A shift from previous posts where we looked at grapes that will be familiar to many, if not most (Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon). Today, we head to the start of the alphabet and to a grape that hails from southern Italy.
Aglianico is an ancient grape found in Basilicata and Campania in Italy’s warm, sunny south. It is first found mentioned in the sixteenth century and, historically, people have been tempted to assume a Greek pedigree for it (based on ‘Hellas’) but modern linguistics and science disprove this (although it makes a good story!).
The wines are dense in colour, with plenty of dark fruit and tannins and these characters, combined with good levels of acidity, mean that the best examples can age into more subtle wines with tar-like notes.
Australia
There’s not a lot of Aglianico being grown in Australia – it’s not making any ‘Top Ten’ lists. But South Australia‘s warm, sunny and Mediterranean climate lends itself well to the grape and you’ll even find it in warmer pockets of the Adelaide Hills, as well as the Barossa and McLaren Vale. Interstate, producers in Victoria, New South Wales and even Tasmania are all experimenting with this grape.
The World
In the case of ‘the world’ we’re really talking about Italy, with Taurasi DOCG (Campania) and Aglianico del Vulture DOC (Basilicata) leading the way. In many ways it’s southern Italy’s signature black grape variety, with around 10,000ha planted.
There’s also some grown in California, although I suspect Australian consumers might struggle to track down those wines!
The Key Facts
Aglianico is very late ripening (perfect for warm climates).
It’s also super vigorous: easy to grow but does need to be controlled.
Key descriptors include plum, dark fruits and chocolate.
Key regions are Basilicata and Campania in southern Italy. Only a tiny amount is grown in Australia.
Food Pairing
The wine is big and tannic so we have to head towards big, protein laden foods. Rich meat, such as lamb, will work well (the richness balanced also by the wine’s natural acidity). But don’t forget the cheese – Basilicata is known for sheep and goat milk cheeses, such as Pecorino, so pick up a strongly flavoured hard cheese and enjoy!
Anything Else I Should Know?
In Australia, Aglianico isn’t commonly blended but some Italian GIs do allow other grapes – Taurasi DOCG may be up to 15% other varieties and in some IGT wines you’ll find it blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
Thirsty?
Despite our love of alternative grape varieties, we’ve discovered we have just one Aglianico in stock! But it’s delicious – the Monaciello by La Prova (Sam Scott’s label). It even comes with its own cute backstory about its name!
Pinot Noir in Willamette Valley, Oregon (US) – photo credit Ethan Prater (flickr)
Pinot Noir is a bit of a ‘trophy’ grape – some of the world’s greatest (read, most expensive) wines are made from it and it’s notoriously finicky. Add to this that some of the wines can have rather barnyard aroma characteristics, and it becomes a bit of a symbol of sophistication (and spare cash).
However, we’re lucky that in Australia we do have some lovely, affordable examples as well as premium wines and (of course!) sparkling wines.
Australia
In Australia we have roughly 5000ha of Pinot Noir planted, accounting for just under 4% of the total plantings and just under 6% of black grape plantings. For context, that’s about a fifth of the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon we have planted and about an eighth of Shiraz plantings! And plantings haven’t changed that much over the last 20 years either.
And while Pinot Noir is generally a cooler climate grape, the Australian region which has the largest crush is actually South Australia’s Riverland with the more famous Pinot Noir producing regions of Yarra Valley and Tasmania coming in fourth and fifth respectively. The Adelaide Hills falls outside the top 5, crushing under 10% of Australia’s Pinot Noir.
The World
Where else to start but in Burgundy in France? A red Burgundy is almost always going to be entirely Pinot Noir, but these wines don’t come cheaply … in Australia you’re usually looking at upwards of $100 a bottle, heading towards the thousands (and even tens of thousands) for some of the most famous wines, such as those from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
In France, Pinot Noir isn’t limited to Burgundy – you’ll also find it grown in Champagne and the Jura. Germany has the next biggest plantings in Europe and you’ll find some Pinot Noir in northern Italy and it is even the UK‘s most planted variety.
Outside of Europe, look for wines from coastal California, where the vines have been cooled by sea breezes, or from Oregon. Pinot Noir from Chile can represent fantastic value, and, over in New Zealand, Pinot Noir is the second most widely planted grape variety (a distant second, it must be said).
The Key Facts
Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier (and others) are actually genetic mutations all appearing in a single initial variety.
Typically the grapes are thin-skinned, leading to wines that are lighter in colour and softer in tannins.
Key descriptors are focussed on red berry fruits, such as raspberry, strawberry and red cherry. But you’ll often see savoury descriptors creeping in (black olive), along with words like barnyard and (my personal favourite) cow pat.
