with Clive Hartley

Shiraz on the nose

‘Man the barricades!’ and prepare to defend Australian shiraz. In the recently published National Vintage Report for 2024 white grapes increased to 51% of the national crush and was higher than red grapes for the first time in a decade. 

A decline in shiraz production was the cause, it has decreased by a whopping 48,000 tonnes. Barossa and Clare valleys in South Australia were amongst the worst hit areas, but it is a wide- spread problem.

I’ve been talking to vignerons in other states and some shiraz vineyards were not picked this year as buyers couldn’t be found for the grapes. Chardonnay was the largest produced grape variety, overtaking shiraz which declined by 14%, making the 2024 the smallest crush since 2007 (Winetitles Media).

So, we need to come out and support our most famous red grape. Let’s face it, with the temperatures currently hovering around zero it is a great time to drink red wines.

To enjoy the best locally grown shiraz you should try Granite Hills. It is the epitome of cool climate shiraz. Alternatively, look at the wines Glenhope Vineyard are producing, such as their Granitic or Ferrosol Shiraz (both $38).

If you want to taste Crozes Hermitage, but not travel there, then go for the 2021 Sutton Grange Syrah ($65), it is savoury with struck match notes as well as green peppercorns and black cherries.

I also recently positively reviewed the ‘growers range’ of wines from Place of Changing Winds, which source fruit from Heathcote and Harcourt.

Take a trip to nearby Grampians and Pyrenees and you have a plethora of wines to choose from. Best’s Bin No 0 is a classic and their 2021 is outstanding, displaying cassis, blackberries, cinnamon and nutmeg aromas.

Refined and elegant on the palate makes it approachable to drink now. Staying in the Grampians, Mount Langi Ghiran Hollows Shiraz 2018 at $30 a bottle is good value and has savoury flavours and soft tannins.

Their Cliff Edge Shiraz 2020 ($35) is also a decent drop and has cedar, dried herbs and plenty of rotundone, the compound behind the smell of white pepper. In the Pyrenees region, Summerfield have a reputation for producing some good full-bodied traditional reds, and Taltarni do a meaty, vanilla-driven Old Vine Shiraz.

In Sunbury, if you haven’t tried Craiglee Shiraz then you are missing out. Also, local winemaker Jean-Paul Trijsburg sources fruit from Sunbury to make his 2021 Syrah ($30). The wine has lifted green peppercorns and spice on the nose.

Clive Hartley’s Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

White wine with steak

It is not something I’d normally recommend, serving a white wine (chardonnay) with steak, but I had it the other night and it made a comparatively good match.

Normally, choosing what wine to have with a dish can be as simple as applying long-established rules such as white with fish and red with red meats.

However, there is so much more to consider; the cooking method, sauces and impact of vegetables, accompaniments and farinaceous sides can all change the impact on the taste of the wine and the main ingredient.

Working out the overall dish’s intensity and matching it with a similarly intense wine is a good starting point and ground rule. Light food with light wines etc. But wine can also be used as a palate cleanser, which is what happened in the steak vs chardonnay incident.

Understanding the style of wine and not just the grape variety is another consideration. The chardonnay I had was extremely light and cool climate in style with plenty of acidity. It would have been a different story if the wine had heavier buttery malolactic notes and toasty oak.

I read a comment from Clare Burder, from Eminence Vineyard in the King Valley recently, about the time she was in Japan where a sake producer said to her ‘sake doesn’t fight with food’.

I think many of our wines ‘fight with food’. Our major grape varieties and warm to hot climate produce intense fruit flavours and high alcohol wines. Attributes that don’t marry with the savoury nature of food. Clare thinks that pinot blanc is the closest the wine world has to the matching ability of sake.

It has low aromatics and flavours, gentle structure and can sit in the background rather than dominating the flavour of food. Italian white grapes such as pinot grigio, garganega, fiano, vermentino, verdicchio can also be classified in the same basket.

Locally you can try an outstanding 2023 Pinot Blanc from Granite Hills and Mount Towrong Vineyard produce an attractive 2023 Vermentino and a saline, herbal, light-bodied 2023 Grillo, a white grape found in Sicily.

