The dry white Semillon of Hunter Valley is one of the wine world’s greatest secrets. It has a devoted following among those consumers who have discovered it and it’s revered by the winemakers of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales; yet it goes curiously uncelebrated in much of the wider world.

The Hunter Valley – a two-hour drive north of Sydney – is Australia’s oldest continuing wine region, becoming established in the 1830s. Semillon is believed to have been grown there from the start, although it wasn’t always given its correct name, its wines being labelled variously as Shepherd’s Riesling, Rhine Gold and Chablis, among others.

As with Chenin Blanc in the middle Loire, Pinot Noir in Burgundy and Nebbiolo in Piedmont’s Langhe, there are few places on the globe where Semillon excels as it does in the Hunter.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 18 exquisite Semillons from the Hunter Valley

Old vines on poor soils

Key to its success are the poor, white, sandy soils of ancient river beds where the best Semillon grapes are grown. These soils are low in fertility and well drained. Many vines are more than a century old and unirrigated, and their roots go deep.

In particular, the area along the rather ill-named Hermitage Road in Pokolbin is where Tyrrell’s, Keith Tulloch, Thomas Wines, Pepper Tree and others source their most prized grapes.

Fruit from vineyards such as Braemore, Casuarina, Trevena, Tyrrells’ HVD and Keith Tulloch’s Field of Mars is highly valued by winemakers and keenly sought where available to buy. This area is what Keith Tulloch refers to as Pokolbin’s ‘grand cru strip’ of the Hunter Valley.

The Hunter isn’t a cool-climate region – its relatively northern latitude and low altitude (roughly 50m-250m) mitigate against that – but its proximity to the sea (the Pacific ocean is less than 40km from Cessnock) and extensive cloud cover moderate the climate.

On the other hand, it can be quite wet during the ripening season, so the fact that Semillon is harvested early works in its favour.

Young and old

Hunter Semillon at its best isn’t grassy or herbaceous when young, but scented with lemon juice, lemongrass and fragrant herbs. It’s delicate, restrained and refreshing, with appetising acidity and low alcohol: normally between 10% and 12%.

Fermented dry and not usually wood-aged, it makes a stimulating aperitif wine and also goes well with a wide range of delicate foods, such as crustaceans and other shellfish, finned fish, salads and vegetable dishes.

It ages superbly, for up to 20 years or more, and the more committed producers release semi-mature Semillon (usually at about five years old) annually, alongside their most recent vintages.

As Semillon ages, the colour deepens and the bouquet becomes more complex: toasty and honeyed, sometimes with buttery traces and often veering into the roasted hazelnuts more commonly seen in aged Chardonnay. The palate also puts on weight and richness, but without losing its essential finesse and appetising qualities.

Tyrrell’s, Mount Pleasant and Brokenwood are the three top-level producers, closely followed by Keith Tulloch, McGuigan, Silkman, First Creek, Vinden, Gundog, Briar Ridge, Pepper Tree, Margan and Audrey Wilkinson, all of whom are right up there.

Mount Eyre, Leogate, De Iuliis, Tamburlaine, David Hook, Usher Tinkler, Saddler’s Creek, Scarborough, Tintilla, Hart & Hunter and Allandale also produce fine examples.

Sadly, many of those bottles can only be found in Australia. Even finding enough wineries that export Semillon to the UK for this report was difficult. While other markets, such as Scandinavia, do import Hunter Semillon, it remains a niche variety.

Let’s hope that more people will discover its pleasures.

Huon Hooke’s pick of Hunter Valley Semillon:

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The Hunter Valley vineyard property has been put up for sale as industry veteran David Hook and his partner, Sherry Watt, seek to cut down on their workload, a listing statement said.

The news comes around one month after well-known name Tulloch Wines was reportedly put up for sale in the Australian region, north of Sydney.

Hunter Valley is ‘undergoing significant generational change’, according to a press statement on the sale of David Hook Wines, which has been producing wines for more than 35 years.

‘It’s always with mixed emotions that these properties come to market after so much hard work, but equally it represents a very exciting opportunity for the next generation,’ said Adam Morris, listing agent for David Hook Wines and affiliated to Christie’s International Real Estate.

Lying on 103 hectares of land, David Hook Wines includes two residences, a winery and an eight-hectare ‘ultra-premium’ vineyard first planted in 1982.

Grape varieties include the classic trio of Semillon, Chardonnay and Shiraz, but also 0.5ha each of Pinot Grigio and Barbera that were planted in 2018.

A further 50 hectares have been ‘earmarked’ for future planting, and regulatory approval has been obtained for a cellar door to welcome visitors and wine tasters, according to the listing.

An asking price has not been disclosed, however. The vendors ‘wish the price guide to remain confidential and only disclosed to qualified buyers,’ said Morris, who is a specialist vineyard broker in the area.

While some wine properties around the world may be sold more as ‘hobby’ vineyard estates, this listing may present an opportunity for buyers seeking a more commercial or substantial operation.

‘The focus [at David Hook Wines] has been squarely on incremental improvement in the vineyard, making excellent wines and selling through an established distribution network,’ said Morris.

For existing wine industry players, this listing could be a ‘highly lucrative turnkey operation which will comfortably fund itself under current interest rate settings’, he added.

Speaking to Decanter via email, Morris said that there were a range of Hunter Valley wine properties, potentially presenting different options for prospective buyers should any come up for sale.

These include larger family-held estates but also hotel and hospitality businesses that produce wine as part of their operations, as well as vineyard estates more at the ‘lifestyle’ end of the market – the latter potentially attracting buyers looking to move up from Sydney.

See more wine estates in our property section

In 2010, a band of 11 leading Australian multi-generational family wine producers with more than 1,200 years of collective winemaking experience combined under the Australia’s First Families of Wine (AFFW) banner. Their purpose? To quash the notion ‘that Australia and fine wine don’t go together… we want to bring perception and reality together’, said then chairman Alister Purbrick of Tahbilk in Victoria.

That objective was firmly achieved at a recent tasting in London where the group members each showcased one of their museum-release flagship wines.

Australia’s Fine Wine

The Shirazes from Henschke, d’Arenberg, Mount Pleasant and Jim Barry stood out for sheer quality and emphatic sense of place, highlighting the mesmerisingly diverse styles of Australia’s most planted grape: the fragrance of Eden Valley’s most famous vineyard; the earthier grunt of McLaren Vale; the ageability of acid-driven Hunter Valley Shiraz; and the bottomless fruit pit of my top scorer, from a sun-drenched vineyard in Clare Valley.

Conversely, Yalumba’s flagship wine, The Caley, showcased Australia’s multi-regional blending tradition. This polished, precise third release puts Coonawarra Cabernet firmly in the driving seat, with Barossa Shiraz for complementary muscle and spice.

Two lovely Cabernet Sauvignons from Western Australia and South Australia’s Clare Valley rounded out the reds, proving that it’s not just Coonawarra where this majestic grape thrives.

Grape-sourcing from more than 5,000ha in 16 regions enables AFFW members to invest in more esoteric styles too, such as the Hunter Valley’s unique unoaked Semillon, a sparkling wine from a plateau at 800m in Victoria’s King Valley, and an unoaked Marsanne which Tahbilk has grown in the Nagambie Lakes region since the 1860s – when it was known as ‘White Hermitage’.

Finally, drawn from a solera of fortified Rutherglen Muscat laid down well over 70 years ago, Campbells’ Merchant Prince is rare by name and nature and a true special occasion wine. How better to celebrate long-term thinking over short-term gain – surely one of the beauties of family-owned businesses?

• See Australia’s Finest: Lanton’s top 40 tasting

And long-term thinking means being ready for every possible challenge, including climate change, already wreaking havoc across Australia through devastating droughts. For sixth-generation wine grower Johann Henschke, nurturing his ancient soils through biodynamic viticulture is key, while Peter Barry’s legacy to the third generation is Greece’s heat-loving Assyrtiko grape. In a similar vein, d’Arenberg’s fourth-generation winemaker, Chester Osborn, is now working with 37 grape varieties, including Mencía, Montepulciano and Fiano.

‘You can’t be scared of climate change,’ concluded Barry. ‘You just have to focus on making better wine.’

