Taylors Wines has pulled out of talks to acquire a portfolio of labels from Treasury Wine Estates, but managing director Mitchell Taylor says further consolidation in the industry is likely and his company is ready to pounce when the right opportunities emerge. Vineyard and winery assets have poured onto the market in the aftermath of the damaging Chinese tariffs, which paralysed the Australian industry for three years before being lifted in March last year. Taylors, a large private producer based in SA’s Clare Valley, confirmed in October it was running the rule over some of Treasury’s commercial wine brands –including Wolf Blass, Lindeman’s, Yellowglen and Blossom Hill – which the ASX-listed group has been looking to exit from. Source: The Australian
Felton Road’s path to carbon neutrality
The co-owner of one of New Zealand’s most prestigious wineries wants to change the world – one bottle at a time. Felton Road is situated in Central Otago, a blessed spot on the globe in that (at the time of writing) it has suffered no extreme weather events, no great changes in harvest dates. “Either we’re paying off the right person, or we’re exceptionally lucky,” said Nigel Greening. It’s technically a desert, with just 380-400ml rain per year, and the Southern Ocean keeps it cool. “It gives Central Otago a holiday from the worst that can happen,” he said. “Cyclones are driven by sea temperature. It’s probably because the Antarctic is melting – which puts shivers down my spine. The loss of ice sheets is keeping us cool.”
Source: Wine-Searcher
Family-owned Adelaide winery hits the market after nearly a century
A southern suburbs-based winery and associated vineyards in McLaren Vale have been put up for sale, with the family behind the business looking to exit the wine industry. The land and business associated with the wine brand Patritti were listed for sale, with CBRE agents brokering the Dover Gardens winery and McLaren Vale vineyards divestments. CBRE noted the Dover Gardens winery – the last remaining family-owned suburban winery in Adelaide – is ripe for development. If sold, it would mean the descendants of the business’ founder would be exiting the industry nearly 100 years after Giovanni Patritti started the company. Source: InDaily
In this issue
I grafted the first Chardonnay myself in the field with some cuttings from John Gehrig Wines at Oxley, near here. He said this came from an old Seppelts vineyard at Corowa that was there in the ‘70s and he said it was Penfolds P58. I have largely stuck with this clone. The largest part was grafted onto Schwarzman rootstock, which I then found out was not recommended! However, I now consider this is the best combination and more recent plantings have gone back to this.
Rick Kinzbrunner, page 52
You can expect to encounter plenty of dismissiveness towards Merlot as a standalone variety around the Margaret River subregion of Wilyabrup especially – and this prejudice appears to have become entrenched sometime in the 1990s. It’s because Merlot was associated with cheap and boring one-dimensional bulk wines that so many of the region’s first-wave winemakers – never the type to flinch from their aspiration to market wines with ultra-premium prices – felt it was hardly worth the risk to Brand Margaret River to stoop to that variety’s lowliness.
Edward Cavanagh, page 32
The exciting thing about Australian Chardonnay is we make a whole range of styles, and we make them to a high level of quality. There’s a lot of really good investment in oak and winemaking, which is allowing us to make these fabulous wines. And why they are great is they have generosity of flavour, but also finesse and complexity and delicacy. So we’re able to—with the cooler climates which are around our southern coastline—we manage to get flavour, but also keep acidity as well.
Angus Hughson, page 80
When the tariffs on Australian wine were removed at the end of March 2024, Australia began to claw back to its previous dominant place. But the overall size of China’s wine market has been rising much more slowly post-COVID than was expected. At least three factors are at play in reducing China’s wine demand growth. One is the large stocks of unsold wine sitting in warehouses waiting for a post-COVID recovery. Another is the surplus housing crisis, which is sapping the confidence of consumers and investors – one consequence of which is a slowdown in economic growth to less than half the pace of the first thirty years of opening up. And thirdly, trade tensions with the US and EU are rising and bringing with them greater uncertainty.
Kym Anderson, page 74
Looking for Merlot in Margaret River (where it’s Cabernet for days)
By Edward Cavanagh
People come from all across the world to visit Margaret River, in southwest Western Australia, just for its Cabernet Sauvignon.
