Bubbling Along Nicely
DOMAINE CHANDON wine master Dr Tony Jordan buries his nose in a glass of Australian sparkling wine and immediately announces his judgment.
"Now that's an idiosyncratic statement," he says to fellow taster and fizz king for Constellation Australia, Ed Carr.
They both swap sensory reactions to the Victorian high country bubbles - old oak, hints of varnish, truffles and sauteed onions, a dash of soy sauce.
The wine has developed over 11 years of sitting on its yeast lees into a bold expression of Australian bubbles.
It'll be one of more than a dozen sparklings popped on Friday morning at Barossa resort The Louise during the inaugural Landmark Australia tutorial, designed to show off the finest wines in the country to 12 of the most influential world wine experts.
The Landmark Australia tastings have gathered more than 200 of Australia's most significant wines of the past half-century, plus scores of the nation's best winemakers to enhance our fine wine credentials to the 12 trade and media powerbrokers.
Already they have tasted the most respected rieslings and shiraz, and opened the heritage greats such as 1955 Penfolds Grange and Henschke 1986 Hill of Grace.
To come will be semillon, sauvignon blanc and blends, the cabernets and blends, chardonnay, pinot noir, fortifieds and the new wave of Mediterranean and Continental varieties.
The aim is not to compare the best we can produce with the rest of the world, but to demonstrate how we are "truly, uniquely different" says peak body Wine Australia's marketing general manager, Paul Henry.
Arguably one of the most challenging brackets in a marketing sense will be the Australian sparklings, which face the might of Champagne when convincing the world of wine that any other country, region or style counts when it comes to bubbles.
"There seems to be a general acceptance that there are benchmarks that don't have to relate to the Old World regarding cabernet or pinot, for instance, but when it comes to sparkling the comparisons always start at Champagne," Henry says.
" 'How fair is that?' is a question worth asking," he adds.
The answer, Tony Jordan suggests, is that even learned wine people still seem to think that everyone making sparkling wine anywhere in the world is making copies of Champagne.
"The same people, if they thought about it for a couple of minutes, would not be saying that - obviously you're in different terroir," Jordan says.
"They'd happily drink a Margaret River cabernet and say that's brilliant. And drink a Bordeaux and say that's brilliant.
"And they wouldn't say the Margaret River was crap because it didn't taste like the Bordeaux."
Jordan and Ed Carr have gathered together a collection of great Australian sparklings to state our case - among them names like Arras, Chandon, Croser, Jansz, and Brown Brothers.
"We are starting to see a level of maturity in our sparklings," says Carr, who's led the way with the Hardy's brands such as Arras, Sir James and Bay of Fires that now come under the banner of Constellation Wines Australia.
"We can talk now about the emergence of house styles," he says, pointing to the diversity in approach between Chandon, Jansz and his own range.
Fruit sourcing also has evolved dynamically, says Tony Jordan, leading the major players to cooler and colder regions all the time.
Chandon uses fruit from Tasmania and higher Victorian districts such as Strathbogie and Whitlands, while its Yarra sources have virtually "walked" up the hills, higher and higher. Its main wines are blends of the areas, although there are smaller makes of individual regional and specific vineyard wines.
Constellation, on the other hand, produces regional wines, taking in South Australia's Piccadilly Valley, the Yarra Valley, Pemberton in Western Australia and Tumbarumba, NSW.
"But for our technically correct, best wines we could ever make, we go to southern Tasmania," says Carr.
With a lively discussion on regionality, terroir and complex blending of both as the backdrop to the Landmark sparkling showcase, its presenters agree that our best, many with eight to 10 years of age and with the complexity of maturity and late disgorging, are world-class wines.
The battle to sell New World bubbles into the Old World against the marketing clout of Champagne, however, is not an easy one, they agree.
"But we'll keep plugging away," says Tony Jordan.
"We're comfortable with the quality of the wines - we just have to tell the world about them."
June 03, 2009 12:00am