The Birth of the White Swan

It’s not every day that you taste a wine from a brand-new grape variety, let alone a grape variety that evolved – without human intervention – in Australia. The other day, though, I tasted the 2007 vintage, the first commercial release of Benson Rise Cygne Blanc. Furthermore, while recognising that the wine was still a work in progress, I enjoyed it and rated it well. It’s delicately and unusually perfumed, with a long, fine texture and lingering savoury qualities. But more on the wine later.

Cygne Blanc didn’t formally exist until 1999, and that was ten years after Sally Mann, the wife of well-known Western Australian winemaker Dorham Mann, found a stray seedling growing in their garden adjacent to their winery at Baskerville in the Swan Valley. The Manns saw that the vine had a cabernet-shaped leaf, and so out of curiosity, let it grow to produce a crop. That it did, with one major surprise: the grapes were white, not red.

The vine, clearly a member of the cabernet sauvignon family, was evidently something entirely new. Only time would tell whether or not it had any potential for winemaking, and what flavours and qualities its wine might have. So, under a veil of silence, Dorhamm Mann propagated the vine and made a small volume of wine in total secrecy for five years. For the Manns, one of the friendliest and most talkative couples in Western Australia, it must have been something of a torture to keep their new grape a complete secret.

In 1993, Mann had enough grapes to make about ten bottles of wine from the new grape, but after propagating and planting more vine material he had enough to make 800 in 1997 and around a thousand bottles by 1998, as both still and sparkling wines. He ended up with about an acre at his Swan Valley property, from which he produced a traditionally made sparkling wine labeled as ‘Mann’.

‘By the time I had enough fruit to do the things technically that I wanted to do in making the wine, I realised I had something quite special’, says Mann. ‘The wines resembled cabernet to some degree, but the grape has its own particular perfume that is quite different to anything I had ever experienced. Like cabernet, it has structure, but in this case a real silkiness and length.’

In 1999 Mann registered the grape as a new variety, Cabernet Cygne Blanc White Swan. Contrasting this natural, evolutionary variety to those like Tarrango and Cienna that have been scientifically bred by organisations like the CSIRO for different viticultural purposes, Mann suggests that the cygne blanc brings a finesse lacking from most bred grape varieties. On tasting the wine, I’d have to agree with him.

With the viticultural IP now secure, next came the matter of how and where to plant it. In 2000, after he had let his viticultural cat out of the bag, Mann was approached by Port Robe Estate, a viticultural consortium, to develop a large commercial vineyard of the new variety halfway between Kingston and Robe in the Mount Benson region on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. Mann was hesitant at first, but changed his mind once he saw the potential of the new region. ‘I was impressed with what I saw down there,’ he said. ‘While it’s a cool area, the cabernet sauvignon doesn’t get heavily herbaceous as it does down at Margaret River for example. The fruit that I saw and the wines down there weren’t that style at all. I expect it to make a most beautiful, still table wine.’

The outcome was an agreement that grants the group’s new Benson Rise brand an exclusive licence to grow and produce cygne blanc until June 2014, with an option to extent to June 2016. The variety can also be planted at other sites subject to the joint agreement of Benson Rise and the Manns.

Derek Hooper, the experienced winemaker at a nearby Mount Benson winery Cape Jaffa and also a director of Port Robe Estate, was introduced to the project from an early stage to initially manage the development of a nursery of vine cuttings from the Manns’ Swan Valley vineyard, and then ultimately, to make the wine from the new site at Mount Benson. Today there is a single commercial vineyard of cygne blanc planted on an elevated site overlooking the Southern Ocean, which produced small, trial crops in 2005 and 2006. The 2007 vintage is the first to be commercially released, and is now coming onto the market.

Dorham Mann, whose father was the late, great winemaker Jack Mann whose considerable list of achievements includes the invention of Houghton’s White Burgundy, has a wry chuckle with which to conclude this story. ‘My father was a great one for quotations. One of them was that the only grape tolerated in heaven was cabernet sauvignon. It was the very year that he passed away that this seedling appeared in our garden so, sometimes you have to wonder !’

Benson Rise Cygne Blanc 2007

Nutty, lightly grassy aromas of apple blossom and pear, dried herbs and cinnamon precede a rather a luscious, generous palate whose, lightly spicy, apple pie-like flavours and lingering notes of almonds and hazelnuts are underpinned by a very fine, dusty backbone and refreshing acidity. It finishes supple and savoury, with a restrained tightness and focus plus a lingering suggestion of freshmint. It has great potential as a food wine. Limestone Coast, $26 approx., ex cellar, 17.2/90, drink 2009-2012+ Please login to post comment