Traditionally, most Cabernet in the region is made from the fruit of innately lowish-yielding ‘Houghton clone’ vines, the majority of which were planted 20 or 30 years ago. Some of these Houghton clone Cabernet vines have been in the ground for over 50 years though, which makes the yields even lower. Bad for the bottom line, it’s often good for the quality of wine that they struggle to produce fruit like the old Houghton vines do (and more especially those which are dry-grown and not irrigated). The tannins ripen late and the flavour profile of these little berries can often be rich, rewarding, and more concentrated in flavour when they’re not full of water. After it becomes wine, it’s often savoury on the nose and on the palate, with distinctive hints of graphite and cedar –or pencil-end. Red fruit and black fruit flavours and aromas are the norm; so too is a leafy character more approximate of eucalypt than mint, but this factor will depend on the block in question and also the picking schedule.
Among other things, this has led to a misconception among many drinkers –and even wine educators, including the WSET –that a predictably boring medium-mediummedium style of Merlot is somehow varietally innate to it.
There have always been a few other Cabernet clones in Margaret River, among them 125, 126, 191 and 337 (some of them newer to the scene than others). What’s been happening more recently, and just in the past few years, is a commitment in key vineyards to undertaking a properly polyclonal approach to Cabernet plantings. While a few vineyard nurseries have been secretly playing around with different cuttings for the last decade at least, a more systematic approach to polyclonal Cabernet is taking place, with the help of industry funding, at the Cowaramup vineyard of Howard Park.
It’s a project that provides yet more proof, if any more were even needed, that Margaret River wants to be seen as a serious producer of Cabernet Sauvignon. But as for Merlot?
Well, that’s a different story. On the left bank of Bordeaux, Merlot is commonly used to provide a bit of fruit and reinforcement to Cabernetdominant blends, but on the right bank of Bordeaux – and more especially in Saint Emilion and Pomerol – Merlot
is usually the prevailing variety. Where the soils there are denser with soft clay and the seasons are ever so slightly shorter, Merlot tends to ripen with bigger berries and thinner skins. And where the vines are found to be struggling a bit, and the season runs for just the right length, the resulting fruit from these parts can often be outstanding. It’s part of the reason why bottles of Petrus and Angelus cost as much as they do. That – and the classé system is clearly corrupt, of course, which is the take-home message from Isabelle Saporti’s Vino Business.
It is a shame that Merlot has come to be planted everywhere around the world outside of Bordeaux for no other reason than it’s a pretty easy-going variety to grow that will produce a smooth and medium-bodied wine in most conditions. From the 1980s right up to the present day, Merlot has been massproduced ubiquitously in boring and ‘easy-drinking’ styles at cheap prices and marketed to people who, well, don’t really drink wine. Among other things, this has led to a misconception among many drinkers – and even wine educators, including the WSET – that a predictably boring medium-mediummedium style of Merlot is somehow varietally innate to it.
If there’s someone you know who needs to read that paragraph, please take a photo of it and send it their way.
Probably the most important of Merlot’s pioneers in Margaret River was Erl Happ. He may not have been the first to plant Merlot in Margaret River, and he certainly wasn’t the first ever to think about giving Merlot a go in Margaret River, but he was definitely the only vigneron to embrace the nickname of ‘Merlot man’ for the zeal with which he promoted the merits of the variety throughout the 1980s. And, to this day, Happs Merlot is pretty amazing at the very low prices that you can pick them up for: both their entry-level and middletier single-varietal Merlots, which are made by Mark Warren, are way better than they should be at the price.
Most Merlot in Margaret River is blended into a minority-supporting role for majority Cabernet – such is the region’s ongoing aspiration to follow the left-bank leader. In a blend, Merlot provides additional reinforcement to the middle palate, where it can round out
the overly tannic and leafy dried-berry features of a Cabernet with plummy, redfruit juiciness. Plums, ripe cherries and dark chocolate are all crowned off at the top of the bowl by the naughtiest cooling-mint phenolic component. You can smell this from a metre away and boy do your legs buckle.
