I have just finished up my three-year stint as Chair of Judges at the Barossa Wine Show and, determined to make my last chairman’s dinner a memorable one, I set about looking for a memorable theme for the night. Something that would not just fire the judges up for a few days, but something that they could draw inspiration from for many years, something unforgettable and resonant.
Last year’s dinner (which James attended as our guest international judge) was all centred around grenache and grenache-based blends and great examples were served from the Barossa and France. It was designed to shine a light on the judging of these wines in the show, to make sure they got the attention they deserved. And they did.
This year, I introduced a theme that was to only drink Barossa wines and to only drink great older bottles. The idea was to bring an air of humility to the table of mostly younger judges, to focus their minds and palates on the Barossa region and wines that would rise above the simple competitive “this one is better” discussion that inevitably ensues when brackets of wines are presented at these kinds of dinners.
I drew on the reserves of a few of the region’s better riesling makers for a bracket of older rieslings to start. A 1997 Leo Buring Leonay Eden Valley Riesling was tired, decayed and weathered, a 2000 Richmond Grove Barossa Riesling showed bold, glazed mature citrus fruit and a pair of 2001s being a boldly flavoured Orlando St. Helga and a fine, pristine Peter Lehmann Reserve were the stars. These 2001s were the youngest wines of the night.
The great Barossa winemaker and all-round legend Peter Lehmann passed away on June 28, 2013 and I approached his vivacious widow Margaret and the family to source some of Peter’s greatest older wines made whilst he was at Saltram, prior to establishing his own eponymous label, something inspiring for the judges to experience.
We tasted two brackets of wines generously made available to us, spanning 1966 through to 1972, bottled under the Saltram label, and all showing magnificently and all showing distinctly different facets of great aged Barossa red wine character. These bottles are now extremely rare and to have access to these directly from the Lehmann’s personal cellar meant they were in stunning condition.
The wines and tasting notes are all below, but as a bracket of wines they stopped the room in its tracks. They showed remarkable composure, consistency, complexity and depth. Many of the comments at the table centred around how well these wines, which were clearly the product of very ripe grapes, had remained so composed, balanced and structurally integral over four to nearly five decades of maturation.
The next bracket was a surprise I dropped on the group, as I’d visited Australia’s greatest living riesling winemaker, John Vickery, at home the day before, along with the wine show committee chairman, Ian Hongell.
Vickery had assembled a mixed box of old riesling wines drawn from his own cellar, many from the Eden Valley, but wines also from the Clare Valley (Watervale) and Coonawarra. These were a gift from him to the dinner, incredibly generous; the time taken in explaining the story and likely character of each bottle as we sat around his kitchen table will stay with me forever.
I presented this set of wines as a surprise sorbet course (no sorbet), a feature of the dinner I attributed to the late great Len Evans. Evans and I both shared a passionate dislike for the sensory assault of sorbet amid great old wines and so this course I dedicated to his memory.
We took these wines standing, glasses in hand, bottles passed around to each other, tasted and discussed. Hongell and I opened them all prior and vetted anything out of condition, the remaining wines tasted as follows:
1972 Leo Buring DWB15 ‘Show Reserve’ Eden Valley Rhine Riesling (in rudely good shape) 1979 Leo Buring DW19 ‘Reserve Bin’ Barossa Valley Rhine Riesling 1979 Leo Buring DW116 ‘Show Reserve’ Eden Valley Rhine Riesling (this wine was presented in two forms of label) 1985 Leo Buring ‘green label’ Eden Valley Rhine Riesling (the star wine of the group, impossibly fresh, singing) 1987 Leo Buring DWQ19 Coonawarra Rhine Riesling 1991 Leo Buring DWU13 Watervale Riesling 1998 Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling (one of their earliest bottlings under Stelvin capsule)
We then returned to the table for a final bracket of fortified wines, one again, all from the region, all mature and all truly great and unique wines. The 1983 Peter Lehmann AD 2004 Vintage Port showed youthfully, and the 1969 Saltram Vintage Port (also made by Lehmann and from the family’s cellar) was shining, fired along by assertive spirit and packed with deeply ripe dark fruits.
The final wine was a rarity, two bottles of 1959 Saltram Single Vintage Very Old Tawny, the back-story to this wine being that it was made by Brian Dolan and finished by Peter Lehmann, bottled in 2009 as a special anniversary bottling. It was a fitting end to an incredible night of wine that honored and celebrated the lifetime contribution of some very special people.
The Peter Lehmann Collection Wines
A note on the wines including Tokay: Lehmann famously used to blend a small amount of muscadelle into his reds in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as much a product of the growing demand for red table wines in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s outstripping supply of red grapes, as it was a means of offsetting the power of young shiraz and cabernet sauvignon.
1966 Saltram Bin 42 Shiraz Tokay
1968 Saltram Bin 52 Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon Tokay
1969 Saltram Bin 52 Shiraz Tokay
1970 Saltram Hydraulic Pressings Angaston/Eden Shiraz
1971 Saltram Bin 88 Shiraz Cabernet
1972 Saltram Hydraulic Pressings Shiraz
1972 Saltram Bin 88 Shiraz Cabernet Angaston/Eden
Nick Stock is a renowned Australian wine writer, author, presenter and filmmaker who reports on his worldwide wine tasting experiences for JamesSuckling.com.
