Mornington Peninsula

Pinot noir is effectively a proxy for cool climate, and in the Burgundian model, where pinot noir does well, chardonnay is sure to follow. Perfume, brightness of fruit and vivacity of body should be hallmarks of cool climate wines, so when Wine Australia held a tasting in London during November of wines from Victoria that are available in the UK, these are the two varieties I stuck with, and I still didn’t manage to taste them all.

Australia, with many of the top examples coming from Victoria, has revolutionised its approach to these two grape varieties in the last, less-than-a-decade. Practitioners who are making classy pinot noir have often worked vintages in Burgundy at high profile domaines, and are bringing back to Australia the philosophy and practicalities around site-specificity required by such a capricious grape variety.

Attitudes to chardonnay, traditionally in Australia the winemakers’ malleable friend, are also revolving to much less active involvement. Instead, minimal intervention and more fruit-caretaking are leading to more refined, linear, even austere, expressions of this grape.

In Victoria, specific sites within such places as Mornington Peninsula, Geelong, Gippsland, Yarra Valley and Macedon Ranges are all making some outstanding examples.

Tasting notes, London, November 2011

Chardonnay

Crittenden Estate, Estate Chardonnay 2008, Mornington Peninsula, ~£18
Sweet leesy cream nose and palate with tropical fruit, and I feel a bit of an alcohol kick though it’s a pretty standard 13.5%.

Crittenden Estate, The Zumma Chardonnay 2008, Mornington Peninsula, ~£25
Creamy lemon on dry brown toast to nose, verging on the buttery sweet, which detracts a little for me. Sweet, unctuous sort of style, has good backbone, but a bit full-fat for my preference.

Dexter Wines, Chardonnay 2010 Mornington Peninsula, ~£25
Mealy and a hint reductive in that leesy, crème fraiche sort of way. Lovely sweet texture that’s not overpowering and with an acid frame that keeps everything fresh and tingly.

Kooyong Estate, Clonale Chardonnay 2010, Mornington Peninsula, ~£15
Light and leesy – meal, brioche, with sweet notes amid citrus fruits. Uncomplicated.

Kooyong Estate, Farrago Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2005, Mornington Peninsula, ~£26
Fatness and slippery broadening texture of some age, vegetal would be a bit strong, but still with savoury, leesy lines (as opposed to sweet lines), bread and dry biscuit notes, hints of sweet texture come towards the back. Lovely balance.

Stonier, Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£12
Sweet lemon cream nose and palate in quite a sharp lemon-syllabub sort of tartness. Softens on the palate into a good example at the price. Balanced, uncomplicated.

Stonier, Reserve Chardonnay 2008, Mornington Peninsula, ~£18
Weightier that the straight chardonnay as you’d expect, with some aromatic tarriness on the nose. Everything in the right place, but can’t quite get excited.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, 10X Chardonnay 2010, Mornington Peninsula, ~£24
Closed nose, in reductive style of slight sweat / flinty element, mealy notes amid just-ripe peaches on the palate attack, rich-linear profile of good intensity. Good personality and dimension. Some nice sophistication here, very good.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, Estate, Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£35
Wafting wood smoke is the first nose, slippery-textured attack, very smooth and richly concentrated. ‘Nice’ biscuitiness, almost unctuous-dry texture with linearity and clarity.  Vg.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, McCutcheon Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£45
Cream, leesy gentle toastiness, richness and creaminess are the themes, sweet-dry textured.  A huge wine, but finely balanced and sweetly balanced for that. Seductive and blanket-wrapping cuddliness at the same time. Vg.

Yabby Lake, Red Claw Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£15
A bit gunflint and austere, lean lemons and acacia-steel sort of stuff.  Good volume of that apple tart fruit, with a bit of leesy cream alongside. Good at £15.

Yabby Lake, Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£26
Lees, meal, lemon cream, steely/metallic note on the mid tongue. Austerity, or, at 12%, just not quite ripe?

By Farr, Geelong Chardonnay 2008, Geelong, ~£34
Meal, white peachiness, huge intensity of ripe, near tropical fruit amid that leesy, toasty refinement, erring to full body, in quite muscular style, and with backbone of defining acidity. Not a particularly elegant wine but has a well-proportioned balance.

De Bortoli, Reserve Release Chardonnay 2008, Yarra Valley, ~£20
Lees and crème fraiche. Sweet texture and purity of fruit without huge complexity, but packs a lot of those lovely, sweet-line chardonnay characters into a straight down the line wine.

Pinot noir

Crittenden Estate, Estate Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£18
Crunchy black cherries with attractive hessian notes, nicely balanced with fresh core. Good intensity.

Crittenden Estate, The Zumma Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£25
Fresh and juicy, with very nice concentration of primary fruit. Good.

Dexter Wines, Pinot Noir 2010, Mornington Peninsula, ~£20
Pale colour, bright, sweet red cherry fruit, juicy succulence, enticing density of fruit with sweet lines. Lovely drinkability.

Kooyong Estate, Massale Pinot noir 2010, Mornington Peninsula, ~£16
Rich, round sweet footballs of juicy red plums and redcurrants. Sweet balance and uncomplicated juiciness. Focuses on the primary fruit, with the backbone of acidity, so not a fruit bomb.

Kooyong Estate, Haven Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2005, Mornington Peninsula, ~£28
Developing a nice feral forest floor on the nose, dark berries, sweetened and fattened with ripeness, with a savoury spear of structure keeping the whole in its pure lines. Some nice sophistication of texture and dimension here. Vg.

Paringa Estate, Peninsula Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£25
Warm herbal and earthy note on the nose, supple fruit with firm defining acidity, medium full body of huge intensity. Richly textured and layered with light bramble fruits and graphite earthiness. Vg.

Stonier, Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£13
All quite light and with a faint hint of bitterness. Not hugely liking this one.

Stonier, Reserve Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£20
Pale colour, redcurrant spiciness nutmeg and allspice. This is nice in a good ’solid’ unexciting way. Sound, but at a high level of soundness.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, 10X Pinot Noir 2010, Mornington Peninsula, ~£28
Bright, sweet red cherry and redcurrant, big hit of fruit delineated by freshness that gives it form. Perkily balanced with nicely toned lines. Vg.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, Estate Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£38
Smokiness an added note of complexity here, amid dark cherries and hint of dark chocolate, in a full, rich, nutmeg infused whole. Fine grains of new oak still to meld in, as are youthful notes of silkiness. Vg.

Ten Minutes by Tractor, McCutcheon Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£55
Smoke with hint of charcoal, on the nose, smooth, super-fine grained tannin in rich, lush (dry) palate sensation. Is a seductive, strong and slinkily built wine. Filling out on the palate nicely. Long finish. Vg.

Yabby Lake, Red Claw Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£22
Pale colour, spicily toasted redcurrants, medium weight, bit of austerity here too, certainly less fleshy than some other examples. Gentle, modest texture.

Yabby Lake, Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula, ~£29
Sweet red cherry/redcurrant compote on the nose, enticing and cuddling. Perfectly proportioned tonality with intoxicating fruit/acid balance and volume of fruit/ nutmeg spiciness on the palate. Vg.

By Farr, Tout Près Pinot Noir 2008, Geelong, ~£65
Aromatic smoky with a hint of graphite on the nose. Sun-dried cherries attack the palate sweetly and freshly, warming into a full bodied, big style for pinot noir. Succulent, juicy, and with retaining frame that keeps the whole thing tastily proportioned. Long finish. Vg

William Downie, Gippsland Pinot Noir 2010, Gippsland, ~£35.00
Earth, dry compost and high-toned raspberries on the nose, an intriguing combination. Full steam ahead on the palate, rich, tongue-tingling, fresh dried raspberries and strawberry pieces; savoury, not quite earthy/graphite core. Hints of tannic grip, just enough to intrigue and critique, without losing the pleasure of tasting/drinking. Just young. Vg.

Ihringer Winklerberg, Baden

Germany has long kept secret its world class pinot noirs, or spätburgunder, though over the past few years has been slowly letting in the rest of the world on these wonderful wines.  Indeed, they hit the headlines in the UK recently, when German versions of this grape variety hauled seven out of the top ten spots in an international blind tasting, tasted almost solely by UK trade folk.

It surprises many to learn of the extent of pinot noir in Germany. It was only after the planting boom in the USA that followed on from the 2004 Sideways film, that Germany’s increasing plantings of pinot noir fell into third place. It has 11,300 hectares, behind the USA’s 15,000 hectares and France’s 30,000 hectares, (including the 13,000ha that go into producing Champagne).

At this modest, medium-term increase in plantings, pinot noir, which also ranks the third most planted variety within Germany, is beginning to give the country’s most planted grape variety, riesling, a run for its money.  Plantings of second-placed rivaner (Müller Thurgau), declined by a third in the decade to 2010, whilst spätburgunder increased by more than 20% in the same period. At this rate it will be only a couple of years before spätburgunder moves into the number two slot.

As to where pinot noir is grown in Germany, more than three quarters of is found in just three regions – Baden, with 5,743 ha, Pfalz, with 1,588ha and Rheinhessen, with 1,363 ha.  Baden is a 50km eastwards hop across the south-north flowing river Rhine from Alsace, whilst Pfalz and Rheinhessen are a geographic northward extension of the Alsace vineyards on the left bank of the Rhine. So the variety hasn’t migrated too far from its Burgundian origins. Indeed it had been the Cistercian monks who brought the variety to Baden in the 13^th century from Clairvaux in Burgundy.

In the south west corner of Germany, Baden alone accounts for more than half of pinot noir plantings. And it is the volcanic, Kaiserstuhl mountain where the variety performs its best. This southerly region gets the best of the sunshine and is warm by cool, northern European standards.  Warm air is also drawn up from the distant Mediterranean sea, crossing the Belfort Gap, or Burgundy Gate, which is a lower lying plateau between the southernmost end of the Vosges mountains and the northern end of the Jura mountains.

Kaiserstuhl, almost uniquely in the wine world, has limestone melted into the volcanic lava, so pinot noir was a good bet to plant here. Arne Bercher of Weingut Bercher, whose family have been making wine in the Kaiserstuhl for over 300 years, explained “pinot noir does nicely in Kaiserstuhl because of the minerally volcanic soils. It is something that sets this region apart from Baden and the rest of Germany.  The wines have higher ageing potential” he added “and take longer to develop.”

Tasting notes, in situ, August 2011

Weingut Manz, Oppenheimer Herrenberg, Spätburgunder Trocken Kalkstein 2007, Rheinhessn €12.50
13.5%. 30% new oak. Sweet cherry and blueberry fruits on the perfumed nose. Palate attack has aromatic tarry hints. Smooth, and nicely balanced. Decent.

Weingut Manz, Oppenheimer Herrenberg, Spätburgunder Trocken M *** 2007, Rheinhessen €18.50
14%; all new oak. Bit of spicy rumtopf on the nose, then more pinot noir character comes through on palate attack with darkly spiced cherries, though this is erring to nice red wine, rather than wine with typical pinot noir attributes.  Texture is attractively smooth, and wine has in-palate length with positive evolution of flavours. Good wine.

Weingut Eckehart Gröhl, Blauer Spätburgunder Trocken Alte Reben 2009. €9
1,200 to 5,000 litre oak casks used for his ‘basic’ quality. Bright cherry fruit, with smooth, crunchy, clean, fruit clarity. Good varietal definition, and medium length. More than an everyday pinot noir.  Good.

Weingut Eckehart Gröhl, Oppenheimer Herrenberg, Pinot Noir Trocken, in barrique, 2006, €18
14%, 80% new French oak, on yeast for two years. Dark char and curry spices, smooth and sweet palate, warmth coming through. Quite muscley, and in a strong red wine sort of way.

Britzingen Winzergenossenschaft, Muggardt, Britzinger Spätburgunder QbA trocken 2008
Muggardt, a 1.5ha vineyard at 400m in Black Forest, on a very steep, south-facing limestone slope, owned by the co-op and two individuals. New barriques and older oak. Planted 2004, with first vintage in 2006.
Medium pale, aromatic, hint of perfumed tar. Fresh and perky acidity, nicely balanced with crunchy fruit intensity. Smooth, fine grained texture. Really nice and refreshing, not so complex, but potential is there. Immediately vg.

Dr. Heger, Mimus, Ihringer Winklerberg, Spätburgunder Barrique Trocken 2007
Very pale colour. Light, juicy red cherry, youthful, quite bit spiciness mid palate with elegant fruit. Good.

Dr Heger, Ihringer Winklerberg, Spätburgunder, Grosses Gewäches, Barrique trocken 2008
30% whole clusters of German clones. Floral cherry nose, light entry, savoury, tarry spice core with dry baked red cherry. Elegantly intense. Good

Dr. Heger, Ihringer Winklerberg, Spätburgunder, Grosses Gewäches Barrique trocken ‘Hausleboden” 2009
Oldest vineyards, planted 1954. Pale cherry colour. Juicy, red cherry, smooth, fine-grained texture, complex and seriously textured, in filigree fashion. Wholesome, seamless and ridiculously tasty.

Weingut Bercher, Jechtinger Eichert, Spätburgunder Spätlese Trocken 2008
Medium pale, red cherry colour. Bright, juicy red cherry nose, smooth attack, wild strawberries. Supple, sweet berry fruit with savoury backbone. Nice.

Weingut Bercher, Feuerberg, Spätburgunder Grosses Gewäches 2008
40% new barriques. Pure south slope. Dark cherry colour. Hint rumptof, rich, full body, quite chewy mid palate. Hints of graphite. A muscley style that’s well balanced and should mellow. Good.

My research trip was sponsored by Deutsches Weininstitut.

Having graduated in 1991, his CV includes stints at Coldstream Hills and at Knappstein where he was involved with the first two vintages of Lenswood pinot noir from the Adelaide Hills. He is now the winemaker at Yabby Lake in Mornington Peninsula, where he moved in 2008 after a 12-year sojourn at Yering Station in the Yarra Valley. Amongst all of this he has worked five vintages in France, a couple in Champagne and three in Burgundy, most recently, in 2000, with Bernard Moreau in Chassagne Montrachet.

Carson said what he learnt in Burgundy was “respect for the land and the vineyard. The time-honoured wealth of knowledge in Burgundy is something you can’t pick up in a four week vintage. It comes from generations of farming.  But it puts some perspective on what we’re doing in Australia. We can’t rush it.”

Thus he speaks of prospects and future in Australia, saying the Yabby Lake site “has huge potential, it seems the foundation of quality is high” and he’s just itching for the vines to age to see what they are capable of in maturity. But already he said “the wines are really precise, detailed, they have presence, purity and integrity.”

In finding those sites of potential, Carson discusses the four parameters of acid, sugar, phenolic ripeness and flavour, likening them to four clocks, saying “if they’re all running in the same time zone and at the same rate, if they all intersect at this nice point where you harvest the fruit, then you have wine that’s inherently balanced,” adding “when you have the site right, the components of the fruit seem to work in synch. As it reaches ideal ripeness, acid falling at a slow rate, the balance, the flavour is there.” It’s only when the clocks work out of synch that the winemaker needs to do something to bring back the balance.

