Millennium Wines

Silly question, really, but if such practical issues like price and availability could be ignored, what would you be drinking as your favourite Australian wines of the millennium? Personally, I’d settle for a running jump into a tub of Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 1989, but Phillip Jones never even made enough of it to fill the sort of tub I have in mind. So I’d settle for ’53 Grange instead, which also nearly makes the short list of one Leonard Paul Evans AO, OBE.

‘I’d have to choose two wines: the Lindemans Hunter River Burgundy 1959 Bin 1590 and Penfolds Bin 60A 1962 vintage’, says Evans. ‘I’ve shown the Penfolds 60A to a swag of senior people and they typically go bananas over it. Andre Tchelistcheff the Californian winemaking legend said it’s the best wine he’d ever tasted outside France. I’ve championed the Lindemans wine since the earliest days and the last bottle I had was simply magnificent.’

Like me, Evans is taken by the ‘exquisite’ quality of the 1953 Grange and also the 1955 vintage. Not unsurprisingly, he also has a soft spot for the classic reds of Maurice O’Shea ‘I’ve drunk them by the dozen’, especially the 1952 Steven, the 1954 Richard and the Henry series, the 1949 in particular.

Has he tasted an Australian pinot noir of top quality? ‘I did see one at last. It was the Bannockburn 1994 Serre, a bloody marvellous wine. It had authentic French quality about it and tasted like a Burgundy. I can pay no pinot a higher compliment, as chauvinistic as I am for Australia.’

In the white wine department, Evans remembers the first Barossa riesling made in 1953 by Orlando using modern refrigeration techniques. ‘It was totally startling; a giant step forward for the mankind of Australia.’ As far as modern riesling is concerned, Evans enjoys taking his Petaluma either when very young or truly mature, but not in between. ‘Some of the Grossets are very good indeed and I really like the old John Vickery Burings. I’m also a great fan of the recently released 1984 Seppelt and 84 Leo Buring rieslings.’

Nobody will be in the least surprised to learnt that Evans lists a range of Hunter semillons amongst the best Australian whites of the millennium and you won’t get an argument from this quarter. ‘I prefer the 1970 Lindemans, the 1968 Lindemans, the 1972 Rothbury and the 1979 Rothbury’, he says. ‘I was also very fond of that marvellous Rooty Hill Trameah of Penfolds. It was a very elegant and high quality traminer.’

Evans considers the Petaluma Tiers and Penfolds Yattarna chardonnays to be great modern developments. ‘Everything else, including the chardonnays of Leeuwin and Giaconda are different wines. They have the flavours, but not the elegance. They have richness and fullness beyond belief, but the Tiers and Yattarna are extremely elegant wines of great structure.’

It shouldn’t surprise that Penfolds’ chief winemaker John Duval also nominates the 60A and the Granges from 1953 and 1955 amongst the most memorable Australian wines he’s enjoyed. ‘The 1955 Grange is a great wine and a very famous wine, while the 1953 was the wine of the two days of the Anders Josephson Grange tasting a few years ago. It simply knocked me over.’

Duval also has a yen for the 1953 Woodley’s Treasure Chest red. ‘Macka Southcorp chief white wine maker Ian McKenzie bought it along to a wine show dinner and shortly after that The Australian newspaper contacted me for a desert island wine story. That was my wine. Luckily Warwick Duthy a former general manager of Seppelt saw the story and sent me another bottle. So I tried it, twice!’

Asked to nominate his favourite Australian white wines over the last 1,000 years, Duval recalls the same 1970 Lindemans Hunter River Chablis admired by Evans and the ‘distinct impression’ it made the first time he saw it. Needless to say, it’s an experience he’s revisited, without disappointment. And old riesling? ‘I don’t know if it’s the best of the Leo Burings, but the DWC 17 Eden Valley Riesling from 1973 is simply brilliant.’

