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Best of the best 2010

NEW IMPORTS
2007 Domaine de Belliviére Les Rosiers, Loire Valley (France), A$55
Wooly and ropey chenin blanc from the Jasnieres appellation. Wild ferment in old wood. On the nose there are custard apple, mango skin, baked quince, a bit of blossom and faint whiff of wax and aldehyde. It has a concentrated, creamy core, with intensity and drive.

NV Marc Chauvet Brut tradtion, Champagne (France), A$69
An exciting grower Champagne from the Rilly la Montagne on the Montagne de Reims from a family that can trace roots in these vineyards back to 1529. A three way split of the classic varieties, with about 30-per-cent reserve wines adding complexity, it’s a balanced, fine-boned style with just enough flesh and a bright line of acidity driving through a long, clean finish.

2008 Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Côte du Py, beaujolais (France), A$34.95
The Beaujolais revival continues apace. A good-value wine from the most prized slope in Morgon, generally considered to extract the greatest richness and intensity from the not always reliable gamay. Juicy, brambly and loaded with spice, beetroot and rhubarb characters and a bit of a bunchy herbal edge.

2008 Weingut Robert Weil Kiedrich Gräfenberg Auslese Riesling, Rheingau (Germany), A$101
A jaw-dropping stunner from one of the finest sites in Germany, the steeply sloped Gräfenberg (Hill of the Rhine Counts) in Kiedrich. The vineyard’s greatest asset is the opportunity it affords to be picked precariously late, resulting in profound flavour intensity and the vital retention of lively acidity. The outcome is stunning. This is a decadent orgy of luscious flavour; creamed honey, poached peach and heady flowers. A thrilling acidity races cuts through 141 grams of residual sugar like a hot knife.

2008 La Croix de l’Ermite Saint Joseph Les Marches, Rhône (France), A$34.95
Sourced by rising star Vincent Paris from several vineyards in Tournon, directly across the Rhône River from the famed hill of Hermitage. It is 100-per-cent de-stemmed and with 18-months maturation in older oak. The result is a lively, edgy, willowy wine with layers of dry cherry skins and spice threaded with a seam of dry earth and rosemary twigs.

2007 Alvaro Palacios Camins del priorat DOC, Priorat (Italy), A$50
From the region’s rockstar, a Priorat that opts for poise over power, slurpability over shock and awe. A blend of garnacha and carignan with small splashes of syrah and cabernet sauvignon, this deliciously drinkable red ripples with bright red cherry, dried rose bud, fresh sage and a fine filament of minerality. A style a lot of Aussie winemakers could be looking to for inspiration.

2007 Quinta do Vale D Maria Douro DOC, Douro (Portugal), A$100
Cristiano van Zeller made his name at the famed Quinta do Noval before taking control of his in-law’s property in the late ’90s. This is a big brooder full of mystery and intrigue, a blend of native Portuguese varieties like touriga nacional, sousão and tinta roriz. Packed with black fruits edged with tar, a rich and gamey meatiness at its core and the faint whiff of the smoke that might waft by if someone had set alight a nearby hill covered in wild herbs.

2006 Domingo Hermanos winery Domingo Molina Malbec, Salta (Argentina), A$45
A family-owned producer with a unique connection to the land as it is owned and operated by native Indians whose ancestors have worked the same soil in Salta for 1000 years. This wine has typical malbec muscle but an element of restraint and refinement at play too. Dark, fleshy fruit and fine velvety tannins come as no surprise but the liveliness and juiciness of the wine is what really sets it apart and can possibly be attributed to it’s fruit source, a 40-year-old vineyard planted at 2000 metres.

CELLAR DOORS
The Lane vineyard, Adelaide Hills
(08) 8388 1250
When John and Helen Edwards bought the property that would eventually be known as The Lane, its suitability as a vineyard was the primary motivation. That it just happened to be one of the most scenic spots in the Adelaide Hills and the perfect site for a cellar door and restaurant has been a bonus a decade in coming. Now the whole place is humming, the vineyard delivers exceptional fruit, while the bright and airy cellar door and restaurant showcase the results in impeccable style. The new heart of the Hills.

Port Phillip Estate/Kooyong, Mornington Peninsula
(03) 5989 4444
Calling the grand new edifice perched on the hill above Port Phillip Estate simply a cellar door would be a surefire way to win gold at the Understatement Olympics. A commanding home for the ironically subtle wines of both Port Phillip and Kooyong, a restaurant of real substance and a suite of beautifully appointed apartments for those that can’t tear themselves away, this is a real statement of confidence and class.

Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander, Yarra Valley
(03) 5962 6111
Giant Steps still remains a benchmark for those who believe a cellar door can do more. Proudly parked in the middle of Healesville, this bakery, coffee roaster, restaurant, fromagerie and theatre just happens to offer tastes of the excellent Giant Steps and Innocent Bystander wines made in the small batch, gravity-fed winery patrons can peer into while eating their lunch. By being so much more than just a cellar door this place must expose an extraordinary number of non-wine drinkers to premium wine and that’s a very fine thing.

Rockford, Barossa Valley
(08) 8563 2720
Brand loyalty is a commodity in short supply throughout the larger wine industry but certainly not at Rockford. First-time visitors are rarely one-time visitors, with many making regular pilgrimages to the place where time seems to go backwards and the spirit of the old Barossa comes to life. The long-term loyalists get the chance to be part of one of the great gatherings in Australian wine, the regular Stonewaller lunches, an uplifting convivium built around a kitchen garden, a cellar full of treasures and an outlook on life that is uniquely Rockford.

Tarrawarra Estate, Yarra Valley
(03) 5957 3510
The chance to taste through a range of beautifully crafted wines in a strikingly designed cellar door with widescreen views out across the Yarra Valley would be reason enough to visit Tarrawarra, but the added bonus of a purpose-built gallery, The Tarrawarra Museum of Art, housing one of the finest modern Australian art collections makes it a must.

Audrey Wilkinson, lower Hunter Valley
(02) 4998 7411
The wine world loves special sites and this is clearly one of them. Perched in arguably the Hunter’s prettiest spot, this cellar door provides not only the Valley’s best views and a recently installed museum offering insight into the winemaking of days past, but also a range of wines that under the recent stewardship of laconic winemaker Jeff ‘Buddy’ Byrne are hitting heights that match the site.

Moorilla, Southern Tasmania
(03) 6277 9900
Be careful when you visit Moorilla because chances are you’ll never want to leave. A stunning facility drawn from a singular vision, this place has everything you could need to nourish body, mind and soul. It boasts not only wine, but a cutting-edge restaurant, an amazing collection of rare antiquities and dazzling modern art, a groundbreaking microbrewery and possibly the funkiest vineyard accommodation on the planet.

Cullen, Margaret River
(08) 9755 5277
They say your cellar door is your chance to project the essence of your brand in bricks and mortar, and in its simplicity and total lack of pretence this cellar door tells you all you need to know about Cullen. A part of the landscape, rather than a flashy blight on it, the cellar door and restaurant take the organic and biodynamic principles that reign in the vineyard and apply them to a wonderful dining experience built on produce grown on the property or supplied by like-minded local growers. What better way to enjoy some of the country’s very best wines.

Sevenhill Cellars, Clare Valley
(08) 8843 4222
Wine is supposed to be good for the heart but at Sevenhill it may just save your soul too. Established by Jesuit priests from Austria in 1851, this beautiful property offers visitors so much more than just a cracking collection of wines. Jesuit winemaker emeritus Brother John May SJ conducts regular tours of the historic grounds that include the old winery and cellar, the shrine to St Ignatius and the St Aloysius Church with its underground crypt containing the mortal remains of his predecessors. Now that’s a unique angle nobody can match.

d’Arenberg, McLaren Vale
(08) 8329 4888
As lovely as the current d’Arenberg cellar door may be, and the restaurant is outstanding too, this is actually a pre-emptive listing, an indication of faith in the quixotic vision of ambitious winemaker Chester Osborn. We may have only seen the plans and hastily constructed model for his giant glass cube among the vines, but if it turns out to be half as crazy in reality as it is in theory, then we’ll be the first ones at the door. 

URBAN WINE EXPERIENCES
The Bentley Bar and Restaurant, Sydney
(02) 9332 2344
One of Sydney’s best boozers just got better thanks to a swank new fit-out from Pascale Gomes-McNabb. While the limitations of the original incarnation were forgiven in the face of Nick Hildebrandt’s magical mystery tour wine list, the package now seems more complete. Clear demarcation now exists between dining room and bar keeping diners safe and secure from the swarm of wine industry barflies that regularly return to be excited, educated and enthralled by one of Australia’s more unique lists.