But when the clocks are in synch, “the sites that can produce fruit that has this inherent balance, then the wines need virtually no winemaking except judicious care to be able to produce wine that reflects where it’s grown, and its balanced.”  He makes it all sound so easy. 

This is probably why he also said “the best wines I’ve made are the easiest. When it’s right in the vineyard and we’ve picked at what we feel is the ideal moment, they look good on vine, and every time you look at them they look good. There’s very little manipulation or invention winemaking. They tend to look after themselves.”

This is not to say that minor adjustments “at the edges may be required in some years because of the marginal climate.” It’s the cool-marginal climate that offers the opportunities to synchronise the clocks, but it doesn’t happen every year, because cool marginal can be rather unpredictable, which is why the wines reflect the vagaries of each vintage.  Carson said “we haven’t added acid to chardonnay for years. With pinot noir most years we don’t, and some years we may need to add a very small amount.  Like in Burgundy, usually they don’t need to chaptalise, but sometimes you need to add a tiny bit of sugar.”

Carson is deliberately seeking that reflection of vintage, of season, saying “we want the wines to reflect different personalities from the site, and primarily from the season. Of all the great wines we talk about, it’s the season that has the biggest impact on flavour, texture, weight and balance.”  

And to this end, Carson needs to change the business model of the Aussie winemaker. He said “the future is the vineyard – a combination of winemaker, viticulturist and site.  It’s more of a vigneron feel, with the winemaker as a piece in the puzzle, not the game changer.”

At least he’s not completely alone in this gargantuan task, there’s a growing band of admirably tall poppies in this vanguard.

He kicked off by suggesting more attention should be paid to the time and place from which wines originate, saying “I think people judge a wine on quality in Australia without a reference for where the wines are grown. But to really understand Australian wine better, you have to put it in the context of terroir, of where and when the grapes were grown and harvested.”

He built his theme by adding, that at the top end of Australian wine, “wines are a little piece and moment in time, and from a particular place” and that people need to take this next step in their pursuit and understanding of Aussie wine. “The best wines for me” he said “are those with the purest expression of their moment in space and time, uncluttered by winemaking.” Carson’s aim is to “make wines that are unique of where they’re grown [to show] the purest, uncluttered, seamless, precise, fine expression of purity.”

For this tasting seminar, he selected mostly wines from the 2009 vintage, the year of the deathly bush fires in Victoria which killed 173 people, when temperatures on ‘black Saturday’ reached over 47°C with 120 km/h north winds.  For the vines, which recovered after the heat, Carson said “it was generally a slightly cooler than average season. There was a heat spike in southern Victoria in late January, three days in a row which broke all previous records – 43.5°C, 44.5°C, 45.5°C at Melbourne weather station. But previous to that spring was quite mild, winter was okay in terms of rain, but we were still in the midst of a severe drought since 1997, with 13 years of consecutive lower than average rainfall figures.” There was a lot of sunburnt fruit, and vines shut down.

Kooyong

Of the first six chardonnays tasted, they saw fairly similar winemaking.  Carson said there is “a movement where Australia is now making finer, more balanced chardonnay, with lower oak, not too high in alcohol, and better balanced acidity.” These wines have been here in the cooler areas of Australia, but until now, they didn’t have too much of a voice. For example, at Yabby Lake he said, the fruit “is hand-picked, whole bunch pressed and crushed fruit with full solids and natural fermentation. There’s no malo in ours; it’s been on lees for 11-12 months, just 8-10% new oak, in 500 litre barrels, so you get the framing of new oak but not the full whack of new barrique.”

Part of the movement to cooler zones and more site expression is the choice of clones.  Carson said “a lot of Aussie chardonnay is made from clones promoted in the early 1980s – the I clones, I10, V1, V3 and V5 – where the idea was if it yielded a lot, it was a good clone.” Reflections of European viticulture in the 70s are all too apparent.  Carson’s preference is for Penfolds 58, which he said dates to the first shipment of vines to Australia by James Busby, and the Mendoza clone, “which has a lot of hen and chicken, it’s low yielding and retains natural acidity well.”

Other winemaking themes that are occurring at this level are a “steering away from overly stirring wine [on its lees], and a pulling back on the malo” which lowers acidity.  What might be needed in cooler Chablis and Burgundy, might not be needed in Australia.

For the pinot noir, Carson adopted a similar focus on mainly 2009. He said that while “pinot noir has a long history in Australia, it’s been there since the 1830s Busby cuttings, it was not till the 1970s that people started getting serous about it, planting it in regions where it would perform well.”  In Mornington Peninsula, Main Ridge first started pinot noir in 1975, Bannockburn in Geelong in the ‘70s also. With his tongue in his cheek, Carson added “we getting up towards a 40-year period, we just have 1,960 years to catch up on the experience of Burgundy.”

Not, he emphasised, that Bugundy is a point of comparison “but as a reference point as to what’s possible with the grapes.” Aussies are definitely making Aussie pinot noir. And what’s exciting Carson is “we have all this clear space to go on a journey with particular vineyards and see how they progress. [Even] over a five year period we see a quality improvement.”

We might only have been tasting wines from three regions around Melbourne, but both the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula are sizeable regions. Yarra elevations range from 80-90m on the valley floor, up to 500m.  “There can be five weeks difference in picking time for the same variety” Carson said, with the style being richer than Mornington Peninsula, with more stone fruit.

Mornington Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water, has clear distinctions between the northern and southern ends. Carson said “the northern end is 60-100m [Yabby Lake, Kooyong, Mooroduc] and the southern end [Ten Minutes By Tractor, Eldridge Estate] goes up to 250m on red volcanic soils”, adding “the south is a bit more fine, elegant, [while] there’s more power in the north.” The style, he added is a bit more reserved [than the Yarra], more flint and minerality and more floral.

Wine tasting, blind, London, July 19, 2011

A couple of ringers in this line up – chardonnay and pinot noir from both Burgundy and New Zealand were included in the line up. Though we were only told half way through.

Themes worthy of note

A lightness of alcohol in almost all the wines marks part of a newish trend in Australia to find areas where fruit ripens before too many sugars have accumulated in the berries.  The fruit is generally more elegant, and more aromatic as heat hasn’t blown off the aromas from the fruit. But one of the risks of harvesting with lower sugars is that of leaner fruit and acidity, which is a bit of a strange new thing to get to grips with when trying to understand Australian wines.

A lowering of new oak regime. No longer are Aussie wines 100% fermented in 100% new oak. Judicious use of oak, new and older, or bigger, is becoming more widespread, especially where winemakers are looking to craft a wine that is representative of the place it comes from.

Eldridge Estate, Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula
13.3%. Creamy, honeyed toast, rich and quite fat on the nose, followed by scents of melon and butterscotch. Fine, lean attack, then alcohol makes itself felt.  A disappointing palate after the build-up of the nose. Quite skinny on the palate, citrus, melon, hints of tar, and that warmth at the back. The oak is still integrating, it’s a bit raw, to pick nits.

Kooyong, Faultline Chardonnay 2009, Mornington Peninsula
12.5%. Steely, leesy, enticing nose. Gentle attack, smooth and focused. Lemon, sweet ripe melon, with some attractive succulence. Fine and integrated. Good.  Tastes ‘cool’.

Yabby Lake, Chardonnay 2009, Tuerong, Mornington Peninsula.
12%. Dark brioche, toast and plenty of aromatic tar.  Attack is lean, acidity verging on tart, which disappoints, though it does open up in the glass. Still overly skinny for my palate.

Shadowfax, Chardonnay 2009, Victoria
13%. Blend of fruit from Macedon Ranges, Gippsland, Geelong, Beechworth
Wafting smoke, dried honey, peaches and creamy lees. Citrus and white peach in the mouth with a smooth and integrated palate texture. Silky components coming in here. Rich in intensity, with attractive complexity and layering. Very good.

Kumeu River, Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2009, Kumeu, Auckland, New Zealand
12.5%. White nectarine, with smoke and aromatic tar on nose and palate. Honeyed toast with hints of charcoal, making it a bit too smoky for my palate.

De Bortoli, Estate Grown Chardonnay 2008, Dixon’s Creek, Yarra Valley
12.5%. classic peaches and cream, combined with rich, leesy weight on the palate attack.  Smooth textured and integrated with warm and enticing embrace. Good.

Yering Station, Estate Chardonnay 2009, Yarra Valley
White peaches and fresh citrus in a light and elegant nose.  Palate is citrus, mealy even, with sweetness of juicily-dripping melon and fresh, white peach fruit on the palate. Nicely balanced, with long finish. Good.

Giant Steps, Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay 2009, Warramate Ranges, Yarra Valley
Carson: “This vineyard on the valley floor, an exposed site on steep north facing slopes, a warmer site in the valley.”
Peaches and meal, with enticing rich, leesy nose, erring to full body where the previous have been medium bodied, and still with fresh core and rich frame.  Attractive immediate and with the gravitas of something more serious. A more overt oaky expression here – overt, but not excessive. Good.

Yabby Lake, Block 1 Chardonnay 2009, Tuerong, Mornington Peninsula
A blend of P58 and Mendoza clones. Only 1,000 bottles made.
Leesy, with hints of aromatic toast and tarry attack, then I find the acid a bit lean on the mid palate. It’s looking for restraint, but I find this a bit mean.

Domaine Philippe Colin, Chassagne Montrachet 1er Cru Les Chenevottes 2009, Burgundy
13.5%. Tropical, yellow peachy nose and palate attack. Ripe with gras, a bit of weight and good proportion. Warm, embracing texture (not heat from alcohol), and erring to attractive lushness. Long and really very good.

Oakridge, Chardonnay 2009, Yarra Valley
13%.  White peach, lees with steely backbone running through the core. Fresh and bright with sweet stone fruits and enticing brightness. Nicely balanced, proportioned and long.  Tasty and good.

Coldstream Hills, Chardonnay 2010, Yarra Valley
13%. Something a bit herbal and leafy on the nose of this one. Still a bit leafy on the palate, fennel and sage, palate opens up into savoury notes. Then the finish is warmer (alcohol) than the nose suggests it might be, resulting in something a bit disjointed for me.
Addendum: perhaps the wine, being 2010, is yet to settle into its skin?

De Bortoli, Estate Grown Pinot Noir 2008, Dixon’s Creek, Yarra Valley
13%. Brick red, ageing rim. Perfumed, with baked red cherry pie. Wild strawberries and minute-roasted raspberries on the nose. Dry with savoury core and elegant backbone. Very good, fully mature wine.
Addendum:  mature too soon?

By Farr, Pinot Noir Tout Pres 2008, Bannockburn, Geelong
Medium pale, aromatic, with crunchy perfume and black tar. Hints of tomato leaf on first nose, then fruit quite lush on palate. Smoky and tarry, in big muscley style.

Eldridge Estate, Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Bright, almost purple hue to the rim, in pale depth. Bright palate attack, not so pinot noir-like, more extracted, heavier, maybe, thought still appropriately pale colour. A bit more like red wine rather than pinot noir, and nice red wine for that, but varietal definition is missing for me.

Stonier Wines, Reserve Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Crunchy and dark berry fruits, core of fresh tannin, again less elegant/filigree that I would expect of pinot noir. Quite big, toned rather than muscley, hint chewy even. Good for all of that, a different (warm?) style.

Ten Minutes By Tractor, McCutcheon Vineyard Pinot Noir, 2009, Main Ridge, Mornington Peninsula
Crunchy, with tiniest hint of VA. Warm and baked red cherries and raspberries, erring to immediately attractive lushness on the mid palate. Heading to a full-bodied wine with warm alcohol. Rich with framing new oak and fleshy fruit. Plenty going here, and I like this multi-levelled style.

Yabby Lake, Pinot Noir 2009, Tuerong, Mornington Peninsula
13.9%. Delicate nose, fresh aromatic strawberries and cherries. Balanced and smoothly textured with savoury, graphite line through the core, showing some sophistication and seamless integration. Youthful. Good.

Yabby Lake, Block 2 Pinot Noir 2009, Tuerong, Mornington Peninsula
14%. Slight, lifting VA along with dark cherries. Almost full bodied, fully dry, rich and finely textured. Dark berry fruits, with elegance, intensity and breadth. Very good.

Domaine de L’Arlot, Vosne-Romanee 2009, Burgundy, France
High vanilla oak and dark berries, with overt youthful oakiness here, meaning tannins are to the fore and still a bit grippy for the cherry fruit.  An obviously different style of wine not quite gelling with the rest of the line up.

Moorooduc Estate, The Mooroduc Pinot Noir 2009, Morninton Peninsula
Juicy, crunchy, berry fruits giving sweet-fruited attack. Dark berries, succulent core, smooth, with freshness. Long sweet finish. Good.

Felton Road, Bannockburn 2009, Central Otago, New Zealand
14%. Elegant sweetness of red and black cherry, with restraint and spiky berry notes, and some attractive lightness of being on the mid palate. This is elegant, sophisticated, layered, focused and seamless. Very good indeed.

Kooyong, Ferrous Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Big, deep, almost blackcurrant, and almost full bodied attack.  Big red wine, with attractive perfume and black cherry flavours. Young and still a hint grippy.

Coldstream Hills, Pinot Noir 2010, Yarra Valley
Juicy, sweet black cherry nose. Supple, red cherry fruits. Sweet, still-fermenting sort of flavour, then mid palate a bit muted.
Addendum:  is that the 2010 again?

Gippsland Vineyard

Having lived and worked half the year in Burgundy for five years, Bill Downie set up by himself, in Victoria, in 2003, with his first Yarra Valley pinot noir, under the William Downie label.

His main focus is on regional expression of pinot noir, and he later added a Mornington Peninsula, and a Gippsland pinot noir to his portfolio.

Gippsland represents a return to his childhood roots.  He has now (2008) planted a vineyard there at high density, between 10,000 and 11,700 vines / ha.  He said with “lower bunch numbers per vine, I am more able to make the wine I aspire to make.  You get better phenolic maturity at lower sugar, and a different structure, more precision, more detail.” His 2011 vintage, from all his fruit sources, will be made at Gippsland too, in a new winery.

Many would agree that Aussie pinot noir is now making a success on the international stage. Downie said “I feel the level of sophistication we’re at is to make very good expressions of Yarra Valley, Gippsland, Mornington Peninsula.  That’s enough.” For the moment.  Other producers are working with single vineyard expressions, and these may come to light as the world gets to grip with regionality of Australian pinot noir. He added “in a few generations it might be worth digging a little further [though] we’re still a few steps away from doing that to a high standard.”

Part of this challenge is that the owner of good sites and the winemaker are often different businesses, let alone different people. Downie said “there’s not a history in Australia of thinking in way of single vineyard site and ownership” as there is in the old world.

