Last Thursday I was a guest at the Yarra Valley Chardonnay Symposium, an industry event that attracted something like 200 attendees at the spectacular Levantine Hill Estate winery. Wine growers and makers from all over Australia attended, as well as a strong representation of international opinion leaders including Elaine Chukan Brown (US), Jamie Goode (UK), Michael Brajkovich (NZ), Richard Hemming (UK) and Will Lyons (UK).
Throughout the day-length event, attendees were given the opportunity to taste 22 different chardonnays, virtually all of which were Australian until the final bracket of four, which comprised one from New Zealand, one from Oregon and two from Burgundy.
I gave my highest score to the first wine of the day – the superbly balanced and expressive Tolpuddle Chardonnay 2023 (Tasmania), while the only other Australian wine I rated as gold medal standard was the excellent Penfolds Yattarna 2022. So I have only two golds out of 17 Australian wines on show. Some were presented as works in progress to demonstrate a technical point but most, I assume, were selected for their quality.
As a guest, I was there in an observing capacity only, which gave me the chance to listen to and then to contemplate what I firmly believe to be a significant disconnect between the industry, its aspirations and its market.
Here are my key take-aways.
The pendulum is finally swinging back
Finally, there’s an evident awareness amongst Australian winemakers that they went way too far and too long with more than a decade of stripping too much fruit from chardonnay to emphasise the wine’s acidic, savoury and saline aspects – most of which are either enhanced or introduced by winemakers. This is good news, for chardonnay is primarily about fruit and how it’s expressed and augmented. I have been banging this drum for ages now and it’s interesting to see my case has finally gained some traction.
UK commentator Will Lyons hit the nail on the head by commenting that when marketing their wines, makers and promoters of Australian chardonnays use a different set of descriptors to others, such as line of acid, mineral texture, saline finish, tautness, brittleness and razor-like finish. I agree entirely. Producers in other countries tend to focus more on highlighting chardonnay’s potential layers of perfume, intensity and length of flavour, balance and charm. One sounds like a mouthwash, the other more like something you might want to drink.
Let’s hope this time around that the pendulum spends more time in the middle.
First you grow the fruit, then you dumb it down…
Many winemakers are still taking interesting and expensive measures to dumb down the fruit that their well-sited and expensively managed vineyards can deliver. Levantine Hill maker Paul Bridgeman discussed experimenting with different containers for fermentation and maturation to minimise over-ripe fruit characters. In a previous age this would have been considered a goal in vineyard management.
Sam Connew, winemaker and proprietor of Stargazer in Tasmania said she is ‘aiming to pull back on the aromatics and fruit of all my wines to emphasise more of their savoury characters’.
The movement to strip fruit from Australian chardonnay did indeed begin in the Yarra and while it’s perhaps on the wane these days – I need more widespread evidence to be sure of this – I remain saddened by the rapidly changing styles delivered by several Margaret River makers such as Leeuwin Estate. While lacking the extreme levels of acidity seen in recent vintages, the 2021 Art Series Chardonnay is still clipped by the standards of its past, failing to deliver the core and drive of fruit that made it an international benchmark.
Instead of a palate whose fruit seemed to last forever, there’s the kind of drying, splintery oaky finish now so common in Australia’s more expensive chardonnays. Nowhere else in the world – at any time as far as I’m aware – is this considered a desirable aspect in chardonnay. The fact that I still gave a silver medal score to this wine truly frustrates me – for had its fruit been handled in a more sympathetic manner it could have made an incredible wine. There’s no doubting the extreme quality of that vineyard.
Rewriting history
The industry seems set on rewriting its own chardonnay history. Yes, in the 1980s many makers were guilty of producing over-ripe, poorly oaked, buttery and oily chardonnays, especially from our warmer regions that we no longer associate with the variety. This stemmed directly from the total lack of chardonnay knowledge and experience displayed by many makers and wine show judges. Remember – these wines we’re so happy to dismiss as rubbish today were given trophy after trophy at major wine shows. Our early chardonnay pioneers like Adam Wynn (Mountadam) and Philip Shaw (Rosemount) helped create the market that our modern chardonnay makers now enjoy. We forget all too easily that some of their wines were indeed quite brilliant.
However, the pendulum was swinging. By the 1990s, when our white wine market became dominated by Kiwi sauvignon blanc, it was a good time to be a chardonnay drinker in Australia. There was a significantly more diverse offering than we see today. Some of our leading makers were settling down into a more restrained expression of the grape, but others recognised an ongoing demand for richness and flavour. Even though many drinkers had been driven away from chardonnay by its not uncommon fatness and thickness, the industry was already responding.
