Who or what should influence the decisions made by winemakers? Wine show results? Sommeliers? Wine critics? The alignment of the planets? Or might it be a little simpler than that?
In late 2020 I wrote an article about the damage that telephonic scores by domestic and perhaps domesticated wine critics were doing to the quality end of Australian wine. Winemakers, their tires pumped by critics and sommeliers of questionable knowledge, experience and even intent, inevitably believe what people are saying and writing about them and what they put into bottle. It’s the human condition. Today in Australia there is an astonishing number of what are considered to be ‘great winemakers’, many of whom have not even made a single great wine or come even close. But every time I make this point, they all think I’m talking about someone else.
Last Wednesday night, March 17, I hosted a dinner that compared some top-class Australian wines with some very serious international competition, most of which was French. With the exception of a very expensive white Burgundy – Domaine Guy Amiot’s Puligny Montrachet Les Demoiselles 1er Cru 2016 – which was totally shattered and broken by premature oxidation, each of the international wines reflected a restless and focused determination by their owner or maker to improve and not sit back on their laurels.
The Riesling Steinertal ‘Smaragd’ 2017 by FX Pichler reflects the intention of its maker to ease back on the oily fatness of previous incarnations, refining the style towards a longer and more refreshing point of definition. And while it’s clearly an emphatic red Burgundy from a serious vineyard, Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron’s Clos-Vougeot Grand Cru 2014 is anything but an old-school Old World wine. Instead, given handsome oak treatment, a pre-fermentation soak to enhance colour and a closed, temperature-controlled fermentation to retain aroma, it’s indeed a result of contemporary technology and true winemaking flair when exercised upon its particular site. The plush, deeply coloured, headily aromatic, savoury and textural pinot is a wonderful expression of its fabled terroir.
Revealing much in common with the Jean-Jacques Confuron approach, the making of Stephane Ogier’s Côte Rôtie Lieu Dits Fongeant 2015 is even more focused towards the pristine, pure expression of fruit and site. Again, here’s a new, sumptuously equipped high-tech winery, a younger generation winemaker and a clear philosophy that gives full rein to the domaine’s wide range of wines, especially from premier sites it identifies as ‘lieu-dit’.
Finally, from the overseas corner came the breathtaking Chateau Haut-Bailly 2010, another French classic that owes more to a New World emphasis on purity and plushness ahead of the leaner and more rustic expressions of decades past. A wine that is steadily emerging from backward shyness towards a finely controlled opulence and style, it marries crowd-pleasing showiness with a more refined structure and minerality. Serious stuff!
Each of these high-end European wines were clearly made by individuals blessed with a confidence, clarity and certainty of style and quality. I didn’t consider it in advance, but there’s also a consistency of winemaking philosophy and technique between the three reds that states beyond any doubt that modern, New World-developed philosophies of purity and flavour retention actually help facilitate a valid and eloquent expression of terroir. It’s not the only way to achieve this, but it does not lack credibility.
That, however, is not the core motivation for this discussion. I’m more interested right now in what winemakers need focus on in order to make great wine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my list of prerequisites does not include a single wine critic.
What the imported wines at the dinner shared in common included an ability to grow or source fruit from wonderful sites, a fastidious and sustainable approach towards the management of their vineyards, a powerful respect for their past traditions, a clear understanding of what their vineyards could deliver and, in each case a powerful conviction regarding how this becomes expressed within each individual brand’s house style. Plus, of course, a restless ambition to shoot for the stars in quality.
No wine critic was deployed in the making of these wines. While some might push the case that Robert Parker jnr is to a large measure responsible for the riper expression of French wine, this trend was indeed already underway by the time he heralded the 1982 vintage. I would also suggest that none of the red wines featured here approached anything like the degree of wine caricaturisation that had become commonplace the world over by the conclusion of Parker’s writing career. I stand to be corrected on this, but I think the only one that was actually rated by Parker himself (Lisa Perrotti-Brown has a different palate entirely) was the Haut-Bailly, with 97+.
The best Australian wine at the dinner was Giaconda’s remarkable 2018 Estate Chardonnay. Here’s a little about how Rick Kinzbrunner, its owner and maker, put it together – a process that has actually taken him around 40 years. From a winemaking education and experience that largely took place in California, he made the then radical selection of a south-facing site of old weathered soils (most cool climate Victorian vineyards were then nearly always facing north) to ‘take heat out of the site’. From the outset he undertook the steady and measured trialling and then adoption of different winemaking techniques, so the impact of each could be measured in full. He has constantly and honestly re-evaluated every aspect of the vineyard and its placement of varieties and in the cellar has operated a fastidious evaluation of how the oak from a single cooper (Siruges) could affect and benefit the evolving Giaconda style.
