It’s a funny thing, but most of us can remember where we were when we first tasted Bass Phillip. For me it was back in 1990, when having attempted to maintain a respectable journalistic aloofness from the hype that had already enveloped Phillip Jones’ wines, created in no small measure by the man’s determination to get as many people as possible to taste them, I became picked up in a pulsating human wave determined to shorten the distance as quickly as possible between themselves and the shining decanter of Bass Phillip Premium Pinot Noir being thrust and parried like a rapier in Jones’ right hand. It was at an Exhibition of Victorian Winemakers, the sort of event that Jones simply loves to attend, holding court as usual to a swelling parliament of besotted disciples. Each typically hangs on his every opinion, hoping they’re still present for that special moment when Jones’ resistance might finally succumb to a special plea for a splash of that Reserve wine hiding somewhere beneath his stand, typically submerged beneath more bottles, decanters and other glassware than its makers ever intended it to bear. The point about it all, which is why the Phillip Jones Roadshow has got away with causing a major logjam at virtually every show it has ever attended, is that his pinot noir is not only Australia’s best, but what he has to say about the grape variety and its making is always worth listening to. Not that you’re always going to agree with everything, of course. But it’s best to get your facts straight before challenging this man and his ideas. Grown from extremely low-yielding, mature and non-irrigated vines near Leongatha in Victoria’s South Gippsland, Bass Phillip’s pinot noirs are arranged by their maker into a hierarchy of increasing weight, complexity, durability and price. There is presently a series of early-maturing wines from new and younger vineyards, before the ‘standard’ Bass Phillip Pinot Noir, atop of which sit the prestigious ‘Premium’ and incomparable ‘Reserve’ wines. Immensely attractive when young, the top labels perform even better after around eight years of age. By then they reveal a level of harmony and strength of pure, spicy dark cherry fruit together with the ultimate gamey and autumnal expressions of pinot noir that few might have ever anticipated in Australian wine. Not in the 20th century, anyway. Although it wasn’t to make pinot noir that he first established the Bass Phillip vineyard and label, Phillip Jones’ tangible devotion towards this grape, his innate feel for its qualities and his preparedness to go to any length to make it stamp him as Australia’s most committed maker of pinot. And that’s why he’s the best we have.
