Issue1 TasteBound compressed - Flipbook - Page 38
Decanted
Of sunlight
and shadow
In the far south of Australia, a new wave of
winemakers is drawing on ancient soils and
cool breezes to produce wines of poise and
complexity. Nina Caplan reports from the
vineyards of Tasmania and Victoria
here is a dappled light I have never seen
anywhere except Australia, which must
be something to do with the shape of
eucalyptus leaves and the strength of the
sunlight. As everyone knows, Australia is
hot and full of gum trees, but that is like
describing England as a rainy country
with a royal family: true, but limited. In the country’s southeastern corner, clouds gather and rain falls, not with the dull
predictability we get here, but with enthusiasm. The trees are
ruffled by ocean breezes and overlooked by high hills – easy
on the eye and, also, on the palate, because grapes soothed by
cool air retain their acidity and elegance.
There are better wines here than many people realise: not
the sun-plumped fruit bombs found on supermarket shelves,
but fine-grained pinot noirs with notes of black tea, smoke
and raspberry; spicy pinot gris; floral, juicy rieslings tense as
tightrope wires; and citrusy chardonnays that have nothing in
common with the vanilla-flavoured cream-cake potions of old.
T
Those wines still exist, of course: they are as
reliable as the sunshine and about as worthy
of comment. But Australia has 65 wine
regions to its name, very few regulations
and a great many producers who are more
interested in fine wine than fat profits.
There is shade here as well as light.
That lush, green south-eastern corner
– Victoria and Tasmania – is not the only
place in Australia that makes fine wine, but
it is the most obviously suitable. When
I visited Mewstone Wines’ elegant tasting
room on Tasmania’s south coast, facing
Bruny Island and, beyond that, New
Zealand's Southern Island, I was blown away
by the quality of Jonny Hughes’ chardonnays
and pinot noirs and then, when the skies
opened, I was almost actually blown away.
Yet two days earlier, some 200km north
along the coast, Freycinet Vineyard’s
winemaker Claudio Radenti and I had
puttered up a steep slope in his motorised
buggy to look down – almost vertically –
on to his riesling vineyards, the grapes
swelling in brilliant sunlight.
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TA S T E B O U N D
