Biggest Australian wine tasting ever: 2,700+ ratings
Our two-week trip to taste more than 2,700 wines began in Perth and ended in Sydney.
The #realaussiewine mission we set ourselves – myself, Jack and James – was clearly stated from the beginning: rate the best and most authentic Australian wine on offer.
Without question the biggest change to the landscape of Australian wine is a redefined idea of quality that is founded, defined and delivered by the vineyard and not by winemaking or in the winery. This idea underscores the true, the great and the #realaussiewines of today.
Quality now defined by terroir
It has taken Australia some time to get to the moment where winemakers and winemaking could be relieved of the pressure to define style and quality in their wines. They have now added in most cases provenance and best practice viticulture and vineyard management. It means outstanding quality wines with real character.
“We’ve become better farmers growing healthier vines in healthier soils,” says Yarra Valley-based winemaker David Bicknell. “It’s also allowed us to relax a bit. Winemaking is less critical. The quality of vines, grapes and vineyards is where it matters. Soil health delivers detailed wine and we are so much better at understanding and respecting the way vines and soils work now.”
It seems that wines born of obsolete farming practices with chemically-reliant management regimes are exposed and outclassed by wines highlighting the strength of the natural environment and the Australian landscape. It’s a powerful divide, allowing Australia’s terroirs to find their full voice in the best wines on the table. Make no mistake, this is a watershed moment.
Similarly the legion of Aussie red wines that were picked late and overripe, watered down in the winery, propped up with acid and swamped with oak are becoming a thing of the past, though some producers in Barossa are guilty of holding on. Our ratings clearly side with wines showing balance, true character and transparency. It’s the same when we rate wines from other regions or countries with a past of jammy, overdone wines, from Spain and Argentina to Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Napa Valley. We prefer drinkability.
The best Australian wines continue to offer great flavor, but there are so many threads of place, variety, generation, and style to follow in each bottle. There are great options for all palates.
Natural, low-intervention growth
In addition, there is a growing number of low intervention and natural wines in Australia that should be taken very seriously. No place in the world is making as many outstanding quality wines using these methods, from precise pinot noir to lively vermentino. We highly rated dozens of wines like this.
“We are finding the sensible middle ground where we have the idea of natural wine and the pure commercial well-made wines,” says William Downey, one of the best producers of pinot in the country.
“We are trying to make a pure expression of place but then made a beautiful drink. We don’t want it to be random wine production. It is comfortable and pleasant fine winemaking. It’s not natural wine. It’s proper wine. The good thing about Australia is if your wine is full of bret and volatile acidity nobody is going to sell it or dink it. You have to make correct wine.”
Australia’s chardonnay champions
Our tour kicked off in Margaret River in Western Australia where we collated wines from right across the state into one tasting location. The predictable strength and prowess of chardonnay from Margaret River really kicked the tasting off well as did the consistency and terroir-driven cabernet sauvignon-based reds.
Riesling and shiraz from Great Southern, in particular Frankland River, are also very exciting this year. The best are wines of subtlety and finesse with lots of character and structure that are reminiscent of the best of France, but with Aussie purity.
The Deep Woods Reserve Chardonnay 2017 set the bar high with Jack declaring “this smells like Chevalier-Montrachet!” High praise indeed, the highest possible, and words that could equally be applied to the Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay 2017 with the cool stony aromas and underlying tension reflective of the power and tension seen in great white Burgundy.
Chardonnay in Margaret River is a style that delivers such weight, refinement and consistency and many producers are hitting the high mark. The tiny production Cloudburst chardonnay exemplifies the potential for quality when a vineyard is carefully managed. The 2018 topped the 2017 vintage in our ratings, both delivering fruit weight and electrifying tension.
Also look to Xanadu, Stella Bella, Voyager Estate, Flametree, Robert Oatley, Larry Cherubino and Cullen for top Western Australian chardonnay. In fact, we drank a bottle of the 2007 Cullen Kevin John Chardonnay at Margaret River’s Settlers Tavern one night (their last), as this was really the first Margaret River chardonnay to turn the conversation towards elegance and balance. Along with the 2006 Oakridge 864 Chardonnay, this wine can be credited for seeding the movement to redefine Australian chardonnay and setting a course that today sees it rivaling great Burgundian examples for quality.
Elsewhere in Australia, chardonnay is excelling thanks to the reimagined vineyard-driven approach and a dialled-in winemaker influence. The Yarra Valley is awash with great examples of a very linear and highly defined style of chardonnay. Oakridge is leading the charge here (the 2018 Henk, 2018 Willowlake and 2017 864 Funder & Diamond in particular), as are Hoddle’s Creek, Giant Steps and A. Rodda. The baseline quality of Yarra chardonnay is well up the curve.
The Adelaide Hills, Macedon Ranges and Tasmania are the other places that really rate a mention in the chardonnay discussion with smaller numbers of wines achieving very high scores. Michael Downer’s star at Murdoch Hill continues to ascend in the Adelaide Hills across three tiers of chardonnay with the 2018 Murdoch Hill Rocket Chardonnay leading our ratings, closely followed by wines from Shaw + Smith, Henschke, Michael Hall, Longview and Ochota Barrels. In Macedon Joshua Cooper and Silent Way are names to note and Tolpuddle Vineyard continues to set the mark in Tasmania. Yabby Lake brings the Mornington Peninsula region to the top table also.
