Cape Mentelle Shiraz

I confess I’ve never been much of a fan of Margaret River shiraz. Then, a few of weeks ago, David Hohnen of Cape Mentelle decided to challenge this view and those of others like me by opening a tasting of various Mentelle shirazes made between 1981 and 1999. While I wouldn’t say I’d go out and buy the company on the strength of this tasting – if indeed such a shot was even near the board – I’ve now seen enough to take this hitherto unfeted combination of region and variety a little more seriously.

Although prior to this tasting I have been occasional taken by shirazes from Vasse Felix, Evans & Tate and Cape Mentelle, I’ve noticed an unpleasant tendency for many Margaret River shirazes to become almost a parody of what the grape can do. Many mature extremely quickly into very wild, meaty and gamey wines, but lack the depth of ripe fruit to get away with it. There’s a greenish, tomatoey regional character that so many acquire, which in the company of under-ripe sappy tannins, leaves my fire rather unlit. While many are quick to criticise the scale and speed of the new developments in the warmer Jindong segment of the region, I’ve seen enough encouraging signs there to suggest that shiraz may actually be suited to these plantings.

That won’t affect David Hohnen, though, who is looking for the red berry and white pepper shiraz characteristics he finds in cooler-sited vineyards around the Margaret River township and still further south. Although a couple of other vineyards have since made their way into Cape Mentelle shiraz, the core of the wine has always been the original five acres that produced the property’s first shiraz in 1979.

Hohnen doesn’t reckon his shiraz is ‘worth talking about’ until the 1980s, especially 1984 when he had ‘a young French bloke’ over to do vintage who took an interest in it. ‘Until 1983 we’d really just treated it like cabernet’, he says, echoing what most Australian winemakers were doing with shiraz until the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Since it’s become an important wine for Cape Mentelle, Hohnen says that his benchmarking has focused less on what he wanted to do with the wine, rather than on what he didn’t want to do. ‘The last thing I wanted was a big oaky South Australian style of shiraz with loads of American oak like a Wolf Blass.’

Early in the 1980s he started using whole bunches in the ferment and found he liked the characters it gave. He also preferred larger casks and older barrels, muting down any overt oak influence in the fashion he’d picked up at Clos du Val and Taltarni prior to establishing Cape Mentelle.

However, early in the 1990s, while tasting some of his favourite shirazes from the 1980s, Hohnen realised they weren’t holding up too well. The 1986, which now looks thin, weedy and medicinal, was one of his favourite young wines, so something had to change. Reversing his approach somewhat, Hohnen decided his shiraz needed oak tannins to supplement its fruit tannins, to impart more spine, strength and longevity. He began to pick riper and introduced new oak, looking to achieve his aims without sacrificing the wine’s immediate appeal. Today it receives time in equal portions of French and American oak, but the American oak is fully imported as a cask, made from staves which have been air-dried for 24 months. Part of the wine is still fermented as whole bunches. The wine is pressed fairly hard on the first cut and some pressings are occasionally re-introduced to the wine. Really hard pressings are kept separate. ‘We’re making it now the way it wants to be made’, says Hohnen.

From 1991 onwards one could say with conviction that Cape Mentelle’s shiraz lacketh not in the tannin department. 1991 produced a firm, astringent wine, but nothing to match the searing strength and limitless longevity of the 1992 vintage. Since then the wines have closely followed their seasons, with a dense, perhaps heavy-handed release from the hot 1995 vintage, more stylish and focused wines from the moderate years of 1994 and 1997, a typically plush, smooth example from 1998 and a surprisingly firm and astringent wine from the cool 1996 vintage.

They’re not often given the importance they’re due, but the presence of bird pests and the vineyards’ ability to deal with them have been significant factors in shaping Cape Mentelle’s shiraz. ‘We’d get hammered by birds three years out of five’, says Hohnen. They’d be driving harvest decisions, not us. You either took fruit in when they appeared or you’d lose half of it. Now we can net and see the fruit through to full ripeness.’

Hohnen has also adapted his canopy to vertical shoot positioning VSP, which he reckons really pays off in more difficult years. ‘Prior to that we had the Australian sprawl and when the rain typically came in the second week of March we just had to take the fruit off. Now if it rains we can dry it out, let it hang for a while and re-concentrate itself, so we’re not driven to harvest by the elements, either.’

The Margaret River, says Hohnen, is ‘miles off’ developing a regional shiraz style, for everyone’s doing it very differently, from very different fruit. It’s a grape that was and still is actively discouraged for the region, so most of the plantings are still quite recent. Only time will tell if it’s a genuine match, or if it’s merely suited to the occasional site. Meantime, I’m happy to credit Cape Mentelle for setting the pace. Please login to post comment