Tag Archives: Moscato

A Sense Of The Famiglia

It’s like synaesthesia. Whenever I hear the Vajra name or taste the wines, I see a riot of colour. It’s like drinking in the cheerful hues of the labels and stained-glass windows, or splashing through the poetry-soaked palette of the Barolo landscape.
Giuseppe Vaira reckons he wasn’t brainwashed. I don’t think I was either. It’s just that every interaction with the wines, the place and the people has felt like tracing another vivid detail on the same seamless canvas.
Fluidity and fusion are in G.D. Vajra’s DNA. A good dose of that genetic material was dished up by one Aldo Vaira, the flock-defying, tractor-loving intellectual who founded the estate in the early ‘70s. “I feel like I’m still discovering my father, but I guess it’s a journey like all human relationships,” says eldest son Giuseppe. “It’s a very alive relationship; it’s not like something stuck in a moment that’s always the same.” Aldo is cast as a multifaceted, nuanced character. “He can be strong in situations that would make other people feel weak. Very at peace, very hopeful, very faithful; he’s not going to give up,” says Giuseppe. “On other occasions when you want him to be more forceful, he’s not. When it comes to human relationships, he’s one of the most delicate, sensitive people I know.”
This gentleness may sometimes do a disservice in the short-term – the family’s lost out on acquiring coveted vineyard to more assertive rivals, for instance – but it’s a corollary to another virtue that’s stood G.D. Vajra in good stead in so many ways. “It took me time to realise that patience is incredibly important. I think it’s possibly the most important lesson I’ve learned from him,” says Giuseppe. “That certainty that things will happen over time, but at a time we do not decide. He doesn’t try to force the situation.”

However acute Aldo’s influence has been, it’s only half the story. “I can’t see Vajra as a one-man show,” says Giuseppe. “It’s always been a two-person show.” His mother Milena was raised on the plains some 20 miles from Vergne, by a family of cattle farmers. Agricultural accomplishment abounds on that side, too, with the grandparents’ house still filled with trophies from prize-winning Piedmontese veal. Milena wanted to work the land, too, but back in the ‘80s her best hope was as a farmer’s wife. “She realised she needed to go to college first to make a stand for herself if she wanted to be what she wanted: not just a wife but someone who shapes reality through work.” As fate would have it, she fell in love with a handsome professor of viticultural sciences nine years her senior. They soon married with Milena still in her early ‘20s. And there she was, shaping a reality she hadn’t foreseen, on a wine farm in Barolo. “She really complements our dad in the sense of her charm, her passion, her drive and energy.”
Aldo moved back to the fields in the late ‘60s, at a time when contemporaries were leaving the countryside in droves. What drew him was the spell of the land and the freedom of farming. As Giuseppe points out, there was always a creative aspect to this. “It was not about bucolic, untouched wildlife; it was nature as farming – so it was interaction between nature and humans.” And then the magic of making wine sprung from elevating that interaction into a form that would carry new significance and personality. “Eventually each bottle is like a picture, is a shot taken with a certain time and exposure and light,” says Giuseppe. “In other words, framing a moment – a certain grape and vintage.”

The artistic metaphor is apt. The family’s dedication to allowing every one of the Langhe’s great grapes shine in their own right – Moscato, Dolcetto, Barbera, Nebbiolo and Freisa – is rooted in a sense that the portrait of home would otherwise be unfaithful. A wholehearted portrayal is called for – but equally important are aesthetics. “Life is beauty at the end of the day,” says Giuseppe. Art and literature were omnipresent growing up, and every winter holiday’s itinerary featured visits to exhibits and local museums. “I never felt we were forced or brainwashed into this. Our parents just wanted to show their three little children what is beautiful about life, and then it grew spontaneously.” He and his siblings have their own tastes but common to each is a capacity to appreciate. It’s something Giuseppe wants to instil in his young children, too. “I’m not dragging them into museums at the age of four or five just because. But when you see something nice, you just point it out – whether it’s a mountain or a sunset or a starry sky.”
With all the art, then, where does the technical stuff come in? As a student, Giuseppe was actually on the path to medical school, and was only assured he could hack it in the family business when the combined nerdiness of vine physiology and wine science promised enough to feed his inner geek.
The precision of the wines makes clear that creativity and technical nous are evenly matched here. The marriage of the two is evident in ways methods have been adapted and equipment customised. But, Giuseppe says, aesthetics come first. “The bottom line is: ‘What is the wine we’d like to produce? What is the wine we’d like to drink?’.” And from there, the Vairas work backwards, weighing the options and possibilities, wondering what they can improve, what they can do differently and what they need to learn to get them to that goal. “I think it’s science at the service of a dream, rather than the other way around,” says Giuseppe. “Which I also think prevents us from going to extremes. Sometimes the extreme in winemaking happens when you fall in love with a technique – or a technical detail – but then what you pursue is that detail, losing control of the galaxy surrounding it. Wine is a galaxy, made up of many stars, so if you get too much into one detail, the risk is that you lose the orientation that only happens if you line up all the stars.”

