21 minute read
focus on australia
Australia bounces back
With a vintage almost a third bigger than the fire-ravaged disaster of 2019, Australian winemakers have a lot of quality wine to sell. And with China almost out of the picture for the time being, the UK has once again become the country’s most important export market, as David Williams reports
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ine Australia called it a “unicorn
Wvintage”. Other sources preferred “largest ever”, or simply “massive”. However you choose to describe it, there’s no doubt that Australia’s latest grape crop was a tonic for grape growers after a torrid preceding couple of years.
The 2021 vintage clocked in at a total of 2.03m tonnes, some 31% bigger than 2020 and 19% up on 2019. Better still, according to Wine Australia’s National Vintage Report, it was “characterised by nearperfect growing and ripening conditions across most states and regions”.
In a Wine Australia statement, the body’s general manager for corporate affairs and regulation, Rachel Triggs, said there was “good fruit set, plenty of water at the right time, lack of heatwaves, low disease pressure, and favourable harvest conditions [that] have resulted in a highyielding, high quality vintage”.
The upbeat tone was perfectly understandable given the apocalyptic scenes of the Australian summer of 2019 to 2020 and the Covid-ridden times that have followed.
In spring 2020, the full cost of Australia’s devastating and prolonged bushfire season was still being counted and analysed. The fires ended up destroying around 1% of the Australian vineyard, but with many producers choosing not to produce wines because of smoke taint, Wine Australia estimated that 4% of production, or 60,000 tonnes, was affected by the fires in some way, and the vintage ended up being the smallest in 10 years.
In that context, the 2021 vintage, which was as ever dominated by a resurgent South Australia with 1.06m tonnes (52% of the total) followed by New South Wales (580,875 tonnes; 29%) and Victoria (334,834 tonnes; 17%), could be seen as the year Australia bounced back, providing, as Triggs put it, “an opportunity for depleted inventory levels to be restored, ensuring we have the supply we need to take up new export opportunities”.
Outsiders could be forgiven for finding a slightly euphemistic edge to Triggs’ reference to “new export opportunities”. This, after all, is an industry trying to come to terms with the collapse of what was, until late 2020, its most important export market by value, China. The effects of the swingeing tarrifs imposed on Australian wine by the Chinese government at the end of last year were rapid and severe.
According to the latest figures from Wine Australia, exports to mainland China fell by an astonishing 77% in value, to £148m (to put it in sterling terms) in the year to the end of September 2021, while the number of Australian shippers selling wine to China fell from 2,241 to just 750 in the same period.
Naturally, a loss of that scale (Treasury Wine Estates alone lost £41m worth of Chinese sales) is going to have an effect on the overall export figures. And sure enough, the headline figures show a fall in value of 24% to £1.23bn, and a 17% drop in volume to 638m litres. As well as in China, Australian wine struggled in what is now the number two market by value, the United States (losing 11% in volume to £213m) and in its fifth largest market by value, Canada (down 12% to £93.6m).
n the plus side of the ledger, Hong
OKong was up 135% to £112m. And, rather more pertinently for readers of this magazine, Australia is in the midst of a UK boom. Indeed, the British seem to have fallen hard once again with Aussie drops – and it’s premium wines that seem to be finding the most favour.
“Over the past 18 months, there has been a significant increase in exports to the UK, which has led to the market solidifying its place as Australia’s number one destination by volume and it has now overtaken mainland China as the number one destination by value,” said Triggs.
According to the Wine Australia Export Report, published in mid-October, exports to the UK grew by 7% in value to £249m in the year to September 2021. Significantly, a slight drop (2%) in volume was offset by average value increases of 9% to 99p per litre, which is the highest average value Australian wines have managed since mid2011.
“In the past 12 months, exports in almost all price segments to the UK have continued to grow, with exports at an average value over $5 per litre enjoying 35% growth in value,” the Report said. “The
growth in premium wine has meant that the UK has moved from the seventh largest destination of exports above $10 per litre to fifth in the past year.”