Some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines in the world are right here in Australia – Best’s Great Western in Victoria has eleven rows of vines planted in 1868.
Key Australian regions include the Adelaide Hills (SA), Tasmania, Yarra Valley (Vic) and Mornington Peninsula (Vic).
Food Pairing
When it comes to food pairing, Pinot Noir is pretty delicate, so you want to avoid swamping it with big hearty dishes that are laden with rich sauces. Salmon and tuna are potential pairings as is roast chicken. If you’re cooking game meat simply, then there’s no reason you couldn’t pair it with duck (the acidity of the Pinot Noir the perfect foil for duck’s fattiness) or even kangaroo or venison.
If cheese is your thing, you should look to Burgundy for inspiration and pair with Epoisses – a delicious cow’s milk soft cheese with a washed rind. Yes, this means it’s stinky!
Anything Else I Should Know?
Pinot Noir is typically not blended – although many Australian winemakers do have a bit of an experiment here! Its thin skins make it ideal for rosé – so you’ll probably find it in a pink sparkling wine. However, a white sparkling labelled ‘Blanc de Noirs’ will be white (yet still made from Pinot Noir and possibly also Pinot Meunier).
International Cabernet Sauvignon Day is almost upon us (3 September – or just behind us, as some people say it’s 30 August!) so it’s the perfect time for a quick primer on the world’s most widely grown black grape. Yes, here in Australia Shiraz is the undisputed king of red wine (all wine?!) but for the rest of the world, it’s a crown which rests squarely on Cabernet Sauvignon’s shoulders.
Australia
In Australia we have roughly 25,000ha of Cab Sav planted, making up just over 18% of all plantings and almost 30% of black grape plantings. The Riverland, Murray-Darling and Riverina come in as the top regions for crush – at first I found this a little surprising but Cab Sav is pretty easy to grow and is used a lot for bulk wines (yes, you can buy a bottle of Cabernet for less than $5 …). The Coonawarra (a much smaller region) does come in fourth but Margaret River doesn’t make the top 5.
For comparison – Shiraz accounts for 46% of our black grape plantings … there’s not too much room for everything else!
The World
The question is more ‘where is Cabernet NOT grown?’ … because, really, Cabernet is loved the world over. It’s found throughout south-west France – most famously in Bordeaux, and there are plantings throughout Europe. From the usual suspects (Italy, Spain, Portugal) to much further east (Ukraine, Russia, Moldova …) you’ll find Cabernet Sauvignon being grown. Similarly, when we head the Americas we find it hugely popular. It’s only once we hit the cooler climate of New Zealand that we find Cab Sav less well-represented.
The Key Facts
Cabernet Sauvignon is the offspring of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc
The grapes are small and thick-skinned so it produces densely coloured wines with high tannins
Key descriptors include blackcurrant, mint (menthol, eucalypt), green capsicum, cedar and more blackcurrant
The oldest planting in the world is Penfold’s Kalimna Block 42, (here in SA!) planted in the 1880s.
Key Australian regions are the Coonawarra (SA), Margaret River (WA), Limestone Coast (SA), McLaren Vale (SA) and the Yarra Valley (Vic). Also look out for wines from Great Southern (WA).
Food Pairing
Thanks to Cabernet’s high tannins it’s an amazing wine to pair with anything high in protein. Its very intense palate means that it can handle that char-grilled steak while the lively acidity will work beautifully with a hard cheese. It’s a food-friendly wine – just steer clear of anything delicate because the wine will swamp it!
You might want to avoid spicy (chilli) foods (the tannin will enhance the spice, the spice will enhance the tannin – you’ll know if this is your thing or not!) and I’d avoid pairing it with oily fish – the tannins can make everything seem a bit metallic.
Anything Else I Should Know?
Cabernet is really commonly blended with other black grapes. The typical Bordeaux blend is Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (with a few friends) and in Australia we love to blend Cabernet with (you guessed it!) Shiraz.
Thirsty?
Our budget pick is the Forest Hill Highbury Fields at just $24 a bottle. From WA’s Great Southern, this wine is just delicious and absolutely over-delivers. Pop some away and revisit in 5, 10 or even 15 years time.
Our luxe pick is the Château Pontet-Canet from Bordeaux ($360). A 2008 it’s drinking beautifully now but still has cellaring potential.
Join us here at 6pm (Adelaide time) Friday for a weekly wine (& beer & all things drinkable) wrap up …
I put together this video and blog post after being at an event where more than one winery noted that their sparkling wine had been made by the Charmat method. My first thought was that I was surprised they were making note of that … but this was closely followed by the thought that how many normal people (ie not wine trade!) would know what the Charmat method was.
