New Eagle Series puts Dalwinnie amongst the Elite

When Ewan Jones bought 350 acres of land near Moonambel from Ballarat earthmoving contractor Wal Henning, he had very little idea he would be initiating one of Australia’s very best vineyards. Sure, he wanted a few vines on the property’s hilly slopes to give him something else to worry about other than his successful architectural business, but Dalwhinnie’s present producing area of 18 ha of vines and their signficance today must have seemed light years away from the hard toil and yakka first undertaken to plant them.

For there’s no doubt any longer that Dalwhinnie is one of Australia’s greatest shiraz vineyards. Its first decade of wines in the 1980s showed potential but inconsistency, a typical phenomenon with young vines. Its second decade has been nothing less than extraordinary. The lowest mark I have given any of Dalwhinnie’s shirazes of the 1990s has been 18.1. Not a bad low water mark! With Jasper Hill, Mount Langi Ghiran and Bests Great Western, I rate it as one of the four most important shiraz vineyards in Victoria.

Yet, as a recent release of a reserve Dalwhinnie shiraz has shown me, there’s little doubt that the best has yet to come. Made with an entirely different approach to the ‘standard’ shiraz, the ‘Eagle Series’ Shiraz 1997 reveals a complexity, fineness and harmony I have never before witnessed, or thought to witness in Dalwhinnie red. It was basket pressed without crushing and given a traditional relatively short and warmish French-style fermentation in open fermenters with pigeage to encourage a gradual and gentle breaking up of whole berries during maceration, some of which remained until pressing. Half of the wine was fermented with natural yeasts. It spent two full years in small French cooperage, only half of which was new, receiving extended gross lees contact for the first ten months until after malolactic fermentation, after which it received but a single racking. Jones kept sulphur additions to a minimum to ensure that the vineyard had every chance to express itself in his wine.

The result is a natural, earthy wine of great restraint, yet no loss of flavour. Its extended period in oak has lost it some colour, but what remains is very stable. There’s a hint of dustiness and a scent of old French-polished furniture beneath the spicy, musky red and black berry fruit also evident in the ‘standard’ 1997 Shiraz. There’s poise and refinement not found in the ‘standard’ wine, a silky fineness of tannin and a slightly wild undergrowth-like quality borne of extended lees contact. I find it harks ever so strongly of the best examples of Cote-Rotie, although Dalwhinnie’s owner David Jones, Ewan’s son, sees more southern Rhone influence.

However it’s my undoubted conviction that if present owner David Jones, Ewan’s son, were to pursue more of this style then Dalwhinnie’s fame would quickly spread to all corners of the wine world. Sure it would mean a change in direction. Sure it would mean more investment and, for a period at least, a slower return. But it worked for Guigal.

It’s a testament to the quality of his vineyard that if David Jones never released another ‘Eagle Series’ Shiraz then Dalwhinnie’s fame would still reach anyone seriously interested in shiraz. As the sumptuous, concentrated ‘standard’ 1998 vintage shows, it’s a powerful, heady expression of the grape and the uniqueness of the site. Despite the sheer opulence of its fruit, it still retains elegance and form. Dalwhinnie Shiraz is about as far from the soppy, soupy expressions of shiraz so popular in Australia today as you can get. Its layers of deep, dark fruit and firm, sinewy tannins give it a shape and longevity rare in this age of porty, over-ripened shiraz and vanilla jam.

Dalwhinnie’s next most convincing wine is its Chardonnay, a sumptuous, savoury expression of this variety, again poles apart from what most Australians would tend to expect. It’s one of the longest-living chardonnays of this country, with a creamy, seamless texture tightly mitred with a backbone of bright mineral acidity. Recent vintages reveal something of a French ‘dirt’ influence, but a purity and brightness of fruit that is never challenged by the restraint and harmony of excellent Burgundian oak. The 1998 is perhaps the best yet – a sumptuous, nutty wine with quartz-like edge to its finish. As he does with shiraz and the cabernet varieties, David Jones harvests at several different stages of ripening to optimise the vineyard’s ability to produce different elements of complexity.

Dalwhinnie’s Cabernet Sauvignon is typically robust, deeply flavoured and suited to cellaring, but lacks the uniqueness of its shiraz on a year-to-year basis. Some releases can be excellent, 1995 and 1998 included, but there are plenty of people in different areas doing it better. Tasting these two vintages together clearly illustrates how the broader spectrum of fruit flavours captured at harvest result in a more complete, more interesting and sophisticated wine.

Despite David Jones’ enthusiasm for it and the fact that Rick Kinzbrunner makes it at Giaconda, Dalwhinnie’s Pinot Noir just lags that little bit further behind. Sure it’s complex and can tend towards the ‘feral’ or ‘funky'; sure it packs some sweet fruit and velvet tannins; but its comparatively hard edges, green flavours and minty eucalypt background leaves me feeling the same dirt might have developed some interesting shiraz. The 1998 does represent a step up from previous years, but doesn’t get the blood moving in quite the way the shiraz tends to. Still, there’s a winemaker born every minute who thinks his or her vineyard is on the verge of another great Burgundy. It’s all part of the passion.

