“I just want to make my wines delicious,” Fraser McKinley, the owner and winemaker of Sami-Odi in Barossa, Australia, said while Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt and I were standing in his tiny garage-like wooden winery just outside the sleepy farm town of Angaston in early October.
The New Zealander does all the viticulture and winemaking for Sami-Odi, with “nothing that plugs into the wall for winemaking,” as he put it. McKinley sources his grapes from a young hillside vineyard of about three acres above his house. Plus, he purchases grapes from a number of respected Barossa growers, with some vines dating back to the late 19th century. His shiraz, or syrahs, were some of the most exciting wines we tasted, with their fresh and structured palates and hemmed-in alcohol. The texture and clarity of Sami-Odi shiraz, vintage-dated and blended, are seductive and memorable. You really want to drink the whole bottle after just one taste!
The Sami-Odi visit was part of our two-week tasting trip to Australia that started at the end of September, and we rated literally thousands of wines from the great wine continent. We spent half of the trip in South Australia’s Barossa Valley and the other half in Western Australia’s Wilyabrup, in the Margaret River wine region. It was worth every penny to travel to Australia – James and Marie Suckling, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and Associate Editors Claire Nesbitt and Nathan Slone – after almost three years of not personally visiting and tasting new releases from the country. There’s nothing like walking vineyards and talking to winemakers besides tasting in the country.
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRALIA 2021
We are writing this story just a day after finishing the last bottle of our tasting at Smith’s Beach in Margaret River, where about 500 bottles were opened and rated. We are looking at an endless horizon of the Indian Ocean and thinking about the unlimited possibilities of winemaking in Australia.
The clean and crisp sea air reminds us of the purity of so many of the wines we tasted and their brightness in character and attractiveness in drinkability. And so many of the wines communicate the special character of their region, vineyard, and microclimates.
JamesSuckling.com tasted and rated nearly 2,300 Australian wines this year, and we were most impressed with shiraz, chardonnay and riesling. The three grapes seem to transmit the uniqueness of specific regions and vineyards, such as the ancient shiraz vines of the Eden Valley in the hills above Barossa, biodynamically farmed chardonnay in the maritime region of Margaret River or riesling on the poor slate soils of Polish Hill in the Clare Valley.
“I am always looking for new and exciting vineyards, and I think that some of the best vineyards have not even been planted yet,” said Dan Standish of The Standish Wine Company, who makes some of the most innovative, small-production, single-vineyard wines in Australia.
His production of his four single-vineyard shiraz was even smaller than normal in 2020 due to poor flowering, yet the hundred or so cases of his wine are amazing quality. “The German farmers just planted on the flats” in the 1800s, he said. “It was alluvial soils and those were great for potatoes and vegetables. The western ridges were not planted and that was great for the future,” he said during our visit.
Standish said that his great-grandfather landed in Barossa in 1848 and that he feels his roots are firmly attached to the region. “I only work with shiraz. My winemaking style is very Burgundian. I love that you look at the label and you know what vineyards it comes from.”
REFLECTING THE EARTH
Vanya Cullen, who owns Cullen Wines in the area of Wilyabrup and is one of the leading lights in winemaking and biodynamic farming in Western Australia, told us: “Wines need to reflect the earth that they came from. It’s fundamental that you can taste where the wines come from, and we think biodynamic farming helps us.”
Cullen, Standish and McKinley all made some of the top wines of our tastings, and we loved the fact their top wines are so evocative in transmitting the distinct character of their vineyards. Yet, our top rated wine of our tastings of Australian wine was none other than the world-famous Penfolds Shiraz South Australia Bin 95 Grange 2018, the historic multi-region blended red wine that remains the country’s top collectible item. The 2018 vintage is a great year in all of Australia’s winemaking regions and it stands to reason that something like Grange would be exceptional quality. The 2018 seems to have a little bit more finesse and depth than past years of Grange, which can be tannic and hard through most of its life regardless of the vintage. The texture and mouthfeel of the 2018 is polished and the finish almost endless, making it one of the best Grange’s ever. It’s about $500 a bottle.
The other classic collectible at a similar price and is near the top of our list of the best wines tasted this year from Australia was the Henschke Shiraz Eden Valley Hill of Grace Vineyard 2017. We found old-vine reds from that year also slightly more refined than in the past because 2017 was a cooler year. “The 2017 is unique,” Steven Henschke said during our visit to the winery and the Hill of Grace Vineyard. “You really get this spiciness. This is a year of vitality. It’s a riesling year with great shiraz.”
