I am not all that concerned about the old guard of Australian wine moving on. Many of the individuals best equipped to deal with the future challenges of Australian wine have yet to take on the roles for which they will ultimately become well known. Just as vintages and decades roll on, so do people and the roles they play. I have recently had the opportunity to touch base with two of the participants in Australian wine’s inaugural Future Leaders Program, a joint incentive between the Winemakers Federation of Australia and the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation. One is a sixth-generation member of a family that arrived in McLaren Vale back in 1841. Born into a grape-growing heritage, Corrina Rayment has created her own wine brand and is making some of her region’s best and most sophisticated wine. The other is the fifth generation of a well-known Australian wine family from Renmark. If ever a person was glad that Qantas has been told to keep its Frequent Flyer program going, that person is Victoria Angove, who travels internationally the way that you and I might wander down the street. Last year she was away three weeks out of four, flying the flag for Angoves, her family business, and for Australian wine in general. The first article in this short series is about Corrina Rayment, and her wines under the Oliver’s Taranga label. Doing it her way in McLaren Vale I have been writing about wine for twenty-three years, but never before have I heard an Australian winemaker offer a statement of intent such as this: ‘When you come from a family that has been on the same property for six generations, my aim is not for me, but in making a base of greatness for the next generation. That gives me perspective.’ Yet, word for word, that is what Corrina Rayment, a winemaker in her early 30s, told me recently. I have heard similar stuff, of course, but always from long-established European wine families. Yet Rayment’s wines, made and bottled under the Oliver’s Taranga label (which has absolutely no connection to me) speak with equal clarity and conviction. Six generations of viticulture, but just over a decade in the bottle! Some families take a long time to get their name under lights. Way back in 1841, a family of Olivers settled on two farms just north of McLaren Vale near d’Arenberg. They immediately embarked on a series of agricultural pursuits including viticulture, although today their White Hill property is entirely used for cropping and grazing. The Taranga property of 110 ha, whose name is a corruption of the aboriginal word ‘Tarangk’ meaning ‘the middle’, is home to the family’s vineyards. Today this property is owned by Corrina Rayment’s uncles Don and Morris Oliver, while her mother, Robyn Rayment, owns a smaller portion. The Olivers have sold fruit to wine producers for around 160 years. Their present clients include d’Arenberg, Kays, Fosters, Hardy’s, Chapel Hill, Coriole and Haselgrove, and the pick of their fruit has often made its way into Penfolds Grange and Hardy’s Eileen Hardy Shiraz. The family largely grows shiraz, although their vineyard is also planted to cabernet sauvignon, grenache, merlot, petit verdot, tempranillo and sagrentino, with a smattering of white varities such as chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, viognier and fiano. Today the family operates a winemaking business, for which Corrina Rayment is winemaker and general manager. Oliver’s Taranga now accounts for around 10% of the total production from the family’s 101 ha under vine. Rayment is first to acknowledge the role played by her family from the label’s earliest days, especially while she was overseas or working elsewhere. Her aunt Margie Oliver handles the businss admin, uncle Don Oliver the viticulture and cousin Brioni Oliver, a wine marketing graduate, has earmarked a marketing role based in the cellar door. Furthermore, provided someone else fills her car with petrol, Corrina’s grandmother is prepared to bake the cookies. Sounds like a perfect arrangement. The sixth generation comes good! Because her father, Colin Rayment, has long been a fixture in McLaren Vale’s wine industry, especially with Pirramimma and Kay’s (where he is general manager today), Corrina Rayment grew up around wine. Her earliest memories are of the particular smell of wineries and sneaking olives from the counters of cellar doors. Then, despite working in the family vineyards from age ten and in cellar doors once she was old