Tag Archives: Yarra Valley

The Mount Mary Mantra

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The see-saw fortunes of fad chasers can make for entertaining viewing, but in an age of flip-flop “leadership” and obsequiousness to “opinion- shapers”, it can be good to remember those who stick to their guns and keep hitting the target.
Few Australian estates match Mount Mary – newly crowned Halliday Wine Companion Winery of the Year – when it comes to showing the courage of their convictions. The tenor was set by Dr John Middleton, and has continued as the reins have passed through the generations to his grandson, current head winemaker Sam. “I think his staunch belief in what he was doing from a winemaking point of view was pretty amazing,” says Sam of the man who planted the vineyard in the early 1970s. “I remember sitting with him by the fire one day, and it was a time when the industry was changing a little bit and fads were coming in and out, and he just looked me in the eye and said: ‘We’re going to keep making the same style that we’ve made for the past 30 years and if palates change, we’ll go out of business’.” It struck a young Sam as extreme but has come to make perfect sense as he’s grown into the role of leader. “It’s a reminder that if you’ve got confidence and real passion in what you’re doing, people are going to follow and are going to like it.”
Fittingly for a Middleton, you sense that Sam did not simply take his grandfather’s word for it; rather, it appears to be the land and its wines that have convinced him that the good doctor was right. “I’ve learned a huge amount about the site from tasting the wines,” he says. “We’re trying to make subtle, restrained, food-friendly styles of wine that age well and show liveliness and vibrancy but still restraint – and I think that’s what our site does really well.” In fact, the site itself has eased the strain of upholding the estate’s legendary reputation since he took the helm in mid-2011. “It’s another reason why I don’t get too stressed with feeling the pressure and expectations,” he says. “I think we all know at Mount Mary how important the vineyard is, and if we get that right, the winemaking’s pretty easy.”

People who drink Mount Mary wines have also given reassurance. The wines don’t come cheap but in some ways the equation is simple. A ruthless insistence on quality has gone hand-in-hand with the Middletons constancy of style, and the range is neatly delineated and firmly established. There are four wines made under the Mount Mary label, two inspired by Burgundy and two by Bordeaux. In the former camp are Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, in the latter the white and red blends Triolet (Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Muscadelle) and Quintet (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec). All the fruit comes from the one site in Coldstream, where all the original vines are planted on a north-facing slope on sandy clay loams over Silurian limestone. The wines set out, says Sam, to reflect the site and the season, and Mount Mary’s followers tend to appreciate the vagaries of nature. “They’re not just looking at the quality of the wines from year to year; they’re looking at how the wines have changed from year to year, and how the seasons affected those wines. That’s a big part of allowing us to do what we do, I guess.”
He sees an instructive moral in the story of the Chardonnay, a wine that – like everything at Mount Mary – has held its course and let the waves of fashion wash over it. “It’s funny to talk to people about our Chardonnay now because 20 years ago people thought our Chardonnay was really lean and tight, picked too early and whatever else,” he says. “Now we’re on the opposite end of the scale where we’re probably a bit richer, riper, with more structure to our Chardonnay than a lot of other producers currently. I guess my grandfather was a trailblazer in a lot of ways in terms of that style of Chardonnay, and it’s really en vogue at the moment.”
That’s not to say that Sam’s been resting on his laurels. Quite the contrary. “I’m very conscious of wanting these ‘modern-day’ Mount Mary wines to sell based on the quality that’s in the bottle,” he says. “I don’t want these wines to only sell on past history and reputation. I want these current wines to be the best wines we’ve made. If I was too worried about the past, I wouldn’t be spending enough time and energy thinking about how we’re going to improve things. I’m not interested about trying to keep the reputation where it is, because I want to improve it.”