Circa, The Prince, Melbourne
(03) 9536 1122
How do you make one of the country’s best restaurants even more of a wine-lovers destination? Installing a state-of-the-art Enomatic machine and stocking it with some of the most desirable labels on the planet is a pretty good start. Circa’s dauntingly good wine list is cleverly augmented by a constantly rotating line-up of vinous superstars all delivering their delicious joys in perfectly presented doses through the high-tech Enomatic. The chance to taste some of the great wines of the world has never been so close at hand, with selections at time of writing including 2002 Egon Müller Riesling Kabinett Scharzhofberger, 1998 William Fèvre Valmur Chablis and 2003 Château l’Évangile, with plans afoot to regularly rotate superstars such as Château Haut-Brion and DRC through as well.

The Exeter Hotel, Adelaide
(08) 8223 2623
The front bar of the Exeter Hotel sells Krug. That’s pretty much all you need to know to understand the special place this iconic Adelaide pub has in many wine-flushed hearts. This is the unofficial headquarters of the South Australian wine industry, a dependable dispenser of cold Coopers ales and possibly the only place in the world to serve old vintages of legends such as Rockford and Greenock Creek with beer nuts and chips.

The Melbourne Supper Club, Melbourne
(03) 9654 6300, 1/161 Spring St
The benchmark by which all other wino boltholes are measured remains at the very top of its game. If anything, the addition of a rooftop bar and expansive deck with gorgeous views across to Parliament House has made it even better. A list as tempting as it is deep, a sense of shabby occasion and a consistency few can match keep this legend firmly entrenched at the top of favourites list.

Cru Bar & Cellar, Brisbane
(07) 3252 1744
My colleague and GT WINE contributor Ken Gargett considers Cru Bar one of Brisbane’s best assests, which I couldn’t agree with more. A brilliantly constructed list, with a particular focus on mini-verticals of seriously tempting wines, make this the go-to option for anyone chasing a bit of vinous nourishment in Brisbane.

R Bar, Adelaide
(08) 8230 0100, 171 O’Connell St
You’ll have to seek it out, there’s no street signage and entry is through a non-descript door in a lane, but once you do you’ll find yourself drawn into the wonderland world of R wines. Either a bar masquerading as a city cellar door, or the other way round, this fabulously funky new addition to Adelaide’s drinking scene showcases the dazzling range of wines from Chris Ringland, a striking and diverse collection that stretches from ancient vineyards in the Barossa all the way to Spain.

The Deanery, Melbourne
(03) 9629 5599
If you’ve ever scanned a restaurant wine list and thought “my cellar is much better than this”, The Deanery may be the place for you. A bar, restaurant and professional wine-storage facility rolled into one, The Deanery allows clients to enjoy their own wines alongside some of Melbourne’s finest food. And it’s a whole lot cheaper, and safer, than stashing a chef in your own cellar.

The Pot, Adelaide
(08) 8373 2044
A cracking wine list becomes even more user-friendly on evenings early in the week. Choose anything that takes your fancy off the list and pay half the price for half the bottle. What remains becomes an ever changing, always interesting by-the-glass selection for the other patrons. A very sensible way to make us all drink more widely and one we’d like to see adopted elsewhere.

Must Winebar, Perth
(08) 9328 8225
The current holder of the Best Wine Bar List award in the GT WINE’s Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards remains our favourite place in the west for a seriously exciting drink. We’re particularly smitten with the intimate Champagne Lounge, a coolly elegant bar within a bar, and it’s stellar line up of more than two dozen great marques.

EYE-CATCHING LABELS
Some Young Punks
(08) 8842 3773
Vintage comic books and the gritty-glam aesthetic of pulp fiction cover art provide the inspiration for a suite of the most eye-catching labels in the business. The flashy livery is supported by exciting winemaking drawing on Clare, Barossa and McLaren Vale fruit to create wines as good as they look.

Ad Hoc
(08) 9382 2379
Larry Cherubino’s entry level Ad Hoc range draws on the distinctive characters of WA’s classic regional styles for naming and labeling inspiration. Hence the widely planted Mendoza clone’s tendency to vary in berry size within a bunch leads to Hen and Chicken Chardonnay, riesling’s demure side is celebrated in Wallflower Riesling and the remoteness of Frankland River turned on its head with Middle of Everywhere Shiraz. All this illustrated by beautifully designed labels and the wines are exceptionally good too.

Crittenden Estate Los Hermanos
(03) 5981 8322
Sketches of Spain in both wine style and packaging from the hugely talented Rollo Crittenden. Tempranillo in the Joven style, and the wine formerly known as albarino now called Tributo a Galicia, adorned with labels that take inspiration from a distinctively Iberian kind of naive art. A clever example of packaging giving stylistic cues to what’s inside.

