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Uncorked

Wizards of Oz

Australian vintners make make magic down under as their inventive and creative wines attract an ever-larger following.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published February 2, 2005

If Australian wine were a single bottle, a fanciful critic might call it "surprisingly mature yet insouciant and amusing."

But it is far from one bottle. There are lusciously rich muscats and ports, grand old vintages of shiraz, and wildly eclectic blends. Can you say chardonnay-semillon-gewurztraminer? Yarraman Estate makes one in its Banjo collection, and it's a delicate gem, creamy with a crisp edge and an orchard of fruits.

As winemakers throughout Europe and Californian know to their detriment, and wine drinkers to their delight, Australian bottles are many. Imports are almost 10 percent of the American market and about to pass France. In the process, they have reset standards for good taste and value.

Yet, Australia wants us to know that its wines are not all fruit bombs, easy-drinking chardonnays for the fridge and sure-bet shiraz for anything on the barbie. So a troop of 50 Australians waltzed across the United States in January to pour 300 of their favorite bottles.

Yep, those wines are almost always friendly to palate and wallet, but Australia is a big country (as broad and tall as the United States), and as diverse climatically as California. Its wide-open winemaking culture combines unbroken centuries of tradition and a "Give it a go, mate"' spirit of try-anything innovation.

That allows room for all kinds of wine, and when the tour stopped at A La Carte event pavilion in Tampa on Jan. 25, it had perhaps 100 labels of shiraz. The tasting drew a smallish but dedicated audience of several hundred retailers and consumers.

For those who think Australian wines cost $12 or less, there were fine premium shirazes such as Penfolds' rich St. Henri, worth twice its $40 price tag, and McWilliam's deep, dark Stentiford's reserve at $70.

Shiraz can sparkle, too, as foreign as that seems. Bright red bubbly is standard wine with turkey on Australian Christmas tables, and importers want to celebrate Thanksgiving here. Rumball makes an especially rich and peppery one.

And syrahs do get better with age, judging by a 1992 vintage of Lloyds Shiraz from Coriole, still tight enough for another decade. So do semillons, which are the secondary grape in the white wines of Bordeaux but a favorite Down Under. Australians make semchard blends but also like the grape straight. Indeed, aged semillons are what made the Hunter Valley famous and are still its signature, as evidenced by a rich 12-year-old Tyrell's.

The country's promoters also made a start at explaining Australia's infinite wine geography with wines from two distinctive regions. Margaret River, on the west coast below Perth, is exposed to cooling ocean breezes that have made its cabernet sauvignon distinctly fresh. The other area singled out was Rutherglen, a small chunk of the much larger eastern winelands where eight vineyards have joined together to promote their special heritage in beautiful dessert wines of muscat that are rich, velvety and yet clean on the finish.

There, too, Australians have a fondness for "stickies," which aren't really, and are bargain priced compared with the rest of the world's sweet treats. DeBortoli's line of botrytised semillon and tawny ports and R.L. Butler's muscat and Tokay showed a wide breath from apricots to caramel, yet all refreshing.

Beyond teaching Americans about shiraz, Australians have many more graces in their vineyards, many also from the Rhone and suitable for hot weather growing, plus pinot noir in Tasmania and a few other cooler spots.

The imaginative blending of the Rhone also worked well 5,000 miles from European rules. Australia makes a robust red blend of grenache syrah and mourvedre so popular that it's called just GSM.

Beyond teaching Americans about shiraz, Australians have many more graces in their vineyards, many also from the Rhone and suitable for hot weather growing, plus pinot noir in Tasmania and a few other cooler spots.

The classiest mix is adding a splash of white viognier into syrah, the trick of famous Cote-Roti. It doesn't affect the color, but it gives syrah extra rose petal perfume, soft texture and elegance.

Rule-breaking innovations continued, first in harnessing refrigeration and then in packaging, with clever labels and names from modern consumer-smart brands such as Yellowtail to fanciful whimsy.

D'Arenberg Estates, known for Dead Man's Arm and Money Spider, calls its syrah/viognier the Laughing Magpie because the owners' daughter couldn't pronounce the name of Australia's kookaburra birds and called them magpies, which, as it happens, are black and white, like the grapes.

Some of the innovation is just practical, such as the adoption of screw caps for almost all whites. "The argument (cork vs. cap) is all over in Australia now," says Bob Baker of Vasse Felix vineyards.

Australia's ultimate advantage is rooted, like all wine, in the land. The territory available for wine is vast and much cheaper than in Napa and the Old World, and is one source of the wines' cost advantage, says John Ells of Blue Pyrenees Estate.

"We want any wine that costs $15 to $20 to taste like a $30 bottle," he says.

That's a pitch from someone who really wants to sell wine. And an entire continent that does.

[Last modified February 1, 2005, 10:37:04]