Tasting flagship Australian Wines from the AFFW members:

Members of Australia’s First Families of Wine

Brown Brothers (Victoria)

Campbells (Rutherglen, Victoria)

d’Arenberg (McLaren Vale, South Australia)

Henschke (Eden Valley, South Australia)

Howard Park (Margaret River, Western Australia)

Jim Barry (Clare Valley, South Australia)

McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant (Hunter Valley, New South Wales)

Tahbilk (Nagambie Lakes, Victoria)

Tyrrell’s (Hunter Valley, New South Wales)

Wakefield (Clare Valley, South Australia)

Yalumba (Barossa, South Australia)

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What began in 1970 as a Hunter Valley hobby-farm vineyard for three Sydney-based solicitor friends, Tony Albert, John Beeston and James Halliday, has today evolved into one of Australia’s premier wine brands.

Brokenwood Wines produces an impressive range of high quality wine from vineyards around Australia, including the Canberra District, Beechworth, and even as far afield as McLaren Vale. However, it’s in the heart of the Hunter Valley – Australia’s oldest wine region – that Brokenwood calls home.

‘Hunter Valley terroir is very unique in Australia,’ declares Brokenwood’s managing director and chief winemaker, Iain Riggs AM. ‘Our sub-tropical climate typically means dry winters and wet summers, so humidity, low fertility soils and rapid ripening from véraison to harvest plays a big part in the unique quality of Hunter wine.’Semillon and Shiraz are the stalwart wine grapes of the Hunter Valley. While Brokenwood doesn’t own any Semillon vineyards itself, it produces an outstanding expression from two of the finest sandy-loam Semillon vineyards in the region: Oakey Creek and Trevena.

ILR Semillon

‘The ILR [Iain Leslie Riggs] Reserve Semillon is typically a blend of two high-quality vineyards in the Hunter, bottled under screwcap and released with six years of bottle age,’ Riggs explains.

Graveyard Shiraz

Brokenwood’s most significant vineyard holding is Graveyard, so named because the 15ha patch of red clay-loam and ironstone patches was once dedicated as a cemetery, although it was never used as such. The first Shiraz vines were planted in 1968, with the Brokenwood partners purchasing the vineyard ten years later. The first single-vineyard Shiraz was made by Riggs in 1983.

It’s the only Hunter Valley Shiraz in the Langton’s Classification, occupying a spot in the highest, ‘Exceptional’, category.

‘We only make Graveyard in the very best years, usually to around 13-14% alcohol, with 100% new French oak. Because of the lack of colour and tannin extraction, the wines are very much in the medium-bodied spectrum, which is typical of most Hunter reds.’

The tasting

In late 2018, Brokenwood invited a select number of guests to attend the opening of their new cellar door and taste a 13-vintage vertical of their seminal ILR Semillon, and an 18-vintage vertical of their quintessential Graveyard Shiraz. Below are my highlights of the tasting – the top six vintages of each wine.

Tasting Brokenwood’s Hunter Valley wines:

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Bruce Tyrrell introduced screwcaps to his famed Vat 47 Chardonnay in 2004. Daniel Honan picks out his top 10 vintages from this screwcap era...

The first time Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay was entered for judging at an Australian wine show, in 1973, it scored six points out of 20. As Bruce Tyrrell jokingly recalls, one of the spit buckets scored eight.

Since then, rather serendipitously, Vat 47 has gone on to win 47 wine show trophies throughout its 47-year existence.

Scroll down to see the wines

Winemaker Andrew Spinaze says the philosophy of Vat 47 is simple; ‘the fruit is king.’ Timing the picking in the Short Flat vineyard, and ensuring careful handling of the fruit in the winery, is crucial.

Of course, bottling is also an important process, which brings us to the theme of this tasting: since 2004, Vat 47 has been bottled under a screwcap closure.

‘We were dealing with about five to six cork companies,’ Bruce Tyrrell explains. ‘We had 30 batches of corks, priced around $2 a cork, and not one of those thirty batches passed quality control. So that was that. The introduction of screwcap in 2004 saved Vat 47’s reputation from the damage done by dud corks.’

There’s a clear evolution of the house style in this screwcap era – no malo, lees stirring, the re-introduction of gentle basket pressing, and deliberate oak selection.

What emerged over this 14-year vertical of Vat 47 Chardonnay was the elemental pedigree of the Short Flat vineyard to exhibit provenance, authenticity and vitality, despite vintage variation or age, and the perpetual paradox of the Hunter Valley as a world-class wine growing region.

Daniel’s top 10 screwcap Vat 47 Chardonnays:

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Decanter editorial and tasting team members recommend some of the latest takes on classic Australian varietal wines, plus a couple of examples of more unusual projects in well-known producer regions.

Australia still makes plenty of bold, oak-driven Chardonnay and super-ripe, jammy Shiraz, but it’s no secret that the country is becoming known for a greater breadth of regions and styles.

Cooler climate areas, such as Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania and Adelaide Hills, are becoming regular names on wine lists, for instance.

That doesn’t mean, though, that everything is entirely new.

Below, you’ll find some new twists on familiar varietals wines, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Semillon and Chardonnay.

Plus, there are a couple of more unusual wines from well-known producer regions, such as Roussanne from McLaren Vale and a white ‘field blend’ from Riverland, an area historically known for large-scale production or value wine but now also home to a growing number of small-batch labels.

All the reviews below are hot off the press from recent tastings, including last week’s ‘Australia Day’ annual tasting hosted by Wine Australia.

Some are so new that they aren’t even available yet, but keep your eyes peeled as you won’t want to miss out.

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Mike Bennie picks his top places to eat and drink when visiting Australia's Hunter Valley...

Top Hunter Valley restaurants

See also: Hunter Valley wineries to visit

Bistro Molines

The best spot for lunch in the Hunter Valley, set in a charming renovated cottage, with views from the verandah over undulating vineyard and farmland. Food is hearty and French-accented. www.bistromolines.com.au

Circa 1876

An icon restaurant, part of The Convent hotel. There’s an emphasis on paddock-to-plate dining, and a stellar wine list offers plenty of choice for a charred rib-eye for two. www.circa1876.com.au

Margan Restaurant

Extravagant views form the backdrop for one of the Hunter Valley’s best dining options (pictured top). The kitchen garden and orchard provide ingredients for the dishes served here, alongside organic and local produce. www.margan.com.au

Muse

Chef Troy Rhoades-Brown’s creative, uncluttered dishes have raised this venue to the peaks of Australian regional dining. The restaurant is at Hungerford Hill winery, but the detailed wine list spans the globe. Be sure to book ahead. www.musedining.com.au

Pop-up at Harkham

Now a permanent fixture, open only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The fun menu is ‘Latin street food’-oriented and Harkham produces lovely natural wines. www.harkhamwine.com.au

The Goldfish

A local beer at The Goldfish – which happens to be conveniently across the road from Brokenwood – is the right way to finish a day touring. www.thegoldfish.com.au

Enzo’s café

Have a coffee from Enzo’s café, a favourite of the local winemaking community. www.enzohuntervalley.com.au

Originally published in the January 2018 issue of Decanter. Edited for Decanter.com by Ellie Douglas. 

Mike Bennie is a wine writer, editor-at-large of Australian reviews site www.winefront.com.au, and co-founder of Sydney’s Rootstock festival.

The appeal of the Hunter Valley is broad, says Mike Bennie, who picks some of the top wineries to visit...

Hunter Valley wineries to visit

More than 150 wineries and inviting cellar doors punctuate meandering country drives, offering a broad spectrum from cosy boutique tasting rooms to state-of-the-art facilities.

Alongside the wine offering, there are world-class golf courses, varied dining opportunities, pastoral drives, hiking, cheese and chocolate tastings, breweries, distilleries and adventure activities.

Travel distances are typically short drives – manageable by bicycle in some cases.

Getting there: The Hunter Valley is a 2.5-hour drive from Sydney airport; otherwise, Pokolbin is an hour’s drive from Newcastle airport.

Where to eat and drink in Sydney

Tyrrell’s

No visit to the Hunter Valley should exclude a visit to Tyrrell’s. Here, living history is writ large from the first breach of the driveway. The bitumen road to the cellar door is flanked by some of the Hunter Valley’s oldest vines – the landmark wines 4 Acres and Vat 9 find their genesis in these storied vineyards. The 140-plus-year-old plots are an easy stroll from the winery car park, and a must-see for wine enthusiasts.

Tyrrell’s conducts a cellar tour and tasting, which is also not to be missed – visitors are able to tread the dirt floors that six generations of the family have walked, and visit the old, large-format barrel cellar that houses Tyrrell’s flagship wines for maturation.

Mount Pleasant

A visit to the charming Mount Pleasant cellar door makes for a neat pairing in the historical stakes. The McWilliam family is custodian of this great estate, which was home to arguably Australia’s most significant winemaker, Maurice O’Shea. He established Mount Pleasant in 1921, partnering with the McWilliams in the 1930s to expand vineyard holdings.

