Three issues ago (volume 5, issue 3) I published an article discussing the status of Australian pinot noir. It’s also appropriate to do something similar with the other Burgundian variety of note, chardonnay, since despite the nascence of viognier and the renaissance of riesling, we’re still drowning in it. I’m still staggered by the number of people I come across whose palates and knowledge I’ve generally respected who emphatically declare that they’re done with chardonnay, forever. Pressed for a reason, out they trot with a litany of criticisms encompassing too oaky, too flabby, too concentrated, too industrial, too monotonous, too contrived and too expensive. While I agree that it’s become hard to find a chardonnay with real individuality and character without parting for at least $30 per bottle, I’m prepared to defend Australian chardonnay against the other charges. But before I do so, it’s best to make it clear what angle I’m coming from. One grape, several wines There are several different kinds of Australian chardonnay. The cheapest and most commonplace expressions, in casks and bottles up to around $10, are basic but approachable wines of straightforward fruit and whose oak character generally has little to do with maturation in small casks. While some are good enough to compete against more expensive wines, most are utterly monotonous and many are of questionable quality. The point about these wines is that irrespective of how ordinary some of us might think they are, they sell. Why? Because they’re usually better value than most of our export competition at their price points. No room for complacency though, for the Europeans and Chileans are snapping at our heels. The next level actually offers some aspects of genuine chardonnay complexity. Given that chardonnay needs to be built up in the winery using the fruit as a foundation, rather than simply be converted from fruit into uninteresting wine, these wines can display different winemaking techniques able to enhance flavour, texture and palate length such as barrel fermentation, malolactic fermentation, lees contact and stirring in the barrels. Occasionally the results resemble classic chardonnay and can offer some delicious drinking at an affordable price. Priced mainly between $15 and $25, this is the hottest chardonnay market right now, mainly because it’s a battleground where the big companies are competing very strongly against each other. The premier level of chardonnay, which is really what this article is addressing, is the unashamedly Burgundy-influenced expression influenced by an approach which pre-dates the Industrial Revolution by centuries. Crafted with painstaking and hands-on attention to detail, these wines are usually 100% fermented in barrel, sometimes with ‘wild’ yeast species, are typically given the full benefit of lees contact and some degree of malolactic fermentation and are often handled with very low levels of preservative. Provided the winemaking inputs don’t over-ride the fruit, which usually requires a cropping level of significantly less than three tonnes per acre, such wines tend to reflect terroir in much the same way that pinot noir can do, but perhaps not to such an obvious extent. The best examples from cooler climates such as the Adelaide Hills, Mornington Peninsula and Tasmania are more restrained in fruit expression, tauter and racier in their acidity, yet can reveal surprising intensity and depth of flavour. Slightly warmer regions such as the Yarra Valley and Margaret River fashion rounder, plumper wines into which winemakers have more of a scope to introduce significant complexity in the cellar. Faster to mature but occasionally even richer and more opulent are the best Hunter Valley chardonnays, which can reveal pronounced figgy, tobacco and melon fruit. You’ll notice that unwooded chardonnay plays no part in this discussion. That’s because, with only a few exceptions, I have very little respect or time for it. Most examples are exactly what their name suggests them to be: unfinished. Is Australian chardonnay all it should be? For a winemaking country with such diversity of terroirs, mature vineyards and talented producers, we don’t have enough top-end chardonnay to feel remotely comfortable with our achievements. We’re now talking about the grape that was until recently the most substantially planted in Australia, and the one that until the re-emergence of shiraz received a healthy lion’s share of winemaking attention. It’s still handsomely the most widely planted of the white varieties in quality regions, but not enough of the chardonnays from our best regions do anything to reflect terroir or typicite. The temptation that has attracted so many Australian makers of individual vineyard and small production chardonnay is to use the tools because they’re there. Too many simply deploy a full malolactic fermentation because they can. Ditto for leaving it on lees for a year or using ‘wild’ or indigenous yeasts for the primary fermentation. Worthwhile techniques for some chardonnays, but by no means for all. Too many wines purporting to be top-level chardonnays are simply too cluttered with artefact that their fruit is barely noticeable. Good fruit it might have been, but in too many cases it has simply been overwhelmed by the time it’s been put into bottle, while a more sensitive approach could have worked wonders. Instead of attempting to superimpose their concepts of their ‘ideal’ chardonnays over their vineyards, makers should pay more attention to what their fruit delivers and adapt their techniques accordingly to maximise quality. Sure, they mightn’t end up in bottle with the wine they dreamt of making, but they’ll do the best thing from a quality perspective. Michael Hill Smith and Martin Shaw latched onto what is wrong with so many ‘premier’ Australian chardonnays when they went about redesigning and re-thinking Shaw and Smith’s flagship oak-matured wine, which was formerly called ‘Reserve’. Realising that so many matured so fast into ‘fat, golden and developed Australian chardonnays that