#hhfeature

Melbourne-based wine importer Bibendum recently staged a tasting unlike any other. Entitled "Dots and Bubbles", it was a mini-exhibition of Champagnes from six small houses including two of the rarest and most extraordinary, Jacques Selosse and Jerome Prevost – and the winemaker/proprietors themselves were there, pouring their wines. 

It has to be said that people like Anselme Selosse and Jerome Prevost are seldom seen, and for Bibendum to persuade them to travel to Australia and conduct exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne was extraordinary. 

Excuse me if I haven’t road-tested the Coravin gadget yet. I haven’t felt the need to shell out US$299 for a piece of kit that may or may not work, which is probably only of interest to mega-wealthy collectors with cellars full of fancy ‘collectable’ wine who want to be able to have a sip of it whenever they feel like it. 

I was prompted to write about this because the London auction house Bonhams has flagged a pre-auction tasting of some ‘collectable’ wines, sampled by Coravin. Presumably Bonhams won’t be trying to flog the sampled bottles afterwards.

Various ‘experts’ have heralded the Coravin as the most game-changing wine invention of recent times. I’ve read the testimonials on the Coravin web-site which are nearly all glowing. But something sends a shiver up my spine whenever I think of the idea of inserting a needle through a cork and stealing a sample of wine, then putting the bottle back in the cellar and treating it as though it’s an untampered bottle. Because tampering is what this process seems to be. 

If you can take a glass or three out of your treasured bottle of ’45 Mouton, it’s not beyond the realm of imagining that you could squirt some Jacob’s Creek back through the same needle to make this bottle of wine seem virginal. Maybe the present Coravin isn’t able to do this, but it surely isn’t far off. 

The Coravin, just to fill in some background, replaces the wine you remove with argon gas. Argon has been in use for quite a few years in those wine preservation systems you see in restaurants. Argon supersedes the gases previously used for this purpose, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, because it’s heavier – it sits more heavily on the wine’s surface to shield it from destructive atmospheric oxygen. With Coravin, no oxygen gets into the bottle in the first place, so the argon’s job is easier. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like the idea of leaving space inside a bottle of wine, irrespective of what occupies that space. My feeling (possibly totally unscientific) is that when you have a liquid and a space, the liquid will lose aromatics to the space, no matter whether the space is a vacuum or is occupied by gas. 

The Coravin is described by its inventor as a ‘wine access system’, and it can be used as a short-term preservation system as above, or as part of long-term cellaring. I’ve read people who claim to have sampled the same bottle of wine over a period of years and the last sample was as good as the first. I find that hard to believe. 

The few complaints on the website feedback page revolve around the cost of the unit, the slowness of pouring, the speed with which gas canisters run out and the cost of replacing them. 

Bonhams auction press release is headed ‘Try Before You Buy at Bonhams April Fine Wine Sale’. In the lead-up to the sale, four recent vintages of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild are being offered for tasting in Bonhams’ restaurant – 2003, ’04, ’07 and ’08 at £25 a glass. 

It reads: “This is possible because the Coravin wine access system used in the restaurant keeps the wine in perfect condition day to day. The bar also offers a light lunch menu…” etc. etc. 

John Forrest is excited: he’s like a code-breaker who’s cracked the cipher. His breakthrough isn’t about top-secret military intelligence, it’s about making wine in a new way. And far from being secretive, he’s telling everyone about it. 

Forrest (pictured), who has been making wine in New Zealand’s Marlborough region for 27 years, has grown determined in recent times to make high-quality, full-flavoured, well-balanced wines with less alcohol than normal. We’re talking 9 per cent instead of 13 – a reduction of about one-third. 

Forrest is a molecular biologist by training and his wife Brigid is a general practitioner. She’s still practising, but he works 100 per cent for their winery, Forrest Wines. Both of them have long been convinced that low-alcohol wines would catch on - if only they could deliver the classic Marlborough sauvignon blanc flavour at 9 per cent alcohol, instead of the more typical 12 to 13. 

Alcohol levels of 8 or 9 per cent have been achieved before, by harvesting the grapes earlier than usual, when the sugar levels were lower, but the wines tended to be overly acidic and hard, with green rather than ripe-fruit aromas and flavours. Because of the lack of alcohol weight, they tended to have a hollow middle-palate, and this lack of palate weight was often compensated for with higher levels of residual sugar. 

But John Forrest reckons he now has the formula. The wine, marketed under Forrest Wines’ second label, The Doctors’, is a triumph. The 2014 The Doctors’ Sauvignon Blanc has ripe-spectrum fruit flavours, a full palate and balanced acidity, with a perfectly reasonable 6 grams per litre of sweetness (lower than the norm for full-strength Marlborough savvy). How does he do it? He’s quite happy to give away the secret. 