Improvements have been small but constant, says Sam. He credits his father David and sister Claire with getting the business into good shape and says he learned “huge amounts” during three vintages as assistant to Rob Hall, his predecessor as head winemaker. Since then, Sam’s status as a member of the family has allowed a certain flexibility in questioning practices and implementing tweaks. These have been minor but myriad, in both the field and cellar. All have been made with an emphasis on a healthier vineyard and gentler ways in the winery to coax out its spirit. The team has sown cover crops in every second row to build up organic matter in the soil and attract beneficial insects to help with pest control. Cover crop under the vine row helps with weed control, and straw and compost mulches under vine row conserve soil moisture and improve its structure. In the winery vibrating sorting tables have replaced receival bins with augers, gravity is used a lot more to move wine and peristaltic pumps have replaced harsher mono versions.
The estate, whose Pinot is voraciously lapped up every year, has moved decisively to deal with the threat of climate change to the viability of early-ripening varieties in this, a relatively warm pocket of the valley.  Enter Marli Russell, the project named for Dr John’s wife. In 2008 and 2009 David Middleton and Rob Hall added Rhône varieties to complement the Burgundy and Bordeaux contingent. In went Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Cinsault. The first wines were made in 2014, with a second lot following in 2015, both released earlier this year. “I love it,” says Sam. “It’s thrown up more surprises than I thought it would. With the Grenache in particular we’ve been able to get that riper than I expected, which is good. I think the reds are going to keep improving but I think we’re making some great white Rhône blends from those varieties.”
Thus the estate advances at a measured pace, with pros and cons meticulously weighed.  The approach is empirical, as befits an estate founded by a doctor of resolute purpose. Sam’s a chip off the old block in this regard. Where the hares leap from bandwagon to bandwagon, Sam’s happy to be the tortoise, strolling along with a healthy sense of scepticism. “I’m absolutely 100% up for experimentation and doing different things but at the end of the day it has to make a better wine,” he says. “The whole thing’s just lost and gone a bit silly if you’re just doing stuff to say that you’ve done it, rather than doing stuff to make a better drink.”

With some young winemakers you sense the passion bubble over like a shook-up Pét-Nat. That’s not Sam. But this deeply committed character derives serious pleasure from his work. The connection to the family vineyard is key. “That whole notion of being able to make a product from that one site, that reflects a season – it’s a time capsule that we can keep, if we want, for ever and ever – that really excites me, and being able to offer that and give people enjoyment from that product is something that really excites me,” he says.
The success of the estate, both past and present, must be deeply satisfying. But while Mount Mary’s style and values are here to stay, it’s the future that holds the real excitement. “I’m really passionate about it being a family business and playing my part in hopefully continuing the story and improving it where I can,” says Sam. “Having something that I can hand to the next generation hopefully in a better state than I found it is something that really excites me as well.”

***Disclaimer: This article was first published on the CellarHand website. CellarHand is both the author’s employer and the Victorian & NSW distributor of the wines of Mount Mary.***

 

Sleight Of Shand

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Tim Shand has an alter ego. There’s Tim: Offspring of two teachers, incisive, earnest looking – even a touch of the nerds about him. Logistics whizz; lob a few moving parts at him and he won’t flinch – just knock up something tidy in no time.
And then there’s Shandy: Impish grin, sense of mischief, sub-surface surge of quiet confidence. Bit of a smart-arse; probably rubs a few people up the wrong way. Intuitive, impulsive, and with more flair than perhaps he realises.
Talk to him and you sense the tension between Tim and Shandy, something akin to the counterbalance ‘twixt smooth fruit and acid cut, has always been there. Head winemaker at Punt Road in the Yarra Valley, Shand is palpably intelligent but hardly covered himself in glory in his formative years. Irked by academic parents peering over his shoulder, he squeaked through school and got into an arts degree in his hometown of Perth in Western Australia. Free to get up at midday and drift on down to the pub, he failed everything in the first year – and chucked it in.
Truth was, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, except travel. He had family in Zimbabwe and fulfilled a dream to travel the length of Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town. Towards the end of a great year, reality hit – “the anonymity of going through Heathrow, horrible hostels and having no money” – and he knew he was coming home to nothing. “What that taught me was that the world actually didn’t give two shits about me, and if I didn’t get my skates on, I was going to be in deep poo,” he says.
He had no connection to the vine – “bad wine, horrible beer and West Coast Coolers” had been the staples growing up – but knew he wasn’t cut out for academia or a desk job. It was 2000, a time of optimism in the WA wine scene, and he was vaguely aware of a dynamic industry down in Margaret River. He duly enrolled in a winemaking degree at Curtin University, chugging through the course but essentially grounded in his old Perth life, working part-time in a pub and drinking with his old mates.