Red wines that don’t fight with food would be grape varieties like sangiovese, nebbiolo, some gamays and pinot noir. These are light to medium bodied wines that have good levels of acidity, useful in food matching as it acts like seasoning.

Looking over my recent notes, Mount Towrong Nebbiolo 2022, Best’s Pinot Noir 2022 or J.P Trijsburg Pinot Noir 2021and Vinea Marson Sangiovese 2018 fit the bill.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His 305 page full colour book Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

Go out and visit a wine region. A leading wine CEO is pleading with Australians to buy local red wine in support of grape growers facing tough years ahead.

“The best thing that consumers here in Australia can do is to get out and go to a region and visit a cellar door,” said Lee McLean, chief executive officer of Australian Grape & Wine, Australia’s national association of winegrape and wine producers.

Many larger producers and their army of growers are suffering. They once relied upon the Chinese export market worth $1.2 billion, but those days are over.

There is now a wine glut and red grapes will not be picked this vintage. You might not have noticed this glut in our local regions. The majority of these are populated with small, boutique wineries and it is not these that are suffering.

McLean is talking about larger areas such as the Murray-Darling which covers areas in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

A petition entitled “Save Riverland Wine” has begun, requesting government to cover the cost of harvesting shiraz and cabernet sauvignon. Not to be made into wine, but to be picked and dropped on the ground. Such is their plight.

So, plan a road trip along the Murray and call into some cellar doors. Grabbing a bargain is often hard to achieve these days.

Sadly, wines are often cheaper at the big wine retailers than direct from the winery, but at least you get to taste them before buying. At the cellar door it is worth asking the question – “is this exclusive to cellar door or is it available in retail and, if so, why should I buy direct?”

Maybe weigh up the benefits of joining a cellar door club. Often you are rewarded with discounts or special offers. One of the best clubs in Victoria is run by Tahbilk at Nagambie.

Trentham Estate on the Murray has a range of wines including a good varietal example of sauvignon blanc and nebbiolo. Or simply delicious on a hot day is their Frizzante Maestri, a sweet red that is served chilled.

Andrew Peace Wines in the Swan Hill region produce a quaffable range of well made wines under the Masterpeace brand priced at $15 a bottle. Some other brands in their portfolio are sold as low as $75 a case through the website.

Alternatively, look further afield at McLaren Vale wines. With the next vintage upon them they are moving the 2022 and 2023 vintage reds out.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

with Clive Hartley

The pursuit of pinot
Pinot noir is a significant grape for the Macedon Ranges, along with chardonnay. Climatically, we are on the edge of being able to ripen the grape. However, that is not a bad thing as the grape responds well in a marginal climate. Grapes grown in a hot climate can lose their varietal identity and have ‘cooked’ fruit aromas if not carefully managed. If the bunches fail to ripen the resulting wine becomes weedy and herbaceous. You need a long summer and warmish autumn to get the right balance. It is a low yielding grape variety, losing its flavour if you crop too high. Vignerons walk a tight link between success and failure. You can see why I like to think of it as a ‘tightrope’ grape variety.
Pinot represented only 2.6 per cent of crushed grapes in Australia in 2022. The pursuit of pinot is often only the quest of smaller producers and not the big players in the industry. It’s a winemaker’s grape that brings out their artistry and skill. There are close to 50 clones available in Australia. MV6 is the most widely planted clone, and it produces more firmer, darker red fruit wines. Whilst other clones, such as D5V12, are light and aromatic with bright red fruits. Choosing the right clone for the vineyard site is critical and vineyards are often planted with a number of different ones.
In general, pinot should be light bodied, dry with soft tannins and aromas/flavours of red fruits and oak. You do get variations of this, and I divide the wines into three categories. First there is the soft, fresh cherry and strawberry fruit dominated style that is very light and acidic. Opposite to this is a more meaty, even tannic style that has savoury game, mushroom and oak derived aroma and flavours. In between you get a nicely balanced ripe red fruit style with some subtle oak.
Here is a top 10 of some local producers that I’ve recently tasted and recommend: Attwoods, Joshua Cooper, Curly Flat, Hanging Rock, Musk Lane, Lyons Will, Passing Clouds, Silent Way, J.P Trijsburg and Zig Zag Rd.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer. Want to learn more? Buy his 300+ page full colour Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