It’s not all good news for Australia in the UK. As the Wine Australia Export Report says, “worldwide shipping delays, linked to Covid restrictions, have also impacted exports within the 12 months ended September 2021 … shipping lines around the world are lacking capacity and there are major delays at ports, leading to worstever schedule reliability when combined with current record levels of ocean freight.”
he country’s geographical position
Tmeans long delays have become par for the course for importers. As Stuart McCloskey of Kent-based Australian specialist The Vinorium told The Wine Merchant in July, “The problem is that we are now waiting 16 weeks door to door and it’s getting worse.”
Other smaller-scale importers contacted by The Wine Merchant, including Hennings Wine Merchants and Specialist Cellar, made similar observations, with Matthew Hennings saying the “domino effect in deep sea containers will take months to sort out”.
Such problems are not restricted to Australia, however. And in general there is a sense that Australia’s travails in China have led to an increased focus on the UK, a market of historic importance that some exporters may have been guilty of taking for granted in the period when highervalue Chinese sales boomed.
How far that feeling of optimism will be helped by the terms of the free-trade deal agreed in principle by the British and Australian governments in summer 2021 remains to be seen. Although details have not been confirmed, the headline figure of a saving of around 10p per bottle for importers has been greeted with scepticism by many in the UK trade. And the government’s new duty regime, which will penalise many Australian wines for their alcohol levels, may in any case wipe out any such benefits.
More important for the independent sector, however, is the sense that the UK is now getting a more realistic representation of Australia’s full vinous repertoire.
With many producers having lost sales in China and/or the States, and with the country’s strict Covid response having a significant effect on cellar door visits and domestic sales, the UK market, for all its fabled price consciousness – and shipping headaches notwithstanding – no longer looks like such a bad bet for Australia’s varied, dynamic and creative scene of smaller producers.
All of which makes Australian wine a more attractive proposition for UK independents and their customers than it’s been for some time. The reasons behind that might be less than ideal. But the wines themselves – not least those in the selections overleaf – show an industry still very much capable of surprising and delighting in a range of styles to match anywhere in the world.
Possibly a faster way to ship wine at a time of transport chaos
Five sides of modern Australia
David Williams selects a handful of producers that should be on the radar of indies
Place of Changing Winds (Macedon Ranges, Victoria; Graft Wine)
Robert Walters is one of Australian wine’s most interesting figures. He has spent much of his career working as a wine buyer, as co-owner of the Melbournebased fine-wine importer Bibendum Wine Co (not to be confused with the British company of the same name). More recently, he’s established himself as one of the country’s most gifted wine writers, the author of the subtly iconoclastic Champagne: A Secret History. Since 2011, he’s also been a vigneron, buying – and then planting at very high density – a virgin 3ha site at some 500m altitude between Mt Macedon and Mt Bullengarook in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. The intensely, meticulously (organically) farmed vineyard, with its tiny yields, has now produced its first wines, and they’re beauties: immaculate, expressive, superbly detailed cool-climate Syrah, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Distant Noises (Yarra Valley, Victoria; Swig)
Another key figure in Victorian – and Australian – wine for several decades now, Tom Carson worked at a succession of leading Australian Pinot Noir producers, including Lenswood with Tim Knappstein, Coldstream Hills with James Halliday and Yering Station, before taking up the reins at Yabby Lake in 2008. There he’s been responsible for some of Victoria’s top Pinots and Chardonnays in a variety of Mornington Peninsula’s best sites, while also helping sister operation Heathcote Estate make its name as a leading producer of cool-climate Shiraz/Syrah.
For Distant Noises, Carson has developed a side-project that aims to project the best of cool-climate Victoria at considerably lower prices than the usual. The Cabernet, tasted by this correspondent at The Dirty Dozen, achieves its aim with something to spare: superbly supple, elegant and aromatic.
House of Arras (Tasmania; C&C Wines)
Few individuals have done more to establish Tasmania as a leader in global sparkling wine than Ed Carr. The head winemaker at House of Arras has been making sparkling wines in Australia since 1986, moving to Hardys in 1994 and being one of the original pioneers in Méthode Tasmanoise from 1998.
The quality of the wines has slowly won an international audience, and built up a loyal following in the UK over the past decade. The secret is in the combination of Carr’s commitment to long, careful ageing and the zing and zip of the Tasmanian Chardonnay and Pinot Noir fruit, leading to modern classics such as the Bollinger RD-alike EJ Carr Late Disgorged and a plethora of other rich but refined sparkling wines.
