One of the so-called advantages of Australian wine used to be that our vintages didn’t matter. As warm and sunny as a childhood recollection, our seasons were dry, dusty and arid, or so the story went. Our wine came from places whose very names conjured hazy images of parched, cracking ground and vines wilting under the burning southern sun: Tanunda, Renmark, Mildura, Rutherglen and Griffith. Enter stage left the cool climate revolution and with it, vintage variation. Not the variation encountered in most top European regions, but variation all the same. All of a sudden the vintage year began to denote quality as well as maturity. 1995 is a perfect example. I wouldn’t shed a tear if you told me I couldn’t drink another bottle of Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon from 1995. Ditto a cabernet of that year from the Yarra Valley, Barossa Valley or Langhorne Creek. But I would certainly let out a sob or three if denied future access to the Margaret River cabernets of the same year. When the truth is told, 1995 was not a broadly successful year for Australian red wine, although the exceptions are indeed exceptional. Give me anytime a shiraz from McLaren Vale, central Victoria or Clare. Or give me just about anything red from Margaret River. Occasionally statistics tell more than the outright lies for which they are famous. Statistics reveal much about the consistently even temperatures throughout Margaret River’s growing season. Aside from early spring and autumn, the numbers are uncannily like those of Bordeaux. But unlike Bordeaux, where rainfall during late ripening and vintage is always a possibility, Margaret River’s Mediterranean climate is dependably dry throughout summer until mid-autumn. Bruce Pearce, viticulturist at Vasse Felix, says ‘We’re lucky over here. We don’t tend to have summer rainfall at all. You hear the horror stories of botrytis from other regions, but there’s never a problem with reds at Margaret River. Not even in whites if spraying programs are carried out on time.’ According to Pearce, 1995 was a classically untoward, average vintage. There were no problems with weather through flowering or through the rest of the growing season. Crop levels and ripeness were standard, he says, with fruit coming in around a week earlier than normal. ‘Unless we have an exceptionally large weather variation late in the cycle, we don’t tend to get much dramatic difference between seasons.’ ‘Like 1994 the vintage was warm and dry, but things ripened very quickly’, recalls Vanya Cullen. ‘Everything came off within a month and the ripe fruit flavours were incredibly concentrated. Some people say that slow ripening is good ripening, while others say rapid ripening is better. The fruit flavours in our reds from 1995 were ripe and concentrated because of the lower yields we experienced and the lack of stress associated with the faster ripening.’ Of the wines released to the market to this time, I have been most impressed with the Cullen Cabernet Merlot and the Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon. Both wines are sleepers, the Moss Wood being typically silky-smooth, fine-grained and refined, the Cullens vibrant, sumptuous and powerful. Both easily meet high gold medal standard. Nearly of the same pedigree is the Devil’s Lair red blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc, a polished wine of intense cassis fruit and cedar oak structured in a Cape Mentelle fashion with firm, integrated tannins. A brother to this wine is Xanadu’s Cabernet Sauvignon 1995, still withdrawn behind a heavy cloak of new oak, but already revealing depth and power on the palate with cassis/plum fruit and strong, rich tannins. Yet another cellar style from ’95 and one that is fast improving all the time. 1995 also fashioned the best Redgate Cabernet Sauvignon yet. Flagrantly plush and oaky, with assertive chocolate-like barrel ferment influence, the wine packs an equal punch with its brilliant accent on pristine, penetrative blackcurrant fruit. This maker now deserves your full respect. Finer, more dusty and leafy, with a toasty fragrance of violets and small berry fruit, is the Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon, a firm but fine-grained wine of length and polish which will develop complexity over the next decade. Add to this very smart collection a brambly, explosive Cape Mentelle Zinfandel, a peppery, spicy and fleshy Shiraz from Amberley and excellent medium to long-term wines in the cabernet-merlot blends from these properties and the Margaret River reds from 1995 offer an abundance of riches. There’s no escaping that old saying: ‘In vino veritas’. These wines do speak the truth. 1995 was a very good year indeed for the Margaret River.
