A Modern Evolution of Victorian Wine

Times and fashions have changed in Victorian wine, but for the better? This was a difficult question to avoid when six previous winners of the Wine Press Club of Victoria Trophy recently went on show. This trophy is given annually at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show for the best Victorian red wine of any age.

If the concept sounds insular, the quality of the winning wines themselves confirmed their status as recipients of a worthwhile trophy. I wonder if a corresponding array of Jimmy Watson winners would have been half as good or interesting.

Tracing a path from the earliest to the most modern winners was to take an abbreviated trail through the modern history of Victorian wine. The wines to capture the judges’ attention were clearly those representing styles most in vogue at the time.

The first WPC Trophy was presented in 1980, to a then-fashionable cabernet-shiraz blend of Baileys at Glenrowan. Today the Bin 57 Cabernet Hermitage 1978 is the exemplary north-eastern Victorian red wine, a proudly robust and statuesque claret now drinking at its peak. It has a tawny red-brown colour suggestive of the development confirmed by the pungent earthy and leathery odours on the nose, given life by intense red berry fruits and a suggestion of volatility. Who cares? It was part of the wine. Small doses of VA needn’t detract. Just ask Max Schubert, inventor of Grange.

The 1983 vintage fell amid one of Victoria’s most memorable droughts, if a drought could ever be described that way. Berries were small and tight, tannins abundant and balance in wine elusive. It would take someone of rare talent to make a red which would be still to reach its best eight years down the track. Stephen Hickinbotham did. He won the WPC Trophy in 1984.

The Hickinbotham Anakie Cabernets 1983 is an extraordinary wine if only for the phenomenon that in a drought year it was made with the traditional Hickinbotham philosophy of between 10-15 botrytis infection, naturally induced by the cold misty mornings and clear days of the 1983 Anakie season.

Still three to five years from maturity, it has an essentially red colour with brown tinges. Ripe red berry fruits and hints of capsicum feature in a gamey, earthy nose augmented by cedar-like oak qualities. As expected, the palate is still powerfully structured, with layer after layer of depth and complexity a la Bordeaux. It’s richly flavoured, with hints of olives, capsicum and black berry fruits.

It’s worth remembering that the Hickinbothams were amongst the first in Australia to pioneer the use of extended maceration after fermentation, a technique now common in making the best Victorian red wines, to achieve what Ian describes as the ‘velvet’ tannin structure apparent in Hickinbotham reds.

Enter the mid-‘eighties and the height of fashion was the straight varietal wine. In terms of red wine that generally meant cabernet. The Hickinbotham, incidentally, was made from the full ‘Bordeaux mix’ of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and malbec, another instance of forward-thinking viticulture.

In 1984 Peter McMahon made a classic straight cabernet sauvignon from his Seville Estate vineyard, winner of the WPC Trophy in 1986. This was the ‘sleeper’ of the day, the wine you really wanted in your cellar. In this wine McMahon has captured the very essence of Yarra Valley elegance and restraint. Dressed in a refined, soft and integrated structure are spicy plum-like and black olive notes, cleverly married ripe fruit and slightly charry, cedar oak. It’s a fine red that will take another four to six years to reveal its best.

Next year the trophy remained in the Yarra Valley, courtesy of a delicate dry red blend made by Guill de Pury at Yeringberg from early-picked cabernet sauvignon, merlot and malbec. The pleasure of the Yeringberg 1986 was its charming generosity and complexity of flavour, presented as a perfumed spectrum of herbal and cassis-like fruit, sweet oak, violets and cigarboxes. Soft and supple, the only drawback to the palate was a slight shortness developed through time. To impart more staying power De Pury now harvests his red grapes later, managing to retain the brilliant flavours of their youth. Wine, obviously, is an evolving thing.

In 1988 the WPC Trophy went to another 1986 wine and another straight varietal. This was the Mitchelton Cabernet Sauvignon, which today is looking at least as good as it did in 1988. Here leafy, blackcurrant Victorian cabernet is joined by the eucalypt-menthol of central Victoria and carefully aged in French oak by winemaker Don Lewis. This is a vibrant, youthful wine with intense, sweet fruit and a marvellous balance of tannin and acid. It will certainly live for another eight years or more.

Last year’s trophy went to the second pinot noir to come up trumps, following the previous success of the Coldstream Hills Rising Vineyard 1988. The 1990 WPC Trophy was taken by the Yarra Ridge Pinot Noir 1989, yet another Yarra Valley winner.

It’s of immense significance that pinot noir has done so well lately, for many would say that while pinot makes an interesting light red, it’s not able to stand up and perform as a serious red drinker’s wine against either cabernet-based wines or shiraz, which must surely be due for a win in this category.

No-one could accuse the Yarra Ridge of being half a wine. It boasts deep colour, richness and complexity on the nose and an opulent palate. Sporting definitive pinot characters of gamey, red cherry fruit and dusty, tobaccoey qualities, it shows de luxe oak treatment easily carried by fine tannins and great acid. This wine will easily bring in the next millenium.

Interestingly enough, I was surrounded by the opinion that the two wines of the day were the first and last – the old-fashioned and the new kid off the block – the Baileys and the Yarra Ridge. Old-fashioned cabernet-shiraz and contemporary pinot.

It would be a sad thing, however, if by concentrating too much on the present, we lost the sight of the heritage and wine styles of recent past. Please login to post comment