The change came when he got his hands dirty during his final year at Curtin. “I just went to the Halliday Wine Companion because I didn’t know shit, and looked up 5-star wineries – there weren’t as many then as there are now – and I just called them and asked to do vintage. The only one that got back to me was Leasingham in the Clare Valley.” He had a ball at Leasingham under Kerri Thompson (aka KT) and when he got back to WA, his campus had been moved to Margaret River. Finally he cut the Perth apron strings and became bound to wine.
Shand went back to Hardys-owned Leasingham in 2004 as trainee winemaker and reckons boldness “way beyond my ability” accelerated his learning curve. This chutzpah, part ignorance and part derring-do, cut both ways. “I drove a forklift into their most expensive red ferment – a two-tonne ferment, pierced the tank and it all just pissed down the drain – because I was arrogant and I wasn’t being careful,” he recalls. On the flipside it’s what gave him the nerve to ask KT to sit in on her monthly tasting with the group winemaker, for whom dogsbody Shand had readied 100-odd Cabernet and Shiraz samples. “So I worked night shift, he arrived at 9am and I went into this tasting that was going to take six or seven hours. I must have looked like death warmed up. He kind of looked at me like, ‘What are you doing?’” But Shand managed to make a couple of pertinent comments, and the fact he’d skipped a sleep to be there left the boss impressed. That connection helped Shand secure a vintage in Hardys-affiliated Veramonte in Chile and, when he got back, a place at Hardys’ Yarra Valley sparkling specialist, Yarra Burn.
Sharply contrasting vintage experiences in the Haut-Médoc and the Côte de Nuits may reveal something about the Tim Shand dichotomy. He managed to “bore” the late Paul Pontallier into offering an incredibly rare opportunity at the first-growth Château Margaux. It was a disaster of grand cru classé proportions. Shand grudgingly admired the viticulture but was deeply unimpressed with everything else. “It was awful. I wasn’t allowed to do anything, they all hated me,” he says. “It was three months of torture. I used to call my wife in tears.”
He left feeling utterly rejected by France but gave it another shot with the Seysses family of Domaine Dujac. They took him in the following vintage, and it was a totally different story. “I went in ’08 to stay at the domaine with this lovely family,” he says. “I swear to God, I was there for two months and can almost remember every day and every experience. It was like some sort of blessing. I worry about going back to Burgundy because it was perfect in every way.” Those halcyon days in Morey-Saint-Denis were also instructive in winegrowing generally, and Pinot in particular.  “It was an open palette. It was a conversation rather than a recipe at Dujac. It was so interesting, so terroir-driven, so transparent.”

Like France, Shand’s time at Giant Steps in the Yarra Valley proved intensely bittersweet. On the plus side, he learned precisely what it took to make top-notch Australian Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Cabernet. He’s also unstinting in his admiration for the “creativity and innovation” of 2016 Gourmet Traveller WINE Winemaker of the Year Steve Flamsteed. “What it is, is having the courage to put yourself out there and back your talent.” says Shand. “It’s his gut. It’s an understanding of aesthetics matched with high energy and intensity, is where his success lies.”
Ask Shand about his own strengths, and he’s typically candid. He reckons he lacks originality and doesn’t see artistry in what he does. “To me, winemaking is not an art. I think it’s a trade. It’s arguably more like being a jeweller or a carpenter. I think if you’re telling people you’re an artist, you’re a bullshit artist.”
Instead, he feels he’s good at the boring stuff and owes his success to his work ethic and high standards. “In terms of wine and vineyard and people, I know what good looks like and I know what bad looks like. I kind of understand the standard and I know how to meet it,” he says. “There’s the right day to pick the grapes, there’s the right way to make it, the right oak, the right bottling date. That’s kind of par; anything below that, you’ve f***ed it up.”
I put it to him that the tradie analogy doesn’t really hold up. I assume, perhaps naively, that there’s less site and vintage variation in planks than Pinot Noir. The last few harvests in the Yarra have yielded many exceptional wines but could hardly be described as uniform. Many reported being turned inside out by fast and furious, topsy-turvy 2016. Shand, on the other hand, was in his element. “One of my skills is, having all of those factors in my head, I can balance them out to the right outcome. Calculations, priorities – that’s what I think I’m good at: bringing a lot of things together,” he confesses. “And wine is a lot of things. It’s agriculture, it’s marketing, it’s sales, it’s logistics, it’s science. You bring them all together. That’s what I think I like about it, and I just can’t fathom people who don’t bring things together.”
Evidently Shand’s developed a knack for bringing things together nicely. He’s widely credited with winning Punt Road promotion to the Yarra Valley’s premier league, a feat illustrated by its silverware haul at last year’s Royal Melbourne Wine Awards: best single-vineyard wine, best Shiraz and trophy for viticultural excellence. Gary Walsh of independent review site The Wine Front says Tim is “turning out some of the best value, and most interesting, wines in the country” under the Punt Road and Airlie Bank labels. Tim puts it down to having everything in the right place, in moderation. “All of the interest with none of the nonsense, at a good price,” he says, citing his highly original and widely loved Airlie Bank Franc as a case in point. Made with 100% whole bunch carbonic maceration, it’s hardly the most conventional crowd-pleaser.

