Water Wheel Shiraz – don’t let its price fool you

It used to be one of the best-kept secrets, but then it started getting inches in the press. And while it didn’t often collect the gong for being the best shiraz at a given event, it usually won for the best value. Water Wheel Shiraz is and has been one of the very best buys in Australian red wine under $20 and I reckon it’s only going to get better and better.

In my tastings it frequently embarrasses wines at least double the $17 retail price of the currently available 1998 vintage, yet its makers have no intentions to do what virtually every other maker of quality Australian red wine has done in recent years by making it less affordable. So, despite imminent increases in production, it will continue to sell out in weeks, if not days. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The present Water Wheel operation is the brainchild of Peter Cumming whose family have long been established as successful growers of tomatoes and cherries around Bridgewater-on-Loddon to the north-west of Bendigo in central Victoria. Peter studied winemaking at Roseworthy at the same time as did I, and after a few excellent years as winemaker for Hickinbotham at the old Anakie vineyard near Geelong, threw himself boots and all into the Water Wheel business. I remember that his driving ambition as a relatively inexperienced winemaker was to capture as much flavour on the palate of his wines as he possibly could, precisely the edge that Water Wheel still retains over so many of its competitors.

The first Water Wheel plantings are no longer used by the present wine business. There were three acres mainly planted in 1972 by the Water Wheel flour mill to cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, plus a smattering of some fairly exotic grapes including several Portuguese port varieties. As more land near the mill became available in 1975 another ten acres of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz were planted, plus another ten of chardonnay and riesling in 1977. The present winery was constructed prior to the 1980 vintage.

Apart from the original three acres of vines which they leased for several years, this is what the Cumming family purchased in 1989, linking the vineyards with the new vineyard established nearby at Gem Bend by Peter Cumming in the mid 1980s. Since 1990 the family has invested heavily in new plantings at three sites: around the winery, at Gem Bend and at a new property, Memsie’s, which was bought specifically for tomatoes until Peter Cumming struck limestone while testing its soil types. Over the last two years Cumming has already planted another 46 acres of shiraz on this site and is brimful of confidence that it will provide his best shiraz fruit in future.

‘I don’t know how it works, but for some reason the best wines in Australia and France come from soils with limestone. There’s just no doubt about it’, he says.

Water Wheel’s present vineyard of around 220 acres today comprises 106 acres of shiraz 46 non-bearing and 42 of cabernet sauvignon, the varieties responsible for its most distinctive wines. Water Wheel has reduced its cropping from 4-5 tonnes to 3-4 tonnes per acre, resulting in a tangible improvement in quality.

With winemaker Bill Trevaskis, Peter Cumming ferments his shiraz in the low 20s, pumping over the cap in the mornings, followed by two separate manual plunges. Trevaskis finds that pumping over helps to extract forward tannins, while plunging develops tannins at the back of the palate. They press only when dry, racking the wine and waiting for a malolactic in tanks before being transferred to oak, trying to avoid the ‘seasoned’ oak characters they find in many larger company wines. The shiraz then spends just under a year in American oak, significantly with only a relatively small proportion of new barrels. The wine just doesn’t need it.

Although it was his comparatively unusual and blocky 1997 shiraz which Peter Cumming says put Water Wheel on the map by collecting a gold medal at the Melbourne Show, he considers his 1996 and 1998 wines to represent the style he’s looking to make. ‘While it lacks the concentration of subsequent vintages, the 1996 shiraz is the best we’d made in a long time. The 1997 was driven by the low yields of the hot vintage, while the 1998 reflects our recent compromises in yield’, he says.

‘The 1997 is an aberration which I wouldn’t want to repeat. I find its consistency too thick and treacly, not refreshing. It did get that gold and it has been our most popular and sought after wine and I’m not ashamed by that, but how can you tell people it’s not what you’re trying to make? I want to be known as a maker of wines to drink.’ Please login to post comment