Tomfoolery Wines
0404 889 416
The motto here is “the coming together of all things foolish” and while Toby Yap and Ben Chipman may be good-time Barossa boys par excellence there are serious skills behind all the fun. Beautiful Carrollesque illustrations adorn a range of well-crafted wines worth watching.

Ducks in a Row
0413 445 534
Following a great tradition of famous Australian artists creating labels, John Olsen’s frogs on Leeuwin Estate riesling perhaps the best known, new outfit Ducks In a Row have turned to Mirka Mora for her distinctive touch. The great vinous gallery grows ever larger.

Samuel’s Gorge
(08) 8323 8651
The official line is the label is a clever collage, combining lots of small photographic snippets to recreate the stunning vista from the winery’s perch high on a hill. But in reality it more closely reflects the blurred vision of thirsty cellar door visitors who find they just can’t leave.

First Drop
0420 971 209
Despite appearances, Matt Gant and John Retsas have a strong sense of style and while they may not show it themselves their wines sure do. From the comic-strip chic of their Mother’s Milk Shiraz to the Hogarthian homage of Mother’s Ruin Cabernet, these boys know how to make a sensory impact.

Penfolds Koonunga Hill ’76
1300 651 650
A celebration of retro-style, a tribute to the original Penfolds Koonunga label resurrected to celebrate its 30th birthday. At once a gently nostalgic throwback and a breath of fresh air.

Head Wines
0413 2114 233
Combining old-school and ornate Euro-style with a modern Australian frankness and clarity, young gun Alex Head’s Rhône-clones The Blonde and The Brunette are as eye-catching and attention-grabbing as the best of their namesakes.

Holyman
(03) 6394 3678
There’s a lot to be said for simplicity. An elegant font spelling out the winemaker’s name and simple depiction of a nautical flag of great family significance give a good indication of the quality and class you can expect from one of Tasmania’s best vineyards.

NEW PLAYERS TO WATCH
Dandelion Vineyards
(08) 8556 6099
Despite some pretty compelling physical evidence suggesting otherwise, Zar Brooks is actually a man too busy poking his fingers into a plethora of pies to be simply eating them. He has been around too long and achieved too much to be labeled a rising star, his less than heavenly body has been a fixture of the Australian wine firmament for more than 20 years, as marketing whiz, winery CEO, brand strategist and very capable filler of a show judge’s white coat. But it’s his latest project, his most personal yet, that may just be the best thing he’s done. Certainly in terms of personnel anyway.
Brooks has teamed up with his winemaking wife Elena, a woman whose talents are outweighed only by her tolerance, in an exciting new venture called Dandelion Vineyards. The approach is remarkably simple and sees Elena making wine from a suite of beautiful old vineyards identified by Carl Lindner and Brad Rey across that blessed curve that runs from the Barossa, up through the Eden Valley and Adelaide Hills and down into McLaren Vale.

The result is a line-up of wines that show the best in dedicated viticulture and sensitive winemaking, abandoning clutter and artifice for purity and poise. A trophy at the Brisbane show for their first release, the scintillatingly fresh 2009 Dandelion Vineyards Wonderland Of The Eden Valley Riesling, was the first indication, if any was really needed, that this project might be something special. We like to say we’ll be watching developments with great interest, but we know full well we’re going to be very well informed every step of the way.

Collector Wines
(02) 6116 8722
To call Alex McKay a little bit taciturn is like saying the Louvre is a nice place to put up a few posters, but when you’re blessed with winemaking talents as well honed as his, the gift of the gab becomes superfluous. In an industry that can over-inflate itself on a surfeit of hot air, his quietly thoughtful approach is a cooling breath of the fresh stuff and proving you don’t need to make a lot of noise to get noticed.

His Canberra District based Collector Wines label hit the ground running just three years ago with the first release, the 2005 Marked Tree Red, awarded NSW Wine of the Year before he had even finalised a license to sell it. Sucessive vintages have brought more acclaim for both the regionally sourced Marked Tree and the single-vineyard Reserve Shiraz with both wines clearly laying out his intensely focused approach to shiraz. It’s a style that opts for elegance and edge over plushness and power and he walks a fine line that many others topple over. But clearly it works. The 2008 Collector Wines Reserve Shiraz was a star of the 2010 Sydney Royal Wine Show, cutting a swathe through the red wine classes to collect four trophies including Red Wine of Show. Asked to comment on the achievement McKay was unusually verbose: “Yeah, I’m pretty happy.”