enough, she perhaps oddly went to Adelaide University, determined to be a lawyer. It took long enough to put a commerce degree under her belt for Rayment to figure she wasn’t cut out to wear a suit all day. So, despite some concerns about the strength of her palate and the issues around being a woman in a male-dominated industry, she went back to wine, starting at Roseworthy College and the Waite Institute in 1994. In retrospect, she now believes her palate had a more than adequate training due to the constant osmosis of being around wine from her earliest years. Indeed, she thinks, it was probably easier for her to trust her own palate than for someone coming into wine from the outside to develop a trust in theirs. Several years later she perhaps gained some confidence from the sight of her own two year-old daughter playing with an egg cup in her bath, putting water inside it, swirling and sniffing! Opting to finish her winemaking with a scholarship at Davis in California, she stuck around the US for another two informative years at Gallo-Sonoma, a winery perhaps equipped with more technological playthings than many winemakers would see in a lifetime of work. Gallo-Sonoma could hardly be more different from the circumstances that produced Corrina Rayment’s first wine. Thinking it a neat idea to make a little wine to swap with some friends, and ultimately even as a promotional vehicle for the family vineyard, Corrina persuaded her uncle Don to part with some rather over-ripe shiraz late in the 1994 vintage. Today that very wine, while unable to conceal a spirity aspect, has much to suggest about the firm, pliant structure and savoury qualities of her modern wines. It was made under the guidance of winemaking legend Pam Dunsford at Chapel Hill. On holiday and out of town in 1995, Rayment didn’t bother with a wine from 1995, but returned in time to make a truly first-class shiraz in 1996 which looks youthful even today. It was made at Kay’s, with the assistance of Nick Haselgrove, who continued to watch over her winemaking until after the 1998 vintage. Today she makes the Oliver’s Taranga wines at the new Haselgrove winery and at Boar’s Rock. Having worked through the Penfolds graduate program at Nuriootpa in 1999, Rayment was posted to Seppeltsfield in 2000. It was around then that Robert Parker changed her life rather abruptly. As he did with so many small-scale South Australian wineries in around the turn of last century, Robert Parker got the jump on the Australian wine media. Hundreds of new wines were put in front of him by Dan Phillips of The Grateful Palate that were never shown to the Australian press. So, Parker was first to discover Oliver’s Taranga, rating the Shirazes from 1996, 1997 and 1998 very highly and singling out the 1998 vintage for special praise. Rayment’s phone didn’t stop ringing. Within a week of the reviews, she had fielded calls from fifteen countries and dozens of restaurants. Initially without an export licence, she began to sell the bulk of her wine into the US via Dan Phillips. ‘We didn’t do anything in Australia, didn’t send samples to wine writers and generally kept beneath the radar’, she says. Indeed, my first exposure to the label was in 2003 while writing for American writer Steve Tanzer, and Oliver’s Taranga was just one of many small Australian brands that had by then developed large followings in the US well in advance of their Australian release. Oliver’s Taranga was in transition from a professional hobby, and its first commercial vintage didn’t take place until 1999. Still with Southcorp, Rayment spent between 2001 and 2004 at Lindemans’ massive Karadoc plant before returning to McLaren Vale to work for Rosemount in 2005. A casualty of the Fosters takeover, she still spent the 2006 vintage as white winemaking consultant to the company, but by then she had well and truly developed the Oliver’s Taranga brand to a full-time business. 