Australian cabernet flourishing
Cabernet sauvignon has found such esteemed favor in Margaret River and the wines are continually hitting the benchmarks set by Bordeaux, Tuscany and US wines. The refinement of vineyard management and viticulture is the lever for bringing Margaret River cabernet to the top level and familiar names find favour in this report. Vasse Felix, Moss Wood, Cullen, Juniper Estate, Cape Mentelle and Cloudburst to name a few.
“2018 is a beautiful vintage for cabernet sauvignon,” says Vasse Felix’s Virginia Willcock. “We all thought they would be very muscular wines but we are seeing really pretty wines with ripe tannins. The mild finish to the warm year seems to give the wines a cooler cabernet tail with a gorgeous line, a bit like 2014.”
The previous 2017 vintage was the coolest in a decade for Margaret River and producers really had to hold out long and late in 2017 to get the balance and ripeness right. The wines were really made in the vineyard.
The other place to explore a highly distinctive and elegant style of cabernet is the Yarra Valley and the 2017 vintage has provided a high point for these claret-like wines. The Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 2017 is exceptional and really defines the pinnacle, closely followed by De Bortoli’s Melba Reserve 2017 bottling, the Mount Mary Quintet 2017 and Dominique Portet’s 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon.
These wines deliver such depth of flavor and such noble tannins in an elegantly refined and drinkable way. And importantly they also age magnificently. “We are really focused on balancing our cabernet,” says second-generation winemaker Ben Portet of Dominique Portet. “We’ve found the quality of tannin we like and we are confidently focused on that as the centrepiece of the wine now.”
Pinot noir offers value
Pinot noir drinkers have much to celebrate in Australian as the quality is high but most importantly the value represented by these wines sets them apart on a global playing field. There are almost too many producers to mention here but pinot is one of the strongest examples of the move towards vineyard-driven quality and style in today’s Australian wine. We rated and reviewed almost 300 pinot noir wines here and the top score goes to the 2017 Bass Phillip Reserve from Gippsland (98 points), edging out the 2018 Murdoch Hill Phaeton and 2018 Giant Steps Wombat Creek, both scoring 97 points.
There is much to love about the 2018 vintage for pinot noir across the board. The best pinots produced are so drinkable that it’s almost unnerving. “I really think many people are underestimating the greatness of the 2018 vintage for pinot noir because it was so warm and early,” says Murdoch Hill’s Michael Downer. “But they’re so balanced and fleshy and drinking so well on release. I think they will be well-regarded over time as well.”
Varietal imports
“The rising success of grenache shows that the right grape variety grown in the right place really dictates where great wine is made,” says McLaren Vale’s Steve Pannell. “You need varieties suited to landscape to make this happen and that’s what we are seeing with grenache, tempranillo and touriga nacional. Australia is full of cooler climate northern European varieties transposed into warm climate Australia and many of them just aren’t ideally suited to where they are growing.”
Pannell’s experienced palate and broad acuity around winemaking, culture and style has seen him play a major role in the rising regard for Australian grenache and a suite of other more recent arrivals he mentions above. His influence on modern Australian red wine cannot be overstated: lighter red wines with fragrance and defined tannin that are vineyard-driven first and foremost with abundant and focused flavors.
The resources of old and very old grenache vines planted to ideally suited terroirs in both McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley are being brought into a new focus – these vineyards are finding regard like never before. Yalumba, Cirillo, d’Arenberg, Aphelion and Adelina are all leading names to find in this report. They produced outstanding wines in both the cooler 2017 vintage and the warmer 2018.
Another broader trend in the #realaussiewine discussion, and one that should be a front page headline in a global sense, centres around the resource of very old vines found in greatest concentration in South Australia’s Barossa and McLaren Vale regions. Often planted to shiraz, the value in these parcels is regarded differently by a new generation of winemaking. Combine this with an improvement in farming and winemaking practice and some extraordinary wines are being made. Established ancient vine greats like Henschke Hill of Grace are set to be joined by a legion of others in coming years as the currency of these parcels increases. Watch this space.
Shiraz stalwarts
Shiraz remains Australia’s most widely planted wine grape and the regalia of style covers almost every possibility. We reviewed and rated more than 700 examples here. Sami-Odi and Standish Wine Co. in the Barossa Valley rate a special mention for perhaps the most deft re-interpretation of warm climate Australian shiraz style and Torbreck is also making a meal of dishing up warm climate depth and flavor in a vibrantly attractive guise as it continues to make more balanced reds than in the past. Elsewhere and at the other end of the spectrum, Clonakilla has released a stunning collection of spicy, cool-climate shiraz from vintage 2018 that are perhaps its greatest wines to date.
Tyrrells in the Hunter Valley is a great example from New South Wales’ most famous wine region in which the new generation lead by Chris Tyrrell is moving to elucidate the family’s collection of very old-vine shiraz. The recently purchased Old Patch Shiraz parcel has once again garnered a perfect 100-point rating for the 2018 vintage and it is the best wine of our tasting. Also look for Tyrells Four Acres, Eight Acres, Johnno’s and NVC bottlings from 2018 for some of the best value old vine shiraz. These wines, like so many of Australia’s best, are sold at very reasonable prices.
It’s hard to write a single tasting report about a place as big and as diverse as Australia but that’s what you have here. We racked up the frequent flyer miles over three weeks and tasted and drank thousands of bottles and Jack, James and myself feel all the better for it. Bring on the next #realaussie tour! – Nick Stock, Senior Editor