lose their vitality’, they’ve thought more carefully about preserving fruit character from the moment the fruit is harvested for what is now the M3 Chardonnay. The results are showing through, right from their first effort in 2000. In their case this meant whole fruit pressing after 12-16 hours in a cold store and avoiding sulphuring at receival. Other makers might take note. Just as with pinot noir, the chardonnays making a real statement about style and place are those given a chance to do so in the vineyard. Classifying Australian Chardonnay I’ve crunched Australia’s elite chardonnays into five levels. Effectively, what this has meant is to pick those listed as 1 and 2 rating wines in The OnWine Australian Wine Annual, plus most of the 3 rating entries. I’ve ended up splitting the 1 and 2 categories in two, which I’ll now explain. Not many people will argue that there are two Australian chardonnays against which the others are compared: Giaconda and Leeuwin Estate. Hugely different wines in origin, scale and individuality, they have maintained spectacular standards of quality. While Leeuwin’s wine has remained unashamedly consistent (and rightly so) over a long period, Giaconda’s is a work in progress. Some progress, mind, and it’s been a delight to watch. But not even its maker, Rick Kinzbrunner, really knows exactly where it’s going to take him. Beneath these wines are the remaining rating 1s plus a wine so close to getting back there it’s not funny, the Bannockburn Chardonnay. The others, including the two Petalumas, speak for themselves, although you could hardly find a greater contrast between the fineness, tightness and delicacy of Croser’s Petaluma expression and the more robust, assertive expression that Mike Peterkin achieves so consistently at Pierro. The next two levels (3 & 4) correspond to the rating 2s in the book, which I’ve made an effort to divide on the basis of track record and consistency, while Level 5 are most of the rating 3 wines in my book. Serious wines all, each able to produce gold medal quality (18.5 points and above) quite regularly. Because I require a minimum of three vintages to record a rating in my book, some highly rated new labels do not appear in this list. Giaconda Beechworth, Victoria Leeuwin Estate Margaret River, WA Bannockburn Geelong, Victoria Petaluma Adelaide Hills, South Australia Petaluma Tiers Adelaide Hills, South Australia Pierro Margaret River, WA Bannockburn SRH Geelong, Victoria Cape Mentelle Margaret River, WA Cullen Margaret River, WA Hardy’s Eileen Hardy Tasmania/Yarra Valley Moss Wood Margaret River, WA Mount Mary Yarra Valley, Victoria Penfolds Yattarna (Fleurieu, Adelaide Hills) Adelaide Hills, South Australia Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Lower Hunter Valley, NSW Wantirna Estate Isabella Yarra Valley, Victoria Yeringberg Yarra Valley, Victoria Dalwhinnie Pyrenees, Victoria Domaine Epis Macedon Ranges, Victoria Grosset Adelaide Hills, South Australia Lake’s Folly Lower Hunter Valley, NSW Rosemount Orange Vineyard Orange, NSW Rosemount Roxburgh Upper Hunter Valley, NSW Rosemount Show Reserve Upper Hunter Valley, NSW Stonier Reserve Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Yarra Edge Yarra Valley, Victoria Bindi Quartz Macedon Ranges, Victoria Coldstream Hills Reserve Yarra Valley, Victoria Devil’s Lair Margaret River, WA Lenswood Vineyards Adelaide Hills, South Australia Main Ridge Estate Mornington Peninsula, Victoria Plantagenet Great Southern, WA Seppelt Drumborg Henty, Victoria Shaw & Smith M3/Reserve Adelaide Hills, South Australia Sorrenberg Beechworth, Victoria Starvedog Lane Adelaide Hills, South Australia Stefano Lubiana Southern Tasmania, Tasmania TarraWarra Yarra Valley, Victoria Vasse Felix Margaret River, WA Voyager Estate Margaret River, WA Region/Ranking State 1 2 3 4 5 Total Margaret RiverWA 1 1 3 3 8 Adelaide Hills SA 2* 1 2 1 6 Yarra Valley Vic 3 1 1 5 Beechworth Vic 1 1 2 Geelong Vic 1 1 2 Lower Hunter Valley NSW 1 1 2 Tasmania Tas 1** 1 2 Upper Hunter Valley NSW 2 2 Macedon Ranges Vic 1 1 2 Mornington Peninsula Vic 1 1 2 Orange NSW 1 1 Pyrenees Vic 1 1 Great Southern WA 1 1 Henty Vic 1 1 * Includes Penfolds Yattarna ** Includes Hardys Eileen Hardy No prizes for assuming that Margaret River would come out on top. It’s handsomely the best-performed chardonnay region in Australia and it’s the only one where there’s genuine pressure being applied to the status quo by newly emergent vineyards and brands. I expect the gap between Margaret River and the rest to widen rather significantly over the next five years. There are more people there working hard from the ground up, doing everything right in the vineyard and cellars. Numerically the Adelaide Hills is second on the list, although the Yarra Valley is very close behind. There’s less chardonnay under vine in the Adelaide Hills than in the Yarra Valley, although I reckon it has more commitment and less complacency with chardonnay. I’m still at a loss to understand why there aren’t more Yarra Valley chardonnays in the top bracket. The only real surprise in the list is Beechworth which, thanks to the south-facing Giaconda phenomenon and Sorrenberg’s very worthwhile effort, has more wines at top level than a large number of regions that would rate themselves significantly higher. The emergence of Kooyong will undoubtedly raise the Mornington Peninsula’s status, for it’s as serious and as likely to succeed as any current development in Australia. Like pinot noir, chardonnay is like a mirror, and it’s a mirror that never lies. At the very top level there’s nowhere to hide a viticultural deficiency or a winemaking inadequacy. As Rick Kinzbrunner says, every small thing a winemaker doesn’t do might rob a wine of 1% in quality. Perhaps you might think you can afford a shortcut or two in the cellar without discernible effect, but go much further and they quickly add up. There’s no doubt that existing Australian vineyards have the potential to produce much better chardonnay than they have done. All most need is to be given a serious chance to do so.