What’s so telling at Vajra is that the children were left to gaze at the stars and find their own way from so early in the piece. Unlike so many European estates where the older generation brooks no dissent and clutches rigidly to the reins for as long as possible, Aldo and Milena’s children have long been encouraged to enquire and experiment. “Even today when we have more responsibilities, I don’t think there are many fathers or winery owners who allow the freedom he allows us. Sometimes he can already see that we might fail with our judgment, for lack of experience, but that’s exactly what he encourages: for us to have our own experience.” Giuseppe thinks this unique chance to question and learn is the reason he, Francesca and Isidoro are working together; had they felt pressed into it, they’d likely have walked away.  “I think having the chance to be ourselves and to make free choices is part of why we could eventually fall in love with this,” he says. “And now in the details of the work I realise how precious it is. I also realise how much of a sacrifice it is. For our parents to let us to take decisions and do trials – and it’s not just now that we’re over 30, it’s been for the past 10 years, so from a fairly young age – it’s definitely a sacrifice of their own power to steer the situation. But it’s a huge component of us growing our own experience. I’ll never be thankful enough for that because if you don’t go through that phase of learning through also failing sometimes, you just don’t grow. There’s just no other way around it.”
Now around his mid-30s, Giuseppe has made sacrifices of his own. Much of his 20s were spent split between the winery and overseas, and he still clocks up serious air miles pouring wines. The world has changed since this was a small gig, when domestic drinkers soaked up almost every drop, and Aldo and Milena knew just about every customer by name. “It’s a joy to meet the people who would drink our wines,” says Giuseppe, and he is clearly buoyed by their gratitude – plus it gives the vineyard team in Vergne a lift to know that the fruits of their labour are being gleefully lapped up on all corners of the globe. “But I’m a countryside kid; I really love my home and love staying home. And especially now being married with our children, there’s no other place I’d rather be than with them,” he says. “That being said I also have this impression: Sacrifice is never betrayal.”
And I suppose Aldo wasn’t betraying his own vision when he bestowed such freedom on his children. Likewise, Giuseppe – and you can well picture the scene of an 18-year-old Italian kid, sweating in the vineyard during summer while friends lounge about, play football, ride bikes and head to the pool to meet the girls – knows the worth of his toil. “When you embrace a sacrifice, whatever it may be in your work – not accepting a compromise; not looking at your watch because you need to refine what you’re doing; going one step deeper into details – yes, it takes something away from you, but it gives a lot in return.”
You can pack a heap of history into a glass of wine, we know. And the G.D. Vajra stamp is deceptively simple shorthand for all the profound and unhurried thoughts that have arisen here in Vergne – inspired by the land, refined by time, balanced by the will and wit of kith and kin.  

***Disclaimer: This article was first published on the CellarHand website. CellarHand is both the author’s employer and the Australian importer of the wines of G.D. Vajra & Luigi Baudana***