It’s reasonable to assume that a good proportion of the wine buying public probably doesn’t care – ultimately, if a wine tastes good and is at the right price point, most of us aren’t that interested in the ins and outs of production. But … if you’re one of the ones who is interested … here we go!
This method of sparkling wine production was first patented by an Italian, Federico Martinetti, in 1895 – and it was, unsurprisingly, know as the metodo martinetti. In 1907, after some tweaks and development, it was patented again in 1907 by a Frenchman from Bordeaux, Eugène Charmat – which is where it gets one of its modern names. It’s also referred to as cuve close (in French), the tank method, granvas (Spanish) or autoclave (Italian).
In Champagne (and other premium sparkling wine) production, a still base wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in a bottle. This fermentation (and subsequent ageing) can be anywhere from 15 months up to … well, as long as you want really. Vintage Champagne is required to spend a minimum of THREE YEARS in bottle. Above all, this is time consuming – as a producer you can’t react to consumer demand and get more wine out there quickly! But it’s also expensive (you’ve got bottles sitting around for years not generating cash flow) and labour intensive (in some instances, those bottles will be turned by hand).
The Charmat method solves all of these problems. You take your still base wine (made the same as any wine) but instead of putting it into individual bottles, you put it into a pressurised tank. You then add your yeast and sugar and allow the secondary fermentation to happen. This is a rapid secondary ferment – you’re most certainly not hanging around for years – you’re looking at one to six weeks. The longer the ferment, the finer and more durable the bubbles and the better preserved the wine’s aromatics. Once the winemaker is happy with where things are at, the contents of the tank are chilled to below 0°C and fermentation stops. Keeping the (now bubbly) wine at a low temperature and under pressure, it is then filtered and then bottled (using a counter pressure filler – keeping all those bubbles in).
Straight away – you can see that this is FASTER. It’s also CHEAPER – you don’t need to have hundred or thousands of bottles hanging around the winery and monitoring what’s going on in one large tank is a lot easier than worrying about all those bottles – making it LESS LABOUR INTENSIVE. And guess what? The wines are sometimes (but not always!) cheaper.
Of course, you don’t get to take a few shortcuts without some impact on the finished product. While sparkling wines made using the Champagne/traditional method will often be described as bready, yeasty, toasty, brioche-like you don’t get any of those characteristics with a wine made by the Charmat method. Wines made by the Charmat method are more likely to taste like the base wine plus bubbles. This means the method is really well suited to wines that drink well young and don’t have great ageing capacity.
In general, you won’t find CHARMAT METHOD plastered all over a wine’s label – so it’s not going to be immediately obvious if a wine has been made by this method. If you’re at a cellar door or talking to winery staff, they might be able to tell you and often the tasting/technical notes for a wine will include this information.
If you want to try a Charmat method wine – check out the Golding Last Hurrah. This is an incredibly consistent sparkling from one of our favourite Adelaide Hills producers.
Last Monday (10 Feb 2020) Sommeliers Australia hosted a Riesling tasting at Mother Vine in Adelaide’s East End. There was a group of about 15 of us, including John Hughes (Mr Rieslingfreak himself) and Phil Lehmann – who were on-hand to offer some of the more technical insights into the wines.
We started off on some very familiar territory, with John’s 2018 No 2 Clare Valley Riesling and the Pewsey Vale 1961 Block 2017 from the Eden Valley. This pairing prompted the obvious question from the somms in the group about how to pick the difference in a blind tasting. The thoughts on the day were that Eden Valley is often more delicate, showing jasmine, green lime and even Bickford’s lime cordial, often a little more saline and showing more talc, while Watervale wines (in particular) are more powerful and edge towards the lemon end of the citrus spectrum. That’s not noticeably reflected in my tasting notes from the day but if you are training yourself up for blind tastings, those little differences (eg lemon vs lime) are good ones to remember and look out for. And it’s definitely going to be an excuse for me to open a Watervale and an Eden Valley Riesling side by side some time in the near future!
The next (bonus) bracket was another couple of SA Rieslings – Petaluma’s Hanlin Hill (Clare) and Phil’s Max & Me (Eden Valley) – both 2019s . In this bracket, I felt the Max&Me did show more of the chalky/talc character.
We then moved on to ‘Other Australian Riesling’ – the 2018 Pooley Margaret Pooley Tribute from Tasmania (my pick in this bracket, and possibly in the whole tasting, possibly as I’m not familiar with Tasmanian Riesling and this was great!), the 2017 Frankland Estate Poison Hill from Great Southern in Western Australia (also delicious – and my notes suggest it may look even better with oysters) and the 2018 Seppelt Drumborg from Henty in Victoria.
