Tag Archives: Viognier

Game Of Rhones Rules

If I say “wine tasting”, this is what you see: Men – I bet it’s men – swirling and snorting, scowling and spitting in a space with all the cheer of a dentist’s waiting room. What you don’t see is the swashbuckling sauciness of the Seven Kingdoms.
But armour-clad winemakers and goblet-toting maidens are exactly what you get at Game of Rhones. This event, now in its second year, kicked off in Adelaide on 24th May before heading to Brisbane and then Melbourne on 7th and 14th June respectively. It features 150-odd drops from almost 50 Australian producers, as well as – say it quietly – fun.
The initiative is the brainchild of Melbourne sommelier and wine educator Dan Sims of Bottle Shop Concepts. It’s his act of rebellion against “boring-arse masterclasses” that cater solely for the geekiest 5% of the wine-drinking public. “We’re trying to speak to the other 95% and tell them that it’s possible to come along, enjoy yourself and learn about wine,” he says. “Plus by sticking to Rhône varieties, we’re keeping it simple.”

Dan Sims of Bottle Shop Concepts
Dan Sims of Bottle Shop Concepts
This last point is important. Beyond the theatricality – and organisers have camped up the Game of Thrones parody to the max – this is a chance to get to know some of Australia’s most enjoyable wines and the people who make them.
So which varieties are we talking about? For a start, reds rule the Rhône. Syrah (Shiraz) reigns supreme in the cooler northern end of the valley, while Grenache leads the way in the south, usually blended with the likes of Syrah, Mourvèdre, Carignan, Cinsault and others. Playing second fiddle are aromatic whites ranging from hedonistic Viognier to floral Marsanne and fashionable Roussanne.
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French wines will be available at Game of Rhones, but homegrown talent takes centre stage. It’s time to banish for good the stereotype of Aussie Shiraz as a generic big, dry red. “Shiraz in Australia is so diverse,” says Sims. “What we want to celebrate is the diversity of style within the variety.” Full-throttle blockbusters are but a detail in a tapestry that includes earthy, medium-bodied Hunter Valley wines, the peppery, black-olive notes of Victoria and evolving elegance from Adelaide Hills and Margaret River.
Meanwhile the Barossa and McLaren Vale are getting Grenache to sing right now. It loves the heat, as does frequent blending partner Mourvèdre (Mataro), and a trend away from hot, jammy numbers in favour of freshness, is allowing them to shine. “We’ve got some of the oldest Grenache vines in the world and the wines offer ridiculous value,” says Sims. “GSM is wonderful, medium bodied and goes great with food.”
Corinna Wright of Oliver's Taranga
Winemaker Corinna Wright
Let’s not forget the white varieties of the Rhône, which continue their mouthwatering march. The once isolated success of Yalumba with Viognier or Tahbilk with Marsanne is being built on by others. “Viognier is always going to be a richer style of wine,” says Sims. “Then you have Marsanne and Roussanne and blends. They’re never going to be as popular as Chardonnay but I think they offer a more savoury style, and Australian winemakers are learning to play with them better.”
Game of Rhones: you’ve got to be in it to win it. And the beauty is you can always play along at home.

Dan Sims’s Game of Rhones heroes:

Head Red GSM 2013 Barossa Valley $25

“Alex Head’s wines are going from strength to strength and this is just bloody delicious. Medium-bodied, red-fruited deliciousness.”

Voyager Estate Shiraz 2011 Margaret River $38

“While the west isn’t famed for Shiraz, Voyager is nailing it. Fuller flavour, dark plums with a savoury edge. It begs for roasted meats.”

Tyrrell’s Stevens Single Vineyard Shiraz 2011 Hunter Valley $38

“I really like Hunter Shiraz as it’s classically medium bodied without being too much. Perfumed and elegant now but long lived for sure.”

Oliver’s Taranga Shiraz 2012 McLaren Vale $30

“Superfresh, dark-fruited, slippery and slurpy deliciousness from winemaker Corinna Wright.”

Mitchell Harris Mataro 2012 Pyrenees $29

“Recently did very well in the North East Versus Western Victoria Challenge. Medium bodied, spicy, attractive fruit. Great drink.”

Shaw & Smith Shiraz 2012 Adelaide Hills $50

“Cool climate, spicy fresh Shiraz at its Adelaide best. Super smooth and seductive.”

