This week I attended a grenache tasting overseen by winemakers Steven Pannell and Pete Fraser from the estates S.C. Pannell and Yangarra, respectively. Each is at the forefront of an evolutionary vanguard that underlies the most exciting category in not just Australian wine, but the New World at large: the stylistic fine-tuning of Australian grenache.
As with other varieties, Australia boasts the richest patrimony of old vines in the world. Sadly, many were pulled up during the well-documented Vine Pull Scheme of 1985-1987. In Barossa, grenache makes up less than five percent of plantings today, while in McLaren Vale a mere 70 hectares is in the ground. This said, the price of premium grenache has surpassed that for shiraz and more is being planted.
The tasting introduced a number of older vintages to demonstrate the wines’ capacity to age and the evolutionary nexus of texture, particularly the increasingly marked tannins of the McLaren Vale wines on show. The tannin profiles ranged from a gritty mandala of sandiness to an earthenware stickiness, depending on site and handling.
As Pannell pointed out, “Grenache is a variety of modest acidity, yet paradoxically, one with low pH” where the pH “is a trigger for tannin.” He suggested that his aim is to “pack in flavor that is harnessed by elegance” and “to craft wines that are coiled like a spring” – in other words, wines that are compressed by tannic exactitude.
The first flight was served blind. While the first two wines were clearly older, no one in the room, including yours truly, would have considered them as 2011s, a vintage that was the wettest and coldest in South Australian history and yet, according to Fraser, “the making of Yangarra.”
As the tasting progressed, it was evident that oak regimes had shifted from used barriques and hogsheads to less invasive larger, neutral formats. Maceration times grew longer, too. Some cuvees were crafted, too, in a mix of eggs/amphorae, including Fraser’s prodigious Ovitelli, which spends more than 130 days on skins in ceramic eggs, sans aggressive agitation.
In essence, grenache was no longer treated as poor man’s shiraz, but as a superstar on the rise! With this in mind, the team gave a nod to other top producers, including Thistledown and Bondar, also in the Vale.
There were brilliant wines across all flights, auguring positively for a category that, generally speaking, bridles a je ne sais quoi pinoté, with a core of Mediterranean ripeness, red fruits, exotic spice and nebbioloeseque tannins. None was more brilliant than the Yangarra Grenache McLaren Vale Ovitelli 2021, an iridescent mid-ruby, juxtaposed against complex notes of pithy red cherry, kirsch, tamarind, sandalwood and musk. It is perhaps the greatest vintage the region has ever seen, and is from an old plot of biodynamically farmed, dry grown bush vines on sand, dating from 1946. What is best is the expansive pucker of tannins – silty and gritty and pixelated – triggering a sensation of compelling vinous intensity. Wow! As with all Aussie grenache, this is to be served in pinot glasses.
– Ned Goodwin MW