Forrest and his team of winemakers and viticulturists discovered that if they plucked the new leaves from the vines late in the ripening period, and left the old leaves to do all the work of ripening the grapes, the sugar accumulation was slower, while the flavour accumulation continued as normal. The harvest-time is the same as for the grapes for the ‘normal’ Forrest Sauvignon Blanc, and the acidity is similar. But the grapes that result from this leaf-plucking regime simply have less sugar (for the tech heads, 18 degrees Brix instead of 24 for the regular sauvignon), which means the fermented wine has about one-third less alcohol. 

How does this happen? Forrest isn’t entirely sure, but assumes it has something to do with the old leaves being tired - a little worn-out - and therefore less efficient as ‘sugar factories’. Forrest makes no secret of his excitement, firstly that The Doctors’ low-alcohol sauvignon blanc is selling very well, and secondly that it’s turning the jaded heads of senior members of the retailing fraternity. He cites an experience with a highly experienced Melbourne fine wine retailer who was non-plussed when he heard about the wine, until he tasted it.  This is probably because low-alcohol wines have been underwhelming in the past. We’ve seen the spinning cone column, reverse osmosis, distillation and vacuum distillation. All have been used over the decades to remove alcohol from normal-strength wine. 

The spinning cone is an Aussie invention that uses a centrifuge to remove alcohol from regular wine. The resultant wines tasted thin and hollow – not like ‘real’ wines – so winemakers added grapejuice sweetening to fill the hole in the middle-palate. The result was a wine that lost any dietary advantage it gained from holding less alcohol because it was so sweet.

There have also been low-alcohol wines made by distillation, which resulted in wine with cooked flavours due to the high temperature, and vacuum distilled wines (distilled at lower temperatures) which also had problems with lack of palate weight and thinness. 

Forrest says that perhaps the most exciting thing about the new technique, is that it can also be used on other wines, such as chardonnay. Forrest is no friend of high-alcohol chardonnays, and he’s already using the technique on some of his chardonnay vines. He makes batches of lower-alcohol chardonnay, then blends some of this into his regular chardonnay just before bottling, to achieve the desired balance. Riesling and other wines can also benefit - even reds. Forrest is already using it on some of his pinot noir.

The Doctors’ wines all retail for $20 to $22 and the range includes arneis, gruner veltliner, riesling and st laurent (an Austrian grape which makes a light red wine). All are very good. Forrest is also making a petit manseng and an albarino under The Doctors’ label, but at present these last two are only available at cellar door, because of the small quantities. 

Forrest is not the only New Zealand winery exploring low-alcohol wine. Villa Maria has already launched its Lighter Private Bin range of wines. Lower-alcohol-producing yeasts are part of their strategy. Indeed there is now a group in New Zealand called the Low Alcohol Initiative. It comprises 24 wine companies and has attracted government funding of NZ$9 million to add to industry funding of NZ$8.24 million. 

I’ve often expressed regret that so many wines are released (and presumably drunk) too young, before they’ve had a chance to show their full worth. Verdelho is a variety that is seldom treated seriously by critics and wine judges, but perhaps it hasn’t been given enough time. 

I recently tasted the Faber Vineyard Swan Valley Verdelho 2009 (tasting), which at six years of age was a truly beautiful bottle of wine. The sample was sent to me with one of the current release: 2014. Faber is owned and run by the highly accomplished former Houghton winemaker John Griffiths (pictured above) and his wife Jane. They are great believers in warm-climate viticulture and grape varieties. The wine is rich and complex, beautifully textured an balanced, and crammed full of buttered-toast and honey aromas and flavours. I scored it 95. I can see it drinking well for several more years. 

The 2014 (tasting) is straightforward and drinks very well as a young, simple, but somewhat neutral dry white. Chances are, it will develop in a similar direction, especially as Griffiths believes ‘14 is a particularly good vintage. He has a small quantity of the 2009 which will be re-released as a museum release in the next year or two (no date has been set). 

When I asked John about these wines, he  pointed out that the 2006 had also been held back for further aging and re-released at $42 at cellar door last year. It had won the chairman’s trophy at the 2013 Swan Valley Wine Show.   Griffiths himself believes verdelhos like the 2014 are best at about one to two years, or else as aged wines (presumably he means at least six years).  

“When I make verdelho I’m never really quite sure how good they are until they are about 12 months old,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to see beautifully developed verdelho here in the Swan. Houghton in the past occasionally held back some Moondah Brook for a museum release as a seven-year-old, and Westfield/John Kosovich have had a succession of beautiful aged releases.  Whilst they are delicious simple, fruit-driven wines when young they really become something else again in four-plus years. I have seen these wines still beautiful up to 15 years old and I really think our 2009 is just on the start of its journey.”