He also said “the single greatest limiting factor” is not controlling the site to express the site, adding he’s found it challenging, though not impossible, to find good growers who work in the way he wants to work. “It’s an evolving process” he said.

Bill Downie (L) as part of the Yeastie Boys, with Paul Bridgeman (M) of Yarra Yering and Mark O'Callaghan (R) of Yarra Burn. On drums is Stuart Proud, Downie's viticulturist

Downie’s work at Domaine Fourrier in Gevrey Chambertin and Hubert Lignier in Morey St Denis has inspired him to pursue precision and place. And he happily admitted “the closer I get to the type of wine I aspire to, the further it gets from Burgundy, and the more reflective it is of place, with the least impression of the hand of the winemaker.”

Oak is used to “add an extra dimension to the red fruits, to enhance the expression of place.” And one of the things that have become important to Downie is to fill the barrel as soon as possible after it’s been toasted and constructed.  He uses 40-50% new French oak from a Burgundy cooper, made by an Aussie cooper who imports the pre-seasoned staves. He said “I can fill a barrel within 24 hours of it being made … who wants to eat a cold piece of toast?” Of the immediacy of filling newly made barrels, he said “they opened up the wines in a way I hadn’t seen in Australia before.

Tasting notes, Yarra Valley, October 2010.  

William Downie Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 2008, ~£35
Savoury and sweet combo. Forward, mellowing warmth behind it.

William Downie Gippsland Pinot Noir 2008 ~£35
Deeply aromatic, violet, parma, rich, ‘light’ tannins, full and appealing. Quite sumptuous. Darker fruit.

William Downie Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2008 ~£35
Sweet, lush red fruits, perky. Full sweet savoury profile. Super lifted red fruits, takes a while for the substance of the wine to come through.

My research visit to Australia in October 2010 was sponsored by Wine Australia.

Phil Sexton

At the Australia Trade tasting in January, Phil Sexton of Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander in the Yarra Valley, and Martin Spedding of Ten Minutes By Tractor in Mornington Peninsula, argued a strong case for an expression of place in Australian pinot noirs from the three regions of Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Valley and Tasmania.

Sexton said that while “pinot noir has been in Australia for quite a while, getting snapped up quickly in the Melbourne and Sydney markets, it’s new for us to be taking pinot noir into other parts of the world.” Only around a decade ago expressive Aussie pinot noir with great varietal definition would have been an oxymoron.

And whilst Tasmania is some way distant, the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula are only an hour’s drive from each other. Even so said Sexton, we need to “re-orientate our thinking on Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Valley and Tasmania – there is a direct relationship between this part of Australia and the Antarctic; there’s nothing between us [and the Antarctic].” 

The Yarra Valley is a large, diverse region, some 70 miles across, and this makes it difficult to generalise about a Yarra style.  There are simply too many different aspects and mesoclimates.  Soils too, vary enormously, going from “the oldest soils known on earth in the Upper [cooler] Yarra to younger, deep red, friable soils in the northern [Lower] Yarra” Sexton said, adding this has an influence on yield with “1-2 tonnes/acre range on the older soils, and up to 3-4 tonnes/acre” on the younger ones.

Given this diversity of mesoclimate, Winkler’s heat degree days remain a blunt instrument. The Yarra Valley comes in “at 1354, which sits between Bordeaux and Burgundy” Sexton said.  But “in the Yarra Valley our diurnal variation, especially in summer is more important. We get hot days, hotter than Mornington Peninsula, especially in summer. And [Yarra Valley] evenings, especially in the higher vineyards, drop quite significantly at night time. This gives good natural pH, and high acidity.”

Of the Yarra Valley wines shown, Sexton said “they are similarly produced. We tend to see pHs in the range of 3.5. Total acidity is usually 6-7g/l, a magical number for us because generally it means we don’t have to mess with the acids.  All four were open vat fermented, with minimal plunging, trying to avoid extraction, and looking for floral fruit.  All four have some barrel fermentation, but one of the problems of going too far with barrel fermentation in our part of the world is you get some real bacon, charcuterie characters.  They were all out of oak within 12 months, and the most new oak at 20%.”

Martin Spedding

Viticulture in maritime Mornington Peninsula is small scale said Martin Spedding “all [~200 vineyards] are family owned, with the focus on cool climate wines expressing the unique characters of each site.”  Altitudes get up to 300m just a short distance from the bay, and “most vineyards are in the hills and on slopes getting cool air from the ocean and the bay”.

Soils are also varied, with sand-based sedimentary clays in the north, and basalt-derived red ferrusol soils towards the south.

As with the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula offers different mesoclimates. Spedding said “it’s difficult to generalise. Ten minutes by car from Red Hill to Yabby Lake can be four weeks difference in harvest dates.” Which is a similar difference between the peninsula and the valley.

Stylistically though, Spedding said “spiciness is very much Mornington Peninsula. Asian spice characters, plus bracken and pencil shaving characters, along with potpourri, aromatic, violets and herbiness.”  Sexton said Yarra Valley pinot noirs are “more perfumed, elegant, you don’t get into those five spice, herbal hints and lovely concentration you see in Mornington Peninsula wines.”

Tasmania vineyards are concentrated around Launceston in the north and Hobart in the south. Though further towards the Antarctic, Sexton said don’t just “look at the latitude. It has a lot more to do with the relationship to the ocean. Both Tasmania wine areas are close to the ocean.”  And one of the advantages is “great natural acidity” added Spedding.

Tasting notes

Yarra Valley wines are 2008, as 2009 was the year of the bush fires and the problem with smoke taint was huge.

Mornington Peninsula wines were 2009, where, said Spedding “the extremes of the heatwave in 2009 didn’t have a large impact on us, except some parts of northern Mornington Pensinsula.”

De Bortoli, Reserve Release Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley, ~£25
Pale cherry colour, pure and perfumed with wild strawberries and a sweet fruit attack which continues all through the palate. Light, elegant with full flavour intensity and length. Sweetness of fruit is the core of this, with a faint silhouette of supporting sandalwood under the horizon. Very good.

Giant Steps, Sexton Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley, ~£19
Pale cherry colour, only faintly aromatic, with medium body and spiced dark cherry notes.  Tannins are restrained, and fruits are rich and sweet. Warm and enticing.

Mac Forbes, Woori Yallock Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley, ~£33
Very pale cherry colour with crunchy red cherry, cherry sorbet which melts warmly and attractively on the palate. Sweet fruit core, with aromatic spice, intense, big fruit density for such a fragile looking wine. Fine-fine tannin texture, barely perceptible. Balance and precision with softness of mouth feel and long finish. Very good.

Yarra Burn, Bastard Hill Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley
Smoke and aromatic spice. Tarry note mid palate, quite butch, the least pinot noir like of this line up.

Yabby Lake, Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009, Morninton Peninsula
Medim pale colour. A hint stemmy, in a complexing, peppery way, with smooth and medium-bodied black cherry sweetness. Rich and quite lush ripeness, glycerol texture, and just a bit of grip to the finish.

Kooyong Estate, Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Rich, red cherry compote, warm and enticing on the nose. Quite full bodied and fat, with varietal flavours of tart cherries and fresh compost. Complex and rich, with quite broad shoulders for a pinot noir. Long finish.  

Stonier, Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Aromas of cultivated strawberries, warmly spicy. Rich definition of bright cherry fruit, nicely balanced in a rounded way. Not massively complex, with good varietal definition.

Ten Minutes By Tractor, Estate Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula
Lifted perfume of violets and sweet peas. Rich and flavoursome, in a medium to full body. Richly and elegantly proportioned with immense depth and volume of flavour, and a long finish. Very good.  

Domaine A, Pinot Noir 2006, Tasmania, ~£40
Deeply coloured with lifted and stalky nose, full bodied, with some of the more classic pinot noir characters absent. Rich, ripe, fat red fruit.   

Pirie Estate, Pinot Noir 2007, Tasmania, ~£18
Pale cherry colour. Bright and crunchy red cherries and crystallised strawberries. Medium to light, fresh and fragranced, body, Bright, linear and smooth, finely grained light tannins and attractive definition. Long finish.

The aim of the tasting was to show a current snapshot of new world pinot noir producing countries, with wines that are commercially available in the UK.

Gérard Basset

A panel of experts was on hand after the tasting to talk through discoveries and themes. They were Blair Walter of Felton Road, Central Otago, New Zealand, Helen Masters of Ata Rangi, Martinborough, New Zealand, and Mac Forbes of Woori Yallock, Yarra Valley, Australia. The discussion was moderated by true wine maestro Gérard Basset MS, MW, Wine MBA, best sommelier of the world 2010, and owner of TerraVina hotel in Hampshire’s New Forest.

The wines were arranged in five flights, one for each region represented. It was difficult to draw many conclusions as to country of origin. For me, the lush, sweetness and defining acid backbone characteristic of NZ was evident, though within this framework, the styles widely differed.  Basset even joked “I tasted twice and I’m even more confused,” adding “in our restaurant we choose 2 to 6 pinot noir per country because we like the style, but in each region there is not just one style of pinot noir, which I’ve rediscovered here.”

The absence of consistency within the flights was a theme of discussion, due, it was considered, to the youth of pinot noir production in new world countries. Pinot noir simply hasn’t been grown for many years. 

Youth of human experience in these sites, and changes as a result of exponential learning were also explored.  Walter said “As a winemaker in a young, new region like Central Otago, we have an opportunity to forge a style. In the early days, [perhaps not much more than a decade ago] we had lot of wines that were too oaky, too flashy, too extracted, and not in balance. But over the years, we’re looking at more subtlety. We’re more reflective of the place they’re grown. And we have a hands-off approach in the winery, allowing the site capability to come through in the bottle“.

Mac Forbes agreed, picking up site expression, which is something pinot noir can do well. He said “we’re in a much better position than 10, even 5 years ago. We do less, we pick earlier, we come to grips with our own patch of dirt. There’s trouble when you push harder, pick riper – you lose some of that fine detail that’s interesting.”

L-R :Walter, Masters, Basset, Forbes

Forbes continued “with increased confidence, we’re able to step back and let sites express themselves a bit more. It’s easy for people to get on planes and go to Burgundy, but I’ve got to get into my back yard.” As a result, he said there’s “more honesty in these wines than we might have anticipated a few years ago.”

Vine age also formed part of the youth discussion, as Helen Masters explained “vines are much younger [in the new world]. Most are around 30 years old. Burgundy has vines of 70 years.” Consequently she said “we’re looking for clones, for rootstocks that express something different from our sites. We’re looking for something to express the soil, the climate.  And we’re beginning to get depth, and fineness of tannin – from some vine age.” 

So while the new world waits for vine age, there’s plenty of work being done ‘in the back yard’ with clones, rootstocks, and specific sites.

Tasting notes of some my favourites, with identities!

I’m disproportionately relieved to report my favourite wine of the tasting was the Schubert, Block B Pinot Noir 2008, Wairarapa, New Zealand, which I recently recommended in wine reviews as being a stand-out wine.

Australia

Stefano Lubiano, Pinot noir 2008, Granton, Tasmania ~£36
Sweetly smoked black cherry aromas. Sweet palate attack with some lushness to fruit within an appropriately firm frame. Fine grained young tannins evident in mid palate, with enough fruit to soften them soon.

Dexter, Pinot noir 2008, Merrick’s North, Mornington Peninsula ~£22
Pale colour with hauntings of cherry blossom perfume escaping from the glass. Light bodied with fresh crunchy flavour of decent intensity. Nicely fresh and balanced with attractive notes of elegance.

Yabby Lake Vineyard, Pinot noir 2008, Mornington Peninsula ~£24
Light, sweet fruit of crunchy cherries. Freshly balanced with ripe red cherry flavours.

Kooyong, Pinot noir 2008, Haven vineyard, Mornington Peninsula ~£27
Bright cherry nose, crunchy ripe core that’s nicely proportioned, with some layers of warm fruit emerging.

Giant Steps, Pinot noir 2008, Gladysdale vineyard, Healesville, Yarra Valley 
Pale colour with bright cherry nose, sweet crunchy attack, nicely balanced, with hints of glycerol smoothness to the texture in an elegant light-and-concentrated combo. More-ish and nicely balanced and proportioned.  

Mac Forbes, Pinot noir 2008, Woori Yallock vineyard, Upper Yarra, Yarra Valley ~£26
Pale colour, the dark cherries and a hint of dark chocolate aroma without the weight imagined of dark chocolate. Nicely balanced and proportioned wine in cooler spectrum of red cherry fruit with firm acidity and good flavour intensity. Like a red riesling (which is a positive comment for such a pinot noir).

California

Marimar Estate, Pinot noir 2004, Don Miguel vineyard, Russian River Valley, Sonoma ~£30
Pale and browning rim, mature fruitcake profile, nicely balanced, with rich flavours of depth. 

Sonoma Cutrer, Pinot noir 2007, Russian River Valley, Sonoma ~£24
Juicy tutti frutti on the nose, almost a hint jammy, in a positive way. Full bodied with hints of spicy cinnamon, showing good character. A wine in the full fat style, with a warmth of alcohol coming through at the back palate.

Cambria, Pinot noir 2006, Julia’s Vineyard, Santa Maria Valley, Santa Maria
Pale colour, with a faintly balsamic nose. Then a sweet palate, with a remarkable intensity of red fruit flavours.  A good light-and-intense combo.

Au Bon Climat, Pinot noir 2008, Santa Maria Valley, Santa Maria ~ £25
Bright cherry colour. A little reclusive on the palate attack, then opens up mid palate with light red berry fruits and an attractive glycerol texture.  

Chile

Viña Leyda, Lot 21 Pinot Noir 2008, Leyda Valley ~£20
Medium deep colour, spiced, mulled black cherries, strawberries, quite an atypical nose for pinot noir. Sweet and spicy fruit in a more full bodied style, with some more typical crunch among soft berries.  

Casa Marin, Pinot Noir 2006, Lo Abarca, San Antonio Valley ~£25
Balsamic smoked wood, graphite and earthy savoury characters. Big savoury flavours, well balanced, needs some attention in the mouth to reveal itself. 

Matetic, EQ Pinot Noir 2007, San Antonio Valley ~£18
Quite deep plum colour, with almost mulberry aromatics and a sweet, lush palate of dark, smoked summer fruits. Big volume of rich, sweet, varietally-expressive fruit. And long finish.

Casas del Bosque, Pequeñas Producciones Pinot noir 2008, Casablanca Valley ~£19
Dry-baked summer fruits with dry-compost, earthy aroma. Supple attack of sweet, ripe, black and morello cherry. Full, sweet palate, more-ish with layers of some charm unravelling mid-palate. Well framed by a defining backbone of acidity.