Next up, on to NZ and Austria. This was an interesting line up – the 2017 Framingham Classic from NZ was noticeably different from the two Austrian wines. There was definite sugar weight on the palate (I haven’t been able to find exactly what the RS is on this) and the fruit was almost swerving into stone and tropical fruit. The sugar was (as you’d expect) perfectly balanced by the acidity – and this was another great discovery for me.
The two (dry) Austrian wines, 2016 Nikolaihof Vom Stein Federspiel from the Wachau (say that three times fast!) and the 2015 Weingut Bründlmayer Heiligenstein 1er Alte Reben from the Kamptal were much more challenging wines. Both took a little while to open up and while I felt the Nikolaihof was a really interesting wine, it wasn’t really my cup of tea – although it did have some big, big fans at this tasting. The Bründlmayer was quite a bit more savoury and probably another good food wine.
Now, talking of wines taking a while to open up … we moved on to the German bracket and there ensued a really fascinating discussion about the use of sulphur. That probably warrants a whole other blog post but our first two wines were LADEN with it AND THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. Sulphur is in everything (and generally in far higher concentrations than in wine) – if you have a sulphur allergy, you will know about it. If you get a headache from wine … it’s not sulphur. Both the 2016 Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Kabinett and the JJ Prüm Graacher Himmelreich Kabinett needed a good lot of glass swirling and time in order for the sulphur to blow off. But blow off it does and you are then well-rewarded. I’m not sure I can write in an unbiased way about either of these wines as I have plenty of very positive memories associated with both producers – but I’ll give it a go. The Müller was all green apple, apple skin, a touch of saltiness (maybe think preserved lemon) and amazing length with a touch of smokiness on the finish. I’ve tried a few vintages of this now and it always seems to be such a beautiful, ethereal wine.
The Prüm was more sherbet, lemon curd and floral (honeysuckle) but again with great length.
The final wine in this bracket was a bone dry 2017 Keller Dalsheim Hubacker Trocken GG from the Rheinhessen, Germany’s warmest Riesling producing area. Much, much less sulphur and a bone dry wine with searing acidity and a spicy, green apple skin, pithy palate. Given that the tasting was geographically grouped, I understand why it sat next to the Müller and Prüm but I think a really interesting comparison would have been to have it alongside the first two South Australian Rieslings, with whom it probably had more in common style-wise than the other two German Rieslings.
The last bracket was a look at aged Rieslings from a few places – Germany, the Alsace (France) and Oregon (US). The pick of this bracket was the 2013 Georg Breuer Berg Schlossberg from the Rheingau in Germany. Apparently this winery uses a lot of old oak and a very traditional approach to winemaking – amazing length, with lots of Granny Smith apple, without the super aggressive acidity of the Keller in the previous bracket. The last two wines (2010 Trimbach Cuvée Frédéric Emile from the Alsace and the 2009 Tunkalilla Vineyard from Oregon) were both a little underwhelming. I wondered if the Trimbach had hit something of a flat spot although someone commented that they thought there was some premature oxidation (prem-ox for the cool kids) as it had a definite touch of the bruised apple character about it. The Tunkalilla felt a little simple – pleasant enough but not wowing anyone in the way some of the other wines had. Someone mentioned ‘spiced pear’ which I felt was close – think apple crumble or frangipane (the pastry, not the flower!). However, this assessment is pretty brutal because this wine actually sits at around $40 retail … considerably cheaper than some of the other wines!
In the space of 2 hours we tasted through 16 wines and had interesting discussions about sulphur, cork, Riesling grapes themselves, wine making … I’ve really only covered off my tasting notes in this post!
SommsAust events (and others like these) are always worth going to – it’s a very different kind of discussion than you have in consumer-focussed events and while you might find that some of the winemaking detail (and acronyms!) goes over your head you get to taste a really broad range of wines and the selection has always been thoughtfully put together.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to the Cellar Door Fest. I’m not the biggest fan of elbowing my way through crowds to have a taste of a wine (and, thankfully, most trade tastings don’t work like that!) and in general, February is a crazy wrangling of Fringe, Festival, return to school and the start of our WSET courses, so there’s not a lot of time or mental capacity to indulge in a day out.
