Viognier, eh? Another new grape to Australian shores, joining the likes of sangiovese, barbera, petit verdot and pinot gris and the born-again interest in marsanne, grenache and mourvedre. What’s it about? What should you pay for it? And who are the players? Of all the new or alternative grape varieties to which Australians have shown varying degrees of interest in recent years, viognier is the one most likely to succeed. It’s a viable alternative for makers of premium white wine in cool to warm areas and has the added benefit of being ideally suited to blending with shiraz to make Cote-Rotie-like blends such as those from Clonakilla, The Heathcote Winery and Yarra Yering’s Dry Red No. 2. It requires more interventional handling in the winery than does riesling, but not as much as top-shelf chardonnay. That’s why good viognier is well suited to pricing around $25 per bottle. I’d want to know why a viognier was priced above $30 per bottle, although scarcity has always been the main reason for some small vineyard wines to sell well above their genuine worth. It’s perhaps surprising that of all Australian wineries, the one to have done most over more years and across more labels with viognier is Yalumba. Winemaker Louisa Rose oversees the making of different parcels of viognier for the Yalumba Limited Release (or Growers) range, the Heggies Vineyard range and some to be blended into both the Antipodean white and red wines. The Heggies Vineyard Viognier stakes a fair claim to be the best and most consistent yet made in Australia today. Other names to look for are Clonakilla (extremely limited and rare), The Heathcote Winery, Petaluma (whose first viognier is about to be released) and Elgee Park, the Mornington Peninsula vineyard which has been making some very good viognier since the mid 1980s. ‘I look for lifted honeysuckle and sometimes musky aromas’, says Louisa Rose. ‘There’s usually a lot of apricot in Eden Valley viognier and texture and lusciousness on the palate are both very important. Because of the ripeness we get, we regularly achieve its luscious viscosity and glycerol.’ Texture and heat are important to viognier, whose punchy forward fruit and relatively low acidity are often accompanied by quite assertive levels of alcohol. It’s generally a wine to drink between two to five years of age, after its full gamut of varietal fruit has developed, but prior to excessive bottle-aged influences. Rose believes the grape has enormous potential, especially in the way it works with food. ‘Viognier matches well with a good range of foods. With its strength of flavour I see it as a variety which will suit Australian culture. It grows so well in different regions and makes great flavours. The limiting step at the moment is availability of planting material. The oldest plantings to which Yalumba has access date back to 1980, when eight acres were planted at Vaughan’s vineyard. There have been two subsequent plantings, including five acres at Heggies itself. Oddly enough, Rose is quite impressed with the varietal nature of the viognier also planted at Oxford Landing in South Australia’s Riverlands, which contribute to a wine solely made for export. ‘We started making viognier with no real idea at all and have made every style from lots of oak to no oak’, she says. ‘New oak has no place with viognier for it just clashes with the grape’s rich flavours, although a lot of Californian makers might disagree. The real thing we’ve learned for our style is that fruit must be ripe in flavour, or else there’s not much point in persevering. It’s hard work to get the vines in balance, for it crops very erratically. There’s either a big crop or no crop. We’re trying to get more reliable lower crops around 3 to 3.5 tonnes per acre where we can get better flavours. Viognier needs some fruit exposure and an open canopy. ‘We pick viognier as gently as possible. The skins are very soft and we don’t want any phenolic extract, since it clashes with the style like oak does. It’s pressed gently and isn’t crushed. It’s passively oxidated since it makes some contribution to the wine’s stability and is fermented either in older barrels or in tank. We generally ferment around 12-16 degrees, but may get to 18-19 in barrels. The wine is kept on lees in oak or tank for around six months to keep the richness in the wine and we don’t go to a lot of effort to stir it. Around 20-25% goes through malolactic, then we bottle after stabilising. ‘We’ve been making viognier since the mid 1980s and even now we’re still learning about it.’