Henschke is in a position to make those kind of statements, because he’s also one of Australia’s leading dry riesling producers. His Henschke Riesling Eden Valley Julius 2022 was one of our highest-rated dry rieslings, with a deep column of fruit and crushed stone character. Like 2017, 2022 is clearly a great vintage for the dry rieslings from the Eden Valley and Clare Valley, South Australia’s two premier regions for this grape.
READ MORE GREAT VALUE WINES: 8 GREAT AUSTRALIAN DRY RIESLINGS UNDER $25
To deepen our perspective on current developments in the Australian wine industry, Senior Editor Stuart Pigott was one of the judges in the Clare Valley Wine Show.
“It was the ideal moment to do this, because I got to taste more than 50 dry rieslings from the 2022 vintage blind, and there were some shining stars among them,” Stuart said.
The best of them for him was the Mitchell Riesling Clare Valley Watervale 2022, which is aromatically and more texturally complex than the linear and lime-flavored style of Australian riesling often considered classic. The sensationally fresh Mitchell Riesling Clare Valley Watervale 2002, one of the first to be bottled under the Stelvin screw cap closure, demonstrated how spectacularly the best vintages of these wines age in bottle.
INTO THE GREAT SOUTHERN
Outside the Clare Valley Wine Show, Stuart was also wowed by the Grosset Riesling Clare Valley Polish Hill 2022, a super-concentrated and expressively mineral wine. It’s the highest-rated dry riesling in this report. The trend toward more generosity in dry riesling was also clearly apparent in the Great Southern, the remote region of Western Australia where Stuart traveled after the Clare Valley Wine Show. There, too, he was able to taste a broad spectrum of the region’s dry rieslings.
Here is Stuart’s tasting note: “The Frankland Estate Riesling Frankland River Isolation Ridge 2021 is not only delicious, it easily carries 13.5 percent natural alcohol thanks to its ripeness and extremely focused finish.” Even today, many Australian winemakers say that 13 percent plus alcohol in dry riesling makes the wines overblown and/or heavy. Clearly that opinion needs reconsidering.
Something winemakers across many regions agree upon is the excellent quality of wines from the 2022 vintage, and in many regions it was declared to be better than 2021. After the hot and dry years that culminated in 2020, 2022 was a rather cool year with few really hot days and good rainfall. We had never seen Australia this green before! That weather pattern was clearly very good for grape varieties as contrasting as chardonnay, riesling, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz.
Regardless of the price, we really appreciated the quality of so many shiraz this year. James already wrote in weekly tasting reports that the best Australian shiraz is all about balance and transparency, as well as a distinctive character that communicates their origins. Top shiraz has a uniqueness in both its aromas and flavors that define syrah in a different way compared with even the best of France, such as Hermitage or Cote Rotie. Their purity of fruit and depth of earthy terroir character give them wonderful aromas and mouthfeels, enabling them to transmit the distinctive character of their vineyards and regions. They are agile and almost weightlessness in their definition and personality. We hope that more people outside of Australia find the chance to drink some of these wines. It’s not easy because many never leave Australia for export markets like the United States.
Dan Standish in his cellar at The Standish Wine Company in Barossa.
We liked the way Ian Hongell of Torbreck Vintners described how he got the most out of his shiraz vineyards. One of his new releases, the Torbreck Shiraz Barossa The Struie 2020, shows the transparency and drive we are looking for in top Australian shiraz, and it sells for about $50 a bottle. Great values in high quality are abundant from Australia.
“We have an inherent ability to get more out of the vineyard and out of the fruit but still remain in control,” Hongell said. “It’s like driving a car fast and being on the edge but in control. You get to that point without crashing. You need to define where you want to do and get there. It takes courage.”
On the other hand, we were slightly disappointed with many of the pinot noirs we tasted. Many were delicious, but frankly we expected more. It seems that the quest for making crunchy, acid-driven pinots has sometimes gone slightly too far. And many winemakers, particularly in the Adelaide Hills, have exchanged drinkability for complexity and world-class structure. We hope this tendency doesn’t extend to other regions and producers.
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF 2021
It’s not really good when winemaking techniques take over, such as picking intentionally early to emphasize underripe character or the excessive use of whole clusters to focus on green and floral undertones. It reminds us of winemaking in the 1990s and early 2000s, when big was better, but now for some winemakers it seems to have gone in the complete opposite direction.
Maybe the COVID lockdown in Australia accentuated this inward thinking and exaggerated winemaking? But don’t worry about that.
There’s a whole world of winemaking out there and Australia has some of the most moving wines in the world, especially from shiraz, riesling and chardonnay. The transparency and intensity of some wines are breathtaking, redefining these grape types in a near perfect way. Their purity, balance and precision are at a level that few others in Europe or America can hope to produce when the moons come into perfect alignment with climate and terroir. We will be back next year for sure to delve even further into this vinous wonderland.
– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman and Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor
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