Challenging vintages
With the 2023 vintage now put to bed Oliver Rapson from Lyons Will Estate had time to summarise the year. “In a nutshell, the start of this year was exceedingly wet, delaying budburst substantially, which in turn had a knock-on effect across every stage of the vine development, including flowering, veraison and ultimately ripening.”
Early autumn is a critical time for final ripening, and in Daylesford it felt that we switched from summer to winter on the first day, I recall. So that put the vintage back as much as three weeks behind the normal dates.
Macedon Ranges is already one of the last regions to pick grapes in Australia, so this delayed harvest didn’t help ripening for some varieties. A late harvest also means that the temperatures in the winery are lower, and this can affect the fermenting must. Temperatures hovering around or below 15°C means the fermentation takes longer to finish. It also means the grapes will have lower sugar content and therefore have resulting low alcohol. It has been a run of three difficult vintages. 2022 was also a damp vintage as was 2021, being described as “a little bit on the cool side”. You have to go back to 2019 to find a normal warmer vintage.
This is the third year of the La Niña cycle where conditions in the Pacific Ocean bring wetter conditions to northern and south-eastern Australia, resulting in lower-than-normal temperatures. Whilst the full effects are felt in Queensland and NSW it does seem to reach as far south as the Highlands of Victoria. It is likely that the cycle has come to an end with some international agencies reporting that El Niño cycle has commenced, although our own, and highly respected, Bureau of Meteorology is being more cautious about declaring a change.
The drier conditions from El Niño bring their own threats and we only have to recall the terrible bush fires in 2020 that resulted in roughly half of NSW wine regions being affected by smoke taint and unable to make wine.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au You can contact Clive on info@australianwineguide.com.au

Pepper in Shiraz
A cool climate is not the growing conditions you imagine suiting a grape like shiraz. It is more at home in hot regions like the Barossa or Hunter Valley. Classic Australian wines are full bodied, rich, alcoholic with ripe jammy, dark black fruit aromas. However, when it is grown in chilly regions it develops more of a savoury medium bodied palate with distinctive pepper aromas. Ask winemaker Llew Knight from Granite Hills about pepper – he’s an expert.

Llew has clocked up over 50 vintages and there are not many cooler places to grow shiraz in Australia than the Macedon Ranges. He has been studying the influence of rotundone, the compound responsible for the pepper aroma in shiraz. You might think that the smell of pepper comes from underripe grapes, but research has shown that rotundone increases as the grape ripens. Underripe grapes just smell of green stalks or green capsicum and winemakers try to avoid them at all costs.
Rotundone is a strong compound and extremely low concentrations (such as 16 ng/l) can be detected by the olfactory region of the brain, but only by some people. Research has found that roughly 20 per cent of the population are anosmic to the smell. It is also found in other varieties including gamay and grüner veltliner.
Wine companies are pretty liberal in using pepper in the descriptions of their wines. Probably this is because they want to associate their wine with the French ones from the northern Rhone Valley where you find the aroma occurring more often. They will often choose to call their wine syrah and not shiraz if they think it is more of a French style. The Grampians region is another area that extols the virtues of pepper in its reds and Mount Langi Ghiran has been at the centre of research with the Australian Wine Research Institute.
Coming back to Granite Hills. The vineyard is on granite-strewn pasture at 550 metres. The first vintage of shiraz was in 1978 and the current vintage for sale is the 2018. The wine is a classic with plenty of white pepper. You can also purchase a magnum of 2001 vintage to see how the wine ages.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. Want to learn more about wine? Try his Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) now available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au