Delinquente (Riverland; Indigo Wines)
Riverland is Australia’s winemaking engine, but it’s never been a place for vinous romantics. It’s where you go to source simple juice for your big branded or bulk wine: an important part of the Aussie wine story, but not usually included in the marketing spiel. Deliquente, the work of Con-Greg Gregorgiou, a Riverland native and son of a winery manager, aims to challenge those perceptions by making natural-leaning, single-vineyard modern wine bar wines with stylish hipsterish packaging from the Italian varieties that he feel work best in the Riverland’s hot, dusty climate, such as Montepulciano and Vermentino.
With a bunch of highly impressive, highly drinkable releases now under his belt, he’s already made his point.
Aphelion (McLaren Vale; Graft Wine)
The slogan on the website is very firstwave of Aussie wine: the 1980s-tastic “Taste our bottled sunshine”. But the wines of this small family producer run by husband-and-wife duo Rob and Lou Mack could not be more 2020s: small-batch, finely crafted and elegant, they bring a very different character to the big-boned, big-fruited wines with which McLaren Vale originally made its name.
The grapes are sourced from partner growers working with sometimes very old Grenache vines in Blewitt Springs and White Valley, and the wines have earned a devoted following in Australia (where Rob Mack earned a Young Gun of Wine award in 2018) and, increasingly, in the UK.
THE WINEMAKER FILES // Jo Nash
McPherson Wines, Victoria
Jo graduated from Charles Sturt university and began her career under Andrew McPherson’s tutelage at the family-owned winery, becoming head winemaker in 2011. She is perhaps best known for Don’t Tell Gary, a wine she first made by quietly bypassing the annual budget set by the winery’s general manager.
McPherson is very much like a family.
When you’re in the winery everyone is working together, everyone is appreciated, everyone has a part to play. It’s certainly not a hierarchical structure, it’s a warm family environment where everyone comes to work and does a great job. I’d extend that to the sales and marketing team too.
Andrew McPherson is lovely; he’s like
a big teddy bear. He’s really gruff on the outside but warm and lovely on the inside. We certainly had our differences of opinion over the years but we worked collaboratively and we got the end results we wanted. He was great. In the early years he was there as much as I needed him to be and then he allowed me to step up and put my fingerprint on the wine and the winemaking styles.
The philosophy for me has always been, why interfere with the style of the fruit?
Let the fruit do the talking and let the wine speak for itself, so whether we are making a commercial wine or a premium wine or anything in between, it’s really important that stylistically you put your nose in the glass and you’re like, “yep, it’s a fruit-driven style, it’s fresh, the wine’s in balance”.
The guys work so hard out there in the vineyards and there are so many
challenges. So it’s important we capture all of that work.
I’m really lucky in that we are located in central Victoria and we get to draw fruit
from various regions surrounding us. So not only do we look at central Victoria, in terms of Strathbogie Ranges and Heathcote up to Dookie, but we move out to places like the King Valley and towards the Yarra. There are so many different regions that we actually get to be involved with, which is fantastic, because all the regions have their own nuances.
I’ve never been a big fan of American
oak, it’s always been French for me. It’s much more delicate and integrates a whole lot better with the wine. There’s nothing more romantic than a 500-litre French oak puncheon that’s brand new. If you’re fermenting Chardonnay and you stick your nose in the barrel it’s just the most incredible thing you’ve ever smelled.
I have a love/hate relationship with
vintage. Every year before you head into it you’re thinking, “goodness, here we go again”, but once you’re into it it’s the most amazing thing. The winery is full of aromas and the team just comes together.
We’re very busy and a very small team but we are all conscious that we have
to have a good time. When you’re midvintage and working 12 hours a day, six days a week, or longer, if you can’t have a laugh, then what’s it all about? We keep a sense of humour and we don’t take ourselves too seriously and I think that’s been part of the success of the business. We are making this wine with this crew of people, and people on the other side of the world are enjoying it. That’s what we do it for. That’s what gets me out of bed.