If that’s the Shand standard, what makes for greatness? “A wine not made to instantly ingratiate itself,” he muses. “When I taste a Wendouree, or a grand cru next to a 1er cru, I taste profundity. I taste a confidence. It knows what it is. There’s a comfort in its own skin. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand about wine: that less is more. My place in it all is to keep doing the boring stuff, and authenticity will shine through.”
Straight-talking and clear-sighted he may be, but perhaps Shand overlooks the role played by his inner rogue. The youthful rebellion, the pierced tank, the misadventure in Margaux – all these point to a non-conformist side that lends tension to Shand’s universe.
Some are apt to use the terms tension and balance interchangeably in tasting notes, but to me they’re not the same. The latter hints at a pleasing harmony, and is a wonderful thing. The former, running closer to the edge, is more daring, more intriguing. And you sense that the two sides of the imperfectly balanced Tim Shand give you the latter.
Dr Tim ensures order and completeness, and the mercurial Mr Shand takes it a little further, deeper.  It’s compelling viewing and can lead to profundity – with the emphasis on “fun”.

***Disclaimer: This article first appeared on the CellarHand website. CellarHand is both the author’s employer and the Australian distributor of Punt Road and Airlie Bank wines.***

Don Quijote De La Yarra

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Let’s start with the similarities. Don Quixote was a wandering romantic on a Spanish quest, a noble sort with lofty ideals whose author lent him the epithet “ingenious”. And the differences? The man from La Mancha was vain, deluded and got his name on the cover of the book.
Andrew Marks, meanwhile, turned down the role of hero in his own story. When I ask where the Wanderer moniker came from, he tells me: “I just didn’t feel it needed to be eponymous. The wine has to speak for itself.” You hear that a lot in this game, but often the wines don’t get to do the talking. You sense an ego there, prodding the wine to perform. Wines raised to get themselves noticed, groomed for the limelight.
But the Wanderer wines, like Marks, are measured, modest and gently persuasive. They make no grand demands and then you note their welcome presence, stronger and more enduring than you’d expected. You nod and think, “Good trick,” but then realise it wasn’t a trick. It was good wine. And then you want some more.
Marks has been around wine since he was a child, with his parents planting vineyards at Gembrook Hill in the southern part of the Yarra Valley in 1983. After high school, Marks studied Oenology at Adelaide University and landed a job at Penfolds in 1998, a year after graduating. He stayed with the company until 2003, during which he fitted in vintages in Sonoma, Burgundy and the Languedoc.
Then came the time to expound some Marksist theory. “After working for Penfolds all those years, I just thought I’d be better off working on my own dream rather than someone else’s,” as he puts it. So he returned to the Yarra Valley, where he does his real job at Gembrook Hill.
Marks released his first Wanderer wines in 2005. He started with a pair of field blends – a Gewurztraminer/Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir/Chardonnay rosé – plus a frizzante Muscat he called Moscatito. He then started adopting, bit by bit, the sites that make up the current range. First came a single-vineyard Lower Yarra Pinot Noir in 2007. This was followed a year later by an Upper Yarra Pinot and brilliant Shiraz from single vineyards in Yellingbo and Dixons Creek respectively. In 2010 he added a lovely barrel-fermented Chenin Blanc.
Where a company like Penfolds has a glut of options when it comes to fruit sources, Marks is more exposed to the vagaries of nature at home in the Yarra. Perhaps it’s further sharpened his acutely sensitive touch. “With Gembrook Hill, working in the vineyard you learn year in, year out that you’re producing a wine that’s a product of the year and of the vineyard,” he says. “The most important step is getting the picking day correct. I’m looking for bright, sweet fruit flavours, with the acid balanced.”
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Then there’s Marks’s quixotic venture far from the Yarra, in Catalunya. El Wanderer traces its roots back to 2000, the year Marks met “legend” Anna Espelt while working in California. Her family has Carinyena (Carignan) vines planted in 1908 in the Empordà region of Spain’s Costa Brava. Marks worked a few months in the Espelt cellar in 2004, then spent a further six months there a year later, at the end of which he was invited to head up the winemaking. Needless to say he declined, but the annual pilgrimage to this second home continues.
Marks plans the trip to ensure he’s on Catalan soil comfortably in advance of the fruit hitting perfect ripeness. As with the Upper Yarra Pinot Noir, he sorts the Carinyena grapes in the vineyard. He then places them in an open fermenter (10% whole bunches), gives them three weeks on skins and likes to have them pressed to barrel before hopping on the plane back to Australia. “I feel pretty lucky to play with fruit of that character,” he says. “It’s a medium-bodied wine with good structure and balance, light enough to go with fine foods. As with all wines, texture is critical. Texture is what makes wines drinkable and smashable. Sometimes it’s a little bit overlooked.”
The Wanderer name wasn’t simply inspired by Marks’s globetrotting winemaking escapades. He was something of a searcher before all this began and, of course, it isn’t just about him anyway. “I’ve always enjoyed a sense of adventure, and as you get older you realise that pretty much everyone is on a journey in some respect,” he says. “I just want people to drink the wines and enjoy them. And people who look for a little bit more should find it.”