But this year, I was very lucky and I won a couple of tickets for the Sunday from Artis Wines. With plenty of large event attending experience behind both me and my +1 we opted for an early start. If you want to avoid the bulk of the crowds, I absolutely recommend heading to the Cellar Door Fest on Sunday at 11. There was one year when Friday evening was very quiet – the year it opened on 14 February (scheduling mistakes – we all make them!) – but in general Friday evening is the crowd who are enjoying knock-off drinks. Saturday is CRAZY and Sunday – I guess people are still in bed and don’t want to be feeling under the weather for work on Monday.
I had a bit of a hit list of small wineries I wanted to check out and so the Emerging Producers was a great place to hang out. However, even the regionally themed areas had plenty of small producers. We actually headed to the Adelaide Hills to start because I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to Andrew at Artis.
We spent a couple of hours tasting, with a detour via Barossa Cheese – which was doing halloumi on a stick for $3 (surely the bargain of the day!) and finally wrapped up in The Distillery tasting through a few gins. By then it was time for food (from Flammekueche) and to call it a day, as it was starting to get pretty busy.
The spacing and layout is pretty good (after 10 years you’d hope they’d be on top of this) but sometimes the location of wineries felt a bit wonky – like they’d had one or two more wineries for a region/theme than they really had space for. And I felt that putting Flammekueche in the Adelaide section rather than the Food was a bit odd(we actually had to go out to the glass collection area and ask someone where to find it).
One thing the organisers are still not on top off are the spittoons and water stations. As far as I could tell there was just the one water station (near the food) and each aisle had a spittoon roughly at either end. This made it a challenge if you were tasting from a winery in the middle – especially as it got busier and you had to dodge people. My friend and I solved this problem by sharing our tastings. We reserved one glass for reds and one for whites, so we weren’t needing to rinse before tasting and we had a plastic cup which we used as a makeshift spittoon while talking to a winery. Setting up spittoons between the winery stands would be a great improvement, because even when the spittoon was relatively close you still had to move away and interrupt the conversation.
Some wine highlights to wrap up:
Cobbs Hill Estate Shooting Star Sparkling Pinot Noir – dry pink fizz – what’s not to like? Salena Estate Vermentino – a BARGAIN at $20 a bottle Artis 2016 Clare Valley Riesling – just starting to show some oiliness from bottle age – delicious! Sussex Squire Samuel’s Block Cabernet Sauvignon – super minty and moreish
And a shout out to Red Hen Gin, for what stood out as the smoothest neat gin I tasted!
It’s been a horror summer (and it’s not over) for Australia in general, and many of our beloved wine regions have been severely impacted by horrific bushfires. Close to home for Wine Academy, Christmas got off to a terrible start with a fire ripping through Cudlee Creek, in the Adelaide Hills region. Things didn’t improve, as fires then raged on Kangaroo Island for weeks. In other parts of Australia, it’s been a similar story.
So here are my thoughts on how you can best help your favourite region.
Firstly – buy direct. If you have a favourite winery that has been impacted by fires (and that doesn’t necessarily mean fire damage to any of their assets – the down tick in tourism dramatically affects everyone) buy wines directly from the winery. I know that might sound a bit strange from a retailer – but really, buy direct and the money goes directly to the winery. Don’t have a favourite winery, don’t want to buy a six pack? Then by all means – buy from retailers (like Wine Academy) because every bit does help. And all our Adelaide Hills wines can be found here.
Next – visit the region. This might be easier said than done – but for those who live in metro Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills is just a short drive up the freeway. By having lunch in a winery, and buy one (or more) bottles of wine, you’re helping ensure a region’s tourism remains sustainable. I was saddened to read that the magnificent Simon Tolley Lodge has had a run of post-fire cancellations. Simon Tolley makes great wines AND lost 80% of vines in the fires before Christmas so staying at the Lodge is a great way to support him while the business recovers from the loss of vines. But even if you can’t justify a few days away, at least head out for lunch and a winery visit. In SA, the #bookthemout campaign has recently launched to highlight just how much there is to do in both the Hills and Kangaroo Island.
Finally – donate. I’m not going to tell you where to donate BUT I do encourage you to make sure you understand where you money is going. For example, here in South Australia, the CFS Foundation supports volunteer firefighters who have suffered a loss (physical or financial) during service. Particularly if you live in an affected region, you may prefer to donate to your local brigade, which will allow them to buy otherwise unfunded equipment (defibrillators seem to be a big one). The state government administered State Emergency Relief Fund (and SA Bushfire Appeal) raises funds for people directly affected by the bushfires. And there are countless charities also raising money, not to mention gofundme (or similar) pages for individuals and businesses. I’ve not linked to any of these quite deliberately – all are equally worthy causes. Sadly, money is finite so make sure you understand the cause you’re supporting.
