It’s a pleasing thing that Rick Kinzbrunner has been named the 2003 Qantas/Australian Gourmet Traveller WINE Winemaker of the Year. For several years Kinzbrunner’s small Giaconda winery in the hills of northeast Victoria has been recognised as one of the nation’s leading makers. Giaconda is principally known for its Chardonnay, the most complex and Meursault-like expression of this wine produced in Australia. I have long rated it as Australia’s leading chardonnay, and ever since the release of his groundbreaking 1996 vintage, Kinzbrunner has clearly been the most influential Australian maker of this variety. Kinzbrunner and pinot noir have always been hard to separate, although in truth he has made substantial changes to Giaconda’s Pinot Noir over the years, as he has restlessly left no stone unturned to eke the most of out the variety’s potential from a site that is not ideally suited to it. He has now returned to the formidable form he showed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and is perhaps making the best pinot of his career. Kinzbrunner now has a three-year commercial track record with two new whites, the Aeolia Roussanne and the Nantua Les Deux blend of chardonnay and roussanne. These wines have already shown an ability to deliver punchy flavours and musky, perfumed aromatics, and combined with Kinzbrunner’s flair with the so-called ‘dirty’ aspects of winemaking such as wild yeast fermentation and extended lees contact in barrel, they sit well as part of the Giaconda stable. It’s perhaps with shiraz that Kinzbrunner’s fame will spread even further, since the first four efforts under the Giaconda label present a steady progression towards a benchmark expression of southern Australian excellence. The rest of the world needs to discover that this country’s iconic shirazes aren’t all picked over 15 Baume and matured in American oak. Wines like this will help to show that there’s more than one string to the bow of Antipodean shiraz, which might surprise some of our friends in parts foreign. But there is still a wine of Giaconda’s that still sleeps quietly while the others are fought over. This, not unsurprisingly, is the Cabernet Sauvignon, a classic wine from the forgotten grape. I’ve been collecting them for years, and they give me almost as much pleasure as the Chardonnay and Shiraz, and just as much as the Pinot Noir. Rick Kinzbrunner has never been affected by fashion or trends. He’s moved along his own direction, at his own speed. Fame, and now publicity, have caught up with him.