Cono Sur, Ocio Pinot noir 2008, Casablanca Valley ~ £38
Allspice and cinnamon-baked cherries and raspberries. Super, ripe, delicious berry fruit, not lush, just well proportioned. Sweet supporting oak; full bodied for a pinot noir, and appealing and enjoyable nonetheless. Good texture and definition,

New Zealand

Felton Road, Pinot noir 2009, Bannockburn, Central Otago ~£23
Sweet red cherry fruit. Quite a full palate, with lush and voluptuous fruit, dark cherries and raspberries that are intense and vibrant. Sweet and lush and immediately attractive.  

Mount Maude, Pinot noir 2007, Wanaka, Central Otago
Soft mulberry and cherry aromas, then full-flavoured attack of sweet-smoked cherry and raspberry;  good concentration and depth, nicely balanced with great varietal definition.   

Quartz Reef, Pinot noir 2007, Bendigo, Central Otago 
Medium pale colour; savoury, smoky, almost tarry aromatics, then layers of complexity emerge in the mouth. Nicely defined, with sweet texture without being lush. Good, with long finish.

Pegasus Bay, Pinot noir 2007, Wairapa, Canterbury ~£28
Wood-smoky nose, savoury notes alongside lush, sweet fruits and hints of early maturation – faintly emerging earth and farmyard. Lovely sweet glycerol texture, rich, endearing and understated. 

Fromm, Pinot noir 2008, Clayvin vineyard, Marlborough ~£30
Graphite nose, with black berried fruits in an elegantly proportioned mid palate. Fresh acid backbone, with attractive complexity emerging in the mouth. Understated, with good concentration of warm fruit and sweet texture. Nice.

Schubert, Pinot noir 2008, Block B, Wairarapa, Martinborough ~£29
Crunchy red fruits on the nose, with a sweet perfume at the back palate. Crunchy attack mellowing to a big, sweet fruit concentration mid palate. A nicely-proportioned wine that creeps under the radar, needs a bit of human concentration to get the depth. Long finish.

Craggy Range, Pinot noir 2008, Te Muna Road, Martinborough ~£20
Chalky red fruits in a crunchy-and-sweet combo. Hints of sandalwood-wrapped red cherries and redcurrants in a light-yet-intensely fruited whole.  Fresh core and long finish.

Ata Rangi, Pinot noir 2008, Martinborough ~£35
Lush, sweet berry attack, full and sweet, balanced, with graphite-savoury note mid palate. Attractively framing core on which layered fruit hangs.

Oregon

Firesteed, Pinot noir 2008, Oregon ~£16
Pale, light cherry aromas, bit of crunchiness. Firm acidity with medium weight of fruit, pure and direct red berry fruits. Tastes a bit like baby brother sort of product from someone who knows what they’re doing.

Beaux Frères, Pinot noir 2007, Willamette Valley, Oregon ~£55
Smoked cherry, with hints of dark chocolate on the nose. Smooth attack, with sweet texture to the medium-to-light weight body. Faint twist of bitter chocolate on the finish. 

Willamette Valley Vineyards, Pinot noir 2007, Willamette Valley, Oregon ~£20
Sweet briar and red cherry aromas. Smooth palate entry, with some sweet glycerol weight to mid palate. Lovely varietal definition and weight with positive acid backbone for frame. Immediately appealing and with nice length.

Schubert, Block B Pinot noir 2008

Schubert, Block B Pinot Noir 2008
Hercules Wine Warehouse £27.95
Noel Young Wines  £27.95 
Cork, 14.5%

This really is an award-winning wine, having just totted up the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) regional trophy and the International Wine Challenge (IWC) New Zealand pinot noir trophy.  I judge the NZ panel at the DWWA, but having done a bit of traceability analysis, this particular wine was on the other table.

The business was set up in 1998 by German couple Kai Schubert and Marion Deimling, who bought a small vineyard north of Martinborough – renowned pinot noir territory. More than three quarters of their 12 hectare vineyard is planted to this variety.

The wine has a pale ruby colour befitting classic pinot noir. Black cherries emerge from the glass along with a faintly herbal, rosemary-garrigue type note in the background. It has a sweet berry fruit attack with cinnamon and allspice new oak complexity. Its smooth, slippery texture slides sweetly across the tongue, as raspberries, cherries and redcurrants play on the palate.  It has big fruit concentration while retaining clearly-focused varietal definition. This is serious and seriously good Kiwi pinot noir, with notes of savoury complexity that focus the origin towards Wairarapa rather than Central Otago, for example.  It’s sweetly balanced with a fresh and lingering finish.

Panellists for the seminar were:
Rod Berglund, owner and winemaker at Joseph Swan Winery.
Tom Hinde, president and director of winemaking at Flowers Vineyard and Winery.
Jeff Stewart, winemaker at Buena Vista.

Sonoma County Wine Regions

The definition of cool climate mentioned was Winkler’s Region I, and Stewart said: “we’re cool climate guys so we’ll always reference Burgundy.”

Honore Comfort, executive director of Sonoma County Vintners, the organisation that promotes Sonoma County wines, introduced the session. “Sixty miles of Pacific Ocean front influence the daily climate of Sonoma County.”

It is this oceanic influence that provides the defining model for Sonoma viticulture. Deep, cold ocean currents offshore provide a regular supply of cold air above the ocean.  On a daily basis, during the afternoon, this chill air is drawn inland, as fog, by the hot Sacramento Valley. Comfort said: “the cool maritime fog defines the region: how it filters in through the Petaluma Gap, up the Russian River, and into Carneros from the bay to blanket the county,” adding the fog blanket stays in Sonoma, blocked by the Mayacamas ranges on the eastern edge of the county. 

Sonoma fog blanket

The major effect of these daily fogs, which come in practically like clockwork, is cooling.  Hinde said: “on the coast during the day it’s 85°F [30°C], at night it’s 35°F [2°C]. At Healdsburg [in the middle of the county], it’s 95°F [35°C] in the day and 60°F [16°C] at night.  Typically there’s a 25 to 30°F [14 to 17°C] diurnal shift.”

As well as a cool overall climate, vintage variation is a parameter for cooler climate, and whilst it’s not a big issue for Sonoma, it clearly exists. Hinde said “nine years out of ten we have a consistent climate, a Mediterranean climate, with a long wet winter, and an arid summer. And within this we have the influence of the Pacific Ocean.”  

However, in Russian River Valley, Berglund said “I see different personalities, different expressions [in the wines]. We do see vintage variation in Russian River Valley, some are more fruit forward, some have more structure and backbone, such as the ’07s.  But we don’t see the wide variations, for example in Oregon.”   

L-R: Comfort, Stewart, Hinde, Berglund

Stewart added “2004 was a very early bud-break and season. It was forward, giving wines that were beautiful straight out of the gate. 2005 was later, cooler, giving wines with more structure; not the structured wines of the ‘07s which were built for the long haul.”

The moderating influence of this coastal phenomenon is evidently the main influence enabling grape varieties such as pinot noir and chardonnay to be grown, though more than 60 varieties are grown in the county, including hot-climate loving zinfandel. 

Alongside coolness, soil is often considered another primary factor for quality, but the panellists could come up with few acceptable generalisations about the area. It is, after all, an active fault zone, so topography and soils are by definition enormously complex, with the gamut of volcanic, sedimentary and alluvial deposits closely intermingled. Aspect and slope are similarly something of a patchwork effect. 

The wines tasted originated from three of the coolest AVAs in Sonoma County:  Carneros, Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast.

Tasting Notes, March 2010, London

The contradiction of high alcohol and so-called cooler climate is a hard one for a European to overcome.

La Crema Chardonnay 2008, Sonoma Coast (13.9%)
Hinde: “not an estate but a Sonoma Coast blended wine. It’s representative of the potential for chardonnay here. Eight to nine months in oak, around 20% new, including some American oak.” 

Ripe, peachy and mealy nose, spicy aromatic oak, vanilla and charcoal, heat of alcohol a little too evident, heating the back of the palate. Sweet praline nuttiness, quite full bodied, very warming palate with some attractive typical flavour characters, but back palate is too hot for me and wine broadens in the glass.

Ramey Wine Cellars, Ritchie Vineyard Chardonnay 2006, Russian River Valley (14.5%)
Sweet smoke, high glycerol, slippery texture, with almost overt honeyed sweetness at the fore of the palate. Full bodied, with overt alcohol reasonably well integrated. Almond-toasted lemon cake, with allspice and star anise aromatic spices.  Length not massive. Full-fat, lush fruit, good concentration of fruit, heat coming through on the end.

Stewart:  “the first two pinot noirs both come from Carneros AVA (American Viticultural Area), which is fruit driven, with cherry, berry, and always an earthiness, a forest floor, more than in Russian River Valley.”

Gloria Ferrer Caves and Vineyards, Pinot Noir 2007, Carneros (13.9%)
Translucent ruby colour with bright red-cherry nose and smoked charcoal note. Oak a little raw on the palate attack, black and tarry without redeeming elegance. Spicy, smoked forest berry fruits, with alcohol present but not dominant and wood tannins a little edgy. Tarry note blows off in time, but leaves the finish a bit dry and talc-like.  

Buena Vista Carneros Pinot Noir 2007, Carneros (13.5%)
Stewart: “we hand harvest at night, then have a 5 to 10 day cold soak. Average 17 days on the skins; 30-35% new French oak with a 10 to 11 months’ ageing regime.”

Translucent ruby, aromatic strawberry and raspberry nose. Smooth, sweet palate attack, sweet fruit, attractive varietal definition, with balance of fruit and acid core, and tannins held neatly at bay for aromatic focus. Balanced and integrated. Very nice; with long finish.  Crunchy freshness emphasises aromatic fruitiness well. Nicely balanced.

Flowers Vineyard and Winery, Andreen Gale Pinot Noir 2007, Sonoma Coast (13.5%)
Hinde “we’re still discovering where pinot noir and chardonnay will do their best.  We believe we’re challenging the outer [cooler] margin for pinot noir and chardonnay.”  The winery is 1 mile from the Pacific at 500 to 700m ASL.

Medium translucent ruby. Nose a bit elusive, but simple crunchy red cherries are there. Palate has appropriate grip of supporting oak tannin, beginning to soften.  In crunchy rather than soft style, perky acid freshness keeps the palate linear, with enough fruit flesh to comfortably balance the structure. Not a fleshy wine, hint tomato leaf? Medium full body, alcohol integrated, unnoticed. Decent finish.

Patz and Hall Pinot Noir 2007, Sonoma Coast (14.2%)
Medium translucent red cherry. Lifted red cherry and red apple notes on the nose. Fresh palate attack, soft aromatic tar supporting very ripe sweet black and red cherries. Some lushness to palate with good acid frame. Good varietal definition. Alcohol integrated. Oak just enough to soften in.  Balanced, full and sweet. Good, with lengthy finish.

Berglund: “the final two: textural element. RRV has wonderful texture and mouthfeel. We have more red fruit characters with hints of cola. Carneros wines tend to me more linear, while RRV is broader on the palate. Sonoma Coast wines have darker fruits than RRV.  The Hobbs wine has more dark fruits. Our wine comes from one of oldest pinot noir vineyards, planted in 1969.”  

Joseph Swan Vineyards, Trenton Estate Vineyard Pinot Noir 2007, Russian River Valley (14.5%)
Medium cherry red. Lifted cherry, with fine-grainy spicy oak and gently mulled fruit to the fore; texture of stewed fruit, with sandalwood, and cinnamon oak notes, not (yet?) melding together.  A bit disjointed at the moment, with dry sandy sides to palate. Feels like a ‘cooler’ expression, but the alcohol is evident.  Alcohol expressed as those warm stewed fruits, but it doesn’t burn. Fruit is fresh and dense, with good concentration.  I’m sure it’ll come through, there’s nice fruit underneath. It’s rich and dense and not over-ripe.

Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir 2007, Russian River Valley (14.7%)
Medium ruby colour. Bright dark cherry fruit, sweet, full-fleshed and lush. With good pinot noir character: firm acid core supporting fleshy cherry fruit. Sweet balance, with alcohol unnoticed and integrated. Lush and delicious. More-ish.

L-R: Greiner, Fürst, Rebholz, Maurer

The recent emergence of German pinot noir (spätburgunder) on the world stage was revisited with this tasting seminar, held at Staatsdomäne Assmansshausen in Rüdesheim, Germany, in late September 2009, as part of a Master of Wine visit to the region.  

Panellists for the seminar were Dieter Greiner of Kloster Eberbach-Domäne Assmannshausen, Paul Fürst of Weingut Rudolf Fürst, and Hansjörg Rebholz of Rebholz estate. It was moderated by Caro Maurer, a journalist in Germany and Master of Wine student.

One might be forgiven for imagining Germany and riesling in the same breath, but a third of the German vineyard is planted to red grape varieties, with pinot noir accounting for a grand 12% of the total, a figure that’s tripled in the past 30 years, and which, if plantings for Champagne are excluded, is about the same as for France.

And it’s the past 30 years that has witnessed a revolution in red-winemaking in Germany.  It coincided with a change of generation, including Rebholz and Fürst, who took over the family estate and went travelling, especially to Burgundy. Prior to this red wine making was generally, though not always, as for white wine, so a short fermentation, no time on the skins, no malolactic fermentation, resulting in high acid wines that were sweetened to balance them.

These leading lights of the new generation started making their red wines as red wines. And the usual gamut of experimentation followed: pre-fermentation cold maceration, extended time on skins, the introduction of oak etc. Then moved into the vineyard with lower yield management: harder winter prunings, green harvest during the growing season, foliage management as well as the search for higher quality clones, such as Burgundy clones 113, 114, 115, 667 and 777, plus new ones from Geisenheim Research Centre, the type 20 clones, which give lower yields and smaller berries with more concentrated fruit. Even as the pinot noir vines age, new dimensions are developing in spätburgunder.

And as with such a ‘young’, experimenting industry, Maurer said: “There is no ‘German pinot noir’ [style]. We have so many different climates and soils, from slate to coloured sandstone. We have the most vivid acid, generally showing more fruit than other pinot noir producing areas, keeping the balance between fruit and acidity.”

She added: “For us, pinot noir is prestigious. Like riesling, it shows its climate and its soil:  pinot noir is as the red riesling. It’s our terroir variety.”

Given pinot noir’s propensity to reflect its local site, there is a reversion to vineyard site, which is how the German vineyards used to be organised hundreds of years ago. Maurer said: “we’re not using pradikats, such as spätlese or auslese, for pinot noir so much, we’re more concentrating on the [vineyard] sites, such at Centgrafenberg.” 

The wines

As part of this experimentation, a modernist approach was also discussed.  Fürst said: “I find some important things with these wines.  Slate soils are very different from the others. Then, Huber and Becker represent the modern German interpretation of spätburgunder, which is what we all want to do now. In winemaking it is very important to go to lower extraction, use gentle work with the grapes, to get more silkiness and more freshness.”  

Tasting notes, September 2009.

The main regions for pinot noir are Ahr, Württemberg, Baden, Franken and the Pfalz.