O’Shea’s wines are still renowned for their longevity, with wines from the 1940s and early 1950s considered some of Australia’s greatest and most sought-after. The current suite of wines from Mount Pleasant, under the guidance of the multi-awarded winemaker Jim Chatto, are heading on a similar trajectory.

Thomas Wines

Andrew Thomas of the eponymous Thomas Wines dazzled the Australian wine community with his pristine Semillons and inky Shiraz releases from single vineyards.

His departure in style, and yet myopic adherence to the Hunter Valley’s calling-card grape varieties, is one of the great stories of the Hunter’s recent wine history.

Thommo, as he’s known, is often found outside his sleek cellar door, cigarette and beer in hand, ready for a chat about his wines.

He’s one of the great winemakers, and characters, of the Hunter Valley.

De Iuliis

Nearby you’ll find his contemporary, Mike De Iuliis, a second-generation wine-grower of Italian background; his De Iuliis’ cellar door blends modern styling and rustic charm.

The architect-designed tasting room is bathed in natural light, with a backdrop of native fauna framing the space. Wines here follow both the cutting-edge and more traditional line, with tannin-driven Nebbiolo and crunchy blends of Shiraz and Touriga Nacional sitting alongside the regional stalwarts of single-vineyard Shiraz and fine-boned Semillon.

Tastings here are completed with a visit to the intriguingly named Two Fat Blokes Gourmet Kitchen, which specialises in cheese and charcuterie.

Krinklewood 

Rod and Pete Windrim are a father-son wine-growing operation, and the region’s leading biodynamic farmers. Their homely cellar door is a neat counterpoint to much of the Hunter’s rising architectural glamour.

Brokenwood

Go for a late-afternoon appointment at Brokenwood, which has a compelling offering in both local wines and those from elsewhere in Australia.

Small Winemakers Centre

Alternatively, call in to the neighbouring collective of wine producers at Small Winemakers Centre , which gives voice to those without resource for a cellar-door operation of their own.

Innovative, new-to-Hunter Valley grape varieties, expressive blends and a youthful enthusiasm are driving a new generation of Hunter Valley wine producers.

The Hunter Valley offers something for every globetrotting wine lover: the luxurious and the homely; the historic and modern; and, above all, truly world-class wines.

Originally published in the January 2018 issue of Decanter. Edited for Decanter.com by Ellie Douglas. 

Mike Bennie is a wine writer, editor-at-large of Australian reviews site www.winefront.com.au, and co-founder of Sydney’s Rootstock festival.

Find more Decanter travel guides here. 

Forget about Chardonnay and Riesling for a few days and enjoy Australian winemakers' uncanny ability to get the best from myriad white grape varieties, says Matthew Jukes...

You will already be familiar with Australia’s two greatest white wines styles – dry Riesling and Chardonnay.

Keen wine lovers have known this for years, but less adventurous oenophiles seem to have only recently cottoned onto the fact that Burgundy and its Chardonnays and serious German or Austrian dry Riesling cannot compete with the Australian icon brands in terms of value for money and, in many cases, longevity.

I would add dry Semillon to this list as a style of wine which Australia has made its own. While I love Bordeaux Blanc, the uniquely fascinating Hunter Valley style of Semillon, made without the oak barrel component (so beloved of the Bordelais) and which ages like clockwork for often two decades or more is spine-tinglingly attractive.

But what of Australia’s other styles of white and sparkling wines?

For the past 15 years, I have been compiling a report of my favourites: ‘100 Best Australian Wines’.

For the first time, I’m sharing with Decanter my entries from the ‘other whites’ sections of this report in the hope that readers might feel compelled to whet their palates with some of the more diverse wines made Down Under.

View all of Matthew’s tasting notes from this article

Australian winemakers have an uncanny knack of knowing what a wine will taste like long before a vineyard has been planted with an untested variety. I find this intuitive vinous guesswork utterly compelling. They are unswervingly accurate with their palate predictions and this means that they hit the intended target more often than not.

It is this experience of their own unique terroir and also their understanding of the myriad of global styles of winemaking which gives them the utmost confidence when trialling new wines.

I am often amazed at the speed in which tricky white varieties like Viognier, Fiano, Vermentino, Arneis and Marsanne, among others, have already all been made with world class results in Australia. Sparklers, too, in spite of warmer daytime temperatures are also starting to go head-to-head with other world standards.

This is because they are invariably made from noble varieties and they are often put together with economies of scale which make their price tags increasingly attractive.

All of these wine styles are built from a base of fine, tight, balancing acidity. You cannot make a lush, alluring white wine if there is not the equivalent ratio of tense, mouth-watering acid. Australia seems to understand this more than most other winemaking countries. After all, it is this component which has made their elite Chardonnays so downright delicious and amazingly ageworthy.

This rule holds true with other grape varieties, too. Even the lustiest of white grapes, Gewurztraminer, rarely rides solo in Australia, because the wine fraternity understand that it needs tempering and enlivening with either early picks or other, tautly acidic grapes to bring it to life.

My selection is a medley of wine styles, all different, and all fascinating, which I believe sum up Australia’s modern white wine scene. The running themes are internationally informed winemaking, unrivalled value for money and uniquely delicious and bright flavours. In short, they are some of the modern standard bearers for today’s global wine industry.

Matthew’s top unusual Australian wines made from white grape varieties:

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A collection of some of Australia's greatest wines worth an estimated five million dollars has gone missing in the country.

Police in the Hunter region have appealed to the public for information after failing to find the A$5m stash of missing Australian wines.

Full details of the wines were not released, but police said the haul was made up of dozens of individual wine collections.

Bottles include some of Australia’s best-known wine names, such as Penfolds Grange and Henschke.

Police said the wines were being held by Wine Investment Services Pty Ltd until 2013, when the firm collapsed into receivership.

Some of the firm’s assets were seized, but ‘inquiries revealed a number of wine collections were not surrendered’, police said.

• SEE ALSO: Australian wine burglars caught on CCTV

In March 2016, detectives from the State Crime Command’s Fraud and Cybercrime Squad launched an operation named ‘Strike Force Farrington’ to investigate the missing wine.

Officers raided a warehouse in Newcastle on 31 May and seized documents and electronic devices, police said.

‘As investigations continue, detectives are appealing for assistance from the public to locate the wine collections.’

Police added, ‘In particular, they would like to speak with anyone who may have purchased, or has been approached to purchase, collectable or vintage wines, including Penfolds Grange, varieties of Henschke, Torbreck, and Chris Ringland/Three Rivers.’

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Bob Oatley, Australian wine pioneer and founder of Rosemount Estate, as well as owner of the Wild Oats XI yacht, has died at the age of 87.

Bob Oatley established Rosemount Estate in 1969 and built it into one of the driving forces of the modern Australian wine industry before selling via a A$1.5bn merger deal with rival Southcorp in 2001.

Five years later, he set up Robert Oatley Vineyards with son Sandy, and was also a keen sailing enthusiast whose yachts dominated the Sydney to Hobart race, and also won the Admiral’s Cup in Cowes.

From modest beginnings in the Hunter Valley, Oatley made his first fortune in exporting coffee and cocoa beans from Papua New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960s.

He was named as an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2014 Australia Day Honours.

Fellow winemaker Bruce Tyrrell told the ABC News website: ‘He drove Rosemount into those early days of exporting Australian wine.

‘You know I remember in the early ’80s being thrown out of a New York liquor store because “they didn’t make wine” in Australia.

‘Bob and the crew at Rosemount were really one of the ones that did a huge amount of work to break that down.’

Announcing Bob Oatley’s death with ‘profound sadness’, the Oatley family said, ‘The Oatley family has been touched by the many kind words and tributes that have already been received from friends, colleagues and the wider Australian community. They thank everyone for their love and condolences.’

Several inland Australian wine regions are almost entirely unprofitable, according to analysis by the country's winemaker federation that highlights a gulf in earnings between areas.

More than 90% of production in Australian wine regions including Hunter Valley, Riverland and Swan District is unprofitable, said the Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) this week.

Its figures underline the difficult conditions many Australian winemakers and grape growers face.

• See also: Try these alternative Australian wines picked by Decanter experts

But its report also points to a two-speed Australian wine sector, with wine production in cooler climate regions much more profitable; albeit 43% of cool climate production is still loss making, according to WFA figures.

