A mere two thousand years ago the Israelites had a similar problem to that presently faced by Australian wine, but instead they were waiting for a genuine Messiah. We, on the other hand, are awaiting our first definitive merlot. While some of our makers have undeniably come close to the mark, several of our more ambitious attempts have been more memorable for their budgetary impact that any impression they might inflict upon the human palate. Like sailors drawn towards rocks by the sirens of Grecian myth we have been lured by release after release of apparently ‘definitive’ Australian merlot from makers like Petaluma, James Irvine, Katnook Estate, Evans and Tate and Yarra Yering. More recently our expectations have been raised by debut releases from Oakridge, Pepper Tree and Leconfield. Amongst the current crop of premium Australian merlots are some fine, delicious wines, expressive of certain elements of merlot’s expansive personality, but as yet no thread of consistency or varietal expression runs through them. Surely a bulls-eye is now in the offing. There’s no single reason why varietal merlot been so elusive in Australia. It’s only of late that Australian vignerons have focused on varietal red wines from grapes other than cabernet sauvignon and shiraz and have had access to enough merlot to do something about it. Broadly speaking, it was introduced here to fill out and flesh out the palate structure of cool-climate cabernet. The over-abundance of thin, weedy cool-climate cabernets from many parts of southern Australia have sopped up merlot like a sponge, usually to good effect. Some winemakers still wonder what all the fuss is about. Mount Mary’s Dr John Middleton is one of them. Maker of perhaps the finest blend of Bordeaux varieties in Australia, Middleton has released two straight merlots, from the 1982 and 1992 vintages. ‘I can taste our 1992 Merlot (one of the best yet made in Australia) until I’m blue in the face and it’s still not half as good as the 1992 blend’, he argues. ‘It’s absolutely obvious that with every merlot I have ever tasted, including the best from Pomerol and St Emilion, that it’s not as good as the blend with cabernet.’ Unconvinced in merlot’s solo potential, Middleton blames American winemakers for the current global preoccupation with the grape. ‘They introduced it to their excessively aggressive Napa cabernets in the 1960s. Now they have straight merlot they still need 15% cabernet sauvignon to give them enough oomph’, he declares. Defining a Varietal Merlot Dismissing for the moment some of the sappy and under-ripe merlots associated with some of our cooler climates, the more serious Australian merlots thus made fall between the two extremes presented by Jim Irvine’s Grand Merlot and the 1996 Pepper Tree Coonawarra Reserve Merlot, the best Australian merlot made to date, fashioned by Chris Cameron. Despite an unusually high cropping level for the vineyard, the Pepper Tree is at once packed with intense, vibrant fruit but is yet refined, tight-knit and elegant. ‘Too many people perceive merlot as a lightweight, perfumed, non-event’, says Cameron, who has the charming frankness to say things exactly as he finds them. ‘To make merlot really work you need fruit intensity. It can be powerful in flavour without necessarily being a brute of a drink. Equipped with that fruit intensity, you then look for sophistication and elegance.’ Cameron looks for lifted, piercing berry fruit flavours. ‘It’s a lovely mixture’, he says. ‘You can talk about violets and other floral characters, but the more I look at ours, the more the thing changes.’ Pepper Tree’s merlot is less alcoholic and ripe than some of the other members of the leading pack, since he believes that with high levels of alcohol a merlot will finish hot on the palate, since it forfeits length of flavour. Jim Irvine’s Grand Merlot is the archetypal fuller, riper style, amongst the most alcoholic of Australia’s leading merlots. He deliberately waits around before harvesting his fruit, believing that in the Eden Valley it takes longer to reach physiological maturity than merlot does in Coonawarra. He delights in the sumptuousness of his wines and cheekily says that ‘Petrus fights like hell to get 14%!’ Since its debut 1985 vintage, this wine has developed a reputation for its power, concentration and consistency of robust, uncompromising character. Irvine is inspired the merlots of Pomerol, although he believes that for Australian merlots to achieve a comparable softness of tannin, they require extended maturation in oak. Although he considers believes merlot’s signature flavour to be that of stewed plums, Irvine says ‘the critical part is superb, spicy high-toasted oak’. The oak must be so well integrated that it’s not seen as oak at all, a feature he only begins to observe once a wine has been in barrel for over 20 months. ‘Fruit also dries out in oak to some degree, giving a more European attitude’, he says. Confident that new Alliers oak enhances the ethereal expression of merlot, Irvine gave his early wines a staggering four years in oak but has now come back to 36 months. ‘In all my winemaking I go further than most people believe is necessary, but with merlot I can bring on the whole orchestra’, he says. The result can look old-fashioned on occasions, but delivers a richness and multi-layered depth rarely seen in Australian merlot. Irvine’s goal is ‘something Europeans recognise readily’, a long-term wine capable of developing great finesse during extended bottle age. He ferments warm, seeking a ‘more leathery, stewed plum attitude’, against the fruitier, more forward styles made with cooler ferments. ‘They have great cherry/plum flavours when young, but don’t drink as well with age’, he says. ‘We’re after complexity and you’re going to need 2-3 hours breathing to open up the wine again. When served in big glasses, you get what you pay for.’ Peter Edwards is the owner and maker of the tiny McAlister vineyard in Gippsland, Victoria. Each year he releases a joyous blend of Bordeaux varieties, a wine that personifies those oft-abused terms of elegance and restraint. From time to time, when fruit quality permits and when he’s not likely to compromise the quality of his blend, he bottles a varietal merlot that may include up to 4% of the blended red. ‘I’m a Middleton fan’, says Edwards, ‘so I believe the sum of the parts (of a blended wine) is always better. My wine has proven that over the years.’ Edwards’ first ‘Merlot Noir’ was from the 1990 vintage, from a season his cabernet sauvignon had such complexity and balance he says it simply didn’t need any merlot. But Edwards is convinced that merlot can be a superlative wine in its own right. ‘The mass media has tended to give the wrong idea about the grape’, he says. ‘When it’s grown in a suitable area it’s its own entity. Under these circumstances it’s not a soft, easy-going wine, but is something that stands apart from cabernet. It has strength and character, a terrific backbone and, although they’re possibly more feminine, its tannins are still assertive and require time to come around.’ Peter Edwards looks for palate length in his merlot, plus ‘a lifted, briary fruit expression out of the plum spectrum’. ‘It’s a tenacious thing that clings to the glass and gets into your olfactories’, he says. Real merlot has stacks of individual character and distinction. It can bring together some of the richness and astringency of cabernet sauvignon with the fleshiness and evocative suppleness and sweetness of a premier pinot noir. While youthful its flavour can suggest violets, tobacco leaves and sweet small red and black berries. Like pinot, it can develop rustic, earthy complexity with bottle-age. Its tannins, able to soften sufficiently to uncloak the sweetness of its fruit, tend to ensure its ability to mature for longer than pinot noir, if not for as long as cabernet sauvignon, while merlot certainly helps cabernet-based blends to become more drinkable sooner. In Search of a Benchmark For many years the only Australian straight merlot with any quality pretensions was that grown by Evans & Tate in the Margaret River, although with their two competing premium Coonawarra merlots made throughout the 1980s, sold under the Show and Kirribilli labels, Rosemount stole much of the limelight. Not enough, however, to inspire the local market, despite some wonderfully evolved and supple wines, so the company replanted most of its merlot with cabernet sauvignon and switched its remaining production of merlot towards the American market, still thirsty for this Bordeaux grape. With the pre-release of its 1990 Petaluma Coonawarra Merlot, Brian Croser also backed the variety’s potential, with it and each subsequent vintage largely being sold on an innovative indent basis. At the moment it’s difficult to assess the style, since the wines have behaved so unusually in the bottle. Typically concentrated and plush when young, they have then tended to dry out rather rapidly, evolving towards a lean, almost hard and unforgiving structure, exacerbated by a high proportion of assertive new oak. It’s still to early to predict with confidence where they are heading. Interestingly, they are not kept in oak beyond their second year, which suggests an interesting possibility if Irvine’s views towards oak were to be experimented with in the Piccadilly Valley. A recent (decanted) bottle of the 1990 vintage tasted hard and tough when served after extended breathing, but rich, soft and voluptuous the next evening, surely a fine portent for the future. The 1992 vintage has always shown refinement and more sweetness, while I have been perplexed by the divergent expression of the 1994 wine, sometimes stellar, sometimes stale. I’d hate to point the finger at bottle variation, but my reactions have always been extreme towards this wine, one way or the other. The 1995 vintage is another sleeper, ripe and concentrated with some slightly hard-edged oak and drying, powdery tannins. It should have a long and bright future. Despite the fanfare that greeted it, Pepper Tree’s 1995 Coonawarra Reserve Merlot seemed to me excessively expensive, simple and confection-like, but as I have already indicated, the 1996 vintage sets a new high-water mark in Australian merlot. It takes a gambler’s instinct to invite a small posse of Australia’s most outspoken wine critics to taste masked a dozen of the world’s finest merlots at your own winery and have the conviction to include your own wine in the bracket. Chris Cameron was confident enough to give it a try. Against some stellar competition from Pomerol and pitched against smart competition from the US, Australia and Italy, the 1996 Pepper Tree stood out for its refinement, intensity and purity of fruit. I thought it easily eclipsed all entrants with the exception of the high-toned Chateau Trotanoy 1993 and a supremely complex and restrained Chateau Lafleur 1993. The Petrus presented, from the 1994 vintage, reflected the difficulties encountered with this season and appeared to lack the core of fruit to handle its sumptuous extract. According to Cameron, his Holy Grail is to make the best merlot in the country and one of the best in the world. ‘Of all the Australian areas which grow it, and I look at them regularly, I think Coonawarra is a standout. Other regions offer certain elements like a punchy middle palate, good acids and good balance, but none are quite as complete. The tasting showed that’, he says. ‘That quintessential merlot from Trotanoy was an absolute cracker. It had more fruit intensity and was firmer than ours, but it was able to carry the firmness. I don’t think our ’96 could have been firmer than it was.’ While Cameron appreciates the structure of Yarra Valley merlot, like me he finds too much leafy, greenish regional influence in many of its wines, saying that ‘Once merlot gets that at the front of palate and the nose, I find it overshadows true varietal character.’ By focusing more closely on viticulture than he believes has ever been done on a similarly scale on an Australian vineyard, Cameron hopes to move more closely towards his perfect merlot. A new computerised irrigation system enables him to monitor everything from soil and leaf moisture, evaporation and transpiration on an hourly basis, all from Pepper Tree’s base in the Hunter Valley. ‘We know exactly when and where to drive the water’, he says. Having managed his vines and drip irrigation to reduce berry size and thereby their skin to fruit ratio to achieve more natural firmness, Cameron is confident he has something special in the tank from 1998. If it tops the 1996, I want to have some. For all of that, it’s premature to declare a definitive Australian merlot. The days are still early, especially since Penfolds, our largest and most important red wine maker, has managed to release a white partner to Grange before coming up with a straight merlot strong enough to stand on its own two feet in the Australian market. Despite the astronomic prices of some, the truth is that merlot has still to be accepted here as a premium single red variety. The encouraging thing is that not so long ago they were saying the same thing about pinot noir!
