Big Wine, Small Maker

Greenock Creek is one of those modern wine phenomena that could easily pass most of us by. Although its first wine was made back in 1984, its rise to prominence has been recent, as indeed are most of its plantings. Its flagship wine is the Roennfeldt Road Shiraz, which in just two years has become one of the most sought-after of all the Barossa cult wines put on the map by Robert Parker jnr. Its proprietors, Michael and Annabel Waugh, have a small, but steadily growing market, which is exactly what they need, since present production is tiny, but growing strongly. They’re the kind to shun publicity, so I was very happy to spend some time with them recently.

Prior to meeting the Waughs, I confess that I had only tasted but a single Greenock Creek wine. It was the 1995 Seven Acre Shiraz 18.6, drink 2003-2007, tasted in April 1999. The wine was plush, dense and deeply flavoured, presenting very ripe and concentrated cassis, prune and licorice flavours with velvet-smooth tannins and creamy oak. Very spicy and peppery, it boasted unusual length and power.

Since that time Greenock Creek’s name has gone up in lights. Its 1995 Roennfeldt Road Shiraz recently collected the perfect tonne 100 points from Mr Parker, but even prior to that review the label had acquired unstoppable momentum.

There’s much to like about Greenock Creek. The Waugh’s house, for instance, was originally two separate cottages which Michael Waugh – a celebrated builder and stonemason who built the beautiful stone village that Rockford Wines has become – has joined together. Beneath one of the cottages is a tiny but genuine wine barrel cellar which the Waughs use, plus another tiny and utterly charming one that has become the Greenock Creek cellar door, albeit one that tends to open rather briefly before being closed with that sort of clunk that cellar doors only make when they are completely sold out.

Michael Waugh has also built a new winery attached to an old cellar on his Roennfeldt Road property. Started in 1998 and finished in time for the 2000 vintage, it’s a perfect example of a brand-new version of the sort of winery being built in the Barossa a century ago, complete with open fermenters, underfloor storage tanks and basket presses. It’s ideally suited to making small batches and keeping them separately. Waugh knows what he likes, and through his relationship with Rockford and Three Rivers winemaker Chris Ringland, who remains as a consultant to Greenock Creek, he knows how to get it.

Michael Waugh has a fixation towards low yields, although of the 45 acres of vineyard at Greenock Creek’s disposal, only four acres are old vine vineyards 60-65 years. 38 of these acres are shiraz, which accounts for 85 of the entire crop, the remainder consisting of grenache 2 acres, cabernet sauvignon and an acre of mataro which has yet to bear fruit. Most of the younger plantings are at least five years old and all are spur pruned for yields in Waugh’s target range of 1.5 to 2.0 tonnes per acre.

Greenock Creek’s range of wine reflects its vineyards, since Waugh religiously keeps them separate. The 60 tonnes he crushed in 2001 produced 16 different wines, keeping free run separate from pressings and other little parcels on their own.

He’s managed to find a number of substantially different sites, given that they’re all pretty close together in the Seppeltsfield area in the Barossa’s northwest, not far from Marananga. Their soils include everything from very deep rich red loams, sandy loams into a combination of bluestones, limestones, lighter loams, sandy silts and virtual rock.

One of his vineyards, the Creek Block, is planted on deep alluvial soils, into which the roots penetrate to great depth in their search for underground water. The first vintage of Creek Block was 1986. The celebrated Roennfeldt Road vineyard, responsible for Greenock Creek’s best and most concentrated fruit, was formerly an apricot orchard. Today its low-trellised vines struggle to yield their very small crops. The first Roennfeldt Road Shiraz was actually the 1995 vintage, now immortalised by Parker.

Greenock Creek’s other vineyards include the Seven Acre Shiraz, planted in 1989-90, and whose first crop was in 1993. The first crop from the Apricot Block Shiraz was in 1998, while the first Alice’s Block Shiraz was 1999. Waugh harbours great expectations for The Apricot Block, whose eight rocky acres drop in altitude by 200 feet from one end of the vineyard to the other. Greenock Creek’s other wines are the Roennfeldt Road Cabernet, the Seppeltfsfield Cabernet and the Cornerstone Grenache, whose first vintages were 1995, 1991 and 1995 respectively.