‘Many producers in the warm inland regions in particular continue to experience enormous challenges,’ said WFA chief executive Paul Evans. ‘Our analysis shows that 92% of production in warm inland areas is unprofitable.’

Conditions in some areas have also improved in recent years. Only 28% of Barossa wine production is loss making, versus 50% three years ago.

Evans said it was positive that grape prices across Australia have risen by 5% in the past year, albeit off a low base. He said Australia’s new free trade agreements with several Asian countries, including China, helped to provide a ‘window of oppotunity’ for growers.

‘We must urgently seize the potential to grow demand for Australian wine and help address the on-going structural mismatch between supply and demand at profitable price points,’ he said.

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This year's Decanter World Wine Awards International Trophy for the Best in Show White Single-Varietal under £15 went to McGuigan, The Shortlist Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia 2007 (11%)

Tasted against:

• Gérard Bertrand, Réserve Spéciale Viognier, IGP d’Oc, Languedoc-Roussillon, France 2013
• Gerovassiliou, Single Vineyard Malagousia, Epanomi, Macedonia, Greece 2013
• Kutjevo, Graševina Turkovi´c, Slavonia, Croatia 2012
• Les Vignerons du Pallet, Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Le Pallet, Loire, France 2009

Profile:

Showcasing the diverse nature of the DWWA, it was a lovely array of varieties left to fight it out over this Trophy. Ultimately it was one of the wine world’s most renowned marriages – Hunter Valley and Semillon – that seized the prize, the wine acclaimed for its tremendous precision, weight and pure varietal expression.

When it comes to Australia and wine, names do not come much bigger than McGuigan but, as with many of Australia’s historic wineries, its beginnings are distinctly unpretentious. Its roots stretch back to the 19th century when Owen McGuigan, a dairy farmer, began working vineyards to bolster his finances.

Peter Hall is senior winemaker at McGuigan and can point to more than 35 years’ worth of experience in winemaking, including three vintages in California, two in New Zealand and a staggering 34 in Hunter Valley; his tenure at McGuigan began in 1996.

‘When I joined the company,’ he recalls, ‘the passion for winemaking was clearly evident. As a company, our roots are well and truly in the Hunter Valley and we’re committed to producing iconic wine styles that are inherent to this region. Young Semillon is fantastic, fresh and light, but it’s aged Semillon that is without a doubt unique to the Hunter, and we’re able to release mature Semillon into the market as a result of our maturation programme.’

In producing this Trophy-winner, Hall admits that he is heavily reliant on the Hunter’s climate and terroir to deliver a wine that will display the classic hallmarks of the region’s Semillon. ‘For us, this wine is all about showing the benefits of Semillon maturation,’ he says. ‘It develops rich honey and toast characters with extended cellaring, and the 2007 vintage is a classic example of how this style evolves over time.’

See the full information about this wine

Written by Decanter

This year's Decanter World Wine Awards Regional Trophy for Australian Single-Varietal White over £15 went to Mount Pleasant, Lovedale Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2007 (11.5%)

Tasted against:

• Brokenwood, ILR Reserve Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2007
• Tempus Two, Copper Zenith Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2003
• Tyrrell’s, Vat 1 Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2005

Profile:

In 1914, a 17-year-old Maurice O’Shea visited France on a trip arranged by his French mother. Seven years later, having studied winemaking at Montpelier University, he returned to Australia and, along with his mother, purchased three plots of land that were given the name Mount Pleasant.

About a decade later, McWilliams bought a 50% stake in Mount Pleasant, eventually acquiring the other half in 1941. They retained the talents of O’Shea, and the takeover gave him the finances to seek out and buy two more areas of land, one of which was Lovedale – the source of this Trophy – which was planted in 1946.

Marking his 21st Hunter Valley vintage this year is chief winemaker at Mount Pleasant, Jim Chatto. ‘Lovedale is a unique site in the Hunter. It’s tough and crops are low, delivering a real intensity and purity in the fine-boned, very long-lived Semillon as it grows. We are trying to capture the character of the free-draining, alluvial site within the context of the vintage. The 2007 Lovedale delivers exactly this: a great site and a great vintage equal a great wine!’

Written by Decanter

A visit to one of Australia’s most historic wine regions will reward both wine lovers and fun lovers alike, says Tyson Stelzer. Read his Hunter Valley travel guide here.

Hunter Valley fact file:

Total planted area: 3,537 hectares

Main grapes: Chardonnay, Semillon, Shiraz, Verdelho

Number of wineries: 160

Quick links:

– Six of the best wineries to visit

– Where to stay, shop, eat and relax

Introduction:

No wine region in Australia offers more for visitors than the Hunter Valley. Less than two hours’ drive from Sydney, the most famous tourist destination in the state of New South Wales is a favourite playground for Sydney siders – and no wonder. It’s packed with resorts, day spas, breweries, a cheese factory, restaurants galore, four golf courses, public gardens, horse riding, multiple art galleries, hot air ballooning, even joy rides in jetfighter planes – not to mention 160 wineries.

Immerse yourself in the raw Australian beauty of hectare upon hectare of picturesque Hunter vineyards for a few days and you’ll quickly discover that even the extravagant tourist trimmings cannot disguise the rugged authenticity of this place. In fact, it’s remarkable that the region is able to produce such outstanding wine at all. The weather is often awful, with erratic, heavy bursts of rain around vintage time. This is one of Australia’s warmest and most humid wine growing regions, and it has large areas of poor soil. But, as everywhere, the finest wines emerge from marginal places, and when nature is kind, the Hunter blossoms. In the turmoil of Australian vintages over the past three years, the Hunter has emerged largely unscathed, making for a superb array of new vintage wines to line cellar door shelves, ripe for discovery by the eager wine traveller. There’s never been a better time to visit.

Something for everyone

The key style to uncover is dry Semillon and no region, anywhere in the world, has championed it like the Hunter. Harvested very early, this crisp, dry, unoaked style is grassy, lemony and fresh in its youth, with an acid backbone as dramatic and constant as the blue silhouette of the Broken back Range, which looms as the backdrop to every Hunter Valley scene. Mature Semillons spanning a decade and longer are a highlight of cellar door tastings, showcasing an extraordinary and amazing transformation to honeyed, nutty, buttery richness.

In a region as warm as this, the elegance, savoury character and fine structure of Hunter Shiraz is a refreshing surprise, and the perfect foil to typically rich Aussie reds. Mature vintages opened for cellar door tastings characterise development from edgy, angular adolescence to the velvety, leathery, gamey complexity of maturity.

The Hunter offers something for everyone, from history buffs to fashionistas. This is one of Australia’s most historic wine regions and a number of wineries established in the 1850s are still going strong today. Among them are Tyrrell’s, Drayton’s and Wyndham’s –Australia’s oldest estate, founded in 1828.Meanwhile, a growing band of dynamic and progressive young winemakers is reviving traditional vineyards and techniques while adding their own modern spin.

The Hunter has set the pace for modern Australian wine culture, thanks to such industry luminaries as Len Evans, ‘the godfather of Australian wine’ and James Halliday, Evans’ protégé, who also established Brokenwood. There is an active culture of mentorship, and an extravagant generosity in sharing knowledge among winemakers. The region has become the nation’s training ground for wines how judges, and a hotbed of exclusive private tastings of old and iconic wines – the inspiration of young and old winemakers alike.

Going for Broke

Thanks to a constant stream of Sydney weekenders and holidaymakers, the Hunter is geared up for wine tourism like nowhere else in Australia. Every brand, small and large, relies heavily on visitors, and the standard of visitor facilities provided is testimony to this importance.

Broke Road is the backbone of the Hunter, with cellar doors lining both sides, and it can become a traffic jam on weekends and public holidays. On busy days, it’s smart to begin a little out of the way, such as McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Estate. As the day gets busier, make your way between wineries on Broke Road on foot.

You’ll appreciate the exercise, because the Hunter Valley serves up a gastronomic feast to match its wines. Contemporary Australian cuisine is the theme across its finest restaurants, always with a focus on local seasonal produce. Muse Restaurant at Hungerford Hill is one of the most sophisticated gastronomic destinations in the region, and the dynamic chef Troy Rhoades-Brown and his wife Megan may just be the youngest pair ever to be awarded the accolade of best regional restaurant in the state. The Cellar Restaurant at Hunter Valley Gardens serves generous cuisine from local produce around an open fire in winter or alfresco under wisteria vines in summer.

The Hunter Valley offers so much for the visitor that many tourists don’t even get around to wine tasting. Don’t make the same mistake – they have no idea just what they’re missing.