Recent years have certainly seen astonishing quality gains by makers like Giaconda and Tolpuddle, but the 1990s was the decade in which Australian chardonnay really grew up. By the early 1990s Mount Mary had established its house style. Initially criticised for being too thin; these days it’s more likely to be described as too fat. While it’s more refined today, the style hasn’t moved far. Main Ridge Estate had already begun to craft chardonnays of elegance and longevity. Giaconda was steadily developing the exceptional complexity and restrained power it offers today. Its 1995 and 1996 Chardonnays were remarkable. With a stunning sequence from 1982 onwards, Leeuwin Estate had placed itself at the forefront of a very strong Margaret River contingent. Its Art Series Chardonnay from 1995 was as brilliant as it was memorable. Chardonnay enthusiasts the world over simply loved it – as well as most of winemaker Bob Cartwright’s releases under this brand.
So when consultant winemaker and presenter Steve Flamsteed introduced Leeuwin’s 2021 Art Series as a ‘traditional Australian style’ I nearly choked. It has nothing at all to do with the wines that made the label famous. It’s about as traditional as the reverse sweep in cricket.
A shout out as well to the wonderful chardonnays created by James Halliday’s team at Coldstream Hills throughout this decade – most of which delivered a richness and creaminess together with depth of flavour and complexity that would be shunned by most of the trade today. These days winemaker Andrew Fleming continues this fine tradition, but few seem to notice…
A winemaker-driven loss of regionality
Winemakers now acknowledge a loss of regionality in Australian chardonnay, but don’t yet accept they’re the principal cause. There’s a fascinating comment at the footer of the page introducing the day’s first session on chardonnay history, which reads: ‘Identifying Chardonnay regions in blind tastings also remains a challenge within Australia, suggesting more work is needed to clearly convey regional distinctiveness.’
For years I’ve argued that if you harvest your chardonnay before it reaches full flavour ripeness, then strip away whatever flavour you have accumulated using a homogeneous recipe of winemaking techniques designed to push back on fruit and emphasise both acid and artefact, it’s indeed inevitable that all our chardonnays will taste the same – regardless of where they’re from. This is precisely what we’ve seen for ages and it’s what I’ve been railing against.
The Tolpuddle 2023 provides all the answers, since it delivers a seamless marriage of fruit, minerality, perfume and complexity with texture and savoury style. It’s effortlessly expressive, utterly distinctive and is all about the artful display and integration of simply beautiful fruit from a premier site. Nothing about it was stripped, raw or aggressive. Yet none of the speakers paid much attention to it. A mystery.
Is it important to make wine that people like?
Langtons’ Tamara Grischy ran a session which focused on the most popular chardonnays in the Australian market today. One wine she presented was considered to be totally appalling by the virtually entire room, self included. Sweet, viscous, planky and medicinal, the Robert Mondavi Buttery Chardonnay 2022 is indeed a dreadful wine, bringing straight back unpleasant memories of the 1980s at their very worst. Yet it is one of the best-selling chardonnays in Australia today.
So here’s what I’m struggling to understand. Australian wine is in chronic oversupply and more than 90% of it, I reckon, is up for sale. Yet our winemakers and our wine companies appear happy to cede the top slots in our chardonnay market to product from the USA which, despite the relativities of currency exchange, is snapped up by Australian buyers for $20. And everyone involved, I assume, is making good money in this equation.
I’m constantly asked by friends where they can buy rich, creamy, buttery chardonnays in Australia today and other than a small few I typically reply to their bewildered faces that if they’re after a more special example it’s likely to come from California.
But local makers are indeed beginning to return fire. Accolade Wines – whose internal decisions and processes over recent years have seen its value plummet – has just released two chardonnays with ‘buttery’ in their names: Petaluma B.C.P Adelaide Hills Buttery Chardonnay sells for $29 and Grant Burge Ink Buttery Chardonnay for just $19. While the value of these two once-premium South Australian brands is hardly being enhanced by adding such wines to their folios, it’s clear that some of our wine companies at least are prepared to shelve purist thoughts to create sales and value in the non-premium market.
‘Buttery chardonnays are a crime against wine’, posed Shaw + Smith’s David LeMire. ‘We don’t want to be seen around the world as the buttery chardonnay people’. Yet the seminar notes included a pithy quote from Yalumba’s Louisa Rose who said ‘…the greatness of the variety and its versatility means there is a legitimate place for both ends of the spectrum.’ Will Lyons suggested that even if the makers don’t enjoy these styles, they shouldn’t be seen to sneer at those who do. Of course LeMire is focused on the premium end of the market, where his brands of Shaw + Smith and Tolpuddle kick serious arse, but is there anything wrong with Australian makers choosing to make local buyers happy by providing what they want? Especially when that market is literally on their doorstep.