with Clive Hartley

I consider Best’s Great Western as a national treasure and one of only a handful
of wineries that everyone should visit. It is an historical place for a number of
reasons.
The property’s ‘Concongella’ vineyard was planted in 1868 by founder Henry
Best and is a treasure trove of old vines. One patch cutely called the ‘Nursery Block’
has a staggering 39 grape varieties, some of the most extensive pre-phylloxera
plantings in Australia and the world.
A number of varieties remain unidentified, but amongst the vines are rare
grapes for the southern hemisphere such as fer, fermint and bourboulenc. The
property also contains extremely old dolcetto, incorrectly named as malbeck (sic).
The Thomson family bought the property from Henry Best’s sons in 1920 and they
remain the owners today.
Best’s 1.2 hectare planting of pinot meunier also dates from 1868. It is related,
and similar to, pinot noir, but a tad more resistant to cold weather, and ripens
earlier than its relative.
They are the oldest meunier vines in the world. The grape was called Miller’s
Burgundy, due to the bottom of the leaf looking like it has been dipped in flour.
Best’s Young Vine Pinot Meunier 2022 is outstanding. It has aromas of cooking
spices and red fruits such as cherries and redcurrants.
Palate has a similar red fruit focus but backed up with some fine powdery
tannins. It reminded me of a cross between pinot noir and gamay. The young vines
were planted in 1971, which are considered young compared to 1868 vines. Only
Best’s can think that way.
You might think that the company could rest on its historical laurels. But it
doesn’t. The company is looking for ways to innovate and keep up with market
trends.
Take for example their 2022 Foudre Ferment Riesling. It is a skin contact wild
yeast foudre fermented wine. Foudre is a large 2500 litre oak barrel. This type of
old, yet new treatment produces a more intense and interesting wine with depth of
flavour and texture.
Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His
Australian Wine Guide (7th edition) is available for purchase from his website –
www.australianwineguide.com.au

Macedon Fizz
Macedon Ranges is the coldest wine-growing region on mainland Australia. It has an average altitude of 500m and a degree of continentality, which means the summer days are warm to hot, but the evenings are cool, this helps retain the natural acidity in the grapes. These are some of the factors that make it the perfect spot to grow grapes to make into sparkling wine. However, it does not receive the
recognition it deserves, and top billing often goes to Tasmanian wines.
Exactly 40 years ago, winemaker John Ellis thought the Macedon Ranges
would be ideal for making sparkling wines. He bought a property called Jim Jim
and planted a vineyard on a chilly south-facing slope at 650m that became the site
of Hanging Rock Winery. He planted D5V12 and MV6 clones of pinot noir, and
a Swiss clone called Mariafeldt as well as four clones of chardonnay sourced from Mumm Champagne House in France.
During the years we have seen the rise of sparkling wines in the region with
Hanging Rock leading the charge to use ‘Macedon’ to indicate a traditional method
sparkling wine from the area. Using the term Macedon is similar to the way the
French use Champagne. Our region is also home to Australia’s leading contract
sparkling wine maker – Kilchurn Wines. Some good sparkling wines from the
region include Mount Towrong Vivace NV, using nebbiolo instead of pinot noir,
and Wombat Forest Blanc de Noir NV. Other styles include a nice prosecco from
Red Hare and tasty Pet Nats from Attwoods, Hunter-Gatherer and Zig Zag Road.
Coming back to Hanging Rock. Fast forward to 2023 and we await the release
of Macedon NV Cuvée XIX, the 19th release of John’s vision. John’s son Robert
is now in charge of production and oversees the Macedon sparkling wine which
consists of a blend of vintages going back 10 years, some using a unique Solera
system for ageing. The wine also benefits from around three years on yeast lees.
The current Cuvée XVIII has rich brioche, biscuity and honey aromas with a firm,
creamy, nutty and zesty palate producing a long finish. A fine complex sparkling
wine that is in the style of Bollinger, but uniquely Australian.

• Clive Hartley has just published the 7th edition of his book The Australian Wine Guide
  and is running a two-hour master class on the Macedon Ranges featuring 8 local wines on
  April 29 and June 3. To purchase a book or tickets go to www.australianwineguide.com.au