How to get there:

By plane from London to Sydney: either direct (about 22 hours) or stopover in Asia or the UAE. The Hunter Valley is about a two-hour drive from Sydney.

Alternatively, fly to Newcastle; the vineyards are 50 minutes’ drive away

Written by Tyson Stelzer

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A visit to one of Australia’s most historic wine regions will reward both wine lovers and fun lovers alike, says Tyson Stelzer. Read his Hunter Valley travel guide here.

Hunter Valley: Six of the best wineries to visit

☆ Tyrrell’s Wines

Home to Vat 1, the Hunter’s most long lived and consistent multi-vineyard Semillon, and Vat 47, Australia’s first Chardonnay, Tyrrell’s offers an all-encompassing tasting, with wines to suit all palates and budgets. Don’t miss the historic winery tour at 1.30pm daily.

☆ Brokenwood Wines

Brokenwood’s Graveyard Vineyard gives the Hunter’s most distinctive, age worthy Shiraz. View the vines from the 11th fairway of the Cypress Lakes Resort golf course and taste the wines during a cellar door visit, Sunday barrel tasting or vineyard and winery tour.

☆ Small Winemakers Centre

Don’t miss the wines of some of the Hunter’s most influential and talented winemakers: Andrew Thomas, Keith Tulloch and Andrew Margan, three of the six here. Then try other gold- and trophy winners in the Icon Lounge.

☆ First Creek Wines

Under head winemaker Liz Jackson, First Creek makes some of the most finely crafted, value-for-money wines in the Hunter. Free winery tours leave at10.30am daily, buy from the cellar door or enjoy the wines on the veranda.

☆ Lake’s Folly

There’s no Semillon or Shiraz at this tiny, historic estate, just the Hunter’s best Cabernet and Chardonnay. They never last long after their March release, and tastings are over when they run out, so time your visit carefully.

☆ McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Estate

Climb the hill behind the Mount Pleasant cellar door and see a 120-year-oldShiraz vine – the sacred turf of winemaking legend Maurice O’Shea. Enjoy lunch at Elizabeth’s restaurant and don’t miss Lovedale, the world’s finest single-vineyard dry Semillon.

Next page Previous page

A visit to one of Australia’s most historic wine regions will reward both wine lovers and fun lovers alike, says Tyson Stelzer. Read his Hunter Valley travel guide here.

Sydney: Where to stay, shop, eat and relax

Hotels

The Grace

This large art-deco hotel is centrally located and it now features 10 super-special rooms for a customised stay. Spoil yourself!

gracehotel.com.au

Sebel Surry Hills

Place yourself at the heart of the action in this modern hotel with pool, close to some of Sydney’s best places to drink, eat and shop.

sebelsurryhills.com.au

Bars and restaurants

Bar H

Sydney’s bar scene is vibrant, with bar crawls comprising wine or cocktails to share with small dishes before moving on. H is for Hamish, who picks the wines and cooks the food in this trendy hotspot.

barhsurryhills.com

Bentley Restaurant & Bar

This informal-chic Surry Hills hangout sees Nick Hildebrandt at the helm of impressive wine and bar lists that complement the chef Brent Savage’s innovative food.

thebentley.com.au

Billy Kwong

Chef and cookbook writer Kylie Kwong has reset the benchmark for Cantonese cuisine by adding farm-fresh organic sparkle to hers ,in this tiny, ever-popular Surry Hills restaurant. kyliekwong.org

Marque

Mark Best’s intimate Surry Hills restaurant offers serious, creative food using ingredients with unmasked purity. An imaginative wine list completes the picture.

marquerestaurant.com.au

Porteno

Pull out your retro attire and hurry to Surry Hills for Argentinian grilled meats, groovy sounds and a Spanish-focused wine list. A fun place – if you can get in. Kids love it too.

porteno.com.au

Quay

Top restaurant, top view, centre stage, between the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Be wowed by chef Peter Gilmore’s culinary flair and comprehensive wine list. An unforgettable experience.

quay.com.au

Rockpool

Neil Perry is an Australian gastronomic icon with three Sydney restaurants: Rockpool, for well-heeled modern food; Spice Temple, for jazzy Chinese; and Rockpool Bar and Grill for roasts and toasts in the spectacular lobby of a deco bank.

rockpool.com

Shops

Love, Tilly Devine

Hidden in a side street, this tiny dive is named for a brothel madam. It has Sydney’s most terroir-driven wine list, plus artisan ingredients and a laid-back atmosphere.

lovetillydevine.com

Ultimo Wine Centre

Equidistant from the city centre and Surry Hills, explore Ultimo to purchase top wines from several continents. Time it right for free tastings with knowledgeable staff.

ultimowinecentre.com.au

Activities

Aboriginal plant tour

Explore the colourful Royal Botanic Gardens with an Aboriginal heritage guide demonstrating native plants and their uses.

rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au

Fish cookery class

Roberta Muir’s Sydney Seafood School runs fish cookery classes inside the vast Sydney Fish Market, from a high-tech kitchen overlooking the auction market.

sydneyfishmarket.com.au

Coastal walk

Walk the coastline from Bondi, the quintessential surf beach, past Tamarama to Bronte, ending at the Waverley Cemetery perched on an ocean cliff. It’s an energising way to experience Sydney’s beach culture.

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This year's winner of the Decanter World Wine Awards International Trophy for the Best in Show White Single-Varietal Under £15 went to McGuigan, Bin 9000 Semillon, Hunter Valley 2007, Australia.

White Single-Varietal under £15 McGuigan, Bin 9000 Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia 2007 (11%)

Zesty, lemon-curd style of Semillon with classic toasty, honeyed characters. Rich, spicy pear and apricot nose with hints of beeswax, kiwi, exotic fruit and grassy notes. Not available in the UK

Tasted against • Marks & Spencer, Secano Estate Sauvignon Gris, Leyda Valley, San Antonio, Chile 2011 • Argyros, Assyrtiko, Santorini, Aegean Islands, Greece 2012 • Royal Tokaji, Furmint, Tokaj-Hegyalja, Hungary 2011 • Château Maravenne, Grande Réserve, Côtes de Provence, France 2012

Facing strong competition from Old World regions renowned for their native varieties, McGuigan has shown with this International Trophy win just why Hunter Valley Semillon is regarded as a New World classic. For the past three years, the Old World has clinched this title, so it’s particularly exciting to see Australia reaffirming its talent for producing terroir-specific, single-varietal wines.

McGuigan Wines was founded in 1992, reflecting the experience of four generations of McGuigan families. With the aim of specialising in handcrafted, outstanding Hunter Valley wines, its Pokolbin winery was built in 1968, and underwent a complete renovation in 2008. The Hunter Valley today is recognised not only as one of Australia’s oldest wineproducing regions, but as one of the major regions for a unique style of Semillon, of which the McGuigan Bin 9000 Semillon is a perfect example.

Bin 9000 Semillon was first launched in 1997. The fruit is sourced from the base of the Brokenback Range where a cooling influence from coastal sea breezes moderates the hot summers. Grapes are sourced from low-yielding old vines grown on their own rootstock.

The senior McGuigan winemaker, Peter Hall, was responsible for the very first vintage, and was recognised by his peers as the Hunter Valley Winemaker of the Year 2013.

At the 2010 DWWA, the 2003 vintage won a Regional Trophy. Back then, general manager Neil McGuigan told Decanter that as proud as he was of the win, he thought the 2007 would outdo it. How right he was.

Anthony Rose

Written by Decanter

The Hunter Valley wine-growing region risks being 'ripped apart' by changes to New South Wales planning regulations, campaigners fear.

Open cut coal mine in the Hunter Valley. Image: © david hancock / Alamy

Vineyards and racehorse breeders in the Hunter have long battled against the threat of coal and methane gas mining, but now the New South Wales government is considering the draft of a new, amended State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP).

If adopted, protesters claim, this new policy would prioritise the potential economic benefits of a new mining project over other considerations, such as the environmental impact on vineyards, stud farms and tourism.

The Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association has outlined its ‘strong opposition’ to the reforms in an official submission to New South Wales Planning, ahead of this week’s deadline for public comments.

Association spokesman Stewart Ewen told ABC that the new law would place the emphasis on ‘ripping the Hunter apart’ and appeared to signal a return to allowing unprecedented mining initiatives in the area.

Meanwhile, pressure group Hunter Valley Protection Alliance argued that the draft SEPP effectively meant that the bigger the mine, the more likely it was to be approved.

‘If the government goes back on its promises, there will be no protection for the wine industry or the extensive wine tourism industry, and the many jobs which flow from them,’ it said.