When you consider the effort and expense currently going into zero alcohol ‘wine’ – which I can’t imagine a single winemaker actually enjoying – it sort of becomes ridiculous. If we can make that undrinkable product with apparent conviction, surely we can make fuller, even buttery chardonnay without ridicule.
There’s way too much over-thinking going on…
Here’s some unrequested advice to Australian makers struggling to sell their chardonnay:
- Wineries should understand the style and quality limits of their resources, vineyards and locations and aim to make wines based on these rate-limiting factors.
- Not all wine is a luxury product – which most people can’t afford anyway. It’s quite ok – and can be very profitable – to make really good, delicious wine for under $30 per bottle.
- Wineries should make the best chardonnay they can from the resources (including site) at their disposal. Fruit should be let ripen enough to express regionality or – if it’s actually from an elite site – its unique terroir. If they do this in Margaret River, their wines will automatically taste different from anywhere else. Regionality will look after itself.
- Winemakers should share ideas with their neighbours but shouldn’t be afraid to make different wines from them. Buyers do not want all their chardonnays to taste the same, as they largely do these days. As an owner or a maker you’re entitled to express your own interpretation of site and style. Sooner or later you’ll know if you made the right call.
- Unless owners can afford to run at a loss, wineries are making wine to make profit. So they shouldn’t get too precious. They might need to make wine that their makers don’t like but what a large sector of the market clearly does. And they can always keep a few barrels of something different and special for themselves and their premium customers.
- There’s nothing wrong with malolactic fermentation to reduce acidity and restore balance. As Kumeu River’s Michael Brajkovich pointed out, extended time on lees removes the more obvious diacetyl (butterscotch) characters that detract from many wines.
- Makers should stop following current winemaking trends that reduce chardonnay quality. They should pick fruit when it’s flavour ripe and not before. They should use oak or other containers to enhance and not to replace fruit. They should avoid oak that presently leaves the stringy, drying bitterness at the finish of too many ‘top’ Australian chardonnays. If acid is to be added, it’s best done very carefully and early on.
…and a little bit too much self-congratulation
It became clear that according to most of the winemakers and marketers presenting at the symposium, Australia is indeed making the very chardonnay it should be making. All that’s needed, apparently, is to inform the market how wrong they are. ‘If we educate the market better about what we’re doing, then long-term sustainable returns will follow’ was the popular feeling, as expressed by one leading marketer.
I’m not sure I can recall a single instance in wine in which a country marketed a significant part of its wine industry by telling its potential customers that they’re wrong. Perhaps there’s a first time for everything…
If Australian chardonnay was as good as most of its makers believe, they wouldn’t be able to make enough of it. There’s a massive global demand for really good chardonnay at reasonable to high prices (say AUD $45-85) which no country has yet marked as their own. Plenty are trying.
Regarding the top end of the market, I lost count of the number of times I was told that Australia is making the second-best chardonnay in the world, after Burgundy. That’s just too self-congratulatory for me and I’m not at all sure we’re there yet. We could be and we should be. If only our industry was less susceptible to fads, trends and fashion and its producers went about their work with more conviction, knowledge and understanding of the world market.
As for the lower tiers, there’s still a massive disconnect between what Australian chardonnay makers seek to make and what their market wants to drink. Makers need to better understand what they should do, how they should do it and who they’re doing it for.
If you’re wanting to see what I’m about, check out the chardonnay selection at Oliver’s Wines. The makers whose wines we have chosen share the view that without fruit, chardonnay is empirically deficient. Once the grower has captured the palate length and appropriate weight that a fine site can deliver, it’s then up to the makers to figure the best way to augment what comes in from the vineyard with the tools at their disposal in the cellar. Balance remains everything; just as it has always done. Our selection offers balance and plenty of flavour.
I’ve written time and again about who is influencing our winemakers to make the choices they do – especially here and here – and I still can’t escape the conclusion that it’s those who break out from the bubble that are leading the way, delivering wine that would be recognised as world-class chardonnay wherever fine wine is opened and understood. I just can’t see the current crop of austere, saline chardonnays whose fruit is deliberately clipped or suppressed ever making their way to those tables.
My sincere thanks to Wine Yarra Valley.