Slaking Thirst For Novelty

Innovation: a word from Silicon Valley, not the Barossa. Yet it peppered my conversations with bosses of Australia’s biggest wine companies over recent weeks. The interviews were for the Top 20 feature in April’s Grapegrower & Winemaker magazine. You’ll find no spoilers here, merely a reflection on a recurring theme. This is about fleet-footed giants who know consumers won’t hang around if you don’t give them a reason to.
Many producers preach intimate knowledge of vineyard site and hands-off winemaking. But the major players juggle this with a markedly different mantra: intimate knowledge of consumer tastes and hands-on engineering of bottled novelty. Their preoccupation with relevance is understandable. In an industry where competition is fierce and margins razor thin, they have to build their “share of throat” anyway they can. Any throat will do, of course, but those belonging to so-called millennials – who make up a quarter of the drinking population – are particularly coveted. Last week a UK Wine Intelligence report found these 18- to 35-year-olds “have an overall lack of engagement with wine” and could easily be driven to beer, cider and spirits.
BONDI RD Range with Glass
Which may help explain why Casella, the group that gave us Yellow Tail – and which copped some flak for relying too heavily on the 8.5 million cases it flogs to the US each year – has brought out a sangría at 5.5% alcohol and a Bondi Rd Sauvignon Blanc spritzer at the same strength. This latter comes as a four-pack of 275mL bottles including the improbable flavours elderflower & mint and ginger & green tea. Better they drink something grape-related and graduate to wine than be lost for ever, the argument goes.
Casella’s spritzer isn’t alone in playing with alcopoppy packaging. Some notable debuts this year include the “naughty but nice” labels for De Bortoli’s 330mL Sia Moscato bottles and the piccolo-format bottles for Brown Brothers’ popular, and very good, Prosecco. Brown Brothers, like fellow Australian First Families of Wine member McWilliam’s, has also given its labels a mass makeover. Staid is gone, making way for a colourful, contemporary look. Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) went a step further for its Yellowglen Peacock Lane bubbles, drafting in jewellery designer Samantha Wills. The bottle looks good enough to drink.
TWE says consumers are looking for solutions for mind, body and spirit. These might be portion-controlled (à la piccolo format), calorie-counted (as with TWE’s own Lindeman’s Early Harvest or US brand Skinny Vine) or lower alcohol. Moscato and friends fall under this last heading, and both Jacob’s Creek (Twin Pickings) and Brown Brothers (Moscato with Sauvignon Blanc) have made new forays into semi-sweet territory this past year. The plan here is to bridge the gap between sweet and dry in the hope that sweet-toothed sippers will become committed wine drinkers when they, err, grow up. It’s an interesting area, and one often looked down upon by serious winelovers (see previous sentence).
2014-01-19 18.18.06
That’s not to say all the innovation is directed at this younger, dynamic segment in the market. Jacob’s Creek has been busy in the kitchen, rustling up a couple of wines to match Asian cuisine. Its white Wah wine for sushi now has a red brother for Japanese red-meat dishes. I’m yet to try the red but liked the white: citrus and tropical notes, savoury, grippy with a fittingly briny finish. Then there’s Lamoon, a Grenache-based, plum-sauce-and-five-spice wine that works well with a Thai beef roll. Beef’s also on the menu at TWE, where a pair of Pepperjack Shirazes have been created to go with two different cuts of steak.
Big Wine is also engaging in more small-scale, sustainable practices as people apparently become more interested in the origins of their booze. Hence Angove will soon add another organic wine alongside its Sauvignon Blanc and Peter Lehmann is working on its first carbon-neutral wine. The Barossa company has made a concerted effort to shake its blokey-red-and-Semillon tag in recent years, building a strong following among women and younger drinkers. Meanwhile Victoria’s oldest family-owned winery Tahbilk, which achieved carbon neutral status in 2012, released a pair of new wines to trumpet its green credentials. The Tower Shiraz (RRP: $17) is a fresh, bright-fruited, peppery affair and I was really taken with the Marsanne Viognier Roussanne: creamy, rich, harmonious and brimming with orange blossom, peaches and apricots (RRP: $15).
2013-11-29 09.41.46
Mainstream companies are also getting to grips with fringe varieties such as Carmenère, Grüner Veltliner and Montepulciano. “I’m an idiot. Am I on drugs?” said one CEO as he ran through the weird and wonderful grapes he’s planting. The likes of Fiano, Vermentino, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, and Tempranillo have tended to be boutique territory; now they’re anything but. Exhibits A and B: Jacob’s Creek Classic Fiano and Classic Sangiovese.
In general the cognoscenti applaud efforts to push boundaries on sustainable practices and wine styles. They tend to be more dismissive of gimmicks they see as dumbing down wine. But is there a clear-cut distinction? The success of these companies is built on a readiness to serve popular taste. On this evidence their thirst remains undiminished.

