DEVIATION ROAD’S QUEST FOR GREAT AUSTRALIAN SPARKLING WINE

Executive Editor Nick Stock (center) tastes with Deviation Road owners Kate and Hamish Laurie.

Deviation Road has emerged as one of Australia’s leading producers of sparkling wine. Wife and husband team Kate and Hamish Laurie are driving a unique regional style and have taken the quality of sparkling in their elevated Adelaide Hills region to a new level. They have already initiated a convincing program of secondary, late-disgorged releases and awards and recognition have come fast. Our recent tasting this month of 10 wines resulted in the highest scores we have ever awarded sparkling wines from Australia, placing these wines right among the very best of the world, even Champagne.

Importantly they have also teased out the possibilities for high-quality sparking across a variety of stylistic genres, working in chardonnay, pinot noir and more recently incorporating pinot meunier. “The Adelaide Hills contains so many varied vineyard plantings with differing orientations, altitudes, soil types and clones of pinot, chardonnay and meunier that it is possible to create high quality sparkling wines using all three varieties from within this one region,” Kate Laurie explained.

Deviation Road’s flagship vintage blanc de blancs, called Beltana, is always a small volume blend (1,500 bottles produced this year, at a recommended retail price (RRP) of A$95 (US$68)) from the best chardonnay parcels in vintages that have the potential for the wine to rest a minimum of five years ageing on lees. The Lauries established a high quality early on with this wine and the 2013 Beltana (95 points) is packed with peach and lemon fruits framed with savory autolysis notes of lightly spiced hazelnut biscuit. The palate delivers a sorbet-like textural smoothness with a zesty, linear drive of lemon, peach and yellow-grapefruit flavors. 

But it was the Deviation Road Loftia Vintage Brut Late Disgorged 2012 (96 points, 20,000 bottles produced with RRP of A$88) that was the top-rated sparkling in our recent Adelaide Hills tasting and this prompted a discussion and deeper investigation of the style via a tasting of seven consecutive vintages disgorged a la volee and tasted as a chronological flight. Loftia brings the best parcels of chardonnay and pinot noir together in any one vintage and, like all good vintage sparkling and Champagne, it embraces the distinctive character of the harvest. The dominance of chardonnay and pinot noir switches around according to the vintage and the way it evolves with extended time resting on lees is a fascinating thread to follow. 

“Lees ageing Adelaide Hills sparkling gives subtle and harmonious baked patisserie notes,” Kate Laurie said. “And I am always aiming for a dry, aperitif style with Loftia, now hitting three years on lees before release.”

Laurie also described how chardonnay-dominant years tend to have a citrus-driven, baked brioche style and pinot dominant years have more spices, nuts and baked red fruits with time on lees. “You see such different autolysis notes in Champagne,” she said. “Some are overt like Charles Heidseick or Dom Perignon and some very subtle like Agrapart, which stays really fine. I’m seeing distinct differences in our Loftia that follow the threads of vintage.”

Laurie’s Loftia 2010, 2012 and 2013 bottlings are all pinot-dominant vintages and all showed a consistently spicy, pink fruit style in the tasting. The chardonnay-driven years like 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2016 all show savory pastry, brioche and biscuit characters and the textural glazing that transforms the palate is an impressive structural shift that really sets the wine up with stability, balance and seamlessness. From a textural angle, the pinot-dominant years tend to open and expand with time on lees, whereas the chardonnay-driven years start more compressed and develop porcelain-like luster over time.

There’s another thread too, via their vintage Blanc de Noirs called Southcote (1,500 bottles produced with RRP of A$48). This cuvee was born in 2016 out of a curiosity to isolate how sparkling Adelaide Hills pinot noir develops with time on lees. “We saw the unlocking of spicy, tart and vibrant red pinot fruit,” Laurie said. “It was so convincing we decided to start producing a vintage Blanc de Noirs in years that pinot shines.” 

The non-vintage Altair Rosé was added to the range as a pink sparkling with more body and texture (25,000 bottles produced with RRP of A$35). It fulfils another stylistic avenue that brings drinkability and textural breadth. It delivers more weight and fruit presence on the palate and utilizes inherent, terroir-driven characters to drive the style. “It has more textural richness up front,” Laurie said. “We target the style in the vineyard and we use reserve wines to create and maintain complexity in the base, including the introduction of pinot meunier.”

The Lauries’ command of the technical side of high-quality sparkling production and the drive to create wines that are informed by the attributes of the grapes and sites that the Adelaide Hills region offers is a potent combination. The constant comparison with Champagne is unavoidable, it comes with the territory, but the answer is written in the quality and pedigree they’ve established in the 12 years they’ve been producing. “I am not trying to make a sparkling that looks like Champagne,” Kate Laurie said. “They already do that so well. I prefer to highlight the place from which our wines are born, to unearth their potential and show the world that the Adelaide Hills really has a place on the world stage.”

– Nick Stock, executive editor