The Wanderer Upper Yarra Pinot Noir 2012 Yarra Valley

Clear pale ruby. Pretty nose, red fruits leaping from the glass accompanied by rhubarb and fresh mint. Crunchy red fruits – strawberry, raspberry, redcurrant – mark the entry, and the wine is shot through with subtle sweetness and spice across the palate. It’s medium-bodied with a somehow surprising intensity. The very fine tannins give a touch of grip and there’s lively acidity. A strong sense of unhurried, assertive flow, leading to a finish of juicy redcurrant and fresh herbs. Gorgeous.

Costs $55 from the Wanderer website – Alcohol 13% – Tasted 14/04/14 – Diam closure

El Wanderer Alt Empordà Carinyena 2010 Empordà DO, Spain

Clear medium ruby, bright and inviting in the glass. Red-fruited nose, raspberries and cherries, with fresh liquorice. It’s juicy and medium bodied in the mouth, with base notes of beetroot earthiness and cinnamon spice playing below buoyant raspberry and blackberry. Firm, chewy tannins and sprightly acidity fit like comfortable clothes. It has a sense of rusticity; candid with a country air to that wholesome fruit and earth. Not fussy and precise, but beautifully composed. Delicious and full of character.

Costs $55 – Alcohol 13.5% – Tasted 14/04/14 – Diam closure

Cabernet Reshuffle

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I grew up in a time and place where “wine” meant Bordeaux. Sure as Champagne set the stage for a celebratory meal, Cabernet Sauvignon was the majestic protagonist brooding in the decanter, waiting to steal the show. It smelt at once of pretty things and the world of men: flowers, redcurrants, blackcurrants, dad’s cigar box and leather brogues. It filled your whole head.
Cabernet is not by any stretch an appropriate yuletide beverage in Australia. And yet some internal seasonal sensor set this particular pom yearning for it. Throughout the festive season it’s vital to know there are no chinks in your hosting armour; you need the right bottle at hand at any given moment. But we had no Cabernet of acceptable calibre and maturity hanging around.
That was when it dawned on me: in a year of wine, I’d heard sommeliers, winemakers, journalists and friends gush over just about every grape under the sun bar one: Cabernet.
At first glance it appears odd that this should be the case. Global plantings have doubled since the 1990s to make Cabernet Sauvignon the planet’s most popular grape. It makes some of the world’s most expensive, revered and long-lived wines. So why’s it getting so thoroughly dissed by people whose job it is to love and share wine?
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In a world where cult rules, ubiquity is uncool. Cab’s rise to top spot on earth’s vineyard prompted Time magazine to brand it “the Coca-Cola of viticulture”. “Cabernet is conformist,” young Sydney sommelier Julia Sewell tells me. “Buying Cabernet is buying into the commercialist aspect of wine.” Another young somm, Leanne Altmann of Cutler & Co in Melbourne, wonders if overfamiliarity has left drinkers unconvinced of the grape’s capacity to surprise. “The cool kids will drink Cabernet – if it’s Franc,” she jokes.
My fellow Cab-loving pom Dan Coward, currently a vintage cellar hand at Shaw + Smith, thinks it’s possible that Cabernet has rested on its laurels for too long. That means trading on its Bordeaux image, when for many Bordeaux is “boring and alienating”. “Cabernet Sauvignon’s not communicating itself well at the moment, so people are drawn to more seductive targets,” he says.
And there are plenty of those around. Cab’s world domination makes any grape exotic in comparison. And that’s before you go busting wine stylin’ moves. Other grapes get the full Kama Sutra thrown at them; Cabernet is strictly missionary.