McPherson wines are imported into the UK by Vintrigue Wines 01207 521234 www.vintriguewines.com
Don't Tell Gary Shiraz 2019
RRP: £13.50
It’s minimal intervention so it’s all about the fruit. It’s certainly a riper style of wine. It’s not Barossa jammy or anything like that; it’s more of a full-bodied style with good length. There’s a fair bit of oak but it’s all in balance. It’s cool-climate so there’s some lovely pepper and spice in there and some riper characters.
Aquarius Sangiovese/Shiraz 2017
RRP: £12.75
Sangiovese is a lighter style and it’s been gaining a bit of traction in Australia, so it was certainly something that the market was telling us. We are going for a lighter style with this one. It is a little more savoury, which is something a bit different for the McPherson portfolio.
Sunburnt Chardonnay 2019
RRP: £12.50
This is barrel fermented and we use batonnage. The fruit is from the vineyard right next to the winery, which I look at out of my window every day. It’s a good example of Goulburn Valley Chardonnay: it’s a riper style and it has a good whack of oak in there. It’s a food wine, even if it is just cheese or charcuterie.
THE WINEMAKER FILES // Alex Head, HEAD Wines
I worked here in Australia with Rhône negociant-style producers and felt that the business model could be telegraphed via Barossa’s incredible
wealth of grower vineyards. This is the major challenge: to establish relationships with the right sites and growers to produce a house style that is both unique, consistent and within a traditional Barossan framework.
The growers are the most important
part of the negociant puzzle. In many ways they are like family and the relationships are constantly evolving and require patience, great communication, trust and mutual respect. It is of course necessary to have the right combination of growers and sites so the business is both feasible and sustainable for both grower and producer.
Shiraz has a unique trick: it can still express its site whether picked early
or late. This helps Shiraz in the Barossa, where we do have big seasonal variations and a myriad of unique micro-climates and terroirs.
I really enjoy knowing that Barossa’s potential is still so great and that we continue to understand that we can improve on the wealth we already have. I can see the interest, confidence and understanding from consumers growing and this will allow movement away from large mono blends towards the release of single-site wines that have unique and historical stories to tell.
We work with many varieties that sometimes make unique small-batch bottlings that are only available to
mailing-list customers. Some could become a more permanent part of the portfolio. These include Viognier, Montepulciano, Nero d’Avola, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Tempranillo. We are more or less customer-led on the potential of these varieties. In the meantime, they can be great blending components.
Viticulturally Barossa has always been set up to negate the effects of climate
change. It is not something new we are dealing with. We are finding ways to improve or hold the quality of our fruit once it hits the winery. We are also exploring Mediterranean varieties and finding new ways to retain acidity. We will eventually see most white wine varieties move out of the Barossa Valley (not Eden Valley) and only traditional red noble varieties will remain.
I do love the time when we classify all the wines we have made (50 to 60 parcels) which happens three to six
months after vintage. Then of course when we blend the wines which happens nine to 12 months after vintage. Bottling can be a very stressful time – we create 10 to 15 wines each year and this is the time when things can go horribly wrong!
Around 2010 the Barossa winemaking scene started to become more
progressive and open-minded. There has Alex began his wine career in retail management, having graduated from Sydney University with a degree in biochemistry. After more study and stints in import and auction businesses, he became a winemaker in 2006, establishing HEAD Wines in the Barossa.
HEAD Wines are imported into the UK by Amathus Drinks 0208 951 9840 www.amathusdrinks.com
been a changing of the guard with the next generation of growers and winemakers arriving on the scene at a time when an explosion of online retailing has opened up an enormous space for new wines to be produced. Couple this with restaurants demanding more margin and ultimately allowing the natural wine phenomenon, the creativity has been relentless. The Barossa’s winemaking scene is now so dynamic yet we aren’t even near our potential. The future is bright and safe with the next gen!
2020 HEAD RED Grenache Shiraz Mataro
RRP: £22
Grapes are picked on the cusp of ripeness with some whole bunches retained during the fermentation. Each varietal component is fermented separately then blended after 11 months, resulting in more fruit definition, a dried-herb aroma and harmony of tannin structure.
2018 HEAD RED Shiraz
RRP: £21.50
Fruit is sourced from up to 10 Barossa vineyards, predominantly coming from the higher altitude, cooler sites of Eden Valley. The wine receives 12 months' barrel maturation in French oak of differing sizes. This is certainly the best value, most traditional style and most popular wine of the portfolio.