Generously, he listed other makers of verdelho which age beautifully as Lamonts, Sittella and Mandoon (tastings). “Not every vintage will age so well, although these wines are all made similarly – moderately ripe fruit (alcohols 13 – 14%), moderate acidity, bright fresh fruit, medium to full-bodied, low phenolics.  I believe the key is picking ripe enough to achieve a high degree of flavour, yet not too ripe so that the wine is fat and waxy (high alcohol protruding). It must be made from free-run only as it is a very phenolic variety and the pressings are crap. It’s a balancing act and when achieved the result can be as you see in the 2009.”

The rebirth of Chateau Tanunda is one of the most remarkable stories of the Australian wine industry. This massive, iconic stone and brick building was South Australia's second-largest building when it was built in 1890, second to Elder Smith's Port Adelaide wool store, and was part-funded by 200 Barossa Valley grapegrower shareholders. It's hard to believe, but by 1998 it was unoccupied, unloved, unkempt, inhabited only by pigeons, and under threat of demolition.

Rose Kentish (pictured) of Ulithorne hosted a rare dinner for her mailing list customers in Sydney recently, and aired some interesting thoughts on wine aroma. It’s long been a fascination of mine: to what extent do grapes absorb aroma from the vineyard environment? Think of eucalyptus character in Australian wines, bushfire-smoke taint, garrigue herbs in Provence and wild thyme in Central Otago. 

Rose makes wine in Corsica and Provence as well as her home-turf, McLaren Vale. She served her Corsican vermentino, 2012 Ulithorne Corsus Vermentinu (tasting), with a salad of orange-cured mackerel. The combination was a triumph. 

I’d remarked on what a wonderful aroma and flavour this wine has. It’s a light, easy-drinking wine, and can appear straightforward at first taste, but the more you drink it, the more you notice those special herbal notes. They add an extra layer to the wine, a layer seldom seen in unwooded fruit-wines in Australia, where the simple grapiness and varietal character tends to dominate. Rose had the answer. 

According to her, the vineyard that supplies the grapes is on a slope, and the top of the slope grows different wild herbs from the flat part at the bottom, on account of the different soil type and micro-climate. She says these herbs impart special aromas to the grapes, reminding her of thyme and fennel. If the wine from the upper part of the vineyard is excluded from the blend, it doesn’t have the same character. 

But wait: there’s more. Rose says the locals believe the characteristics of the wild herbs reach the grapes by way of the roots – not by air transmission directly to the bunches of grapes, as is often assumed with such aroma notes. She says the Corsicans reckon the small, fine roots of the vines communicate with the roots of the herbs, and it all takes place underground. Well, there’s no proof of this of course, but centuries of experience feeds into this sort of anecdotal wisdom, and we’d be foolish to discount the possibility that it’s true. 

Rose is perhaps best known for her voluptuous McLaren Vale shiraz, Ulithorne Frux Frugis (tastings), but the other wine that really excites me is the rosé she makes in Provence. We were served the Ulithorne Epoch Rosé 2013 (tasting) as an aperitif, and with anchovy and tomato on toast. Again: sensational. This is more gluggable than just about any Australian rosé I could name. It’s a typical Provencal style, in that it’s pale, doesn’t have a strong purple tinge, and is delicate and harmonious with soft acidity and under-played fruit. 

Rose Kentish has a feel for what tastes good and what goes with food. The big secret is that she is working on long-term projects which she hopes will lead to her making a Champagne in Champagne, and a pinot noir in Burgundy. As they say: watch this space. 

Ask a mainland Aussie winemaker what other region of Australia he or she would like to make wine in, and the most common reply is Tasmania.

Global warming is one key reason: at the southern extremity of Australia, Tasmania is least likely to be affected by rising temperatures – or at least it will be affected later than most other regions. Another reason is that Tasmania specialises in the grape varieties and wine styles that we are demanding more and more today: delicate dry and semi-dry whites, fine sparkling wines and lighter-bodied low-tannin reds such as pinot noir.

Thanks in part to an expanding gang of experimental young winemakers, NSW has become a truly exciting winescape in the past several years.

As a wine-growing area, New South Wales is distinctive in Australia. Its 16 wine regions are very diverse geographically, climatically and wine-wise, and together they differ dramatically from Victoria or South Australia – not necessarily better or worse, just different.

There is hearty red wine from the Hunter, Mudgee, Hilltops and Riverina; delicate riesling from Tumbarumba and Canberra, unique dry semillon from the Hunter and lusciously sweet versions from the Riverina, complex chardonnays from Orange, fine sparkling wines from Tumbarumba, and inexpensive quaffing wines from the Riverina and Big Rivers.