Bellwether wines
(08) 8736 3300
The path from player in a big company band to solo winemaking career is well-trodden. The highly regarded Sue Bell is one of the latest to hand in the corporate credit card and Qantas Club membership and strike out on her own. She had been clearly the best thing about Constellation’s underperforming Limestone Coast winery Stonehaven, had been named dux of the 2007 Len Evans Tutorial and built a reputation as one of the most finely tuned and insightful of the new breed of wine show judges to have emerged in recent years. Industry observers waited intently to see what she would do next and now they finally know.

Travelling through France as part of her Tutorial-topping prize reinforced her love of both chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon and crystalised the idea of a brand specialising in both.

The cabernet component was relatively simple, drawing on high-quality fruit from her home base in Coonawarra, but the chardonnay requires regular journeys to northern Tasmania to source exactly what she needs. Her debut release, the 2006 Bellwether Cabernet Sauvignon, is staggeringly good, a complete and composed wine, drenched in dark fruit and in possession of the structural architecture to see several decades in the cellar.

There are plans afoot to restore a ramshackle old shearing shed just north of Coonawarra into small winery, cellar door and community kitchen in a project that reflects not only her desire to handcraft exceptional wines but her quietly held belief that life is as much about what you can give back as what you want to take. It appears this Bellwether is pointing to a very bright future indeed.

OTHER WINEMAKERS TO WATCH
Excitement abounds with a whole bunch of exciting new producers doing some pretty special things right across the country. In Tasmania the sublimely talented Jeremy Dineen is on such a hot streak at Josef Chromy that he could almost change the state’s status as a cool-climate wine region. This boy’s a star.

Michael Alyward is creating a small slice of Burgundy on the Mornington Peninsula with his hugely impressive Ocean Eight wines while over in Clare, Adam Barton is off to a flying start with his Atlas label quickly stamping itself as one to closely watch.

New wine labels rarely come with the kind of firepower that the Adelaide Hill’s rising La Linea can deploy. A platinum-plated partnership between one of the sharpest technical brains in the business, Peter Leske and Master of Wine David LeMire MW, La Linea has already shown through its groundbreaking tempranillo and thrilling off-dry riesling that it can achieve the results to match high expectations.

BEST AUCTION PERFORMERS
It shouldn’t be all that surprising that perennial secondary market powerhouses are still leading the way in auction houses across the country. In uncertain times money seeks shelter in blue chips and gold bricks, and when it comes to wine clearly some houses are considered safer than others.

In Australia that means Penfolds. Grange remains the dominant player on the auction scene and its increasingly rare early vintages are now scaling stratospheric heights with the inaugural release, 1951, attracting $43,701.15 at a Langtons sale last year.

While the robust health of Grange prices remains a constant, the emergence of its more subdued sibling St Henri as a genuine heavy-hitter has been one of the more intriguing developments of the last year. The 1957 St Henri achieved the highest price for any Australian wine other than Grange when it was knocked down in a 2009 Langtons sale for a staggering $8108.65. Equally notable was the stellar performance of the 1971 St Henri, with a sale price exceeding $3700, almost five times the price of the ’71 Grange.

A growing interest in Australia’s winemaking history, particularly the Hunter Valley’s part in it, saw strong results for wines like the 1954 Mount Pleasant Robert Hermitage, an O’Shea wine, go past $3000 while the legendary pair of 1965’s from Lindemans, Bins 3100 and 3110 hit historical highs.

Chris Ringland’s eponymous shiraz, a Parker star and one of the finest examples of the Aussie cult phenomenon remains incredibly strong while most of its peers have crumbled under an avalanche of hype and unreasonable expectation. Ten vintages are ranked in the Top 50 performing Australian wines at Langtons auctions and represent half of the Top 20 after the Penfolds wines are taken out. In Old World terms the insatiable lust for the wines of Domaine de la Romaneé Conti shows no sign of flagging, while another of the big game hunter’s favourite targets, the gilt-edged Château Petrus also hit dizzying heights.

Perhaps the most interesting trend to emerge has been the resurgence in high-end Australian cabernet sauvignon. Mark Wickman from Wickman’s Fine Wine Auctions sees it as a maturing of the secondary market. “Over the last year I have seen a growing demand for quality aged cabernet sauvignon and wines such as Penfolds Bin 707, Majella, Moss Wood, Noons and Wynn’s Coonawarra Estate performing above expectation at auction,” he notes. “Not so long ago cabernet was out of fashion and shiraz was the shining star, but the US thirst for Australian wine has declined and support for massive premiums on small production shiraz has all but vanished. What is left is a solid backbone of Australian wine drinkers with mature tastes.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DEARNLEY

This article is from the April/May 2010 issue of Gourmet Traveller WINE.