And then there’s the perception of Cabernet drinkers as older people who “know what they like” – which is probably to have sex with the lights off and their clothes on. The herd of rude, red-faced old men who elbowed their way through a recent public tasting of Coonawarra wines did little to dispel this myth.
But Cab doesn’t just lack hipster drinkers; where are the with-it winemakers when you need them? Probably with their head in a vat of whole-bunchy Syrah or skin-contact Savagnin. Wherever, they’re certainly not standing on their soapbox for contemporary claret.
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If Chinese millionaires and imposing Châteaux lend Bordeaux an air of aloofness, Cabernet in Australia may suffer from a different kind of inaccessibility. Coward points out that Coonawarra and Margaret River, Australia’s finest regions for the variety – and the ones hell-bent on championing it – are also bloody miles from anywhere. The cellar doors of the country’s Chardonnay and Pinot havens – think Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Adelaide Hills and Tasmania – are abuzz with trendsetting daytrippers. There’s brilliant Cab tucked into the valleys of Eden, Clare and Yarra, of course, but it’s often overlooked.
And then there’s one other theory, perhaps one that could only have come from someone who’s slowly discovering he should have stayed in the Cabernet closet. But here goes: maybe they’ve forgotten that there’s nothing quite like great Cabernet because they haven’t had one in a while. And by “great” I don’t mean Bordeaux and I don’t mean expensive. I mean a good producer and region, good bottle age and an auspicious time and place – think food, company, even weather.
Looking at that, yes, it’s a demanding old bugger. In the age of “smashable” wines, that’s not going to win it many friends. “I guess it appeals to my head,” says Altmann. “But despite the delicious Cabernets I’ve been lucky to try, it isn’t a variety that appeals to my heart. I want a glass of Burgundy in my hand.”
But Coward’s still with me, lustily reminiscing about a “luxurious” 2001 Cabernet he and his wife recently enjoyed with lunch. The perfume, depth, complexity, length and chameleon-like quality in the glass: how could one not covet it?
“All retro habits eventually become cool again. I just don’t think it’s Cabernet’s time at the moment,” says Coward.
No, but that time will come; it has to. It’s taking over the world, or hadn’t you heard?

Contributors’ Cabs To Try:

Leanne Altmann

Oakridge Local Vineyard Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2011, Yarra Valley $35 “Crunchy, bright, and oh-so-gluggable.”
Bellwether Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 Coonawarra $49 at Cloudwine in Melbourne. “Classically-styled, drinking so well now but built for the long haul.”

Dan Coward

Kilikanoon Killerman’s Run Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, Clare Valley $20 “Good luncheon-claret style.”
Wantirna Estate Amelia Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2011 Yarra Valley $70 from Prince Wine Store, Melbourne. Cooler-climate beauty.

Julia Sewell

Man O’ War Ironclad Merlot Cabernets 2009 Waiheke Island, NZ $45 from Vinaffairs “I was once told by a very happy diner that it was like running with wolves through a pine forest.”
Yeringberg 2010, Yarra Valley $75 from Prince Wine Store. Bordeaux blend from historic Victorian winery.

Ed Merrison

Tim Adams Cabernet Malbec 2008 Clare Valley $24 Regional style released with bottle age; perfumed, approachable, delicious.
Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 Margaret River $90 at Cloudwine Profound Western Australian classic.