‘Age of vines isn’t necessarily the key’, says Michael Waugh. ‘You can still make very good deep and full-bodied wines from young vines if you control yields.’ Yield control isn’t an issue for Waugh’s grenache, whose two acres are planted on a rocky site that ‘makes Steingarten look like the MCG’.
All Greenock Creek’s fruit is dry-grown. Waugh regularly applies organic manures which include fish offal and trace elements, which ‘stink to high heaven’, with a view to gradually improving vineyard fertility. Not to increase crops, he says, but to improve the longevity and vigour of his vines and their ability to tolerate harsh summers.

Michael Waugh had always wanted to follow his father into the wine game, but waited until 1975 before be had the capital to buy the property on which he and Annabel live today. He made the 1984 Creek Block in a shed on the property, but prior to the completion of his own winery contracted his crushing out to a number of local makers including Mountadam, Basedow, St Hallett and Rockford. He would receive the wine back in time to monitor its progess through malolactic fermentation in oak himself.

It’s a vintage by vintage proposition for Michael Waugh as to what block of shiraz will ripen first, so he constantly monitors sugar and flavour levels at his various small vineyards. He prefers his shiraz between 14.0-14.5 degrees Baume, which he finds drops in the crusher by about half a Baume to eventually arrive at around 14 alcohol in the bottle. Some are more alcoholic than that, he concedes, but believes his wines have the fruit intensity to carry more alcohol when they have to. A ‘great lover’ of natural acid, Waugh is very conscious of acidity when determining harvest dates, since he finds that added acid lacks the same subtlety.

Greenock Creek is often touted as an example of the Australian wines at the extremely high end of the alcoholic spectrum, but based on what I have learned from Waugh and on the limited number of Greenock Creek wines I have tasted, I have not seen evidence of this. According to Waugh, the most alcoholic Greenock Creek wine made in 2001 registered 15.5, and mainly range down to just above 14. ‘I’m a bit scared of over-ripe fruit’, he says. ‘We like big shirazes, but once it gets that slight hint of port it loses me. It’s out of style.’

Waugh prefers earthy, peppery flavours and ripe plum characters in shiraz and intense berry fruit flavours in cabernet sauvignon. All his shiraz is matured in American oak, the Roennfeldt Road Shiraz receiving three years in new American oak. The other vineyards receive less than 5 of new oak. ‘I can’t see the point in spending nine months of the year working to get big flavoured fruit, only to mask it with a whole lot of oak’, he says. Waugh is a fan of in-barrel malolactics, and doesn’t filter his wines prior to bottling. He prefers the soft, gentle tannins he finds once wine has spent enough time in oak to drop out the hard tannins it may have begun with.

Waugh’s 1999 reds will shortly be released, but before ending my visit I was able to taste two of his 1998 collection. The Seven Acre Shiraz 1998 $65 retail, approx., 18.0, drink 2006-2010 is surprisingly fine and elegant, with a suppleness and fleshiness balanced by fine, cedary tannins and sweet, reserved oak. A totally and surprisingly different personality to the 1995 vintage, it is however deeply scented and flavoured, with a complex spread of dark berry fruit and spice, especially cloves and nutmeg.

The Creek Block Shiraz 1998 $150 retail, approx., 18.7, drink 2006-2010+ is deeply and exotically scented with dark pepper, spices and a heady scent of briary, musky small berry fruit and mint, very pristine and penetrative. There’s a hint of rustic reductive farmyard/smallgoods complexity, while the plump, savoury palate is laced with intense dark cherry/licorice flavours and bound up in a firm, tight grip of tannin.

From my perspective, limited as it still is, Greenock Creek is very much more than a one hit wonder. I, for one, will be watching this space. Please login to post comment