Travel around Europe’s vineyards and you will find farming and winemaking businesses that have been in the same family for many generations. It’s as if there’s something particularly stamped into the genetics of the family that transmits through the lineage a deep philosophical imprint that determines how each separate generation goes about their business. This might relate to a view of what wine quality is all about, how the vineyards are best able to express themselves in finished wine, or even particular techniques that are handed down from one generation to the next. It’s precisely the same in Australia.Sam Middleton is a young winemaker who shares a vision of quality with his family’s history. Mount Mary is one of the signature vineyards in my home state of Victoria. Its founder, Dr John Middleton, was a visionary and a friend of mine. While young, he developed a philosophy of what constituted wine quality through the French wines he was able to enjoy as a student and as a young doctor, so by the time he was mature enough and financially secure enough to plant a vineyard, he did so with a view to reproducing those sorts of wines in his new Yarra Valley environment. John loved Bordeaux, and for him that meant creating wines of relatively low alcoholic content Ð around 12% Ð with elegance and finesse, and without a great deal of new oak influence.Today it’s possible to find highly rated reds from Bordeaux that are plush, concentrated, powerfully extracted and double-oaked, ie they spend two separate years each in 100% new oak. Many, from seasons like 2009 in particular, sail well above 14% alcohol. In short, they’re nothing like the wines that John Middleton cut his teeth on.Mount Mary’s Quintet blend of the red Bordeaux varieties is one of Australia’s most sought-after wines and one of the tiny number to which I give a Five Star rating. It’s everything John Middleton wanted it to be Ð elegant, refined, complex, restrained and long-living, needing plenty of time to fulfill its true potential. It is food-friendly, it is from a cool climate, and everything John Middleton wanted to achieve is bound up in that wine and the site he chose to grow it. Furthermore, while in common with virtually every red wine in Australia its alcoholic strength has crept up a little over the years, the Quintet has always remained at the finer end of the spectrum.John Middleton’s death a couple of years ago resulted in a process that has seen his son, David, become general manager of the business and his grandson, Sam, become winemaker. So what approach is Sam going to take? Is he going to follow the line of the family, the brand and the site to continue with the same style of Mount Mary, or is he going to turn it on its head?’To be success you need to be making wines that you are passionate about and enjoy drinking. If this isn’t the case it just you wont work for you’, says Sam Middleton. ‘I really enjoy the wine that John made and I want to make that style of wine.’Would he do anything to alter what Mount Mary has been doing? ‘The market is perhaps demanding a slightly richer style of wine, especially red. While I’d never completely alter the style Ð because I want to make food-friendly wines that age well Ð I think we might be able to tweak things in terms of richness, while retaining the wine’s more European style. And while the market is currently demanding leaner and crisper whites than before, I want to stay with the style of white that John made’, he says.’I feel a responsibility to John and to the place to carry on with his style. It would be a horrible thing for me to come in with an ounce of the experience that John had and to change things completely. I want to stay true to the wine that John invented.’What if he actually didn’t like the Mount Mary wines Ð how might that change his view? ‘It would be a tough decision, since I think you have to pay respect to the success of the place. I’d really have to sit down and discuss things with Dad.”I’m still learning, I’m no expert at my age. Really, I want to keep to the style but also to make improvements, to make it better.’Alister Purbrick is a winemaker who greatly respects the traditions and heritage of his family’s wine business. Purbrick represents the third generation of his family to own and operate Tahbilk. With respect to Alister, he’s hardly a new generation winemaker, but it wasn’t that long ago, we both argue, that he was. Tahbilk is an historic winery and vineyard in the Nagambie Lakes region of Victoria that dates back to 1860. Its approach to the making of its red wine has hardly altered since then. The winery still uses ten open Polish oak fermentation vats first deployed in 1862. The young reds continue to be matured in the original 1860 and the ‘new’ 1875 cellars, in a range of large French and Polish oak casks between 