Suck A Punch Pet Nat

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I couldn’t keep this bottled up. Not at this time of year.
The Friends of Punch Rurale Chardonnay 2012 is a social beast, a sparkler to celebrate – but not one that demands pomp and ceremony. Not a cheers-and-small-talk bubbles, more a sit-down-and-stay-a-while affair. “It’s not supposed to be a formal wine; it’s supposed to be a delicious wine,” says James Lance, as if reading my mind.
James and wife Claire kicked off Punch on 1 January 2005. That’s when they started leasing Lance’s Vineyard and Winery in the Yarra Valley from James’ parents, David and Catherine, who founded renowned Pinot and Chardonnay producer Diamond Valley there back in 1976.
Classic Yarra Valley Pinot, Chardonnay and Cabernet from Lance’s Vineyard remain Punch’s bread and butter. But from the ashes of the Black Saturday bushfires, which destroyed the 2009 crop, rose a phoenix or two from further afield. Friends wrote to ask what they could do to help. The response: Sell us some grapes.
Hence the Friends of Punch range which includes this unusual beauty, the fruit for which came from Beechworth’s celebrated Warner Vineyard. It’s a pétillant naturel wine – “pet nat” to the cool cats – made using the méthode rurale (aka méthode ancestrale), described by James as “the oldest, simplest, and purest way to make a sparkling wine”. In this case, it meant fermenting Chardonnay juice most of the way to dryness (leaving about 18g/l residual sugar) in stainless steel before transferring to bottle to complete the fermentation, with the resulting CO2 trapped for a natural fizz. The wine spent about 18 months on yeast lees, so what you’re left with is a bottle-conditioned sparkling wine – a slightly turbid, rustic thing that’ll throw a crust. But when all’s said and done, it merits two important and aimed-for epithets: “delicious” and “wine”.
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Friends of Punch Rurale Chardonnay 2012 Beechworth, Victoria

Cloudy straw in colour, the nose bears the expected stamp of its yeasty upbringing but there’s plenty of orchard fruit and biscuit enticing you to tuck in. The bead is creamy and relatively coarse and the texture across the palate thickish, though the wine has intensity and depth without being the least bit lumbering. Good fizz livens up the gorgeous Chardonnay fruit, apples and peach wrapped in brioche, culminating in an apple danish send-off. Drink with hog roast or scallops with pancetta.

Costs $22 from the Punch website – Alcohol 13% – Tasted 23/09/13 – Crown seal

Salo To The Angels

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Each night, I bury my love around you
You’re linked to my innocence

A little creepy? Don’t worry: nothing creepy about this wine. Intriguing, yes, but really this lyric from the Interpol track Say Hello to the Angels serves only to provide a clever-looking headline. If you read this far, no harm done. If you listen to the song – and, even better, drink this wine – much good done.
We had this Chardonnay at a blind tasting for friends curated by Cameron Hogarth of Chateau Yering. Cam chose as his theme leftfield acts by Yarra Valley winemakers, and this was my white of the night.
One half of Salo is Steve Flamsteed, who can’t put a foot wrong at Innocent Bystander. And don’t even get me started on Giant Steps; if the feeling ever sets in that single-vineyard wines are a me-too exercise, return to these. The sites have something to say and are beautifully articulate. In fact the Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012 probably spoke to me more persuasively than any other Aussie red this year.
The other half is Dave Mackintosh, a winemaker of Kiwi/Scottish extraction who used to tread those Giant Steps. Mackintosh now spearheads Ar Fion, which translates as ‘our wine’ in Scottish Gaelic. He was last month a Young Gun of Wine finalist, in recognition of his vision and vino.
This wine was a joy to share. If you wanted to think about it, there was substance. But if you shut up and let go, it led you a merry dance. Great, gut-feel winemaking.
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Salo Chardonnay 2011 Yarra Valley

I found a lot of noise on the nose, with lemon curd and cashew wafting through a lees-and-banana funk. Then a clean and intense palate of apple, lemon, spicy melon, fleshy nectarine, nuts and marzipan. The mouthfeel is silky with generous curves, and it’s shot through with a beam of acid and minerality. Alive and dynamic, a wine to keep you guessing and drinking. Excellent Chardonnay.

Price: $40 from Barrique Wine Store, Healesville – Alcohol 13% – Tasted 04/11/13