Vintage Year for Australian Pinot Noir

It took a hot vintage to do it, but 1997 has confirmed to anyone harbouring any doubt that Australia can make decent pinot noir across a range of wine regions. I speak as one of the hardest to please in this respect, but continue to be delighted as delicious new releases from this stellar vintage continue to spin out, hot on each others’ heels.

The 1997 vintage is certainly the best ever for areas like the Mornington Peninsula, which has vociferously promised so much for so long. It’s given the chance for the Adelaide Hills to present hitherto unrevealed elegance and suppleness with this variety and has presented the Yarra Valley with the second of two consecutive first-rate seasons for this, the most petulant of all grape varieties.

It’s almost an overnight phenomenon, but there’s no single reason why the wines of so many different vineyards have improved together in a single year. To begin with, 1997 was the first of the recent run of seasons in which I can distinctly recall wishing my wife and I had installed an air conditioner in the Melbourne home we finished building four years ago. It was a fiercely warm summer, with several consecutive days of extreme heat. Even the Mornington Peninsula endured ten consecutive days of 35?C or more that February. And while this heatwave certainly made some of the region’s whites richer and broader than perhaps ideal, they clearly did no harm to the richness and power evident in so many of its pinot noirs.

There’s no denying that the youth of so many vineyards in the cooler regions which we have expected to perform best with pinot noir has considerably delayed their abilty to deliver. More than any other variety, a pinot noir vine tends to require at least ten years of age before it can deliver the strength, length and concentration of flavour expected in top level wine. Given that the dramatic vineyard expansions in the Yarra, the Mornington Peninsula, the Adelaide Hills and Tasmania are so recent,
it’s hardly a wonder that the expectations of so many passionate growers and makers have dramatically exceeded their results in the bottle.

Many of the vineyards attempting to grow top-drawer pinot noir in these regions are still young and their performance was clearly hampered by less than perfect recent vintages, although the Yarra Valley did remarkably well in the dampish 1996 season.

Nobody learns to make pinot noir overnight, and even the most skilled and experienced makers cannot simply make great wine at first attempt from unfamiliar fruit. It takes time to convert a head full of Burgundian ideas into a proven and reliable operating procedure for a specific site in Australia. Then a maker needs to learn how climatic changes from season to season affect fruit quality and yield, and how those factors will themselves impact on the approach to winemaking and the many decisions in the winery demanded by pinot noir which may need to be taken on an hour-by-hour basis.

Of the wines released to date, the best Australian pinot noirs in 1997 are those of Bass Phillip South Gippsland, Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula, Bannockburn Geelong, Diamond Valley Yarra Valley, Giaconda Beechworth and Bindi Macedon Ranges, each of which is remarkably different from the others in this small, and very select group. While Bass Phillip’s Reserve wine is typically deep, dark and brooding, its ‘Premium’ label is vibrant, spicy, musky and supremely deep and assertive. Both are outstanding.

True to form for riper years, Paringa Estate’s wine is sweet, concentrated and fleshy, almost shiraz-like in its spiciness. It flaunts its smoky, mocha new oak unashamedly and should develop into something very special. The appealing things about so many of the new Mornington Peninsula pinots are their incredible concentration and fleshy structure, tightly wound around fine-grained and fully-ripened powdery tannins. Led by two stunning wines in the Paringa Estate and another in the Stonier’s Reserve, the range of 1997 Peninsula pinots has more depth and breadth than any vintage released to this time. There’s no need to wait for the sappiness to disappear, these wines are all deliciously drinkable right now, while the best of them will develop for many years in the bottle.

The typically musky and spicy cinnamon-clove characters I have associated with the region’s pinots for so many years are present in most of the better wines if you look for them, but the overwhelming dark cherry and rose petal scents of a significant number stamps these wines as something truly special. The best examples, which also include wines from Dromana Estate standard label plus an excellent Reserve, Eldridge, Massoni and Tuck’s Ridge even approach the intensity and richness of the modern New Zealand examples from Martinborough, Marlborough and Central Otago.

Another self-confident new pinot is Bannockburn’s 1997 wine, scented with rose petals, undergrowth and dark cherries. Deep, herbal and musky, its strength and power owe much to maker Gary Farr’s fondness for whole bunch fermentation.

Perhaps its best wine ever put to market, Diamond Valley’s Estate wine is silky and supple, simply a must for those who enjoy the fleshiness and fineness of top-class pinot noir. This Yarra Valley maker, whose name has long been associated with top pinot, has now chalked up one of the very best New World pinots ever. Other leading Yarra Valley pinot noirs from this vintage include that of De Bortoli and the Reserve release of Coldstream Hills.

Giaconda’s potential with pinot noir has never been in question since its fabulous 1992 vintage, a wine of such concentration and power that comparisons with the best vineyards of Burgundy are inevitable. It’s early days yet, but the stony, earthy and superbly structured 1997 wine looks like at least its equal. Its heady aromas of maraschino cherries and rose petals precede a long, minerally palate whose sweet-sour fruit flavours finish long and taut.

Bindi is one of the most exciting new pinot noir vineyards in Australia. Bill and Michael Dhillon have separated a small amount of ‘Block 5′ from their Gisborne vineyard’s remaining and more mature vines to create a small, special release of staggering quality. Its deep, alluring dark fruit flavours and savoury finish present a purity and clarity of pinot noir rarely experienced outside Burgundy’s finest wines, while its cellaring potential is unquestioned. Its stablemate, the Bindi Pinot Noir 1997, is more musky and rustic in its expression, but amply maintains a short but very impressive track record.

Closing the gap fast on the premium Victorian pinot noirs are Adelaide Hills wines like the sumptuous, fleshy Lenswood Vineyards edition and the herbal, tight-grained Grosset Piccadilly release, both of which are possibly the best yet made by either of these two very dedicated makers. Please login to post comment