The tasting seminar was orientated around terroir:  slate soils, volcanic soils, limestone, and sandstone soils. 

The tasting comprised wines retailing between €30 and €100.

Wines 1 to 3 come from slate soils, which is said to give lower tannins, softer fruit, more red berries and redcurrant, less cherry fruit.
Wine 4 comes from volcanic soils, which is said to give richer, fuller bodied wines, with spices, more opulent.
Wine 5, plus 7 to 9 are from limestone soils.
Wines 10 to 12 are from variegated sandstones.  

Wine 1.  Kloster Eberbach, Domäne Assmannshausen,  Hollenberg Spätburgunder spatlese trocken 2004, Assmanshausen, Rheingau
Greiner “a classic late ripening vintage with good acidity, picked at the end of October. Cold winds at night keep the acidity level.”

Spicy, hint rumtopf on the nose, black berry, uplifting volatile acidity and slight green notes at back of nose; medium length.

Wine 2.  Weingut August Kesseler,  Berg Schlossberg Spätburgunder  2007, Assmanshausen, Rheingau
The top wine from the winery.  Greiner: “dense planted vineyards, 25-year-old vines. He’s using new Geisenheim clones with tiny berries. Barrique for 18 months, 50% new.”

Medium cherry colour, fresh and linear profile with very smooth texture, rich berry fruits of the forest.  Elegant, young, and lightly chewy tannins, with youthful intensity, concentration and balance. Very long finish. Excellent.

Wine 3.  J.J. Adeneuer, Garkammer Spätburgunder  Grosses Gewächs  2007, Ahrweiler, Ahr
Smoky, hint of lifting volatile acidity; medium weight. Red berry and cranberry background on the palate. Smooth light tannins, long palate and finish. Freshness throughout the palate. Good length.

Wine 4.  Weingut Salwey, Kirchberg Spätburgunder  Grosses Gewächs  2003, Oberrottweil, Baden
Hint tarry, warm, ’sweet’ fruit, higher glycerol. Not so much length, acid balance quite broad in comparison with further north. Full-fat, sweet, very ripe fruit.

Wine 5.  Bernhard Huber, Wildenstein Spätburgunder  R, 2007, Malterdingen, Baden
Maurer: “He cuts the shoulders of the bunches and tips to have round bunches. One week cold maceration; pigeage in wooden fermenters. On skins for 21 days in total.”

Crunchy red cherry fruit, perky, fresh, focused. Smooth texture, but more tannin, felt on mid palate. Youthful, ripe, grainy tannins at core for framework. Uplifting palate with freshening acidity. Great acid/fruit rapier edge, warm tannins add framework. Very good. Plenty of all the right things to age this one. Long finish.

Wine 6.  Friedrich Becker, Pinot Noir Schweigen, Pfalz 2007, Tafelwein trocken
This one has to be called a tafelwein, because the fruit is from France, along the Alsace/Pfalz border. The vines are considered German, though. Long, geopolitical history in this part of the world.
Maurer: “Fourteen day fermentation in wooden fermenters. No extended time on skins; 100% new barriques.”

Closed nose, warm spicy open knit fruit. Less focused than previous wine. This would have to be good value, but even €30 wouldn’t be. Hint hot on the finish.

Mini vertical of Rebholz estate

Rebholz:  “We are in the southern part of Pfalz, 1 km from the Becker estate. There is a group of five estates of the southern Pfalz, we travel to foreign wine regions. One of our goals is to find the perfect quality of pinot noir.  There is a long tradition of pinot noir in our region, with a French introduction in the Middle Ages. We have perfect soil with limestone, like in Burgundy, and similar weather conditions to Burgundy.“

Wine 7.  Rebholz Estate,  Im Sonnenschein Spätburgunder  Grosses Gewächs  2007, Sibeldingen, Pfalz
A sample, ready for bottling. Spicy new oak, still overt, with plenty of fresh red berry fruit alongside; very young, balanced.  Oak will integrate. Fruit is lovely and fresh, slightly masked currently by the oak.

Wine 8. Rebholz Estate,  Im Sonnenschein Spätburgunder  Grosses Gewächs, 2004
Creamy texture, hint of lifting volatile acidity with smooth texture, some savoury development, and with soft red berry fruit. Long finish. Going to a savoury, puréed fruit cake note.

Wine 9. Rebholz Estate, Spätburgunder gold 1997
Smoke and aromatic tar, developing softly and roundly, tannins softening but still have some grip, a bit more than pinot noir this old might normally have. Mellow for sure, warming finish.

Mini vertical of Weingut Rudolf Fürst

Wine 10.  Rudolf Fürst, Centgrafenberg Spätburgunder  R, 2006 Burgstadt, Franken
Fürst:  “We harvested before the rain around Oct 3. With warm nights, it was a medium year, but interesting for spätburgunder. This is what we want to produce in future, better and better wines.  We don’t have many old vineyards with good genetics; we planted vineyards with good genetics in last 15 to 20 years.  We have to wait for these to grow up.  The style and minerality of this wine are typical, a dancing on the tongue and in the mouth, with power.”

Aromatic strawberry nose, elegant and fruit-focused. Crunchy red cherry attack. Oak tannins in supportive background, fruit/acid balance to the fore.  Long palate and long finish. Some attractive purity of fruit definition, lightness, a moment of ethereality.

Wine 11.  Rudolf Fürst, Centgrafenberg Spätburgunder  R, 2003 Burgstadt, Franken
Warmest year, harvested three weeks earlier than normal.

Aromatic spicy strawberry fruit, medium weight,  red cherry. Some dry notes at back palate from heat of vintage. Red fruit still fighting forth.

Wine 12. Rudolf Fürst, Centgrafenberg Spätburgunder  R, 1997 Burgstadt, Franken
Fürst: “one of my best years with my grapes. It was a late harvest, Oct 20^th, but we were not so good at winemaking at this time: more extraction, dark colour, strong tannins. At the time people liked this style. Now my winemaking is gentler, with more silkiness.”

Smoky nose, most deeply coloured. Savoury development, even a hint of dried meat, smooth texture and framework are in place, weight and roundness exaggerated from more modern style now made by Fürst.

Mazon

Pinot noir is one of those grape varieties with an abundance of names.  In Italian, it’s called pinot nero, in German it’s spätburgunder. But it’s also called blauburgunder in German, and in Alto Adige this is often how it’s referred locally, though not necessarily on the label, especially for an international audience.

Mazon

One of the most highly regarded sites for pinot noir is the Mazon (Italian: Mazzon) plateau. This is in the relatively warmer southern part of the region to the east of the river Adige, on west and south facing slopes, with some cooling elevation from 350 to 450m. 

Weingut J. Hofstätter, in Tramin/Termeno is well-known for it pinot noir, which now accounts for about 20% of their production. Markus Heinel, winemaker since 2001, said the Mazon side of the valley “is cooler, you get the soft sun in the afternoon. There is a layer of porphyry and sandstone which is very good for the minerality of the wine. The altitude keeps the acidity on that cooler side of valley, ripening is slower and later than our side of the valley [at Tramin]. We have pinot noir and pinot blanc.”

The top Hofstätter pinot noir is named after Ludwig Ritter Barth von Barthenau who brought pinot noir to Alto Adige from Burgundy and planted it around Mazon in the late 19^th century. The estate was acquired by Foradori- Hofstätter family which has given them access to old vine fruit.  The fruit from 60 year old plus vines is reserved for the Barthenau Vigna San Michele pinot noir.

Hofstätter

Even the basic Hofstätter pinot noir uses some fruit from the Mazon plateau, and is labelled after the historic name of the Mazon hamlet – Meczan.

Mason

Just up from Tramin/Termeno is another producer aiming to make pinot noir one of their specialties. Tenuta Manincor is located in Kaltern/Caldaro, and owner Michael Goëss-Enzenberg said: “our pinot noir comes from Mason at 400m altitude. In our country pinot noir needs high elevation because we have a warm Mediterranean climate on south-inclined vineyards.”

Manincor’s Mason is named after their vineyard on the Kaltern side of the valley, the opposite side from the Mazon plateau.  In particularly good vintages they make a Mason di Mason. Goëss-Enzenberg said the aim for his pinot noir is ”deepness and delicacy and elegance.  We want to have elegant pinot noir fruit, very pure and persistent fruit that draws you back in.” And, he added, “we replanted 15 years ago to newer clones and trellising” as part of his quality drive. 

Thirty years ago the property sold its wines in bulk and Goëss-Enzenberg has been turning the estate around, having trained at Geisenheim in Germany, and Babcock Winery in California. 

Vinschgau/Val Venosta

In the far northwest of the region lies Val Venosta, an upstream extension of the Adige river as it flows in an east-north-easterly direction, before turning south-east towards Merano and on to Bolzano.  Here vineyards are on the south-east facing slopes, with a bit more altitude, from 500 to 800m. And here, pinot noir has recently been becoming something of a specialty. 

Unterortl

This is something of an extreme viticultural environment. The vineyards of Weingut Unterortl lie on steep south facing vineyards, 600 to 850m above sea level, amid rocky outcrops.  Their general manager, Martin Aurich, said the area is “high and open to the valley, it’s open to glaciers and open to cold climate,” adding “the wines have a mineral character because of their high content of acid.”  Harvest here is two weeks later than the main Adige valley.

Pinot noir is grown with pinot blanc and riesling.  Aurich said: “the quality is regular, but the weather and the wind can dry out the grapes. If the sugar became much higher it would become bitter.  We have the elegant point for pinot noir. Pinot noir is not a tannin monster, we have a sweet tannin that can be aged.”

Whilst pinot noir undoubtedly specifies a cool climate for its best expression, the winemaking approach is important not to lose the potential. All three producers here use a varying dose of 225 litre barrique, with up to a third mentioned as being new. They also use big oak, from 500 to 5,000 litres, which imparts only a little, if any, oak flavour and tannin. All of them are aiming for long-aged pinot noir.

Tasting notes, in situ, November 2009

Hofstätter, Crozzol Pinot Nero 2007
Pale ruby colour, bright and attractive, with aromatic smoke and toasty oak. Sweet attack, falling into fruitiness. Bright, crunchy fruit, neatly focused and elegant.  

Hofstätter Mazon Pinot Nero 2007
Translucent ruby; savoury, tar nose, with toast and spice. Phenols a little bit chewy in youth, with plenty of vibrant fruit mid palate. Nicely balanced mid palate, with a purity of redcurrant fruit running through the whole. 

Hofstätter Barthenau Pinot Nero 2007
Not yet on the market. Translucent medium ruby colour. Deep, pipe-tobacco smoke nose, full bodied and a hint balsamic still as the rich fruit is still absorbing the oak.

Hofstätter Barthenau Pinot Nero 2004 
Rim just turning away from youthful cherry. Sweet stewed berry attack leads into a lush-textured mid palate of lovely balance and dimension. Youthful.

Hofstätter Barthenau Pinot Nero 1998   
Garnet rim with a nose of mature undergrowth. Palate shows stewed cherry fruit with a savoury/sweet combo undergrowth finish. Elegant, silkily textured; really very classy.

Manincor Mason Pinot Noir 2007  
Pale ruby, fruit focused palate, clean and define. Fresh cherry with new oak peeking over the youthful fruit.

Manincor Mason di Mason 2007   
This comes from the heart of the vineyard, oldest vines now 15 years. Only made in the best vintages.  
Medium translucent cherry colour. Violet perfume; fruit a bit subdued due to recent bottling, but texture, weight and density are all refined, with lovely balance.  

Unterortl Castel Juval Blauburgunder/Pinot Nero 2007,
Medium pale translucent cherry colour. Aromatic strawberry nose, both spicy and lightly toasty, with a complexing tar note. Strawberry and redcurrant fruit is putting on a bit of weight in bottle, with poise to come.

Loacker Pinot nero 2007 Norital
Medium translucent ruby colour. Vibrant black cherry nose, with hint of tar at beginning of the quite full-bodied palate. Attractive varietal definition of warm cherry fruit, currently a little subdued by still-integrating toastiness.

This piece was inspired by a visit to the region in November 2009 sponsored by the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) and EOS, the export organisation of South Tyrol.

Central Otago

Despite their very short history of production, there are some really classy pinot noirs from both islands, though as in Burgundy, it’s still a case of know-your-producer.  And the country is setting its sights high. David Cox, director – Europe, for New Zealand Winegrowers, the generic body that promotes NZ wine abroad, said “if anyone is going to turn die hard old world pinot noir lovers over to the new world, then New Zealand can do it.”

He added New Zealand pinot noir was getting an “increasing reputation around the world and in the UK. They’re getting better and better each year: the vines have been in the ground longer, and they’re getting confident about pushing regionality and stylistic differences in the five main regions” for pinot noir.

Pinot Noir Regionality?

Those top five regions account for 95% of plantings:

Source for both: NZ Winegrowers

For me, Central Otago stands out as having an aromatic and primary-fruited focus, with a sweet succulence of fruit density that’s not often matched elsewhere.  The Otagans are even sub-sub-dividing their styles, but let’s not go there just yet.

Some pinot noir from Martinborough does seem to have an earthy, forest floor/forest berry component, and can be a more full-bodied style, but still within the pure pinot noir genre.  I’ve also found notable earthiness and weight in some Canterbury/Waipara examples.

Marlborough may lead the plantings field, but it is also notably variable, and sometimes patchy, in style and quality. We’re told Marlborough has bright red fruits such as cherry and raspberry, and a lean core of acidity, and I do find these in some wines.

Whether regional styles are truly emerging or wines are still more a reflection of individual winemaker philosophy is still a subject for discussion. The New Zealand pinot noir industry is still too young to observe categorical differences.

For the new 2008 and 2007 pinot noir releases onto the market, tasting notes below, I wasn’t aware of particularly strong regional identities, more aware of good wines and less good wines.

General observations from the tasting include:

• the idea of perfume as a quality indicator – those wines with enticing aromatics also tended to show well on the palate.
• the fact you need to pay at least £15 to have the chance of getting something decent
• tasting lushness and sweetness of fruit does not contradict with a dry wine.
• the subtlety of tannin volume and texture is crucial to quality perception.

A selection of my tasting notes, November 11, 2009  

Escarpment, The Edge Pinot Noir 2008, Martinborough, £10.75
Bright cherry red; aromatic sweet allspice perfume and stewed raspberries; lush, sweet attack and mid palate with fresh acidity. Quite full body, but good fresh fruit with hints of cinnamon spice. Good flavour at this level, mid length finish.

Escarpment, Pinot Noir  2008, Martinborough, £17.25
Translucent cherry red; aromatic spice, long palate length; sweet, smooth texture, some good refinement of texture and volume of fruit. Medium to full-bodied, with hint of aromatic tar and marmalade-toast. Rich palate fruit and good length of finish. Very nicely balanced and wholesome.