2019 HEAD Old Vine Shiraz
RRP: £28.50
We do not push the ripeness here and instead ferment with 10% whole bunch and a gentler extraction. Combine this with only 20% new Burgundian barriques for 12 months and the wonderful richness and sweetness of Old Vine fruit remains in focus. Its flamboyance will surely blossom when approached by richer protein dishes.
Australia: the new Italy?
Winetraders sees interesting parallels between the two winemaking cultures – which is why boss Michael Palij MW is heading back down under
Michael Palij MW is excited about Australia, a country whose winemaking scene reminds him in many ways of his beloved Italy.
He first visited over a decade ago, while teaching at the Sydney Wine Academy. “Every time I went, I would spend a week touring around a region,” he says. “So over the course of a decade I ended up visiting most regions of Australia and visiting loads of winemakers and really developing my knowledge of Australian wine.”
Palij noted that most Aussie vineyard owners were selling grapes to larger companies. “What intrigued me were the people who had got their own vineyards and were vinifying their own wine. These were the people I was meeting,” he says. “They were just as passionate about what they do as any Italian.”
Palij talks about the Wine Flight of a Lifetime tour to Australia in 1992 as “the launch of Brand Australia”.
He adds: “It did incredibly well. In a way, that was Italy in the 70s with Soave, Chianti and Valpolicella.
“That early success robbed them of perhaps the soul searching, the brand building in the more specific sense of the word … it was all about critter labels and easy-todrink styles. And yet underneath that beats the heart of hard work and ingenuity and a slightly more relaxed approach to legislation, which was the kernel of real greatness later on.”
During lockdown, Palij decided to take another look at Australia, which he knew was producing some wines that would fit the Winetraders portfolio.
The company’s Australian line-up now includes Tscahrke and Eperosa from the Barossa, Flaxman Wines from Eden Valley and Wines by KT from Clare Valley.
Palij shares the frustration among some Aussie producers that their wines don’t always command the price points and acclaim that they deserve.
“The reaction has been very good, but still there is this challenge: with Australia and Italy, sales just fall off a cliff for anything above 10 quid. People view both those countries in the same way.
“It’s very difficult: you have Grange and a few other icon wines at the top, which people collect as they do in Italy with Conterno and Sassicaia, and then you’ve got all the supermarket stuff under 10 quid, much of which is sold on promotion, and then nothing in between.”
But there is hope. “Where we are finding traction is with the indies,” he says. “There are people saying, ‘these are really good wines in their own right,’ and they have time, I think, to tell that story.”
Palij is returning to Australia to seek out more treasures. “The stuff that I’m tasting down there, like Nebbiolo, and particularly more Mediterranean varietals like Touriga Nacional … the quality really is second to none,” he says.
“I think this idea of matching varietal to terroir, which is alive and well in Italy and obviously in France, is the way forward.”
Tscahrke, Barossa
Making organic and biodynamic wines, this estate is achieving success with varieties such as Albariño, Savagnin and Montepulciano as well as Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro (Mourvèdre). “We’ve got an Albariño from Damien Tscharke that’s stunning,” says Palij. “It embarrasses stuff from Rías Baixas. We only had 10 cases and one Michelin-starred restaurant has taken it all.”
Eperosa, Barossa
Brett Grocke, a sixth-generation Barossan, is James Halliday’s 2021 winemaker of the year. His family pride themselves with wines “built from the dirt up” including Grenache, Shiraz and Semillon.
Flaxman Wines, Eden Valley
An estate dating back to 1929 producing Riesling, Shiraz and Semillon, owned by Colin Sheppard, a former builder and one-time MasterChef contestant. “It’s a wonderful, tiny estate,” says Palij.
Wines by KT, Clare Valley
Based in the Watervale district, Kerri Thompson is “sort of Clare Valley nobility,” says Palij. “She was making wine for Leasingham for a long time and knows Clare Valley like you know your garden. She knows her craft. She makes great Cabernet and Shiraz but Riesling is really her thing and I just love it. Not naming names, but tasting against the big names of Clare, I was like, ‘this stuff is better’. They are exceptional wines.”