Evans’ old mate Peter Lehmann puts Colin Preece’s 1946 Sparkling Burgundy high on his list. After backing a winner in 1971 he bought four dozen of the wine at the Barossa Vintage Festival Auction for $4 a bottle, only to forget all about them. Years later, in the company of his friend, the artist Rod Schubert who designed his first wine label, he stumbled over the pile of bottles. It was Schubert’s birth year and since then they open one every year together to celebrate. Who wouldn’t?

‘I’ve nothing but admiration and respect for Colin Preece’, says Lehmann. ‘Once I showed him a wine made from apple juice and he said it was the best white I’d ever made. “Better you stick to apples and leave the grapes to us experts”, he said.’

‘Then there was an amazing Saltram made in 1956 by Bryan Dolan, called Bin 15, I think. Len Evans always thought it was French whenever it came up in an options game. One time three years after I had used it last we were playing options again and the same wine went around and Evans said it was French. “No, that’s the wine I always think is French”, he said. He wasn’t bad in his day!’

‘I also have to include the wine from which point of view I get the most excitement these days, the 1993 Reserve Riesling. I’d also like to give it a plug because we still have a heap of it. It’s won so many golds and trophies for the best riesling of the show at Melbourne and in the Barossa. It’s also won the trophy for the ‘best riesling in the world’ in London. Wigs winemaker Andrew Wigan decided to release the 1994 wine ahead of it because he reckoned it still had a few trophies in it. He was right.

‘But John Vickery could never decide which was the best region for riesling: Clare or the Eden Valley. I reckon he’d tend to go for Clare just ahead, but then he’d taste one of his Eden Valleys and say he’d prefer that instead!’

Naturally enough, Murray Tyrrell has a preference for the wines of his beloved Hunter, but he says he’d never knock back a decent year of Leo Buring Riesling with some age. He’s also very fond of Knappstein’s 1995 Riesling.

When put to the test, Tyrrell, who has never been afraid to declare the ‘Vintage of the Century’, actually comes out in favour of 1965. ‘The reds and some semillons are still great wines of Australia, especially those made by McWilliams and ourselves. 1959 was excellent, but not as good. And more recently, 1991 was just great for both red and white wine, but they all need more time.

Like Evans, Tyrrell is also a well practised hand at Maurice O’Shea’s great wines, many of which he says came from grapes grown at Tyrrell’s. ‘The 1954, 1957 and 1964 Richard are still great wines’, he says, ‘and some of the Lindemans are too of course, especially the 1959, 1965 and 1966. They’re all bloody magnificent. There’s also the Tullochs from 1965 and 1966. And one of the great ones was 1977. I’ve kept some for tastings and it’s always superb.’

‘There are quite a few good Hunters around and if they’re given time they become alright. We drink them too soon today.’

As far as pinot noir is concerned, Tyrrell prefers ‘the softer Burgundy style’ and believes the Tyrrell’s 1980 Pinot Noir is ‘the best ever made in this country’. ‘It’s only just coming good’, he says. ‘People drink it and say it’s great and it’s not that Victorian crap. Most pinots don’t have enough guts; they’re not big enough and soft enough. If I had to pick a wine to drink that would be it.’

Murray Tyrrell also expresses a preference for some Coonawarra wines, especially several Leconfield reds made by his ex-employee Ralph Fowler. He likes Hanging Rock’s sparkling Macedon made by John Ellis, his son-in-law and the new Tyrrell’s Rufus Stone Heathcote Shiraz, even though he says he’s constantly nagged by Victorian wine companies who tell him he sells it too cheaply.

But ever since Tyrrell first experienced the traditional Victorian reticence towards Hunter wine, he’s hardly shown any interest in the wines of Victoria in return. And, of course, he’s the first to acknowledge it. Despite that, he’ll concede that some chardonnays from Coldstream Hills are ‘pretty good’, like some of the Mount Mary chardonnays of the 1980s, although he’s ‘not fussed about’ its reds. ‘There’s also something wrong in the middle palate of many wines from Western Australia’, he says, so he’s not over-keen on them, either.