Old Coach Road, Pinot Noir 2008, Nelson, £9.99 
Pale cherry red; lifted spiky redcurrant nose, some restrained fruit, with hints of allspice in the background; perky freshness without mid palate succulence, but with mid palate restraint. Gentle red fruits, nicely balanced with fresh acidity, medium-ish weight, and no great complexity.

Waimea Pinot Noir 2008, Nelson £11.99
Mid cherry colour, faintly confected red cherry nose, cheers up on the palate into straightforward red cherry fruit, nice fruit, though no great complexity.

Babich Winemakers Pinot Noir Reserve 2008, Marlborough, £ 11.99
Stewed forest berry fruit, but other than that and mid-pale cherry colour, difficult to recognise as pinot noir. Alcohol of 14% becomes too evident on the back palate.

Villa Maria Cellar Selection Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £12.99
Medium translucent ruby; sweet blackberry on the nose, lacking a bit of perkiness mid palate which makes the fruit appear flabby; nice black cherry fruit comes through on the palate. OK, but doesn’t shine.

Hunter’s Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £12.95
Medium translucent cherry; aromatic allspice and cinnamon nose with strawberry compote notes peeking through, fresh palate attack, red berry fruits to the fore, with attractive slippery texture, and rich intensity of primary fruit mid palate. Lifted medium palate, finishes a tad short, otherwise nicely balanced. Very decent.

Momo Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £12.95
Medium pale cherry; nose is a bit weedy – leafy; palate attack has an edge which softens mid palate into a black cherry spectrum allowing sweetness of fruit to emerge. Medium-plus weight and sweet succulence comes out nicely. Warming 14% alcohol is noticeable but not dominant. Sweet finish.

Framingham Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £12.99
Medium deep black cherry; spicy, almost mulled nose, which is not replicated on the palate. Palate is still dark berry fruited. Full bodied for a pinot noir. Rich, sweet density and volume of fruit. 13.5% seems a little warm on this wine. A bit rustic.

Jackson Estate, Vintage Widow Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £14.99
Pretty deep ruby, not opaque by any standards, but dark. Nose a bit closed, hint grippy and oaky on the palate attack. This softens into sweet, glycerol-laden black berry and cherry fruit. Not subtle or delicate, in the bruising style of pinot noir, but not necessarily unattractive for that. Long finish.

Staete Landt, Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £15.95
Medium translucent red cherry; perky freshness, attractive, fresh, crunchy red cherry, with some sandalwood complexity, medium weight. Lean rather than lush – a Marlborough thing?

Huia, Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £16.00
Medium deep translucent black cherry; savoury and red cherry nose, lush red berry fruit, with freshening acid core; focus on primary fruit without too much complexing character; finish has the faintest hint of a bitter note.

Saint Clair, Pioneer Block 14, Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £17.99
Medium translucent cherry red; perfume and wild strawberries on the nose; linear attack of sweet raspberries and redcurrants; enchanting slender and aromatic mid palate, fresh core with restraint and some magnetism. Decent palate length.

Saint Clair, Pioneer Block 4, Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough, £17.99
Medium translucent dark cherry; hint leafy on the nose, palate attack also so, but also has slippery rich texture and dark berry fruits. Some savoury notes add a hint of complexity, but I’d like to see a little less leafiness.

Mt Difficulty, Roaring Meg Pinot Noir 2008, Central Otago, £13.99
Medium pale red cherry; smells a bit sharp; simple crunchy red cherry fruit on the palate; adequate, possibly even decent at the price, but not quite what the region or the variety can do well.

Quartz Reef Pinot Noir 2008, Central Otago £15.00
Medium translucent red cherry; dusky cherry nose; sandalwood and spicy wood notes overlay subtle sweet red fruits; hints of savouriness, with a core of refining acidity. Has lush, sweet, dark brooding cherry mid palate, spicy finish. Some nice notes of non-fruity complexity, which make it stand out. Alcohol of 14.5% is very well integrated but does just pop up on the finish.

Carrick Crown & Cross Pinot Noir 2008, Central Otago, £17.95
Medium pale red cherry; muted nose, bit lightweight on aromatics, and with a dusky mid palate note. Fresh acid core, but I’d expect it to show better. Alcohol of 14.5% is not best integrated.

Mt Difficulty Pinot Noir 2008, Central Otago, £19.99
Medium red cherry; soft spice red cherry compote; enthralling fruit attack, soft fruit mid palate, with fresh acid backbone, delicate and slender; attractive fresh finish of some elegance creates very good impression.

Felton Road, Block 5 Pinot Noir 2008, Central Otago, £29.00
Medium cherry red; dark cherry and graphite nose falling into sweet dark cherry palate, with the smooth depth of a black hole you can’t help but want to fall into. Refined and layered; integrated and beautifully balanced. Sublime.

Neudorf, Tom’s Block Pinot Noir 2007, Nelson, £16.00
Medium pale ruby; smoky red cherry lift; sweet/dry combo fruit attack, slippery texture, dark, brooding cherry palate, supremely smooth and enticing, dark chocolate and savoury back palate notes and very long; flinty notes tucked away in the layers.

Neudorf, Moutere Pinot Noir 2007, Nelson £26.00
Medium cherry red; graphite and cherry nose, sweet cherry and tamarind palate attack. Understated, refined palate, very smooth, long and textured with layers of complexity; savoury/umami sensation; supple, subtle texture and well-proportioned weight. Sweet fruit with dry core, acidity fresh yet swathed in richness of fruit and texture making it very good.

Clos Henri, Pinot Noir 2007, Marlborough, £18.00
Bit reductive nose which blows off; dark crunchy fruit but no great subtlety; dark, slatey notes among tangy dark chocolate, cherry and tamarillo; some good complexity and depth

Spy Valley, Envoy Pinot Noir 2007, Marlborough, £21.49
Medium translucent ruby; lifted stewed cherries; quite full bodied without elegance making it a little rustic.

Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir 2007, Marlborough, £25.00
Medium translucent ruby; dark spices on the nose, rich mixed berry compote palate, with sweet core and lush texture; could be a tad fresher on the core? Rich, fat style with supple texture.

Seresin, Rachel Pinot Noir 2007, Marlborough, £25.00
Medium deep cherry; sandalwood and allspice aromatic perfumed nose, enticing sweet red berry fruit palate, silky texture, succulent, complexing black pepper twist mid palate, lush and complex; more-ish in a simple, focused spectrum.

Seresin, Raupo Creek Pinot Noir 2007, Marlborough, £25.00         
Medium deep cherry; spicy, hints graphite, lush and savoury palate core. Full weighted palate, without being full bodied – the weight of lush sweet berry fruit;  palate fresh and complex, enticing, smooth and delicately spiced. Long finish.

Pegasus Bay, Pinot Noir 2007, Waipara, £22.50
Medium pale bright red cherry; toasted spice nose; full bodied dark berry fruit with smooth, succulent texture, dark chocolate and blueberries. Full, rich, alcohol on the finish but integrated mid palate. In the big, rich, not-quite-bruising style of pinot noir.

Mac Forbes

Australian pinot noir has evolved beyond recognition in the last five to ten years. Cooler sites are being exploited and greater varietal definition and purity are emerging as a result of this, and producers’ growing expertise at managing the fruit/acid paradigm of balance rather than the more typical, for red wine, fruit/tannin paradigm. Inevitably this means a lower perception, and reality, of new oak influence on the fruit from this delicate grape variety. And cooler sites do their part to help preserve more natural acidity in the fruit.

The regions of Australia currently producing some of the best expressions of pinot noir include Tasmania, plus Gippsland, Mornington Peninsula and the Yarra Valley, all in Victoria.

Mac Forbes of Mac Forbes Wines, in the Yarra Valley, led a blind-tasting seminar, in London this month, of Australian pinot noir from these regions. He said: “It’s terrific when there’s excitement in the local industry. From producers’ perspectives, we’re in the midst of an exciting time in history, certainly from a cool climate perspective.”

He emphasised that the Aussies are at the beginning of their learning curve for pinot noir, saying “the questions are far bigger than the answers. We’re asking questions on soils and clones and canopy management. And we’re coming to grips with our own frontier. I’ve never seen so much energy and focus with varieties like pinot noir, as well as pushing the boundaries with other varieties such as shiraz. We’re making a lot of trials, and having a lot of failures.”  Not to mention some enormous and encouraging successes to build on.

Another reason for pinot noir being at the beginning of the curve in Australia is that much of the existing planting material was planted in the wrong (warmer) place, with many of the wrong clones. And said Forbes: “a big chunk of pinot noir problems in the past is because they were situated in places where the night time temperatures are too warm. So there’s a loss of aromatics.”  In fact, Forbes reckons “the picking date is the most important thing. The acid is dropping, fruit vitality is dropping, so we have a pretty small window to pick.  We’re dealing with some fundamental differences in fruit behaviour compared to Europe.” This from a chap who also works in Austria, so he’s able to make direct comparisons with authority.

Victoria

Part of the ongoing challenge is for Australia to identify a style of pinot noir it can claim as its own.  New Zealand’s Central Otago has done a fantastic job in this regard. But Australia is so big it’s not going to have just one style.  Already Mornington Peninsula is talking about sub-regional styles, and Forbes is pushing Yarra Valley the same way. 

For the time being, it’ll be a good job for Australia just to be recognised for producing some proper pinot noir. 

Tasting notes

All the wines were from the 2008 vintage, some of which had not yet been released onto the market at the time of tasting. They would be expected to put on a bit of weight, and fatness, in bottle (a good thing in this context)!

Ten Minutes By Tractor, McCutcheon Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008, Mornington Peninsula
15 months in oak, 27% new.
Pale ruby garnet. Aromatic strawberry, heady perfume. Fresh, light elegant attack with piquancy of alcohol (13.8%) in mid palate, bit of dark plum mid palate. Could have a bit more mid-palate density, but very good varietal definition. Hint of the savoury, with long finish.

Kooyong Haven Pinot Noir 2008, Mornington Peninsula
18 months in oak, 30% new.
Medium deep ruby. Rich blueberry aroma, sandalwood spice of new oak peeking through the aroma, not obtrusive. Medium full body, lush sweet fruit (in a dry wine), good slug of slippery glycerol adding to palate texture, fruit slightly hollow mid-palate, and finish a little disappointing on first tasting, but fills out a bit in the glass and palate has lengthened after time in the glass.

Stoniers Windmill Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008, Mornington Peninsula
11 months in oak, 45% new
Medium ruby. Nose a bit closed, hint of blackberry stems/leaf, and a faint note of tannin grip early on palate. Quite full bodied with sweet texture and redcurrant fruit. Decent length. Quite crunchy (not wholly positive in this context).

Yabby Lake Pinot Noir 2008, Mornington Peninsula
12 months in oak, 33% new
Medium ruby. Wild strawberry nose, bit more warmth in comparison to the first three wines. Hints of savoury, earthy notes amid the soft red berries. The most structured of the first four wines, and attractive for that. Refreshing baked note to finish. Length could be longer. 14% alcohol completely balanced and integrated.

William Downie Gippsland Pinot Noir 2008, Gippsland
40% new barriques.
Medium ruby, with stewed red berries, and hints of tomato leaf and mint leaf. Bit stalky mid palate, with dark plum competing for attention on mid palate. Quite edgy just now. Might settle into itself.

Tamar Ridge Kayena Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008, Tasmania
12 months in 20% new oak.
Bright red cherry fruit, elusive perfume. Medium body with attractive acid balance and freshness of fruit. Softening crunchy fruit, decent length, piquant allspice note mid palate to complex the fruit a little; smoothly textured; wholesome.

Delamere Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008, Pipers River, Tasmania
15 months in 35% new oak.
Medium ruby; aromatic spice nose, not so much fruit aroma on the nose, seductive sweet red fruit undercurrent to the palate with noticeable tannin. Fruit wins out. Attractive slippery texture, sweet but dry fruit, nicely balanced fruit/acid spectrum with a bit of tannin muscle to soften in over the next couple of years.

Pirie Estate Pinot Noir 2008, Tasmania
12 months in barrel
Medium ruby with purple hint. Fresh purple fruit, crunchy, youthful, more simple at first nose. Almost blackberry/Ribena. Has gentle sensation of pinot noir with softer acid core; fruit opens up in warmth of mouth. Quite full bodied with youthful tannin frame, but  still succulent fruit. Nicely balanced; refreshing finish.

Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir 2008, Tasmania
12 months in 30% new oak
Medium deep ruby; juicy dark plum nose and palate attack. Full sweet-fruited body, plum, dark cherry, good level of smoothening glycerol, very nicely balanced for longer evolution, and now. Seductive style with serious structure.

Shelmerdine Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley
10 months in oak
Medium pale colour; wild strawberry, intense perfume nose, very aromatic. Light, sweet-fruited attack, strawberries and raspberries, definitely in the aromatic profile, still with slippery texture; elegantly structured; lightness of being with this wine. Tannins largely hidden; perfume persists through palate. Delicious now, not sure about keeping it for any length of time. Long fruity finish.

Mac Forbes Coldstream Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley
11 months in 35% new oak.
Medium pale colour; crunchy cherry skins on the nose. Perceptive tart note to palate attack, quickly followed by youthful, primary fruit. No great complexity on first tasting; perkily balanced but not showing many personality traits, but does open up in the glass. Long finish though, so maybe understated. Light on tannins.

Yarra Yering Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley
18 months in 40% new oak.
Medium ruby; smoky, almost mint note to the nose; warm, dry baked black cherry, medium full body, warm and warming on the palate, quite seductively textured with good intensity and volume of fruit. Richly balanced with expansive fruit, and sweet long fruit finish. Probably the most atypical of these wines. The 14% alcohol is integrated.

Mac Forbes Woori Yallock Pinot Noir 2008, Yarra Valley
11 months in 33% new oak.
Medium pale; toasted red cherry; medium bodied. Hint savoury mid palate; slightly subdued, but with focused acid core. Fragrant strawberry aroma mid palate; tight fruit; finish a bit shorter than I might have hoped.

L-R: Greiner, Näkel, Fürst, Viehhauser, Heger

Top German spätburgunder (pinot noir) producers from the Ahr to Baden came to London to present their wines at a Master of Wine Masterclass on Sept 11, 2009.

Presenting their wines (north to south) were:
Meike Näkel of Weingut Mayer-Näkel (Ahr)
Dieter Greiner of Kloster Eberbach (Rheingau)
Paul Fürst of Weingut Rudolf Fürst (Franken)
Yquem Viehhauser of Weingut Bernhard Huber (Baden)
Joachim Heger of Weingut Dr. Heger (Baden)

Germany has an historic heritage of spätburgunder (pinot noir) production, stretching back 700 years and more, when Cistercian monks first took their grapes with them from Burgundy.

But the country’s ascendency to emerging world class spätburgunders largely dates from the late 1980s, as Joachim Heger of Weingut Dr. Heger in Baden explained: “We had very good wines in the old days. Then there was a period of time that was not as strong. In the 1950s, most German reds came from heated must. The wine was drinkable in March after the harvest. People added sugar to the wines so they didn’t do the malolactic fermentation. That was style of pinot noir. Nobody kept wine in bottle.

