Tweak up for Tasmania

While the old adage, “You can’t make good wine from poor grapes,” holds true, the oftrepeated saying that a wine is made in the vineyard is only partly true.

Just as nature, the seasons, the soils and vineyard aspect — the terroir as the French call the complex matrix of inputs that go into grapes’ composition — play an important role, it’s the winemaker who ultimately determines the style of wine that goes into the bottle.

Of course, some sites produce better or different quality grapes than others, just as they do cherries and every other fruit. But it is the winemaker who decides at what stage of ripeness the grapes are to be picked, how they’re to be fermented, whether and for how long the wine is aged in oak, and so on.

What we get to drink is, if you like, the equivalent of a film director’s final cut or a conductor’s interpretation of the musical score — in this case, nature’s score.

And these days sophisticated modern winemaking science and technology allow an almost endless manipulation of a wine’s style and makeup.

But, technological manipulation aside, our Tasmanian winemakers are continuously tweaking their wines and making whathappens-if experiments in a vintage by vintage search for improvements, pushing the envelope to make something distinct and different … or perhaps to gain a marketing advantage.

Nick Glaetzer’s 2016 uberblanc riesling is made in an oxidative style, using German riesling yeast with primary and malolactic fermentation over 60 days, which, as one commentator described it, resulted in a wine that was “powerful and racy with the most extraordinary, intense flavour of mandarin marmalade”.

Glaetzer fermented his 2013 La Judith pinot noir with 30 per cent whole bunch and five weeks total on skins, followed by an extraordinary 34 months in new French barriques to provide a depth and fruit intensity that he believes Tasmanian pinots usually lack.

With much the same aim, Joe Holyman’s Project X pinot noirs are 100 per cent whole bunch fermented and go into 100 per cent new French oak.

Steve Lubiana’s Amphora riesling was wild fermented and aged on skins in ceramic amphora, a winemaking vessel and method stretching back to antiquity.

Rebecca Wilson at Holm Oak also fermented 20 per cent of her arneis in amphora to, she says, “enhance the wine’s texture and complexity”.

And, after hand picking their grapes on a flower day after the harvest moon, Domaine Simha also wild ferment and mature their wines in clay amphorae for 90 days before basket pressing and bottling the wines un-fined and un-filtered.

For Moorilla’s newest Alter Ego 2017 carbonic riesling, winemaker Conor van de Reest turned tradition on its head by fermenting the grapes by a process called carbonic maceration, where the juice ferments within the whole intact grape, a winemaking technique most famously associated with the fruity red beaujolais wines of France, the same process Two Bud Spur uses for their gamay wines. And Bay of Fires has just released their experimental 2016 Trial by Fires pinot gris, which, while I’m not sure how it was made, is simply a delicious, beautifully textured drop. Some experiments work, others don’t.

“It’s the winemaker who ultimately determines the style of wine that goes into the bottle”