Sparkling Burgundy article

Back in March, one hundred and four years ago, a French winemaker by the name of Edmond Mazure, resident at the time at Auldana in the city of Adelaide, made a wine from the Champagne varieties of pinot noir and pinot meunier which sparkled. So what? Well, the wine was red; a deep uncompromising red. A rose it was not. This strangely deep, dark and complex red wine which foamed on opening was called Sparkling Burgundy. All of a sudden, Australia had its very own sparkling wine.

While some may argue that another light-bodied sparkling red fashioned twelve years before by Auguste d’Argent, another Frenchman, was actually Australia’s first ‘sparkling burdundy’, serious students of the style, especially Dr John Wilson from The Wilson Vineyard in Clare, prefer that the credit goes to Mazure. But Mazure was fast pursued by Hans Irvine at Great Western, Victoria, whose Sparkling Burgundy was commended in 1894 in the class for Australian sparkling wine at the Melbourne Wine Show. Just twelve months later there was a class at the Adelaide Wine Show for ‘sparkling wine other than champagne’ which was convincingly won by Edmond Mazure and Auldana.

People were taking the new bubbling red very seriously indeed. But today, a century later, with more wineries making Australian sparkling red wine than ever before, it’s still to establish broad-spectrum credibility as a serious wine, although it sells out like hotcakes. No other wine quite polarises a discussion like sparkling red, between winemakers, writers, retailers or customers. You either love it or you hate it; it’s as simple as that. But mark these words: Australian sparkling red wine will have its day.

In favour of sparkling red is a worldwide reaction against the sameness of so many wines made from the ubiquitous grapes of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. The current global fascination with varieties Italian and from the Rhone Valley is the most tangible symptom of this reaction, as people rediscover the pleasures of different tastes, styles and sensations. There’s also incredible renewed interest in the wines on which the industries of different countries have based their traditions. They mightn’t be the best wines created in these countries, but who cares? They’re often much more fun and may yet be regarded as the jewels in their crowns.

In the United States, zinfandel is again a wine of cult status. Old bush-vine South African pinotage is about to blossom into a sought-after international commodity. Ditto: old vine Australian grenache. Thanks to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, Hungarian Tokay Aszu has again leapt to the forefront of the world’s great sweet wines. And Australian sparkling red, our indigenous wine, which for over a century we have kept to ourselves, is waiting patiently in the wings.

The definitive oenological red herring, Australian sparkling red wine is actually a red wine put through the entire champagne process. It begins life as a deeply coloured dry base wine, usually but not exclusively made from shiraz, before an in-bottle second fermentation and subsequent maturation in contact with decaying yeast cells for several years. The Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz, by some distance the leader of the present pack, receives around ten years’ maturation prior to release.

Although some very worthy and delicious sparkling reds are made from cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot noir, there’s no doubt that the classic Australian sparkling red is predominantly, if not entirely, shiraz. The other leading shiraz-based wines include the Rockford Black Shiraz, Peter Rumball’s Sparkling Shiraz, the extraordinary and very rare Primo Estate Joseph Sparkling Red, the Anderson Sparkling Shiraz, Charles Melton Sparkling Red and The Wilson Vineyard Hippocrene, although this wine also includes cabernet sauvignon and malbec.

Given its tendency to develop barnyard complexity and a supple palate structure, you would expect pinot noir to make the base of good sparkling red. The most widely available example is made by Mount Pleasant, while Cope-Williams Macedon creates a supple, fine-boned edition. Perhaps more growers in warmer areas with plantings of pinot noir might well give up on making stewy dry reds in favour of a rich, soft sparkling style. Ian Loftus suggests that more growers might include some pinot with their shiraz bases, reminding us that legendary Hunter winemaker Maurice O’Shea used to find their qualities rather compatible.

Cabernet sauvignon needs to be richer and rounder than usual for sparkling red, so warm area vineyards do it best. Yalumba’s Cuvee Two is a benchmark wine, slightly beefed up with shiraz, and given some pretty smart barrel fermentation and maturation prior to the champagne process. Ian McKenzie likes it, but disapproves of some of the thinner cabernet-based wines from the river regions. All Saints’ rich, chunky Rutherglen cabernet sauvignon will surely impress Yalumba devotees.

The sheer quality of sparkling red wines from other varieties underpins the style’s diversity. Mick Morris’ wine is entirely Rutherglen durif, while the sumptuously textured, opulent and savoury Sparkling Grand Merlot by Jim Irvine from Eden Valley fruit ably substitutes for entree, main course and cheese platter.

While young sparkling red can present itself as rather a jumbled mismarriage of ripe fruit, oak, tannin and fizz, with a few years maturation ‘on the cork’ its components tend to marry together. Once mature, it can be light or heavy, sweet or dry, astringently tannic or as smooth as silk. It can taste assertively oaky or be made without oak altogether.

The greatest experience offered by sparkling burgundy – as we used to be able to call it before international obligations led us to reconsider our use of French place-names in the nomenclature of our wines – is to taste wines of around thirty years age from outstanding vintages and great makers. Given that they had the field almost entirely to themselves for much of this century, this largely translates to wine from Seppelt, which purchased the Great Western cellars from Hans Irvine in 1918.

Fresh, well-cellared bottles of the great Seppelt sparkling burgundies from the late ‘forties, ‘fifties and early ‘sixties still provide an incomparable Australian wine experience. Their mousse has usually lost much of its effervescence, but there’s still a lazy bubble or several to meander slowly upwards from the bottom of the glass. Their appearance is usually a brooding tawny brown, their bouquet complex, earthy and ethereal, with mushroomy, tarry and spicy undertones. Their tannins soften and become finer and although usually bottled with a distinctive sweetness, the wines tend to dry out with substantial maturity. They acquire the charm and fascination of a lively, active senior citizen not only in possession of all the faculties, but a few minor eccentricities as well.

It’s heartening and true that Seppelt’s newest Show Sparkling Shiraz, from the 1986 vintage, is as fine as any wine to wear this label in the last twenty years. Eleven years young, it has a twenty-five year future ahead. If the asking price of $A51 is a shade too steep, simply direct your attentions towards the forthcoming and very affordable Seppelt Sparkling Shiraz 1993, a superb and spicy sparkling red in the classical style.
The man ultimately responsible for making the Seppelt sparkling reds is Ian McKenzie, who has no doubt whatsoever of the importance and quality of the style. ‘The difficulty is that the knockers and others who make throwaway lines about it have never tried it’, he says. ‘Then they have a look and realise it’s not “el cheapo” bubbly, but a serious wine which can age.’

Ian Loftus, a Melbourne-based publicist, whose Australian National Sparkling Red Days have done more to focus attention on the wine than any other promotion, says: ‘It’s proved itself a great drinking style and a great food wine. It’s also one of the most adaptable wines of the world; it’s surprising what it can go with-all sorts of varieties and flavours, spices, odd things and eclectic things. It certainly matches traditional foods-there’s hardly anything it doesn’t match.’ From kangaraoo to vindaloo, from shiraz sorbet to eggs benedict, I’ve tasted it with nearly everything. And given a mixture of sound commonsense and just the right amount of risk, I certainly agree. Please login to post comment