However, the New South Wales government is also considering another new planning assessment which could help protect vineyards from mining developments.

The Lower Hunter Strategic Assessment aims to offer environmental protection to rural areas from the impact of urban development, state planning officials say.

Written by Richard Woodard

An Australian energy company's plans to mine gas on two wine estates in the Hunter Valley would be a 'desecration', local activists say.

Image: Isango

AGL Energy has purchased Poole’s Rock vineyard and the adjacent property Yellow Rock Estate as part of its Hunter gas project.

The company claims the agricultural activities currently carried out on these properties, including viticulture, cattle grazing and cropping, will be continued.

‘It is our belief that over time we will demonstrate to the community that our industry is low impact, it is safe, it is clean and that it can coexist alongside farming, wine-making and other agricultural industries,’ AGL Group general manager upstream gas, Mike Moraza, said.

However, local opponents are calling on the government to step in to protect the region.

Graeme Gibson of the Hunter Valley Protection Alliance told Decanter.com.’The coal seam methane industry in the world-acclaimed Hunter Valley vineyards must be stopped.

‘The South Australian government is protecting the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale from this insidious industry. The Western Australian government is protecting the Margaret River similarly. The New South Wales government, prior to the March election this year, committed to protect the Hunter wine industry, but is yet to take any steps along the lines of the other states,’ he added.

The founder of Poole’s Rock, the late David Clarke, was an active anti-coal seam methane gas campaigner.

The sale, says Gibson, ‘desecrates’ his memory and ‘would have him turning in his grave’.

But Moraza defended AGL’s actions. ‘I acknowledge that the late David Clarke, whose family has sold us the Poole’s Rock property, expressed some concerns about the CSG industry in the Hunter.

‘We spoke to David directly about his concerns late last year so we do understand his point of view.’

Written by Rebecca Gibb in Auckland

Hunter Valley winemaker Bruce Tyrrell has spoken out about the grape oversupply crisis in Australia.

An glut of unwanted grapes from the 2009 harvest had forced many growers to sell their vineyard sites, which were bought up by mining companies.

Speaking at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero, Spain, Tyrrell told decanter.com that despite a surge in the number of vineyards being sold, he expected the best sites to survive.

‘A lot of vineyards are being demolished and the coal miners are buying them up, but no great vineyards will be lost,’ he said.

‘On the one hand we’ve got the government pushing a sustainability initiative, and on the other we’ve got vineyards being turned into mining sites.’

‘Newcastle in New South Wales is the world’s largest coal export port.’

In February, a leading academic claimed that Australia needed to reduce its vineyard area by as much as 30% if it wanted to achieve supply-demand balance.

Tyrrell, who hand picks and uses a traditional grape press for his three single vineyard whites, is keen to protect the historic sites.

‘I’m looking into making the single vineyards from the oldest blocks National Heritage sites so no one can touch them.’

Referring to the 2010 vintage in Australia – dominated by rain and cool weather, a stark contrast to the heat and fire of last year – Tyrrell was bullish.

‘We’ve had great rains this year’, he said. ‘Our place looks like the Garden of Eden – I can’t buy enough cattle to eat the grass.’

Bordeaux 2009: All the coverage

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Written by Lucy Shaw in Ribera del Duero

Hunter Valley winery Brokenwood is renowned for its Graveyard Shiraz. But the white wines it has introduced more recently are also winning acclaim. By TIM GRANGE.

In 1882, the town planners responsible for designing the new settlement of Pokolbin in Australia’s Hunter Valley sketched out the entire town in advance, only to find that their optimism was not shared by many prospective inhabitants. Today, though a large number of wineries now quote a Pokolbin address, settlement remains sparse. When James Halliday and a couple of other solicitors from Sydney came to establish the Brokenwood winery in 1970, they named their vineyards (and the resultant wines) according to the sites they occupied on the original town map. Hence a winery whose fame has been built on its Graveyard and Cricket Pitch.

Since the first vintage in 1973, Brokenwood has built a reputation as one of the Hunter Valley’s most formidable wineries. Not the best-known Hunter name outside Australia (Rosemount, Lindemans and Rothbury all established more of an early profile in the UK), Brokenwood is nevertheless justly renowned for its Graveyard Shiraz. But though its success is built on Hunter fruit, Brokenwood today vinifies and blends from a wide range of quality sites, employing a formula well known and practised by canny businesses all over the commercial world: build the name, then diversify.

Chardonnay’s funeral

It is this pragmatic approach that has led the team to commit to replanting the Graveyard with Shiraz, at the expense of Chardonnay. This will inevitably lead to the demise of the single-vineyard Graveyard Chardonnay, and is bound to upset fans. But the company prefers to make the best wine possible. And in the Graveyard, that means Shiraz.

Now a syndicate of 23 partners, Brokenwood produces 17 different wines from McLaren Vale, Beechworth King Valley, Padthaway and Cowra/Canowindra in addition to the Hunter. That translates into around 40,000 cases per year of Shiraz, Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon, Chardonnay, Merlot-Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot, botrytis Riesling and Verdelho.

https://www.decanter.com/wine/grape-varieties/semillon-grape-varieties/

When in 1982 the partners decided to diversify into white wine production, they appointed Iain Riggs (formerly of Bleasedale and Hazelmere in McLaren Vale) as winemaker and managing director. Just a year later Brokenwood’s output was 70% white. Fast forward to 2003 and Riggs is still running the show (now as part-owner) but has since been joined in his winemaking duties, four years ago, by Peter-James Charteris, a New Zealander responsible for creating Yattarna for Southcorp. Charteris is now largely responsible for the winemaking at Brokenwood, especially for the whites – witness the new Forest Edge Chardonnay, entirely his creation and the subject of ‘a huge amount of debate’, says Riggs. ‘It’s a little bit different from the norm.’

Putting the finished wines together is shared between both of them: Charteris admits he’d ‘rather have two minds on a blend than one’. Painting the bigger picture about the direction Brokenwood takes is also a joint effort, though here Riggs takes an important monitoring role, ensuring consistent quality and style through regional blending where appropriate.

It is Riggs’ intention to build on the company’s success at the premium end of the market through the production of (predominantly red) single-vineyard wines. Working with the right growers is crucial if the wines are to compete at the top level. ‘We visit our growers several times a year,’ says Riggs. ‘They’re an open and friendly bunch. After the Rayner Vineyard Shiraz won a major wine award in London we did a vineyard tour and growers were only too anxious to show us what they’d been doing. They’re pretty competitive. One grower virtually retrained his whole vineyard, then lost the entire crop after a poor fruit set.’

Riggs is a regular wine show judge. He is ‘a huge fan of the wine show system. It’s enabled the industry to learn a lot in a short space of time,’ he says. ‘As a result, what we’ve achieved in a technical sense is amazing.’ But has it short-changed wine lovers by encouraging homogeneity? Riggs is scornful: ‘I don’t accept that at all. The wine show system is for winemakers, and is nothing to do with consumers. It demonstrates what is acceptable in terms of fruit purity and technical competence.’

Charteris also regularly judges his way through hundreds of wines at a sitting. ‘You get used to it,’ he says. ‘It’s a question of concentration.’ Unlike Riggs, he accepts that the show system in the past has led to a tendency in the industry to produce copycat wines. But while ‘that might have been the case a few years ago, I think we’ve moved away from that now,’ he adds. But is it skewed against idiosyncratic winemaking? ‘It’ll root out idiosyncratic wines that are technically faulty – you can always learn something from that.’

Making plans

So what lies ahead? ‘The biggest challenge for the Australian wine industry,’ says Riggs, ‘is the next 10–15 years – once we’ve got the technical side down pat. You have to continue the momentum. Brokenwood must never stop going forward.’

Riggs discusses the possibility of a restructure for Brokenwood. ‘The partners have regular soul-searching about what to do, because the partnership is getting older, but no one has yet come up with any big dollars.’ In the short term, Riggs is concentrating on trying to get into new export markets and on introducing new wines. ‘The domestic market is tough – mind you, so’s export – but we’re working on a few new wines. Take our vineyards over at Beechworth [where Brokenwood has a fruit contract on 36 hectares]. We’re looking at Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, Cabernet-Merlot and new Pinot clones – the Pinot potential there is breathtaking. And we’re working on another McLaren Vale single vineyard Shiraz that’s awesome, but different to the Rayner.

‘Cricket Pitch has a huge following, and rightly so: it’s great quality for the price. We’ve always taken pains to use fruit from the best areas and we’ll continue to do so.’