Mount Mary proprietor and head winemaker John Middleton cut his teeth on old Hans Irvine red wines labelled as ‘Sauvignon’ and ‘Claret’ from Victoria’s Great Western region. They went back into the 1870s and 1880s and, like the excellent old Yeringberg reds from around the same time, linger in Middleton’s formidable palate memory.

‘I also highly rate some of the Salters and Bleasdale wines of years gone by’, says Middleton, ‘with some of the great McLaren Vales like those of the Reynell family in the 1940s.’ More recently, he has been most impressed by some excellent wines by Guill de Pury at Yeringberg, Reg Egan at Wantirna Estate, Peter McMahon at Seville Estate and the long-living shirazes of Birks Wendouree.

The highly talented custodian of winemaking at Cullen’s, Vanya Cullen, is one of the many fans of Mount Mary’s 1990 Cabernet ‘Quintet’, although the two most startling Australian cabernets she’s tasted in recent years were Penfolds’ 1948 Kalimna Cabernet and the 1953 Grange Cabernet. ‘They were such a surprise. We had the 1953 Grange Cabernet in a line up against several 1945 Bordeaux and we expected to have some trouble with it. But it was just so much better than the 1945 Margaux! It was all gorgeous pure varietal fruit. The Kalimna Cabernet was fresh and varietal, with the sort of beautiful length and finesse you don’t often associate with older style Australian reds.’

Southcorp’s John Duval also remembers this win fondly. ‘John Ryan from the Gold Coast must have brought three bottles of it, for he gave one to Brian Croser, one to Len Evans for the Judge’s dinner at the Sydney show and one to me. Given that it was pre-small oak and pre-Max Schubert it was an amazing wine.’

Vanya Cullen’s favourite recent Margaret River wines include Leeuwin Estate’s 1995 Art Series Chardonnay, Moss Wood’s 1991 Reserve, Pierro’s 1994 Chardonnay and Cape Mentelle’s 1995 Zinfandel. She’s also an out-of-the-closet admirer of the brilliant Seppelt Show Sparkling Burgundy from 1967.

Breakaway:

John Hindle is a well-known Melbourne-based print and radio journalist and author who won my immediate and undying respect when I read the first line of a partially autobiographical column about his encounters with the demon drink. ‘In the Hindle family we have a motto. And that motto is: excess is not enough’. But it would be wrong to suggest that Hindle is insensitive to the more subtle pleasures that wine can offer.

‘My favourite Australian wine is Henschke’s Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon. If you don’t know too much about wine, it’s where you are and where it was. In this case the circumstances were good – and that affects the moment – and I enjoyed it more than any red I’ve ever drunk. It was in the Barossa, having a picnic on a day that couldn’t be beat, eating some sausages that a fella I’d met in the Barossa had made. And the scenery and the smell and everything led ineluctibly towards the Cyril. It’s my theory that if you’re a drinking chap it’s much better to appreciate wine in the early part of the day, because from then on you’re just taking it on board. The open air of Australia, and being near to where the grapes were grown all contributed to the bonhomie.’

‘I learned a new word that day: poracious. It means a type of green; the colour of young grass when it comes up brighter than old grass: poracious green. The sky above was azure and the air smelt lightly of all things good. It was a great day.’

John Hindle is well advanced in the planning his welcome of the new millennium. It will revolve around several bottles of his favourite champange, Laurent Perrier NV, plus a swag of Yalumba Signature because he has it and considers the evening in question the correct time to drink it.

‘I have an affection and regard for Yalumba wines’, says Hindle. ‘I first became this way in 1964 or ’65 and it was endorsed by a visit to Yalumba. I expected to find a little joint but instead I found this enormous place. I remember that I’d never encountered such a foul smell in anything that didn’t involve killing animals, but the wines they showered into me were fantastic. When I was a kid Yalumba used to make wines of indifferent quality for mums and dads. But at the other end they made all this top stuff. I just didn’t know.’

Hindle promises to toast the actual millennium with an appropriately filled glass of Mildara Pot Still, confessing that while he’ll only have a taste, ‘those around me will probably fall around a bit.’ Please login to post comment