Wonky Canberra Angle

Bryan Martin is a brainy sort. It speaks volumes that the high-IQ winery where he does his real job has this this to say about him: “He brings wisdom and intellect to the question we constantly ask ourselves at Clonakilla: ‘What can we do to make better wine?’” The cool thing is that the wines Martin makes under his Ravensworth label are first and foremost a sensual, rather than cerebral, affair.
His background as a chef, a profession he practised until 1997, helps explain his heightened sense of a wine’s tactile and savoury qualities, as does his authorship of a Canberra Times food column (so yes, both my prose and palate are under the microscope when he reads this). “When Tim (Kirk, Clonakilla chief) and I taste wine, Tim always talks about aromatics and I always talk about the flavour and shape of the palate,” he tells me. “For me what happens with texture is the most important thing. I’m always thinking about how we can modify texture and what we can do next year to influence the shape.”
And Martin’s using his head rather than inputs to answer those questions. He adds no yeast, bacteria, enzymes or nutrients to the wine, while the cool, high vineyards of the Canberra District chip in with essential acidity. Not everything is a riddle, though. He plays it straight and pristine with his Riesling, which in 2012 fended off more than 400 competitors from six countries to be crowned best wine of show at the Canberra International Riesling Challenge. The Shiraz Viognier is likewise made in the mould of the peerless Clonakilla – cofermented fruit, 20% to 30% whole bunches, three to four week maceration and a preference for puncheons (30% new oak) for maturation.
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Aside from those regional classics “anything else is fair game for experimentation” – and grape skins are a key part of the puzzle. “A lot of places don’t think of skins at all, but I love this idea of soaks and macerations with whites and reds,” he says. Take the Chardonnay for example: the 2013 was made in two separate parcels, the first with 24 hours’ skin contact and the second fermented with 50% whole bunches and on skins for about 14 days. When I tasted the wines I couldn’t bring myself to cut short the sensation of its delicate folds furling and unfurling across the palate, like sun-dappled lace billowing in the breeze. Yeah, I know he’s a writer and he’ll read this; I’ll bear the shame of that sentence because it’s true.
Martin, who lives with wife Jocelyn and their three children on a 650m-high vineyard in Murrumbateman, began working at Clonakilla in 2004 after six-odd years studying viticulture and wine science at Charles Sturt University. It all adds up to a solid platform from which to launch experiments, especially when you chuck in his employer’s well-appointed winery. Martin also seems to relish a bit of mental sparring, bouncing ideas off a visiting Kiwi and Israeli during vintage 2014 and finding himself “very much at home” among the wide-horizoned winefolk of Sydney’s Rootstock festival, where he hosted a session on hunter-gathering. “If you’re not careful you can get insular in your own winery,” he says. “Just by tweaking and playing around at the edges, you can find something that can fine-tune a wine. I’m just really happy to have the time and the interest to go ahead and try things out. I’m always playing around with food and I’m inclined to do the same with winemaking.”

Ravensworth The Grainery 2013 Murrumbateman

A field blend from Martin’s own vineyard comprising Marsanne, Roussanne, Chardonnay, Viognier, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Traminer and Sauvignon Blanc. “The idea is a Rhone blend with some aromatics to give it lift and acid. I’ve tried to make a style based on varieties, not techniques.”
Clear pale lemon, fairly pronounced on the nose with grass and nettles prominent; beyond these are murmurs of citrus and orchard fruits, with no one voice rising above the rest. From a juicy, lemony attack it broadens as white stone fruits and citrus fan out on the mid-palate, the zesty acidity working to keep it trim. It’s a touch more than medium bodied, creamy and velvety in the mouth with orange and gingery spice in there too. It tapers to a lingering finish of white flowers, stone fruits and nettly zing.

Costs $27 from winery website* – Alcohol 12.5% – Tasted 18/03/14* (*applies to all)

Ravensworth Chardonnay 2013 Tumbarumba

Clear medium lemon in colour. The nose is a touch herbaceous, with white flowers, citrus notes, creamy lees and nutty oak. From there it’s an essay in mouthfeel and harmony. Citrus zest drives the palate and the oak feels really good – a firm guide but not the least intrusive. Savoury, soft and lacy on the palate. Grapefruit, white peach, nougat, cinnamon and vanilla skip over each other to a delicate but persistent finish.

Costs $30 – Alcohol 12.5%

Ravensworth ‘Le Querce’ Sangiovese 2013 Canberra District

Sangiovese was the first variety Martin planted, and this is the 10th vintage he’s made. The fruit comes from a few different sites, following Martin’s belief that the variety works best in the lower (circa 500m) vineyards.
Pale ruby and with a pinkish rim. Nose of cherry, dusty herb, fresh plum too. The juicy attack sets the tone for a sprightly, mid-weight wine with soft blood plum, blood orange, sour cherry and earth across the palate. It has the fresh acid and dusty tannins you’d expect and finishes with a lovely cherrystone tang. Immensely pleasurable.

Costs $24 – Alcohol 13%

Ravensworth Nebbiolo 2013 Hilltops

Martin decided “not too go too wild” with his four tonnes of Young-grown grapes in 2013, since this is the first Nebbiolo to appear under his label. The two batches were given three weeks and six weeks respectively on skins.
Pale to mid ruby and pink-orange at rim. Red and black cherry, smoked meat and a bit of earth and tar on the nose. It’s medium bodied and silky smooth, with sweet red cherry offset by orangey sharpness. Racy acidity and intense, scratchy tannin on the finish complete the picture. The varietal signs, feel and price are spot on but I felt the palate came up short on depth and complexity.