Brokenwood has a strong hand to play. Great vineyards, small growers queuing up to become part of the Brokenwood fold, and some excellent quality wines at modest price levels. A far cry from the few cases of Cabernet-Shiraz 1973 made by three Sydney-based solicitors. Perhaps there’s something to be said for slow and steady progress after all.

Written by Tim Grange

Forget the big-name wines of the Barossa or Hunter Valley – JAMES LAWTHER MW believes that Australia's best Shiraz comes from the smaller estates in Victoria.

Shiraz isn’t just a wine, it’s a statement that reads ‘big, bold and Australian’. So far the ripe, full-on flavours of the Barossa, Eden and Clare Valleys, and McLaren Vale in South Australia have been the pundits’ and people’s choice, but another state has the measure in terms of quality and the ability to offer a more refined style. Apologies to New South Wales and the Hunter Valley but Victoria is the place in mind.

It’s difficult to say precisely when the first cuttings of Syrah or Shiraz arrived in Victoria, but there are several pieces of factual information that provide a reliable indicator. On the show circuit, wines made from ‘Hermitage’ (Shiraz), emanating from Bendigo, were praised by European judges at the 1873 Vienna Exhibition. While at Best’s Great Western in the Grampians there is a vineyard known as the Nursery Block that was planted in the latter part of the 1860s with 40 different grape varieties including Shiraz. Likewise, at Château Tahbilk in the Goulburn Valley, the limited edition 1860 Vines Shiraz is made from plantings of that epoch.

Apart from these genuinely old vines and a few centenarian parcels in the northeast, Victoria’s modern viticultural scene dates from the 1960s, phylloxera having put paid to much of the state’s wine industry in the 1880s. At that time vineyard development owed more to the discovery of gold than any intense research programme, but today it’s the range of climate that holds the key. As far as Shiraz is concerned, the very hot but irrigated Murray Darling and Swan Hill regions in the northwest corner of the state provide good commercial fodder. As a generalisation, the hot Goulburn Valley and northeast Victoria offer the same big, sweet, powerful style found in the Barossa Valley, while in the cooler areas of the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula the wines are leaner and fresher, but the sites are better adapted to other varieties.

https://www.decanter.com/wine/wine-regions/barossa_valley/

The real interest, finally, lies to the west and centre in the Grampians, Pyrenees and Heathcote, formerly a sub-region of Bendigo. In terms of heat degree days (HDD) and rainfall these are warm, relatively dry regions (500–600mm annually), ideal for ripening Shiraz. But what is of most significance is the difference in day and nighttime temperatures where there can be a swing of as much as 20°C during the growing season.

The night coolness allows for a better retention of acidity (low pH) leading to improved balance and structure in the wines and a greater complexity of flavour. This means there is little or no need for acidification or the addition of tannin, and the potential for wines of character and ageability that also go well with food.

Making the best

There are, of course, other factors linked to the top wines in these regions and most of these are viticultural. Yields are kept low (35 hectolitres per hectare), attention is given to good canopy management, and variations in site and clone provide other subtle differences.

Back at Best’s in the Grampians, the limited release Thomson Family Shiraz is produced from a block of 100-year-old Shiraz from a clone introduced into Great Western by Swiss colonials in the 1860s. Best’s Bin 0 is also made from cuttings of the Swiss clone from vineyards planted in 1966 and 1976.

The same clone is used at another of the Grampians’ top Shiraz estates, Mount Langi Ghiran, where it constitutes the main Shiraz block, planted in 1969. The soils here are granite sands over red clay loams and the climate is cooler than at Best’s Great Western vineyard due to the cooling effect of gully winds produced by the surrounding forested mountains. A portion of the vineyard is even protected from the icy southwesterly blasts by a giant wind net. Otherwise the benefits of this cooler meso-climate are an extended ripening season, which again helps with acid retention and flavour, allowing more pepper and spice character into the wine.

Trevor Mast is the guiding light behind Mount Langi Ghiran and the blue label Langi Shiraz. ‘Our main focus is the vineyard,’ he explains. ‘An open canopy is essential for the development of fruit flavours and tannins, and to help reduce the occurrence of fungal disease.’ As for the winemaking, the grapes are given a cold soak then fermented in open-top fermentors with regular punching down of the cap. There is no post-fermentation maceration – the wine is run off warm into a mix of French and American oak barrels (35% new), where it spends a year maturing.

In 2001 the Mount Langi facilities were also used to process grapes from Dalwhinnie, the reference estate in the Pyrenees region, to the northeast of the Grampians. Previously the wines had been made at Mitchelton in the Goulbourn Valley.

Dalwhinnie was established by architect Ewan Jones in the 1970s and is now owned and managed by his son David. The particularity of Dalwhinnie is that the vineyards are planted along the contours of the hills at an altitude of 360–460 metres, giving cool evenings and a long dormant period in winter, but are protected by the surrounding ranges which rise to 600 metres, creating a heat trap. The grapes are harvested two to three weeks earlier than in the Grampians and the fruit character is a little more accentuated. The soils are quartz clay, which David Jones believes imparts a dryness to the wines. Dalwhinnie Victoria Shiraz is the classic cuvée from this estate with the limited edition Eagle Series produced only in exceptional years and made at the domaine.

Further east in Heathcote the climate is warmer than in the Pyrenees and Grampians (but cooler than Bendigo) and the nights are cool, allowing for a fuller style of wine but again with balancing acidity. The other important factor is the swathe of deep, red Cambrian soil that is propitious to producing intensely coloured, firmly structured red wines.

It was this that struck food scientist Ron Laughton and his wife Elva when they purchased a 3ha (hectare) parcel of Shiraz and Cabernet Franc in 1979 and another parcel of 8ha of Shiraz in 1982. On launching the Jasper Hill label, the wines from each plot were named after their daughters, so Emily’s Paddock and Georgia’s Paddock.

The power, density and concentration of these wines may be linked to the terroir but it also has much to do with viticultural and winemaking practices. The vineyards are dry farmed in a biodynamic manner and yields cut to a bare 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The grapes are fermented in stainless steel and, contrary to Australian practice, given an extended six weeks’ maceration to soften the tannins. The press wine is then added to the free-run and the wines aged in a mix of French and American oak casks (25% new oak) for 15 months with limited racking.

A taste of history

In another vein and not to be omitted from a line-up of Victoria’s best Shiraz are the wines from Sunbury, and more precisely those of Craiglee. Wines were made at this estate back in the late 19th century when it was owned by the Hon James S Johnston, but the vines were pulled out in the 1940s and the present vineyard dates from 1976. Sunbury is a cooler region just north of Melbourne, with a maritime rather than continental influence. ‘We’re on the limit for ripening Shiraz,’ says Craiglee’s owner and winemaker Pat Carmody, who takes the wines of the Northern Rhône as his point of reference. The region is drier than the Yarra Valley with an annual rainfall of 600mm, and the sandy-stony river-flat soils are low in fertility. The wines are leaner and more restrained with a delicacy and freshness on the palate and an ageing potential of at least 10 to 15 years.

Victoria has a wonderful range of sites for producing outstanding Shiraz and this could just be the beginning. Brown Brothers has already succeeded with vineyards at altitude in the King Valley in the northeast, while at Castagna Vineyards at Beechworth, in the foothills of the Australian Alps, Julian Castagna is cultivating six clones of Shiraz at 500m altitude and producing exciting fruit from young four-year-old vines. What’s even more encouraging is that in Australia’s highly structured, corporate industry it’s individual enterprise that is placing Victorian Shiraz on the map.

https://www.decanter.com/sponsored/shiraz-story-australian-legend-427784/

James Lawther MW is a contributing editor to Decanter.

It’s a bugger of a place to make wine,’ says Hunter pioneer Max Lake with typical Aussie candour, smashing the common belief that as long as the sun shines, making wine is child’s play.

He’s right. With only one good vintage in three, this breathtakingly beautiful piece of New South Wales is a real challenge to even the most experienced winemaker. But there’s good news too. The prize for those who succeed is an exceptional bottle of wine. ‘At its best, there’s nothing like a Hunter wine anywhere else in the world,’ says Hunter legend Len Evans.

To complicate matters further, recent climatic changes have made life more difficult. ‘Over the past three years the degree days are way down and the rainfall has been in the spring and not the autumn,’ confirms Glenguin’s winemaker Robin Tedder MW.

So, you may ask, if the place is so difficult why are so many persevering? The answer’s simple. Not only do the Aussies love a good challenge, they also know that their ripe, crisp Shiraz, dense, juicy Cabernets, exotic Semillons and blockbuster Chardonnays, are once again setting the world alight.