In addition to its mean soils, Dalwhinnie’s particular aspect makes it so special. Like several other quality sites in southern Australia, those of Freycinet and Coldstream Hills for instance, it’s something of an amphitheatre by shape and heat-trap by nature, helping to ripen grapes fully in all but the coolest of seasons. Its soils are clay and quartz-based, which clearly contribute to the wines’ firmness and backbone, and especially to the flinty acids of the Chardonnay.

The highest vineyard of the Pyrenees district, Dalwhinnie benefits strongly from this region’s exceptionally reliable long, dry ripening seasons which certainly make its vintages more consistent than those of any other Victorian cool-climate region, with the possible exception of Geelong.

The list of people involved in Dalwhinnie’s first decade reads something like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Victorian winemaking. As it was gradually cleared and deep ripped, the vineyard was first planted in 1976 to shiraz and cabernet sauvignon according to an initial contoured layout by David Hohnen, now of Cape Mentelle, but who was at the time manager at nearby Taltarni.

Dalwhinnie’s first wine was an equal blend of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon made in 1979 by Gary Farr, who has since made a huge name for himself at Bannockburn, but was at the time winemaker for Ian Home at Yellowglen. Farr made the next two vintages at Yellowglen and the 1982 at Bannockburn, before the Joneses returned to the Yellowglen for the next two vintages which were made by French winemaker Claude Thibaut and Jeffrey Wilkinson respectively. The 1985 and 1986 vintages were made at Coonawarra by Mildara winemaker Gavin Hogg, while in 1987 and 1988 the wines were made by experienced former Seppelt winemaker Rod Morrish, then at Mount Avoca. After the 1989 vintage, made by Vincent Gere at Chateau Remy now Blue Pyrenees Estate, the Joneses looked for a long-term relationship with a winery. They settled at Mitchelton by 1990 and have remained there since.

Dalwhinnie’s plantings today comprises nearly 3 ha of cabernet sauvignon, 15 ha of shiraz, 4.5 of chardonnay, just over 1 ha of cabernet franc and merlot, 2.5 of pinot noir and one each of viognier and sangiovese. Recent shiraz plantings involve a number of different clones as David Jones experiments with potential diversity and complexity, including material sourced from the Thomson family’s old vines at Best’s Grest Western vineyard, Penfolds in the Barossa Valley and Wynns Coonawarra.

Together with his wife Jenny, David Jones works hard to simultaneously maintain his vineyard resource and extract the most from it. The vines are trained into a vertical shoot positioning system, are hand-pruned and hand-harvested. Insecticides and herbicides are avoided like the Plague and a ground cover of legumes is cultiuvated between the rows.
With maximum cropping levels set around a modest 7 tonnes per ha, Jones is now harvesting fruit with a new harvesting regime which encompasses a spectrum of different ripening levels. The immediate outcomes are higher overall level of natural acids and lower pHs, both of which lead towards more stability and life in finished wines, and bring the additional benefit of enhanced complexity of flavour.

David Jones concedes he is under enormous pressure to build his own winery, although he’s the first to concede it would bring tremendous flexibilities of harvest time and processing methods should he do so. He expects to be able to be in a position to seriously undertake such a challenge in five years from now. He’s also crucially aware that whatever the vineyard has achieved to date, it’s far away from realising its true potential. That won’t happen until with a winery on site he’s able to harvest grapes selectively and process the best fruit from his most mature vines in a similar fashion to the way the 1997 Eagle Series Shiraz was made.

Perhaps some parcels from certain parts of the vineyard will simply demand to be bottled alone. Perhaps others will produce strong and distinctive characters that while assertive and impactful may be best incorporated into a blend of similar parcels of differing personalities, encouraging the synergy of such a marriage to make a wine better than the sum of its individual entities. Only time will tell. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sheer joy of the challenge awaiting the very patient Mr and Mrs Jones of Dalwhinnie.

David Jones is still seeking more complexity and character in Dalwhinnie’s fruit. Since he’s unable to expand the vineyard any further on the present property, with Jenny he purchased a block of 135 ha south of the Moonambel Hotel where he is hoping to develop a new vineyard which will include a mix of red Rhone varieties.

To mark the 25th Anniversary of their vineyard, the Joneses have commissioned a small book by David Dunstan which is only for sale from the winery itself. The book, which can tend towards the jingoistic from time to time, is a neat little work. It traces the history of Dalwhinnie’s name to the village of the same name in the Scottish Highlands through the various families involved in its establishment and through the various decisions made over the years which have collectively resulted in its present pre-eminent status amongst Victorian vineyards.

Dunstan constantly tries to put the ambitions and efforts of the Jones family into a global perspective and his work serves as yet another sobering reminder that despite any inherent special qualities, it can take many, many years before a vineyard operation becomes a profitable one. ‘Dalwhinnie’ is available directly from the winery for $15 plus postage and handling on 03 5467 2388. Please login to post comment