“In the late 80s and early 90s Germans came back to fermenting skins with the must, to take colour from the skins by alcohol not by heat. Since then, there has been a big development.”

In this respect, German spätburgunder is ‘newer’ than parts of the new world, though many of the best sites are matched to spätburgunder, so those centuries served a significant purpose.

Germany has the third largest plantings of pinot noir in the world (after France, and post-Sideways USA), but the variety has always played second fiddle to riesling. Spätburgunder is the most widely planted black grape variety in Germany, with 11,820ha, slowly increasing over the past five years. It accounts for 12% of the country’s total vineyard area, and 1/3rd of the black grape plantings.

Dernauer Pfarrwingert, Ahr

Ahr is the northernmost region growing pinot noir, north of the 50° line latitude. The cycle of vine-growing here is two to three weeks behind the southern parts of Baden, some 400km further south. Meike Näkel, whose father started the Mayer-Näkel estate said: “the steep slopes give a high sun intensity. The slate soils conserve heat and reflect it back, so we have higher average temperatures than the surrounding areas.”

A persistent theme for the seminar was changing viticultural and winemaking practices in the last quarter of a century. Meike said: “Before 2002, we used a maximum 11 months’ barrique ageing, but since then, it’s up to 16 months to give the wine more tannin from the oak. We also changed the maceration time to about 21 days including a short pre-fermentation maceration, and cooling time at the end of fermentation. We started making everything longer to give our wines more substance and the ability to age a little longer as well.” In the northern Ahr, the fruit/acid razor edge exists, with the winery working on those other elements of structure.

At Rheingau’s Kloster Eberbach, not so distant from the Ahr, and also on slate soils, a theme of perfumed elegance persisted in the wines.  For this estate, said its managing director, Dieter Greiner “the intensity of how we work in the vineyard has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Such as cutting grape bunches in half [to limit yield], and removing leaves.”

Assmannshausen Höllenberg, Rheingau

Some clones of spätburgunder, as in France, had been bred for quantity.  So Greiner added “it depends on the clones. Some were bred for high yields. Others, like clone 18 or 20 from Geisenheim, have intense aroma but very big berries. With these clones you have to do a green harvest, even in this year when we had a strong flowering period.”

For Weingut Bernhard Huber, in Baden, Yquem Viehhauser said such vineyard work is “much more intensive than harvest. It’s 120 to 130 hours per hectare, but it’s worth it.”

In addition to cutting the bunches, Meike added “what else helps us to keep the berries small is removing some leaves during or directly after flowering. The vines get a small shock and give energy to producing more leaves and not into giving energy to the grapes to get bigger.”

Over in Franken Paul Furst is a leading spätburgunder light.  Though his family have been making wine since 1638, his own expertise has changed dramatically.  “When I was studying, the knowledge to make pinot noir was the same as making riesling [i.e. essentially made as a white wine]. It was the late 80s when making good red wine in Germany came to involve long maceration and deep colour.” But now, he added “the main focus in the work of my son and I is the freshness in pinot noir, the silkiness, and a good acidity which is not sour. We’re working for elegance and a fine long aftertaste.”

Centgrafenberg, Franken

Tannin management has changed towards achieving this aim. A five-to-seven day pre-fermentation cold soak is now the order of the day before fermentation in old wooden cuves using a proportion of whole bunches, which Paul said bring freshness to the wine.  And for Paul “the barrel helps the wine to become balanced and round. It’s important for the wine to stay the whole 16 months on lees without rackings, and for the best wines we use 100% new French oak.”

It is Baden which has the most spätburgunder plantings, half of all of them. The southern parts of this region are 100km north of Burgundy, with more rain because of the foothills of the Black Forest. Here Weingut Bernhard Huber also use a proportion of whole clusters. Yquem said “for the 2005 Hecklinger Schlossberg we used nearly 70% whole clusters. We like the tannins of the stems working with the oak for complexity.”

A more recent change at this winery is to vinify and bottle vineyard sites separately. Yquem said: “until 2004 we had three different pinot noirs, a basic one, like a ‘villages’ then a ‘premier cru’ and a ‘grand cru’. Since 2004, we started to separate the sites. Now the Reserve [with vineyard site] at our winery is a synonym for grosses gewaches/grand cru.”

Weingut Dr. Heger is a bit further south than Huber, in the warmest part of Germany.  Owner Joachim Heger chose his wines specifically to encapsulate the changing attitudes to vinification over the past decades, from the ‘high tech’ 1993 in fermenter with long maceration to extract colour and tannin, to the  ‘low tech’ temperature-controlled, hand punch-down, earlier harvested fruit for greater elegance.

Ihringer Winklerberg, Baden

The 1993 had almost four weeks of maceration, with no pre-fermentation cold soak.  Joachim said: “You get a good colour and it seems to be fresh but there are green tannins in the wine.” He added “It was the way we vinified the wines in this period of time.”

By 1999, he said “we didn’t want the green tannins. We fermented the wine in wooden cuves, but there was no temperature control, and it got very hot.”  By 2005, temperature control is in place and grapes are harvested earlier to preserve the natural freshness of higher acidity.

As to future winemaking, Joachim said: “taking the 2005, 2006 and 2007 we have more complexity and more freshness; more silkiness, and not too much tannin but enough tannin that the wine has enough structure.”

The 2005 was looking great. I’m not convinced pinot noir can support long, dark extractions and keep its aromatic integrity.

Tasting notes

The temporal evolution on the evidence of this tasting is the aim for a more elegant, ethereal, perfumed style of pinot noir. Both vineyard work to limit yield and enhance acidity (further south)/adding structural oak (further north), as well as gentler extraction techniques in the winery are resulting in wine with a more classic paler colour, more perfume, and sufficient tannin to support, rather than constrict, the fruit-acid balancing act that is so crucial for pinot noir.

Weingut Meyer-Näkel, Ahr

Dernauer Pfarrwingert Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs 2007
Cherry blossom perfume, elegant allspice attack. Silky texture with warm, fresh feel. Bright red fruits becoming more perfumed in the glass.

Dernauer Pfarrwingert Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs 2007
A warmer vintage. Dry-baked cherry, lush fruit, with attractive balance. Harvested end October for that richer balance.  Still very youthful with long, warm finish of succulent fruit.

Dernauer Pfarrwingert Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs 2004
Smoky, tar nose with black cherry.  Elegance and structure and fineness of acid core, with just the beginnings of a developing meaty note.  Perfumed red cherry, linear acidity with the flesh of fruit surrounding the core.

Dernauer Pfarrwingert Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs 1999
Lifted earthy notes, with sweet base texture opening up.  I’m beamed up to creamy Portobello mushrooms tasting this wine. Before 2002, wines generally underwent 11 months barrel maturation, subsequently increased to nearer 16 months.

Kloster Eberbach, Rheingau

Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Spätburgunder, 2005
Gunflint smoke aroma, elegantly medium bodied with lush red cherry and strawberry fruit. Quite complete, balanced, perfumed.

Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Spätburgunder, 2003
Warmth, rumtoph fruit of the vintage, still with mouthfeel and profile of a fine wine.  Compare with 1959 and 1947, also hot vintages.

Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Spätburgunder, 1989
Bricking/orange rim with aromatic wild strawberry perfume, with a palate like being enveloped in a silk blanket. And with fruit that blossoms in the medium bodied palate.

Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Spätburgunder, 1959
Brick to orange rim. Barbecue sauce smokiness giving way to sweet fruit.  Remarkable to taste, balanced with expressive fruit blending with the aromatic smokiness.

Weingut Rudolf Fürst, Franken

Spätburgunder R Centgrafenberg, Grosses Gewächs 2007
Sweet spice from oak in a more modern expression of the style, with slightly grippier tannins than seen in earlier wines, above. Warm berry fruits with freshness and length.

Spätburgunder R Centgrafenberg, Grosses Gewächs 2005
Purple fruit, sweet redcurrants in spicily balanced, youthful wine of medium to full body.  This wine is beginning to come into its own, filling out its body.

Spätburgunder R Centgrafenberg, Grosses Gewächs 2003
Steeped red fruits with a minty note and spicy background. Feeling the warmth of the vintage.

Spätburgunder R Centgrafenberg, Grosses Gewächs 1997
Spicy, dark berries, becoming more muscular in style.

Weingut Bernhard Huber, Baden

Hecklinger Schlossberg Spätburgunder ‘Reserve’ Qba Trocken 2006
Warm, fragrant, red cherry nose with bright, sparky fruit on the palate.  Tight and focused. Very young.

Hecklinger Schlossberg Spätburgunder ‘Reserve’ Qba Trocken 2005
Bright cherry, fruit forward, beginning to open up into its quite full body.

Spätburgunder ‘Reserve’ Qba Trocken 2001
Dry-toast smoke on the nose; beautifully balanced full body with intense berry fruits. Complete and à point with all components integrated and harmonious.

Spätburgunder ‘Reserve’ Qba Trocken 1990
This was recently recorked and topped with sulphur dioxide.  Not showing at its reputed best.

Weingut Dr. Heger, Baden

Achkarrer Schlossberg Spätburgunder *** Qba Trocken, 2005
Intensely perfumed, aromatic wild strawberries. Elegant, lightly medium bodied, well balanced with lengthy finish.

Ihringer Winklerberg Spätburgunder *** QbA Trocken, 2001
Perfumed, sweet fruit, with sweetness of fruit detracting a little for me.

Ihringer Winklerberg Spätburgunder *** QbA Trocken, 1999
Lifted spicy warm fruit, almost rumtoph-like.

Ihringer Winklerberg Spätburgunder *** Spätlese Trocken, 1993
Deeper colour, quite grippy with lifted savoury notes.

Even in recession-hit 2009, wine exports from Germany are  holding steady as the trend to fresh, refreshing, fruity wines continues to grow.  It looks as though we are finally beginning to realise Germany offers fresh, unoaked styles of wine, without the massively high alcohols that can give heat to the palate rather than flavour.

Slopes are important in Germany

Germany’s heritage of producing the greatest rieslings in the world is undoubted. They used to command the highest prices in Europe. Rieslings are again going from strength to strength in the UK, and this includes the traditional styles with some residual sweetness, which are popular with the under 35s, who seem to love trying these wines without the hang-ups that some of the over 35s still seem to have.  With light alcohol, these styles are ideal for lunchtime wines and for the popular gastropub culture. It seems the UK is almost the last to catch on to these light, refreshing, fruity styles of riesling.

But what few realise is that Germany also has a long heritage of producing red wines, although until recently, these were rarely found on any of the export markets.  But that looks set to change.  The last quarter of a century has seen some dynamic changes in the entire approach to red wine making style and quality.

PRESSING THE CHANGES

Just 30 years ago red grape varieties accounted for a little over 10% of the vineyard.   Rainer Lingenfelder of his eponymous estate in the Pfalz explained: “Red wine is not new, however there was a renaissance in red wine starting in mid 1980s. I was one of the growers who wanted to revive the red wine tradition in Germany.” As he’d already worked in Australia and at Grand Puy Lacoste in Bordeaux, he was in a good position to see the potential for red German wines.

In the early 1980s, the way to make red wines was to make them like white wine. Lingenfelder said: “German reds were nothing but a coloured white. Tannins were considered undesirable; malolactic fermentation was a no-no, so a typical pinot noir had considerable acidity, a very, very light colour, and the fruit was nicely ripe for spätlese (late harvest).  It would have been made in sweet style.  So German reds were  pale, with high acidity, some sweetness and no tannin.”  To international markets these would certainly not have been a desirable option.

A handful of forward-thinking producers knew they had to make red wine differently from white. As well as colour, Lingenfelder said they needed “structure, tannin, a completely different body. The key changes were lower yields in the vineyard, a classical fermentation on skins, and a reasonably long fermentation. Malolactic fermentation to reduce the fruity acids (malic), because malic acid collides with tannic acid on palate.  You can’t have both malic and tannic acids. Thirdly oak ageing.”

Lingenfelder said: “It was not the suitability of soil or lack of warmth. Pinot noir ripens properly in Baden, the Pfalz etc.  It was in our minds.  Having gone abroad, we could see from a different angle.  So the time was just ready.”

A quarter of a century later the evidence for good quality red wines is in the bag. Within Germany, some of them are fetching Burgundy 1er cru prices. Initially the demand was so high at home there was no need to export, and there probably still isn’t, but cracking export markets add prestige and profile to a producer, especially such a hard nut to crack as the UK market, where wines from all over the world are present in abundance.

Pfalz

RED GRAPE VARIETIES

While riesling has 20% of the vineyard plantings, red grape varieties are grown on more than a third of Germany’s vineyard area. Pinot noir, called spätburgunder, is the main one, with 11% of plantings, and there has been a big increase in plantings of dornfelder, more than doubling in the last five years, to account for 8% of total plantings. Even the likes of merlot and cabernet sauvignon have appeared since the new millennium, in very small quantities, and restricted to the warmer, more southerly regions such as Baden and the Pfalz.   

Pinot noir/spätburgunder: The best examples are from the Ahr, Rheingau, Pfalz, and Baden regions. Like riesling, it is a variety that is influenced by the terroir. Paul Fürst comments: “pinot noir is always a hand crafted wine. You have to work with the soil and the vine. Good pinot noir is always expensive, when you want minerality and elegance. We are always looking for low yields and thick skins on the bunch.”

Dornfelder: This is a vine crossing from the 1950s, and is a household name in Germany.  It is a deeply coloured variety with good levels of acidity and an aromatic, cherry fruit profile with smooth-textured tannins. The best examples can benefit from barrel ageing which give more grip and structure.  It’s easy to grow and easy to drink, generally having about 12%-12.5% alcohol.

The best reds are found in pockets all over the country, notably the Ahr, Pfalz and Baden. And Rudolf Fürst in Franken deserves special mention. Owner Paul Fürst said: “the western part of Franken is traditionally a red wine area, on red sandstone soil. The only interesting places for red wines are where you find strong soils, e.g. Ahr, Assmannshuasen in the Rheingau, parts of Pfalz and Baden. They make very different types of pinot noir. My type is strong, elegant, with wonderful colour and minerality, very long. 20 years ago we started with small barrels, and now have between 30-100% new oak.”

The small Ahr valley is the renowned red wine region of Germany, with 90% of its vineyard planted to red grapes.  It is one of the most northerly regions in Europe, further north than the Mosel Valley, and it has a special microclimate that allows red grapes to ripen.  Unusually, pinot noir here is planted in slate, which adds a mineral quality, fruitiness and elegance to the wines.

At the Mayer-Näkel estate in the Ahr, 80% of the winery’s production is red. Meike Näkel, who has spent time working in South Africa, explains: “we are very much in the north, but we have a very good microclimate. Our valley is narrow, the vineyards are very steep and south facing. In the narrow valley summer is hot compared to a region beside the valley. Our  soil is dark slate and stone, which warms up easily. The soils conserve heat and give it back to the vines at night-time.”