‘Us Aussies don’t look for problems, we just get on with the job,’ smiles Lake.

Australian Vintage Guide

The Hunter Valley

The Hunter is divided into the Lower and Upper Valleys and is conveniently located just three hours drive from Sydney, and the vineyards are the sixth most popular tourist attraction in Australia. Never slow to seize a business opportunity, the Hunter wineries are building custom-made visitor centres, complete with exhibitions and tasting galleries.

The big names of Rosemount, Tyrell’s, McWilliams and Rothbury still dominate, but there’s a new breed of winemaker on the scene – the Pitt Street Farmers. Pitt Street is Sydney’s downtown financial district and, you’ve guessed it, the ‘farmers’ are successful lawyers, accountants and doctors who are trying their hand at winemaking. ‘They see only the dollar signs and not the difficulties of the Hunter,’ comments Meerea Park’s winemaker, Rhys Ether. At first glance it all looks easy, but the myriad microclimates and the ever changing ‘sand to volcanic’ soils have fooled many prospectors who come looking for Hunter gold. ‘It’s all about site selection,’ says Rothbury’s winemaker, Alan Harris. ‘You’ve got to know where to plant. Some just come and plant anywhere and ironically discover their mistakes via their bank account.’

The ‘old boys’ know the Hunter’s secrets, of course. ‘Our founder, Samuel McWilliam, established our vineyards in 1877, and one of our best sites was planted in the 1880s,’ notes McWilliams winemaker Phil Ryan. ‘The original, 120-year old vines are still giving fantastic powerful and tannic wines.’

It is widely accepted that Shiraz, Semillon and the Hunter is a marriage made in heaven, but Max Lake at his famous Lake’s Folly vineyard disagrees. ‘It’s Cabernet Sauvignon for me. I planted it in 1963 and have no regrets,’ he exclaims. Big Rhys Ether argues against this: ‘Why plant Cabernet in the Hunter when it’s made for Shiraz?’ And Glenguin’s Tedder agrees: ‘Cabernet loses its character here as the Hunter imposes her own.’ Merlot is coming up fast and is a particular favourite of Margan’s winemaker Andrew Margan. ‘This classic has a real future in the Hunter because of its inherent softness,’ he says.

Arguments also surface when it comes to the whites. Although it is well established that Semillon performs best, Chardonnay is widely planted to give big wines that respond well to oak maturation. Margan again rings the changes by showing confidence in the little seen Verdelho. ‘Its lifted, perfumed tropical fruits and rich palate are perfect with our spicy foods,’ he explains. Harris agrees: ‘Verdelho is always the empty bottle at the end of a tasting.’

Vineyards

Irrigation is allowed in the Hunter and many vineyards have built their own dams but, as always, the Hunter has her own ideas. ‘When it comes to yields the Lower Hunter is mean,’ confirms Andrew Margan. ‘All my vines are on red volcanic soil. I pick my reds at 0.4 tonnes per hectare (ha), my whites at 0.8 tonnes/ha. That’s what the vines yield, no more, no less.’ Alan Harris looks across the guyot-trained vineyards to Rothbury’s half-full dam. ‘The joke is that when the dam’s full you don’t need the water and when it’s empty you do,’ he laughs. In the Upper Hunter, the Hunter river gives the vines more vigour and higher yields are possible. Up to 2–2.5 tonnes/ha confirms Harris.

The word ‘terroir’ was not in the Hunter vocabulary a few years ago, but now it is the key to a cunning marketing strategy used by many winemakers to pull rank over their neighbours. Listening to one Lower Hunter vineyard owner pronouncing proudly: ‘the aspect, soil and microclimate of my best block makes it far superior to my neighbours,’ I thought for a second I was in Bordeaux. Many Hunter labels now give the vineyard as well as the grape. ‘Our Brockenwood plot gives us consistent fruit,’ boasts Harris. And Tedder wants to classify the River Terrace and River Oaks vineyards: ‘to establish an identity for these exceptional wines’.

Hunter wine

In recent years, a new style of wine has emerged. These ‘new’ wines still have the typical Hunter richness and balancing crisp acidity but the fruit is less ‘in yer face’ and this, linked to a greater control of oak, is producing wines with a definite European edge. French oak is replacing the more obvious American barrels and, typically, Tyrell’s winemaker Bruce Tyrell continues to experiment. ‘To provide a better balance we are reducing the maturation time, but are also using larger 500 litre barrels to reduce the oak impact,’ he explains.

Blockbuster ‘show’ wines still play an important part in the Hunter albeit, it seems, on a smaller scale. The traditional Hunter wines continue to produce tasting notes such as ‘weighty fruit, softer tannins and crisp acidity,’ but it’s the acidity that always surprises your taste buds. Stretching a point, it could be said that a fourth style is now emerging: ‘designer’ wines.

Andrew Margan is a leading exponent, explaining that potential customers ‘know exactly what they want, and that’s immediate appeasement’. To meet this increasing demand, he is making easy drinking, approachable wines – the Merlot is typical, with its soft, plummy sweet fruit balanced with a touch of oak. This ‘touch’ is six weeks in 225 litre American oak barrels.

Although the Hunter offers styles to satisfy every taste, many consumers still group the wines under one ‘drink me quick’ hat. With UK statistics showing that over 90% of Australian wine is drunk within 24 hours of purchase, it doesn’t need a genius to see that to be taken a little more seriously, Oz wine needs a vintage portfolio and a marketing push to tell consumers to hold on.

Thankfully, some winemakers are taking steps to prevent this premature consumption. Tyrell’s, for example, has a well-established ‘future’s scheme’. And at Meerea Park, owner Rhys Ether keeps half and releases half of his premium Alexandra Munro reds ‘to ensure that the discerning consumer drinks the wine at its peak’. It’s good to see that aged Semillon, surely one of the world’s finest wines, and long the sole bottle on the vintage Hunter shelf, will have company in the future.

The Hunter’s back and going from strength to strength. Why? Strewth man, there’s a new pride in the Valley.

Australian Riesling: Five to try

keep

A great vintage and the best for Hunter Valley wines since 1991; yields were low, following drought

5/5

Weather Conditions

Unquestionably a great vintage, the reputation of 1998 seems to be enhanced with the release of each major wine. It’s early days and while standout Australian reds like Grange and Hill of Grace are still some time away from release, there’s every indication that 1998 could well be rated as the best Australian red wine vintage of modern times, possibly even since 1962. It appears to have married the sheer concentration of another top warm-to-hot year in 1990 with the fineness and purity of fruit flavour of 1994. Essentially a vintage that constantly bordered on drought but just managed to receive sufficient rainfall to enable the vines to bring their fruit safely to near-perfect ripening, it was a season which began and finished early and whose wines show great potential for bottle development.

Best Appellations

It rarely happens this way but as far as 1998 is concerned, virtually all Australian wine regions had the opportunity to produce their best wine. Particular highlights are Coonawarra reds, especially merlot, while shiraz from the traditional South Australian regions of the Barossa Valley, Clare and McLaren Vale are exceptional. Crammed with typical richness and opulent intensity of fruit, the best manage a restraint and elegance which is totally beguiling. Never have Australian winemakers had a better combination of ripe fruit and tannin to work on. While some rain made life marginally more difficult for younger Margaret River vineyards, even the Hunter Valley had an unusually rain-free vintage that helped fashion some classic wines.

Best Producers

While many of the best 1998 reds are yet to be released, the selection to date has been astonishing. From Coonawarra have come great cabernet-based reds from Petaluma, Parker, Katnook Estate, Majella, some of the best Australian merlots yet seen from Petaluma and Pepper Tree, plus silky-smooth shirazes from Zema Estate, Majella and Bowen Estate. The Barossa and McLaren Vale have turned out dark, savoury shirazes from Grant Burge (a great Meshach) and Coriole (a spectacular Lloyd Reserve), while the Tim Adams Aberfeldy Shiraz takes Clare Valley shiraz to a new level. Brokenwoods Graveyard does something similar for the Hunter. From the cooler south eastern regions have come outstanding pinot noirs from Bass Phillip, Lenswood Vineyards, TarraWarra, Domaine A and Massoni, while some of the best-kept secrets in cooler-climate shiraz are the wines from Dalwhinnie (Pyrenees), Clonakilla (Canberra), Bests (Great Western) and Mount Ida (Heathcote). And perhaps the best of them all? The outrageously elegant and silky Cullen Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot from Margaret River.