Ned Goodwin MW: In pursuit of regional identity in Australian Chardonnay

Australian Chardonnay has come of age. Since the bumptious iterations swaddled in oak of the 1990s, via the anorexic prototypes of the mid-2000s, the idiom has moved away from liminal extremes, to one that nestles comfortably between tension and ebullient fruit, with increasingly clear regional demarcations.

While effete comparisons with Burgundy’s best were often buoyed by the parochial drumbeat of the Australian press, there has long been something about Australian Chardonnay that is distinctly, well, Australian.

Scroll down to see 12 expressive Australian Chardonnays 

Defining character

For a time it was the compulsive pursuit of lower alcohol levels, a knee-jerk reaction to external criticism – be it excessive fruit or alcohol – by an isolated wine culture held ransom to export success.

While racy, the results were skeletal wines nudging 12% alcohol with brittle edges, often exacerbated by zero to minimal malolactic fermentation in order to retain acidity.

Next, was excessive reduction. Reduction became a means for many producers to impart a sense of tension to their wines, giving an impression of greater freshness to the drinker.

This was achieved with oxygen-starving techniques, including attenuated natural ferments, extended lees handling and strategic injections of sulphur dioxide.

Some producers believed, often misguidedly, that resultant sulphidic notes in the wines, often called ‘flinty’ or ‘match-strike’, paid homage to the mineral torque of Chablis.

The infatuation with these stylised, winemaker-driven expressions, lingered for a decade or so. So different to anything prior, this ‘New Australia’ felt exciting.

But the leanness of the wines eventually became monochromatic, obfuscating regionality rather than celebrating it.

Reinventing Chardonnay

Despite it all, Australia’s isolation breeds a courageous, chameleonic capacity for reinvention. While reduction remains a balancing beam across which fruit and acidity are draped, it is handled more judiciously today. Oak handling is superior and lees work, more exacting.

Moreover, organic and biodynamic bonafides are on the rise, complementing better site selection, more astute viticulture and less interventionist winery practices.

Ripeness and extract are plied to confer textural complexity, rather than supine fruit flavours, or the vapid mantra ‘varietal typicity’, an oxymoron when it comes to a grape as inherently neutral as Chardonnay!

Indeed, well-hewn phenolics in Chardonnay are embraced in Australia, suggesting that the paint-by-numbers rubric of leaner styles has been superseded by more laissez-faire approaches to celebrating what a vineyard delivers.

A meld of fruit intensity and textural detail is the postcard that conveys regionality, according to winemaker Patrick Sullivan.

He posits: ‘Texture comes first and foremost from the vineyard and the concentration of fruit from long hang time, mineral rich soils and full malolactic.’ (Rather than stunting it with filtration and losing texture as a result.)

Sullivan also believes that an oxidative approach to firstly crushing and then pressing the grapes goes a long way to elevating texture, over gentler whole-bunch pressing, long the Australian norm.

Expressions of regionality

The best performing regions? Margaret River, Adelaide Hills, Tasmania, Macedon, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Geelong pockets of central and south-western Victoria, Gippsland and sub-alpine Beechworth. Victorian regions clearly dominate.

I conducted a blind tasting to determine regional characteristics. The wines were all from the cool La Nĩna years.

Far from comprehensive, my tasting nevertheless represented a cross-section of Australian Chardonnay, while assuming that premium expressions are likely to showcase regionality over larger volume, entry-level styles made to a flavour profile. Certain regions were better represented than others due to volumes made and samples received.

Margaret River’s voice was loud and clear, with intense stone fruit flavours underpinned by maritime freshness. Or as Vasse Felix winemaker Virginia Willcock asserts: ‘The al dente phenolic infusion of the thicker-skinned Gingin clone, with its incredible high natural acid and flavour richness.’

Beechworth, too, offered ‘powerful precise wines that have an ethereal character with phenolics’, according to Savaterre winemaker, Keppell Smith.

Beechworth’s extreme Continental climate, dominant granitic geology and vineyards nudging 800m, impart a chiaroscuro of ripeness underlain by a stern mineral carapace.

I got a sense, too, of Tasmania’s rapier-like intensity, the citric thrum of the Adelaide Hills and orchard fruits of the Yarra. Yet, despite its diminutive production, it was the dialect of Gippsland that intrigued.

Gippsland’s ancient volcanic soils are aerated by giant earthworms. The picking window is some six weeks later than many other regions, particularly in the far western zone.

This attenuated ripening window is dictated by the arctic stepping stone of Bass Strait and its ferocious winds, cold currents and diurnal extremes.

The best Gippsland wines feel pushed by these margins and dialled up, with a DNA of textural swagger and baritone depth, rather than a soprano pitch to the fruit commonplace elsewhere.

Here, variegated winemaking approaches feel subsumed by the inimitability of place. These wines could not come from anywhere else and it is only a shame that there is not more to go around.

Goodwin’s pick: 12 must-try regional Chardonnays

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