Quealy’s Daring Gambol

Pobblebonk. I know what you’re thinking: Wacky. Wait till you hear the ingredients. But this inauspicious start heralds an experience as joyous and carefree as a frolic in summer meadows. And then there’s Rageous. Odd name again, the label displeased my eyes and the ménage à trois – Sangiovese, Shiraz and Pinot Noir – seemed a tad far-fetched. The woman behind it admits her friends tried to save her from herself. “When I made Rageous, everyone said ‘You shouldn’t make that wine’. But it’s like the Pobblebonk. To make it, you have to commit from the beginning; you can’t just whack it together later on.”
Few would dispute the fact that Kathleen Quealy’s committed – though some might wonder if she should be committed. These are wines that undoubtedly inspire curiosity. I had to know more.
Fittingly it developed into something of a quest, in spite of the fact they were concocted a stone’s throw from my home. Part of the problem was the holiday season, part of it communication issues. “So where do I find your blog? Is that an internet thing?” she asked when I tried to set up an interview.
I was pleasantly disoriented on arrival at Balnarring Vineyard. It was like landing in a foreign country, an extreme version of Australia, possibly some time in the past. Quealy was hanging out washing on the garden fence, with five bikes lined up like family outside the shed. She still hadn’t seen my blog. “I went on the internet last night to try to figure out how to use the washing machine,” she explained. “That kind of broke me.”
Quealy started the business in 2006, three years after selling T’Gallant, the Mornington Peninsula winery she’d built up with winemaker husband Kevin McCarthy. The wines I’m dealing with here, Pobblebonk and Rageous, were the first made under the new venture, though the range has expanded to include varietal wines from Pinot Gris, Friulano, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo.
IMG_1234
Pobblebonk is a nickname given to a number of species of Australian frog of the genus Limnodynastes. Their call, according to the Frogs of Australia website, is “a short musical, explosive note producing a resonant ‘bonk’”. When the billabong banter really gets going, it’s apparently quite a rousing chorus.
The name was chosen to evoke the symphony of grapes: Friulano, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Chardonnay and Moscato Giallo. The inspiration for the wine was twofold: the Pinot Grigio blends of Friuli in Italy, and whites such as Houghton White Burgundy, the humble but brilliant Aussie wine which always had a good splash of aromatic grapes.
Pobblebonk is a field blend, which is important because “it has to be like a problem that you solve”. Friulano was chosen as the dominant component because of its high acidity and scent of meadow flowers. The Friulano and Moscato are given 24 hours’ skin contact for texture, and these pile on the aromatics alongside the Riesling.
The Rageous, on the other hand is Quealy’s “rip-off of the super-Tuscan”. It’s a blend of roughly 50% Sangiovese, 30% Shiraz and 20% Pinot Noir and is only made in years when the peninsula – a Chardonnay and Pinot haven – ripens the less-common black grapes well.
The Sangiovese and Shiraz are co-fermented, the Pinot added as soon as possible in order to keep its tannin. It spends 30 days on skins, with only the free-run juice used for the wine, which then spends 18 months in a mixture of French and American oak.
The label bears the Ogden Nash-penned couplet: In the land of mules, there are no rules. The Latin rendering of this (‘Mundus
 mulorum/non est regularum’, in case you’re rusty) was once handed to Quealy by a former colleague. “It kind of means that if you do it yourself, you can do whatever you want,” she explains. “That’s all it is really, just a bit of fun.” There are diehard Rageous fans out there – and I’ve met a few – but then plenty of others who won’t go near it.
So do we call it a cult wine? Quealy laughs at the suggestion. “Maybe it is a bit cult, but not with the heavy hitters. I think I’m going to miss the heavy hitters in my lifetime.”

Quealy Pobblebonk 2012 Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
IMG_0677
Pale straw in colour, it has a super-fragrant nose of chamomile, citrus blossom and honey, alongside apple, pear, apricot, lychee and slightly soapy Muscat grapeyness. Medium bodied with good flavour intensity, those orchard, citrus and stone fruits skip over each other through the slippery mid-palate. Even with that range, it’s nicely bound and harmonious, with some stone-fruit kernel savouriness too. The fine natural acidity and phenolic grip leave the perfume and a hint of sweetness lingering on the finish. A lovely wine showing great flair, probably best enjoyed over the next three years or so.

Costs $28 from the cellar door – Tasted 11/10/13 Alcohol 13.2%

Quealy Rageous 2012 Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
IMG_1084
Clear pale ruby in colour with a fairly pronounced nose of sour cherry, plums, fennel and dusty earth. The palate is bursting with sweet cherries and plums with layers of earth, black cherries and vanilla creeping in beneath. It’s exquisitely soft but the real joy is how nicely framed the wine is, with tannins ranging from fine to dusty and chewy shepherding the fruit to a long and very moreish finish. This offers well-judged generosity, and Sangiovese rightly gets its chance to shine. Drink with lamb backstraps. I’d expect it to develop nicely over the next five years.

Costs $35 at Merricks General Wine Store – Tasted 11/01/14 – Alcohol 13.5%