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The winemaking wizards of Oz
By CHRIS SHERMAN © St. Petersburg Times, published February 28, 2001 Geography has given Australian winemakers some surprising advantages, as well as the hottest and most remote New World vineyards. Australians have learned to make fine wines from shiraz and semillon, to invent blends of grapes, vineyards and even vintages, to keep prices down and to insist that wine taste good to ordinary blokes, not just critics. Life in Oz confers other important perks. Winemakers down under are inveterate globe-trotters. Give young Australians or New Zealanders three or four months, and they're off to see the world. The Southern Hemisphere's cycle of seasons gives them that much time every year after their March harvest is crushed, and many head north to the vineyards of Europe. There they help out when Northern Hemisphere grapes come in in August and September. At first they went to learn, but in the mid 1980s, they returned to teach. The so-called "Flying Wine-makers" spent their annual downtime in the south of France, southern Italy and the former Yugoslavia. Their talent and palates helped rebuild and modernize the most archaic and underdeveloped corners of European vineyards. At the same time and with less fanfare, Australians and New Zealanders came to U.S. vineyards. The results have been delicious, especially in shiraz (syrah), sauvignon blanc and dessert wines, and usually priced between $10 and $20. "I strapped on my backpack when I was 28" and headed for France 10 years ago, says Michael Scholz, who grew up in a winemaking family in the Barossa Valley and worked for several Australian wineries. He worked in France, California, South Africa and back home, but five years ago he wound up in Napa Valley full time at St. Supery, a winery started in 1982 by Frenchman Robert Skalli. Every year Scholz brings on a few Australians to help out in his crush. Across the line in Sonoma County, Geyser Peak began a partnership with Australia's Penfolds in 1989, which lent Daryl Croom, the maker of Grange, its most famous wine. Four years later, he imported winemaker Mick Schroeter, another Penfolds alum. Up the road in Sonoma at Simi, Nick Goldschmidt arrived in 1991 from New Zealand. "He's a wanna-be Australian," Schroeter says kiddingly. "Actually, he's one of our best mates." Domaine Chandon, the California brand of Moet & Chandon, last year brought in as its winemaker Wayne Donaldson, who had helped build Chandon's Australian winery. Although Penfolds ended its role at Geyser Peak, it set up partnership with a U.S. family in San Luis Obispo, Calif., at Seven Peaks. There, Australian Ian Shepherd is the winemaker under the banner "California heritage, Australian innovation." Napa's Voss Winery and vineyards are also owned by Australians. Still, it's not a big invasion or an unfriendly one, this bunch of winemakers from Down Under. In most cases, their style has matched a winery's existing goals. California's Australian ties are just part of the globalization of an industry that has always been in worldwide trade. European and American firms have increasingly taken interest in Chile, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. Brown-Forman group, which owns wineries from Italy and France to Mendocino, Calif., is sending its annual traveling seminar of winemakers to visit the brands it owns in Australia, including McPherson and Chateau Tahbilk. Money and ideas flow north as well. Beringer, one of California's oldest wineries, was bought last year by Foster's, the brewery giant best known for its oil can beers, and last week became part of Beringer Blass Wine Estates. (Wolf Blass is Foster's best-known wine label.) The Australians have announced no plans to change Beringer or its related brands, but winemakers from both halves of the company will collaborate to make one special, high-end wine to symbolize the partnership. All across California, vineyards are planting syrah or shiraz, the Rhone grape that made Australia famous among red wine drinkers. Kendall-Jackson's new Collage line specializes in Australian-introduced blends such as cabernet/shiraz. The most significant import remains people like Scholz, a net brain gain for the United States. They have not had the same revolutionizing effect as they did in neglected areas, but they have helped strengthen American wine with a solid core of brands that deliver what Australians call "good value," a price that's better than fair. In wine that means that whether the bottle costs $10, $25 or $50, it tastes as if it should have cost much more. Beyond attitude and accents, Australian winemakers bring a certain style. Often it's called fruit-forward, meaning that the flavor of grapes, and ideally the flavor of a particular varietal, stands out beyond the smoky oak of barrel-aging or other winemaking elements. More obvious to the average consumer is drinkability: The reds don't make your mouth pucker, and even the dry whites aren't sour. These tastes are often achieved through techniques born of necessity in Australia. "We didn't know you weren't supposed to blend certain things," says Andrew McPherson. Barrels, for instance, are expensive for any winery, and they're much more scarce and dear 6,000 miles from the oak forests of France. The hot Australian sun also taught Scholz and others the value of letting grapes ripen fully and then picking them in the cool of the night. Australia also has more experience with certain grapes, from Rhone varieties to the semillon of Bordeaux. While U.S. vineyards concentrated on other grapes, Australia has been through 100 vintages and has wide experience in where and how to grow and vinify them. Australia's big red shiraz caught our attention as a bold and smooth alternative to cabernet, but it's in white wines that the Down Under winemakers in California may do the most to broaden our choices. The chief example is sauvignon blanc, long the secondary white to chardonnay for U.S. vintners and wine drinkers. "When I got here it was just a glorified chardonnay," often oaked and barrel-fermented, Schroeter says, but the Australians and especially the New Zealanders like the wine to taste truer to its character, sharp, crisp, not as soft and peachy as chardonnay can be. "You can go over the top with that green bean, asparagus character, but you want to keep some of it," Schroeter said. Scholz does it without any softening from the oak. "It's all tank-fermented. It still has that zing and a bit of grapefruit, but it's still easy to drink." They do keep enough to be distinctive but still make the wines approachable and friendly, especially to seafood and Asian dishes. Geyser Peak, Simi and St. Supery are now regular winners in ratings and contests. They've also made sauvignon blanc part of expensive, silky white blends like St. Supery's White Meritage and Simi's Sendal, which combines sauvignon blanc with semillon, the other white grape of Bordeaux. Australians also have more respect for rieslings, dry and sweet, and muscats, as well as ports and other fortified wines, all products that American vineyards and customers have lost interest in. Geyser Peak has even made a tawny port and a sparkling shiraz. Others we're still not interested in, like sem-chard, a blend of semillon and chardonnay, make for popular everyday wines in Australia but are a very hard sell here. "There should be a crossover," Scholz says approvingly, but not in everything. "We need to be careful not to become all the same. We need to maintain our terroir." Smart winemakers around the world know that the character of the land and the grapes it grows is more important than the nationality of the people working in the winery. Nonetheless, last fall a few of the hands helping St. Supery harvest belonged to young Australians just like Scholz. It can't hurt. Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" (Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95).
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