1,137 litres to 6,365 litres in capacity. These casks are between 100-150 years of age, and have no ability to impart what we now consider to be ‘oak character’ whatsoever. Instead, their role is one of slow, stable maturation in a mildly oxidative environment. The Tahbilk reds stay in these casks for around 18 months, while its premier labels Ð the Eric Stevens Purbrick Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon reds and ‘1860 Vines’ Shiraz Ð can receive up to another two or more of cellaring in bottle before release. It’s fair to say that no other winery in Australia makes its red wines this way. According to Tahbilk, its approach to red winemaking is considered ‘very traditional and produces wines with emphasis on fruit flavour (as distinct from oak flavour) with the proven potential to improve and develop added complexity if patiently cellared’.Why? ‘My grandfather’s style was to showcase fruit from the estate and the variety of fruit flavours we can derive from our vineyards’, he says. ‘I’m keen to continue that style. ‘I admire great European wines. Great wine are about fruit expression Ð terroir or whatever Ð rather than oak or winemaker-manipulated expression. I’m very comfortable with a more traditional approach.’The only real modification Alister Purbrick has made to his family’s red style has been the introduction of new small French oak casks from 1992 onwards. Between 20-30% of the top reds are aged in these barrels instead of the large old casks, contributing new elements of flavour and texture. ‘We consider working with wine to be like working under an umbrella of fruit. Supporting the fruit is tannin and new oak, each of these needs to be fully integrated into the wine to add complexity but without being obvious’, he says. ‘My view was not to change the pedigree, but to improve the pedigree.”When I look back on the wines of the great decade of the 1960s made by my grandfather and compare them to those I first made in the 1980s, I’m pretty confortable with the decisions we made.’Gary Mills is a young Victorian winemaker whose label, Jamsheed is, with a few other notables like Oakridge and De Bortoli, turning winemaking in Victoria upside down. As a winemaker, he’s prepared to throw what others regard as conventional wisdom out the window. It’s his conviction and practice to ferment the various wines he makes from shiraz with 100% whole bunches in the ferment, creating in the process wines that some believe are inspirationally laced with ethereal complexity and which others believe are herbaceous to the point of faultiness. The interest amongst the younger members of the winemaking community in the Yarra Valley Ð not to mention the Melbourne sommelier clique Ð in this technique hit a peak after the release of Mills’ excellent Silvan Vineyard Syrah 2010. This wine was harvested with sufficient depth of fruit and made with stalks of sufficient physiological maturity to result in a natural balance in which the stalk content was evident but not confronting, as it can be when things don’t go exactly to plan.Today, when talking shiraz with a group of Yarra Valley winemakers, as much of the conversation is likely to be about stalks as it is about grapes. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as perspective is retained. This is life at the cutting edge Ð innovation challenging established practices. But is it?Mills is not the first person ever in Victoria to try this approach Ð normally associated with pinot noir and which is popular in Burgundy at domaines such as Domaine Dujac, Domaine de l’Arlot and Domaine de la RomanÌ©e-Conti Ð with shiraz. Gary Farr was experimenting with high levels of stalk retention with shiraz at Bannockburn back in the 1980s with mixed results and has since eased back. Mills, on the other hand, is often quoted saying ‘100% stalks is not enough’. But not in all cases, in my opinion. It comes down to the site and the season, and in the case of Gary Mills, I think he is smart enough to win more battles than he loses in this space.Today’s young winemakers are better travelled and more experienced than their parents were at the same age. They have worked around the world, working perhaps three or four vintages in a single year for different makers in different continents, becoming exposed to a diversity of sites, fruit, techniques and opinion. Their challenge is to sift through the ‘new’ ideas, and determine if history can teach them a lesson without having to repeat the same mistakes of a prior age. The alternative is to lose a few years of quality while chasing shadows. This, it would appear, is significantly less likely to happen when young winemakers take over their family’s cellars, since their sense of history can act as a handbrake. Which is ok Ð provided it inspires rather than stifles their creativity.
