I can still taste the sugary oak-chipped Chardonnay that typified a bottle grabbed on my way home from work in the 1990s. Mass production was making wine more popular and accessible than ever, and this big fruit-driven New World nectar was regularly sloshed into super-sized glasses.
As a student in the eighties, I had drunk beer
and vodka. Now I was in advertising and had graduated to wine. The price tag
was cheap; the cost was quality and the reputation of particular grapes -
particularly Chardonnay - which even had a character in the popular TV drama
'Footballers Wives' named after it.
How refreshing to be sitting in a tasting run by
Master of Wine Emma Symington and Author and Broadcaster Tom Cannavan, decades
later learning that Australian wines have shaken off their tacky past and are
cool again. Exemplified by coast, elevation and 'tude.
We begin appropriately with Kooyong' Clonale'
Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay 2017 and Vasse Felix' Heytsebury' Margaret
River Chardonnay 2017. Although both are still 'juicy', fruit here is severely tamed
by flint and bursts of acidity resulting in elegance and a tight structure. They
are two of four wines which fall into the 'Ocean’ flight of this masterclass and
they come from Western Australia where a maritime climate influences the vines.
The other two flights are called
'Attitude' and 'Altitude' the latter signifying the cool hipster tastes of
cities such as Melbourne rather than any mountainous regions.
A Shaw and Smith Adelaide Hills Pinot
Noir 2015 from Attitude; is a particularly savoury expression of the grape and tastes
pleasantly 'briny' making me lust for a pile of Gordal olives.
There are currently no reader reviews. Be the first to review by clicking below!