What are currently the most popular quality wines on the Australian market? Fashionable chardonnays or sauvignon blancs, sparkling wines made with the traditional methode champenoise and classically-proportioned reds made with blends of the cabernet family. They are all innovations in Australia, resulting from exciting developments in the last decade or so. But what about tawny port? Has anything happened to it? James Godfrey is Seppelts’ Chief Fortified Winemaker and he believes that the same basic principles that made the best fortified wines a century or more ago still apply today. Modern technology, however, gives today’s port winemaker the edge. History and experience suggest where the best and most suitable grapes are grown and when to pick them. The varietal mix in Australian vineyards, the vineyard site selection and the sugar levels each vineyard is able to achieve all contribute to the selection of base material a large company like Seppelt can choose from. Seppelt select all their port material from the Barossa Valley, which they still make in a traditional Australian style, generally far sweeter than the Portuguese model. “Our ports are more easy-drinking”, says Godfrey. “We have accumulated a huge knowledge of sites and try to make some fine wines in the Australian context – but not too big or fat. Ours tend to be finer than most”. Time has also revealed to Godfrey and other port makers exactly where to put certain wines in the stacks of barrels, for specific spots in the cellar may exhibit a different sort of ‘winery microclimate’. “Once you have made all the wines there are some that develop faster or else some you may want to develop faster”, says Godfrey. Warmer and less-insulated spots in the cellars will clearly encourage a faster maturation. So where have the advances occurred? General winemaking developments like pH control, the monitoring of alcohol production and the use of less SO2, coupled with sufficient experience to predict more clearly how certain wines will mature with age, have all contributed to the standard of our port production. Our greater understanding today of mechanics and chemistry enables our winemakers to be more precise in their production planning and implementation. But not all our progress has been made in a forward direction. “It is a marketing phenomenon that the average age of Australian fortified wines has decreased” says James Godfrey. “I am not sure that all people have adjusted their production techniques to cope with this change, for some commercial wines are not to as good as they once were. I should add, however, that they are still great value for money.” He’s right. You can still pay only $4-6 for a readily drinkable four to five year-old tawny port. Try paying that for a table wine of the same age and see what you get for your money. There are several important variables in modern tawny port production, beginning with fruit selection, from the location to the maturity of the fruit harvested. Over-ripe fruit makes a more jammy style, whereas a less-ripe crop could make a more elegant wine. Like a red wine a port is affected by the length of time left on skins during fermentation and the sugar level at which the fortification, or adding of spirit, occurs will clearly affect the port’s final sweetness. The type and quality of spirit used is important, for it can make the port bigger and fatter or lighter and finer, softer or more heady. Another major variable is the choice of oak in which the port is matured, in terms of age and ‘oakiness’, or of the specific characters found in younger oak barrels. As Godfrey says, the hardest part is knowing what ‘mix’ is right to make the product the winemaker has in mind. Blending, the final variable, is the most critical stage. It is James Godfrey’s greatest challenge. “It is pretty frightening when you first do a blend, especially with something over twenty years old still fresh in oak. You objective is to make a wine as good as last years’, preferably showing the same qualities and flavours. At Seppelt the wine you are blending is often as old as you.” “I have been there eleven years, getting experience and confidence, accumulating a feeling for how individual wines mature and change. It’s all no use unless you can recall that experience. You need just as much effort to make a good fortified wine as a top red, plus the patience.” Seppelt have maintained their entire top of range soleros although the whole exercise is possibly costing at least as much money as it returns them. “We’re doing it in trust of the style and I’m glad the company has stuck to its guns”, Godfrey explains. They are about to release a 21 Year-Old Port, made from product taken from the Para Liqueur blend(which usually sells at 16 years old), boosted with the addition of sufficient 100 year-old material to bring its average age to 21 years. The century-old base will undoubtedly increase the complexity of the ‘straight’ Para Liqueur Port, although itself it makes a fine enough wine. The 21 Year-Old Port will only be released in small volumes. Another new, more commercial port this winter is the new Seppeltsfield Tawny Port, an easy-drinking , clean style, with an age of four and a half year. Godfrey is clearly delighted to work for Seppelt. His job is not up for grabs. “Who else is putting down wine to last 100 years?”, he asks. “I can see each one of 100 years of stock and compare them to wines I put down only eight or nine years ago. I have library against which I can compare wine and get new ideas.” James Godfrey’s work with port in the 1980’s is but a continuation of Australia’s familiarisation process with port. Seppelt themselves were experimenting in the 1880’s, as a look at the century-old wines they keep cellared today shows. When examined as individuals they all appear the same, he says, but when tasted in groups distinctive characters emerge. Analysis shows that some are sweeter, some show changes in acidity. They are clearly different wines, made by people trying different things. Ultimately the changes in port production have been small and barely-noticed. Fine-tuning and experience have played their part, but the product is essentially the same as it was a century or more ago, when similar experiments that occur today were being tried for the first time. When you taste a premium Australian tawny port the answer hits you. They’re very, very good, aren’t they?
