At a glance, Tower Estate almost looks too convenient to take seriously. Firstly, legendary wine guy Len Evans persuaded twelve of friends to share his vision for a wine estate. Evans wanted to match together his favourite combinations of wine regions and grape varieties. They accepted, becoming shareholders and investors in the process. Then, being something of a brilliant, if eccentric designer of intriguing but remarkably people-friendly buildings and spaces, he created the winery. Its large squat and blocky shapes, sloping walls and proud tower occupy the site like an ancient Scottish fortress might occupy the banks of a deep and foreboding loch, yet the airy brightness of its interior is strikingly modern. Next, Evans went about sourcing some fruit. His aim has been to create a range of limited run wines of 1,000 cases only, each batch requiring a mere fifteen tonnes of grapes. Ever persuasive, Evans convinced several of the country’s better vignerons and grape growers to slice the requisite fifteen tonnes from whatever other purpose they had in mind for it. Tower Estate’s Sauvignon Blanc largely comes from Alan Dean’s vineyard in the Adelaide Hills, while Brian Croser has brokered the deals to source its Adelaide Hills Chardonnay from a number of different growers throughout the region. Robert Hill Smith parted with some of Yalumba’s valuable Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon resource, Jim Barry with some his Clare riesling, and Peter Lehmann, an old mate of Evans’, agreed to surrender some of the best shiraz from his own personal Barossa vineyard. Add to this the indigenous Hunter varieties of shiraz, semillon, chardonnay and verdelho, much of the which is derived from Len Evans’ own Howard Vineyard, and you have Tower Estate’s present portfolio. Next job was to find a winemaker. Dan Dineen is a young talent who first showed promise at Mount Pleasant and then attracted considerable attention during his time at Brokenwood, also in the Lower Hunter. He arrived in time for the inaugural 1999 vintage and is presently supervising the fifth harvest at Tower Estate. Dineen’s particular ability is to endow a wine with more complexity and character, without sacrificing tightness and elegance. Whatever the region and the grape he’s using, his wines are typically at the more stylish, focused and restrained end of the spectrum. The rather stylish and steely 2001 Adelaide Hills Chardonnay is fine and modern, the vibrant 2002 Clare Riesling citrusy and slatey, while the 2002 Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc is punchy, sweaty but a fraction sweet for me. While the 2001 Hunter Semillon is bright and tangy, the 2001 Hunter Chardonnay is succulent and tightly oaked. To date most of Tower Estate’s best wines have been red. The 2000 Hunter Shiraz is nothing short of spectacular: a superbly balanced and unusually shapely regional red. Similarly, Dineen’s impression of Barossa shiraz is more elegant and complex than most from the region, although it doesn’t fall short in either richness or impact. The 2000 wine is a worthy effort from a difficult vintage, while the 1999 edition marked a polished debut, even if Dineen has since reduced his use of American oak from 50% to less than 20%. He much prefers the ability of French oak to integrate with fruit rather than dominate it. Tower Estate really works. It’s not a gimmick or a toy winery. It’s overcome the tyranny of winemaking distance to fashion a number of signature wines from a number of regions and isn’t simply another monument on the Hunter landscape. It’s about making very serious wine. And, I might add, a very healthy streak of hedonism, a subject about which Len Evans knows much, much more than he’s entitled to.