This style itself has steadily morphed from the leaner, more Macon-like expression of the late 1980s and early 1990s to the more unctuous, mineral and deeply layered Coche-Dury-like wines of today, something that occurred as winemaker and vineyard evolved together, as the vines matured, as their roots penetrated into deeper, rockier soil profiles and as Kinzbrunner progressively and more confidently attached more winemaking-derived complexity and texture to his fruit. None of this was accidental.
While chardonnay is of course a winemaker-driven wine that actually needs to be made, even I was surprised when once, more than a decade ago, I asked Kinzbrunner how much of his Chardonnay was terroir, and how much was him. The answer was 60% him; hard to argue against that. Ten years prior to then, however, and the number would have been far lower. That’s what happens when a maker really understands site and how best to marry that site with ambitions of style. As Penfolds is presently discovering in California, there are no shortcuts here.
Another question directed a long time ago, to Kinzbrunner: ‘What do you do to make your wines so special?’ Straight back to me the response: ‘I do every tiny thing that should I choose not to, would only cost me around 0.01% of quality. But they all add up.’
The other Australian wines on show that evening included the Grosset Polish Hill Riesling 2017, now experiencing a mid-adolescent phase during which it neither flaunts the fruit of its youth nor the balance of its future. It is however another wine whose style and quality stem from the ability of its maker to make and to learn, plus the clarity of his vision. Frankland Estate’s Smith Cullam Riesling 2017, a sublime off-dry expression of this variety, is all about the measured, intelligent adoption of a European model and its adaptation to its Australian environment. Another conviction wine.
Scorpo’s close-planted Eocene Pinot Noir 2018 is an early release of an ambitious concept, very marginally held back by the youth of its vines and the high yields of its season. It’s unquestionably headed down a path that will work. Sourced from a selection of his finest sites and in only the better years, Steve (Stefano) Lubiana’s Sasso Pinot Noir 2017 is powerfully constructed and handsomely presented. Not for it the green-rimmed nerviness and hollowness of so many alleged high-end Australian pinots – here’s a maker with no doubt what he’s striving for, but who’s aware he’s unlikely to achieve it every year. Smart.
It was almost Beauty and the Beast when contrasting the Côte-Rotie-like Paradise IV Dardel Shiraz of 2017 by Doug Neal with the contemporary Western Australian classic made by Rob Mann, Swinney’s sumptuous and savoury Farvie Syrah 2018. Made to be heady and perfumed, supple and savoury, the Dardel is as pure an expression of style conviction you will experience in Australian shiraz, while I expect Rob Mann’s controlled mastery of powerful fruit to evolve into something spectacular. Thanks to conviction, knowledge and clarity…
The finest release yet under this respected label, Domaine A’s 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon is a polished, textural and artfully balanced cabernet-based blend made in a St. Julien-like mould. It’s born from the firm, if perhaps unfashionable view that cabernet should be ripe but not jammy, textured and gravelly, withdrawn in its youth but made to last. Made by Peter Althaus, a worldly Swiss who never deviated from his oft-spoken aim to create world-class cabernet in Tasmania, it is a brilliant result of intelligent winemaking in pursuit of a clearly defined goal.
So, now at the risk of stating what I hope has become quite obvious, great wines are not made without a clarity of vision, an understanding of what the site is capable and most importantly, a conviction and determination to proceed, often amid the negative criticism of observers, towards the realisation of that goal. Winemakers whose style ambitions blow in the breeze with every review or every change in wine fashion will never progress beyond first base. Sam Middleton, Mount Mary’s outstanding young winemaker, once made the point to me that his family’s Chardonnay was for years criticised by trade and media for being too skinny. Then, once the fashion changed towards the leaner, fruit-stripped chardonnays so popular in the media and on wine lists today, it was damned for being too heavy. Its weight has barely changed, and it sells out each year, to the total non-surprise of its very demanding customer base. Point made?
Too many Australian winemakers listen to the wrong voices, fail to maximise the potential of their vineyards and deliver results that are not taken seriously outside the narrow band of Australian wine critics, sommeliers and judges that simply don’t realise that by helping out their mates, by failing to grasp what wine quality really looks like, or just by locking in their places at the next free lunch or interstate jaunt, they’re not helping anyone other than themselves.
(Or, perhaps, there might be undeclared commercial reasons why wines are pointed so high by some voices but not others? Surely not!?!)
That said, the most important voice for winemakers to listen to is that within themselves. And if it’s not there, or if it doesn’t talk loud enough to be heard above the noise, they’re in the wrong job.