2007 has been the first vintage it has received her undivided attention. She might have hoped for an easier start! A very different spin on McLaren Vale shiraz! Corrina Rayment is not fazed about making wine that remains about as far from the popular conception of McLaren Vale red as you can get. Unlike the countless winemakers who purport to find elegance and harmony in their 15%-plus red wines, she follows through in the vineyard and the cellar. It’s clearly not just a philosophy, but an edict. Here’s something of her winemaking approach: ‘I want someone, some day, to be glad that I started making wines with longevity in mind. I work on the assumption that the fruit is always going to be there; rather than forcing it. I like the early low-alcohol reds from makers like Penfolds, Buring and Wynns. I want people to be able to look back on our wines like they do the old Penfolds reds and see where they come from and where they are today. It’s all about gaining credibility from consistency and constant improvement, and having fine older wines to look at. I know it’s not trendy, but I’m aiming towards a greater good.’ Oliver’s Taranga Shiraz While it remains vibrant and juicy, the first Oliver’s Taranga Shiraz, from 1994 (16.0/87, drink 2002-2006+), reveals some meaty fruit qualities, a savoury aspect and a fine-grained framework of tannin. It presents a lingering core of fruit and fresh acidity, but has probably been a little too spirity since its inception. Still, it reveals plenty of stylistic pointers to the future. The second release, from 1996 (18.5/94, drink 2008-2016+), is a superb wine. Its pure expression of concentrated regional fruit and smooth, plush palate are now enhanced by leathery and dark chocolate-like complexity, with a lingering finish of dark fruit and olives. Fine and measured, it’s an early statement of Rayment’s objectives. 1997, a hotter season, produced a faster-maturing wine down beginning to dry out (16.4/88, drink 2002-2005). Meaty and gamey, but lacking fruit length and sweetness, it has passed its best. 1998 produced a powerful, meaty and reductive shiraz (17.6/91, drink 2006-2010). Its smoky, charcuterie-like complexity overlies some juicy, almost jujube-like fruit whose brambly cassis-like flavour culminates in a slightly angular and lightly stewy finish backed by some slightly awkward tannin. It’s only 14% alcohol by volume, but shares the lack of genuine balance and finesse common to so many reds from this vintage. Typical of its vintage, the 1999 Shiraz (18.0/93, drink 2007-2010) is a smooth and silky wine whose peppery perfume of dark berry fruits and spices precedes a velvet-like expression of pristine and slightly jammy fruit that stains its way down the palate. Rather more confectionary, faster to develop and slightly more simple, the 2000 release (16.4/88, drink 2005-2008) backs its raspberry and plum-like flavour with meaty, peppery undertones, dark chocolate oak and a hint of dark olives. Clearly affected by the heat, the 2001 Shiraz (15.6/88, drink 2006-2009) is meaty, spicy and reductive, with rather dehydrated fruit drying out towards a firm and grippy finish. Two of the next three releases are classic. The 2002 Shiraz (18.8/95, drink 2010-2014+) is smooth and sumptuous, long and elegant. It’s peppery, spicy and cedary, with aromas of dark berries, and cherries backed by a whiff of menthol. Over a firm, chalky chassis of fine tannins, its sour-edged palate of dark berry and plum-like fruit finishes with a hint of chilli dark chocolate. A meaty, simple and stewy 2003 Shiraz (15.7/86, drink 2008-2011) reflects the difficulty of the season. Rather metallic and raw, it’s thinning out and hollow. Aged for 22 months in one-third new American and French oak, two-thirds old American and French oak, the current vintage 2004 Shiraz ($28 retail, approx., 18.9/96, drink 2016-2024) is the finest yet. Finely crafted and superbly structured, its slightly closed and withdrawn bouquet gradually unfolds layers of brooding, briary fruit and tightly balanced oak. Long, evenly balanced and sumptuously fruited, its deliciously spicy and focused palate delivers mouthfilling small berry flavour and dusty French oak undertones framed by fine-grained tannins. With a terrific structure and surprising elegance, it should cellar superbly over the medium to long term. Corrina’s blend Corrina’s blend is one of the more unusual Australian combinations of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz for the principal reason that the two varieties are always fermented together. Says Rayment: ‘Initially the cabernet dominates the nose, you then get some of that rich shiraz burst on the palate. And, while there’s also a structural value in having shiraz juice on the more tannic cabernet skins, the wine is actually made to drink, not so much to age. I can’t make it every year, since I need the varieties to ripen together. They didn’t in 2001, so there was no wine that year.’ Handmade on a very small scale with an open fermenter and a small basket press, the blend is typically around 50% of each variety, although the 2004 wine is 55% cabernet. It is matured in 25% new American oak, plus a mix of older French and American cooperage for 22 months. Slightly meaty, with earthy, dark-fruited flavours of plums and blueberries, the 2003 blend (16.6/88, drink 2005-2008) finishes long and savoury, with slightly roasted oak qualities. Equally sumptuous, but perhaps a little more smoky and brooding on opening, the currently available 2004 blend ($28 retail, approx., 18.0/93, drink 2009-2012) is smooth and meaty, with a gentleness that perhaps belies its richness and strength. Rayment enjoys a ‘pig fat’ character about its earthy aromas, while I like its fine-grained nature and suppleness. HJ Reserve Shiraz Ever since the first overcooked Australian shirazes began to emerge in the late 1990s, I have argued to the contrary that shiraz can be grown into a classic, fully-ripened, full-flavoured and full-bodied expression of the variety without extreme levels of natural alcohol, provided the vineyard is sited correctly and managed sensibly. There is no more eloquent proof of this notion than the HJ Reserve Shiraz, the flagship of the Oliver’s Taranga stable. This is a sumptuous but silky wine that made its debut with an astonishingly fine-grained, beautifully balanced and savoury wine from the extremely difficult 2000 vintage. Its name stands for Herbert John or ‘Bert’ Oliver, Rayment’s grandfather, who planted the vines after his return from the second World War. Apparently, he also pulled out some pretty old material in the process, but Rayment is not one to bear grudges. Not that she needs to, since this old block tends to regulate itself around a crop of 1.0-1.5 tonnes per acre, riding out vintage variation better than most vineyards in the region. It’s only rarely ever needed irrigation. The HJ Reserve Shiraz is harvested from old bush vines that grow on the vineyard’s sandy slope. Unusually, the site produces quite large berries, but their thick skins help to deliver the ‘amazing, fine-grained tannins that go on forever’, in Rayment’s words. After a cold soak, it’s fermented with either natural yeasts or ‘funky’ yeasts that Rayment has been able to collect from the Australian Wine Research Institute, then matured for almost 30 months in new French oak ‘because of the way the tannins speak to me’. While the results clearly speak of their vintages, this is clearly no ordinary wine. Avoiding the overcooked and simultaneously under-ripe characters so common in McLaren Vale shiraz from 2000, the HJ Reserve from this vintage (18.2/93, drink 2008-2012+) achieves an elegance and harmony almost impossible to imagine from this season. It is still maturing and remains short of its peak. Again, the 2001 wine (15.9/86, drink 2006-2009) reflects the unprecedented heat of the season, with angular, under- and over-ripe influences. A massive but supremely elegant and tightly controlled wine, the HJ from 2002 (19.2/97, drink 2022-2032) combines dark, brooding fruit with a muscular extract that is still losing some blocky edges. Exemplary in its length and balance, it will develop for ages, if given the chance. Slightly awkward and herbaceous, the dark-fruited, meaty and chocolatey 2003 current release ($42 retail, approx., 16.6/88, drink 2008-2011) again mirrors its hot season, but does deliver some plump and luscious fruit quality. As you would hope, the best is possibly yet to come. A just bottled sample of the superlative 2004 HJ Reserve revealed a heady, dark-fruited perfume and a silky, refined palate of exceptional elegance and pure, explosive flavour. It was simply too early to rate, I expect to deliver a score handsomely over 19.0 once it settles down, with an all-important estimate of longevity well beyond twenty years. I have seen all the evidence I need to suggest that 2004 will go down in history as the finest red McLaren Vale vintage to its time, and this should be one of its highlights. Steadfastly sticking to her style guns, Corrina Rayment has shunned the trend for over-cooked and ultra-ripened McLaren Vale shiraz, fashioning an extremely impressive young legacy of wines of great natural balance and longevity. While she’s no longer a darling of the Parker set, since her wines now score well below those at the extreme end of the style envelope, she is as committed as ever to leaving a legacy of refined, balanced and long-living red wines. Of increasing excellence, I would add.