You can expect to encounter plenty of dismissiveness towards Merlot as a standalone variety around the Margaret River subregion of Wilyabrup especially – and this prejudice appears to have become entrenched sometime in the 1990s. It’s because Merlot was associated with cheap and boring one-dimensional bulk wines that so many of the region’s first-wave winemakers – never the type to flinch from their aspiration to market wines with ultra-premium prices – felt it was hardly worth the risk to Brand Margaret River to stoop to that variety’s lowliness.
There may be other reasons for this, founded or unfounded.
I distinctly recall one viticulturist telling me that it’s impossible to grow Merlot in Wilyabrup without expecting the fruit to take on undesirable aromatics of barnyard and cowshit in the winery. Neglect is the only possible viticultural reason that my mind is able to conceive for such a result. Which, of course, in its way, makes sense: prioritisation of the needs of Cabernet – Wilyabrup’s moneymaker – may all-too-often relegate Merlot to a see-how-it-goes kind of vineyard regime.
Most Merlot in Margaret River is blended into a minority-supporting role for majority Cabernet, pictured growing in the vineyard of Howard Park Wines
Around the blend
Co-fermentation and new responses to age old problems
Winemaker and writer Paul Le Lacheur takes us through approaches to the process of blending multiple varieties, to produce more complex and rewarding wines.
Historically, natural variation in picking conditions may have favoured picking different varieties at the same time. Even in just a single vineyard row it was common to see multiple varieties planted together. This practice of field blending continues today, but the important difference between it and co-fermentation is that field blending allowed separate ferments. Post ferment, blending could occur if the parcels were compatible, or indeed if a degree of synergy was evident or projected.
Although originally a northern Rhône specialty, co-fermentation (especially of around 10% Viognier with Shiraz), is now widely used in the New World. Co-pigmentation is another desirable result of the process. Red wine colour is stabilised and deepened, from red hues to purple ones, via the molecular interaction between anthocyanins and colourless phenolic compounds called ‘co-factors’. For co-pigmentation to be really effective, the red fruit used must be relatively low in these co-factors and the white fruit necessarily fairly high in them. This will invariably favour the formation of highly stable, long molecular chains which resist the tendency to degrade through oxidation over time. Speaking of tannins, the addition of oeno-tannins is one historical sin which is now not only forgiven but has become an accepted mainstream oenological practice. Volumes can vary in the range from 50 to 1,000 mg/L (Sijing Li et al. 2018). They should be added when the cell wall material suspended in the must is low. This typically
occurs at the fermentation endpoint or sometimes immediately after pressing. Those forms of oeno-tannins with a smaller proportion of high molecular mass tannin should be used in order to counter the loss if tannins over time. Often these compounds are derived from skins. Tannin structure leads us to the growing favouritism for co-fermentation.
Fast forward to today’s brigade of oenological thinkers and you’ll find people like Elena Brooks, winemaker at McLaren Vale’s Dandelion Vineyards, developing complexity by using co-fermentation.
“Long-lived, dry grown Eden Valley Riesling is picked for our varietal Riesling. We only use the free run juice in that wine, but in our Lions Tooth Shiraz, we fork in somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent Riesling skins, […] usually a maximum of 8%,” observed Elena.
Is it discernibly different? No, but the synergy between Riesling and Shiraz is notable, as it gives a plushness and aromatic richness “which definitely suits our warm climate McLaren Vale Shiraz,” she joyfully added. Strangely, some people are still constrained by their thinking that Riesling may not have much to contribute to the profile of a co-fermented wine.
“We use Riesling to add tannin and natural acidity to our Shiraz,” Elena explained. “It’s not just all about fruit and aromatics. I believe that Riesling changes the wine and its aromatic profile from ‘fruits’ to ‘florals’. Importantly, its restraint makes the difference.
“The most we’ve ever used is 8%, but usually its around 5% and up to a ceiling of 10%.
Blending Shiraz and Viognier at Clonakillla winery in the Canberra district