Costs $27 – Alcohol 14%

Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier 2013 Murrumbateman

Medium to deep ruby/garnet. Terrific nose: pronounced perfume of violets and roses swirling above a deep well of pepper, plum and cherry. Lithe and textured, with a mid-weight palate of great complexity and concentration – sappy red fruits, star anise and gingerbread. You sense a lot more tightly bound up within a core framed by firm, ripe tannins and tangy acidity. Great wine – time will be kind to it, and it will be a friend to food.

Costs $32 – Alcohol 14%

The Doyenne Of Viognier

Meretricious. Always been a fan of that word. I love the fact it looks and sounds so grand – even feels luxurious as you wrap your mouth around it – and yet it’s all brass and no class. It reveals the tawdry truth even as it brags away, like those who think themselves très sophistiqué as they trumpet their love of French Champagne and vee-oh-NYAY.
Poor Viognier. It so often finds its name horribly mispronounced or dragged through the mud by shoddy winemaking. Golden-hued and exotically perfumed, it looks every bit the princess. But get a little closer and it’s a burnt-out frump, all grease and flab and booze. A meretricious wine if ever there was one. “A bad Chardonnay is just boring but a bad Viognier is quite horrific,” as Yalumba chief winemaker Louisa Rose puts it.
In fairness, this fine wine grape is extraordinarily well placed to deliver a duff drop. Low acidity and high phenolics can be a recipe for fat, oily wines and its tendency to develop its flavours at high sugar levels can lead to sickly, apricot schnappsiness.
The wines of Condrieu, a small appellation in the northern Rhône, prove beyond doubt that Viognier can be great. That potential is widely acknowledged; any wine list worth its salt will offer an example, while it appears to enjoy strong favour among winemakers across the US. Here in Australia there was barely a vine in the ground in the year of my birth. Thirty-seven chequered years later, some 500 wineries are having a crack.
The truth is that this gifted child needs special treatment. And doting parents Yalumba and Rose have shown just what unconditional love can do for it. The South Australian producer planted three acres of vines in Eden Valley in 1980 and gave them a decade to find their feet. In 1993 those vines got their own fairy godmother when Rose joined Yalumba fresh from topping her year at Roseworthy Agricultural College.
Viognier
Rose says the key is to accept and work with with Viognier’s idiosyncrasies. The grapes like to catch some serious gammas in the vineyard, earning the kind of suntan that would write off other aromatic whites. They accumulate flavours late in the season, and very quickly once they get going. Then you need a fresh approach to mitigate that low acidity, and its slippery nature’s just something you have to get to grips with.
At 400 to 600 metres above sea level, Eden Valley offers hope of good, gradual ripening and retention of natural acid. Rose then allows some exposure to oxygen in order to sidestep other potential pitfalls. “That way it loses the bitter phenolics but keeps the fine, textural phenolics that we think are very important,” she explains. “You want richness and lusciousness but you don’t want the heavy, flabby, oily character.” A combination of prolonged ripening, oxidative handling, indigenous yeasts and lees stirring ensure the wine develops complexity, with savoury and spice notes providing a counterpoint to the rich, ripe stone fruit aromas.
Yalumba offers three tiers of Viognier. The jump-off point is the Y series, a lovely drink with varietal definition rarely seen at its Australian price point around $12. Then there’s the Eden Valley label, which Rose calls “the essence of our Viognier”. I’ve singled this out because it’s cheap enough to take a punt on and compelling enough to settle the question of whether you should drink more Viognier.
Which means you’ll have no choice but to try the Virgilius. This flagship Viognier is 100% barrel fermented in old French oak, then spends longer in barrel and bottle before release than the Eden Valley does. This outstanding wine is a step up in musk, spice and mystique.
So, as they say at Yalumba, Y Viognier? Granted, its richness doesn’t lend itself to the role of aperitif or quaffer. But it’s certainly a wine to luxuriate in. It’s also a hugely welcome dinner guest, with intensity, texture, spice and creaminess to work with.
But really it’s Viognier’s singularity that makes it so enticing. “It behaves differently from other white varieties we’re used to,” Rose says. You sense this is what spurred her to grapple with it and debunk the myth of meretriciousness.
Viognier is how it is. Get used to it.

Yalumba Eden Valley Viognier 2012

Two-thirds of the fruit was gently pressed directly to barrels, with the rest pressed to stainless steel. It was fermented with indigenous yeasts and left on lees, with regular batonnage for 10 months.
Gleaming medium golden green with thick, clinging tears. Pronounced, attractively aromatic nose of apricot, peach, jasmine, cocoa butter and grilled nuts, with underlying creamy lees. It’s dry, medium to full bodied, fairly weighty and unctuous with a touch of grip. The palate shows intense, apricot-led stone fruits with almond essence, ginger and cream. It finishes with spice and notes of brine and almonds, a good savoury offset to the ripe apricot. The wine has superb balance, with striking freshness and a beautifully toned palate.

Costs $16.70 on special at Dan Murphy’s – Alcohol 14% – Tasted 04/01/14