They export just 5% of production which Näkel says it is a new challenge. “My father started wine in 1982, at this time German red wine was not well known. Not many producers were making good red wine and this was the challenge for him. Now export is my new challenge. ”

Part of the challenge for quality-orientated producers of red wine is that most of the best are small players. They are often run by individual families who work hard in the vineyards and cellars to make good and exciting wines.  This of course means they only occasionally get abroad to promote their wines and build up a following. The onus is on wine connoisseurs sniffing out the best wines and spreading the word.

Windy Peak Pinot Noir

Closure: screwcap
Abv: 13.5%
De Bortoli
£8 to £9 at Sainsburys, EH Booth, Frank Stainton Wines, RS Wines

This is just the fab-est and best value juicy pinot noir I’ve come across in ages.  Parcels of fruit come from across Victoria – Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Geelong and Beechworth – to make a fresh wine with gentle strawberry aromas, medium weight and a pretty, elegant, silky texture for its price. It’s not complicated which is part of its juicy charm, and it has good varietal definition. There’s not a jot of oak to interfere with the purity of fruit.

Three Choirs Vineyard

The UK wine-growing industry is evolving at a rapid and exciting rate and is struggling to keep up with demand for home grown wines, despite the fact that the vineyard area has been forecast to reach 3,000 hectares within a decade.

The planted vineyard area is about 1,000 hectares, with nearly a quarter of that figure not yet in production, as it takes three to four years from planting to get the first crop off vines.  Just five years ago, the total vineyard area was three quarters of its current size, giving an indication of the phenomenal rate of growth the industry has witnessed.

It is traditional method (wines made the same way as Champagne) sparklers that are leading the way, and while producers such as Nyetimber and Ridgeview already have an international reputation, others are chasing their tails. It is estimated that in five years’ time the UK will be producing about 3 million bottles of bubbly, which is ten times the current production.

Pinot noir is now the UK’s most widely planted grape variety, with chardonnay a close second.  Together, these two traditional Champagne varieties account for fully one quarter of the vineyard area.  

Such is the growing popularity for English wines, that upmarket supermarket Waitrose is planning next year to plant four to five hectares of vines on the 1,600 hectare farm it owns in Hampshire.  The aim is to make sparkling wines, and, given the lead-time for the production of sparklers made in the same way as Champagne, it will be at least 2014 before the un-named fizz lands on the market.   The farm already provides the supermarket with chickens eggs, milk, mushrooms, apples and pears, and is big enough to convert more hectares in the future, should the sparkling wine venture really take off.

At the risk of being heretical, for the UK home-grown wine industry, a little bit of global warming will be no bad thing.  England and Wales are at the very northerly extreme of cool climate viticulture, but, such is the changing pattern of the global climate, an extra degree of warmth each year would mean that fruit ripens regularly in this country.  English wines consultant Stephen Skelton MW said: “Ripening grapes in the UK terms is defined in terms of acidity, we have to get the acids ripe. And 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 were great for this.  2007 was an anomaly, It was the second warmest year on record, but the summer was awful,” which meant some of the acids were too high. A few hot days over 29° to 30°C is what we need to ripen acidity, which is not such a hard thing to achieve in the current climate.

Ridgeview

The resulting wines, both still and sparkling, are fresh and lively, with fragrant fruit and only moderate alcohol levels, 11.5% to 12.5%. These can be ideal for lunchtime quaffing wines, and wines by the glass. Indeed, Christine Parkinson, the group wine buyer for Hakkasan and Yauatcha restaurants said “We try to have something English by the glass in both our restaurants, such as Camel Valley Bacchus dry in Yauatcha and Plumpton Estate Rosé in Hakkasan.”  Parkinson added: “I’d love to do more English wine, if I could taste more and find the right ones … English wines suit the cuisine at Hakkasan. We try every wine with the food, and generally speaking the aromatic wines with high acidity tend to go well with our cuisine.”

Chapel Down is one of the leading producers of English wines, and they make some of the best still wines from the third most planted variety, bacchus, especially in their single vineyard Lamberhurst and Tenterden labels.  Their managing director, Frazer Thompson said: “We’ve planted a lot because we believe in future of English wines, especially sparkling, but we think there’s an English equivalent of Cloudy Bay, which is bacchus.” In fact the company recently bought 45 hectares of prime North Downs chalklands, which will be planted to chardonnay and pinot noir.  

Thompson highlighted the growing trend for English wines to be on the wine list, saying places such as “Roast, Gary Rhodes, Ramsay and Conran restaurants have our wines on their lists”, adding “good modern sommeliers are looking for locally-sourced beef, vegetable from the gardens of England, and they’re also looking at wines. People shouldn’t be surprised to see [matches] such as bacchus with Whitstable oysters or Dover sole.”

The UK is also well placed to take advantage of the boom in pink wines. Plantings of red grapes are also on the increase, both for red wines and for pink wines. Chapel Down may have trademarked the ‘English Rose’ label for a still and sparkling pink wine, with a slightly more ruddy complexion than its human namesake, but there are plenty of ‘English Rosés’ (with accent) to be found, such as Stanlake Park’s pinot blush or a’Beckett’s Estate Rosé.

English wines will never be cheap. Production at the cool extreme of viticulture is more expensive than in warm sunny places where grapes ripen regularly, evenly, effortlessly.  Thompson sums this up, saying “technically [English wine] is an excellently tasting product. People’s expectations of anything English should not be cheap. It should be premium in taste and feel, so English fizz will make you feel better than if you’re drinking champagne.”

Australia has been long derided on the international stage for the poor quality and varietal typicity of its pinot noir wines, and little wonder when Australian imagery has been vast, spectacular, beautiful, panoramic scenery, all of which is the antithesis of the capricious, site-specific, agoraphobic pinot noir. But the last decade has seen a step change in focus as passionate winemakers have been pandering to the variety’s prima donna needs, with some particularly sweet success.

East Coast Tasmania

It’s arguably not even as niche a product as pinot noir is in France. Perhaps it’s one of those weird statistical comparisons, but Australia, with 2.5% of its vineyard area dedicated to pinot noir, has nearly twice the proportion of pinot noir than Burgundy, which has a meagre 1.3% of France’s vineyard area. For the purists, the absolute hectarage is 4,400 hectares (ha) in Australia versus 10,700 ha in Burgundy.

A quick scan of auction house Langton’s latest classication reveals eight pinot noirs, up from two in the first edition. Langtons’ Andrew Caillard MW, said there had been “a genuine improvement of absolute quality over the last ten years … the top regions are really the Melbourne Dress Circle (e.g. Geelong, Macedon, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula) and Tasmania.”  

Pinot noir plantings may be up only 6% since 2001, but it was also around this time that serious pinot noir producers were getting serious.  Noel Young, proprietor of Noel Young Wines, International Wine Challenge (IWC) Australia Specialist merchant of the year in 2008, which lists 23 Aussie pinot noirs said “progress has been rapid in the last four or five years with the right clones in the right locations, but it’s been happening in Tasmania and Mornington Peninsula since the mid-to-late 1990s as growers have done vintages in France” and experimented with different clones in different soils.

Cool Climate Chic

There’s no getting away from the fact that pinot noir performs to its most precise and perfumed best in cooler climates, and this factor oversees the recent themes of new clonal material, vines coming of age at about a decade old, the trend to site-specific and single vineyard plots, as well as the growing band of producers rocking and rolling with the pinot noir drum.  See table at the end for key areas.

Tasmania certainly has the edge here. “The major natural advantage for Tassie is the wonderful cool climate” said Claudio Radenti of Freycinet Vineyard, “Around the world all the great pinot noirs hail from cool climates. Pinot noirs from warmer climates can be a little heavy and jammy lacking finesse and the gorgeous velvety pinot noir texture.

“The quality potential in Tassie is enormous and exciting. Longer slower ripening conditions favours retention of delicate fruit aromas and flavours” and coolness of climate enables some of those classic, ethereal attributes to thrive.  According to the chief winemaker of Kreglinger Wine Estates (Pipers Brook, Ninth Island and Kreglinger sparkling) René Bezemer, “we retain more of our fruit-derivative components. I look for floral attributes, delicate perfume and distinctive fruit aromas – violets, darker berry fruit, dark cherry.  If I see blackcurrant it’s shrivelled fruit from too much sun. If see strawberry, it’s been picked too early.”    

Pinot Noir

Exploiting the trend to cool climate chic, Tasmania’s vineyard area has nearly trebled since the turn of the millennium, with in 2008, 45% of the yield coming from pinot noir.  In 2000, it accounted for less than one-third.   

Over on the ‘big island’, Mornington Peninsula is oft-cited as producing some really good pinot noir. And internally, Mornington Peninsula winemakers have been talking about sub-regions for some time already: three of them.  Pinot noirs from the north are bigger, more muscular, darker style.  The hill – Main Ridge – show delicate perfumes, floral, elegant notes. 

Ten Minutes by Tractor is one Mornington Peninsula producer doing very well, especially with their single vineyard wines, which can all be reached in ten minutes when travelling by tractor. Neil McAndrew, managing director of their UK importer H&H Bancroft, said: “For us Ten Minutes by Tractor have been the best pinot noirs we’ve ever found in Australia.  They are the bridge between Burgundy and Australia. They have some classic pinot noir characters, but they’re not trying to be Burgundy; they have a savoury character which I haven’t seen in the past from Australia. “The volumes are also Burgundian, and what Bancroft get flies out of the door, according to McAndrew, who also said Ten Minutes By Tractor is the sort of premium Australian wines the restaurant sector is looking for.  It sells in places such as The Square, Home House, Fortnum and Chez Bruce.

Kooyong is another highly respected producer in the Mornington Peninsula, planted as recently as 1996.. The managing director of their UK agent, Great Western Wines, said: “He’s producing great quality in terms of acceptance in the market.  The wines that really tell the story of Kooyong are the wines made from individual parcels, retailing at £25 to £30. But Kooyong also makes two other levels retailing at £15-£16 and about £11, and the acceptance for these has been very good, and remains so, with good success in the independent sector and in the on trade.”  The commercial groundswell is certainly beginning in the UK.

Climbing, Climbing

Both Mornington Peninsula, and Geelong, noted for the likes of Bannockburn and By Farr – on the other side of Port Philip are low-lying coastal zones which garner cooling winds from the Bass Strait. Yet planting at cooler, higher altitudes is also beginning to reap rewards in places such as the Adelaide Hills, though the Macedon Ranges are arguably more successful.  It was in the Macedon Ranges, at 560m elevation, that Phillip Moraghan of Curly Flat settled, having eliminated both Geelong and Mornington Peninsula.  He explained his search was “all about pinot ‘grief’, looking for soil, cool climate, water” all issues for this fastidious grape variety.

But is arguably Bindi, 500m up at the southern end of Macedon that leads the field. The vines, which require straw buttressing in winter, have some age, having been planted in 1988, with 1991 the first vintage.  Owner Michael Dhillon said: “We see about 7-9 years as a real turning point for complexity and structure.”  

Yarra Valley

Steve Webber, winemaker at De Bortoli in the Yarra Valley, also cites vine age, as well as continuously improving quality practices, saying : “I think that with more care and attention to the manual practices [hand picking, hand sorting, whole berry fermenting], we have seen a huge shift in our own quality … I think pinot noir is a vine age thing. Generally our quality is improving with vine age. But poor quality old vine material is not good. I am just starting to make a single vineyard wine from a property that has pinot noir planted in 1990 and 1997″, adding that single vineyard is an important way forward for pinot noir.

A criticism of the Yarra Valley, making as it does, everything from sparkling to fortified, is that its pinot noirs don’t do so well in the warmer years, or indeed the warmer areas, so you need to be in the higher altitude, more southerly, reaches of the valley. But not everyone thinks like that. Rob Hall, winemaker at Mount Mary, just about 30m above the valley floor said: “you can still make very good pinot noir in warmer years, but may not be in the style you’d choose.  Normally we’d like a more delicate style of pinot noir, we’re not keen on tannin or wood. So you might get more tannin in a warmer year. But you can do something with the canopy to keep the fruit cooler.” He added “we’re purchasing south facing slopes for pinot noir and chardonnay to counter some of the warmer years. ”

Champion Clones

Along with site and vine age, newer, trendier clones such as 667, 777, 114 and 115 have been in Australia, also for about a decade. Pirie said there had been a “big impact of new clones and new sites leading to more refined pinot noir expression. At Tamar Ridge, up to 2006, wines were dominated by ‘old’ clones, plus MV6, an old introduction into Australia. These are robust clones but are lacking some of the high notes of true Burgundy.  In the last few years the Pommard clone and the ‘Bernard’ clones from Morey St Denis were introduced. A blend of Pommard and MV6 will be one of the Tamar Ridge reserve wines in 2008.  The Dijon clones, grown on the right soils, have the classic perfume of cherries and summer pudding berries.”

Creature Champions

But above all, human champions are at the vanguard of Aussie pinot noir’s lifting reputation.  Dhillon said: “15 years ago it was young vines, often in poor locations, little experience in the vineyard and winery.  Most [winemakers] did not have a philosophy based on understanding the international benchmarks.  Today, the vines are older, vine management better, yields lower, winemaking more appropriate and the best sites are proving themselves capable of expressing unique qualities.”

“We have inspired growers and winemakers who have a passion and a thorough understanding of benchmarking, using the correct clones and the right sites to grow this unique and challenging grape variety” said Dalwhinnie Wines’ winemaker David Jones, adding “the Mornington Penisnsula Pinot Noir Celebration [a bi-annual pinot noir fest with international flavour, which started in 2003] has been an iconic event and a great inspiration to reach even higher quality levels.”

Another such event is the Victorian Pinot noir workshop, a winemaker-only event, now in its 6th year, where more than 60 winemakers come together to discuss the grape and how to get better and more from it.  Having witnessed “a growing ‘collegiality’ amongst Victorian winemakers who venture down the love-struck path of growing and making pinot noir, more so in this state than I have observed elsewhere” the Victorian Wine Industry Association’s chief executive Joanne Butterworth-Gray thinks this co-operation has been “critical to the success of Victorian pinot noir on the world stage.”

The scale may necessarily be small for the best results, as indeed it is in Burgundy, and as Radenti said, “there are considerably more serious producers of pinot noir in the current decade than in the previous one. There is better understanding by these young professionals of what it takes viticulturally and in the winery to come up with the goods.”

Pinot noir plantings in Australia

A lot of areas are experimenting but a few core regions dominate higher quality production

Adelaide Hills                       391 ha

Geelong                                   170

Macedon Ranges                    58

Mornington Peninsula       252

Tasmania                                 625

Yarra Valley                          706

Sub total                              2,202   50% of total pinot noir plantings