hunter Valley I found myself in a bus full of Sydney wine and food Mafioso, all blessed at this stage with a skinful of sparkler and enough bigotry to all but intimidate this newly-arrived southern interloper still obviously green behind the ears. “What do you mean the Hunter Valley isn’t Australia’s second-largest wine area?” they stuttered. I can still hear them croaking in disbelief, then fumbling for the dagger. Isn’t that often the case? Impact is taken in direct proportion to significance, and in Sydney at the very least, the Hunter is Significant. Of course the Hunter’s value and recognition rightly extends south of the Murray. Anyone who has tried either of the remarkable Lindemans Hunter River Burgundies from 1965 or the Lindemans whites from 1968 will understand, although I am told these great wines are nothing on the ’59’s. Look at the remarkable wines of Lake’s Folly, Tyrrells, McWilliams and see how they have stood the test of time. The Hunter doesn’t have to justify its past. It may have to fight harder to justify its present. Talking more specifically about the vineyards around Pokolbin and Cessnock, which comprise what we now regard as the Lower Hunter, times are tougher than ever. Back in the days when land and labour were cheap, wine companies would simply plant more land to make more wine. Today that’s economically impossible, just as the many old vineyards which only cropped around one tonne per acre are impossible to justify, regardless of how good their fruit led their wines ultimately to become. Many great old vineyards are now grubbed out, others seemingly awaiting their appointment with the bulldozer. And with them we farewell many classic old Hunter semillons and shirazes, made with minimal oak and maximum care. The Hunter isn’t the place for the sentimentalist. Sentiment doesn’t create markets, reduce costs and pay bills. Chardonnay does, however, and that’s where the Hunter’s future surely lies. Although every now and then a classic Hunter red will undoubtedly appear of a quality and style to jerk a tear for times gone by, its destiny is with white wine, and not, sadly in the semillons, often called “riesling”, for which it was once unique. They don’t sell these days, not even in Sydney, the Hunter’s very engine room of support. Hunter Chardonnay now reigns supreme. It is an undoubted success. Show judges crown it, writers rave about it and people drink it. More importantly, you can export it. Generally more vigorous than other varieties, chardonnay has been planted on more productive vineyard sites and becomes more important year by year. Export is such an important catchcry today. As the domestic market becomes ever more difficult, it is now increasingly necessary for wine companies of medium size and above to look overseas to maintain their volumes of sales. Although it is undeniably growing in acceptance and stature, Australian wine still cannot command consistently high prices across the board in important overseas markets like England, so it becomes even more important to rationalise production costs to protect margins, yet further danger for unreliable Hunter vineyards. Although the Lower Hunter is supposed to receive around 27 inches of rainfall each year, its incidence is totally unpredictable, although if you bet on much of it falling around vintage, you would at least break even. At time of writing the area is in the grip of the same severe drought that threatens the future of much of the agriculture in NSW and Queensland. Dams are all but dry, vines are stressed and withered, the mood still bravely optimistic. Rain, real rain, is needed for the 1992 crop to amount to much at all, and dark clouds regularly appear just to tease those who need it most. Put this after a string of difficult seasons from 1989 to 1991 and it’s little wonder that several larger Hunter-based companies now own or buy from vineyards in more reliable areas as an economic safeguard. The Upper Hunter is as much of a conundrum. Vast acres have been planted in better-watered areas near Denman, Jerry’s Plains and Muswellbrook, but the fortunes of the area’s two largest producers, Rosemount Estates and Mountarrow (Arrowfield in a previous existence) could hardly be more disparate. Through a consistent and reliable range of table wine, culminating in genuine excellence at the top end, Rosemount has created a sound niche in Australia and has made huge inroads overseas. Mountarrow or Arrowfield has skilfully hidden its bushel beneath a plethora of confusing labels and brands, to the extent that major surgery is necessary. The potential, however unrealised to date, remains. I’d just hate to be paying the bills. Human nature being what it is, this story was always going to finish on an optimistic note. For despite all I’ve said, and as much as it is heartily meant, the Hunter continues to make wine it shouldn’t. It is with great anticipation that I look forward each year to trying the semillons and chardonnays from brands like Petersons, Brokenwood, Allanmere, Rothbury, Tyrrells, Mountarrow and Lake’s Folly. Smaller, newer names like Horseshoe Vineyard, the Fraser Vineyard and Reynolds are a must to keep track of, while the new whites from the bullish Dr Phillip Norrie’s Pendarves Estate shows his site is as good as his bark. It is a decade of truth for the Hunter Valley. And wine, not rhetoric, should see it safely through.
