Discover why it is emerging as one of Australia’s most dynamic wine regions.
Located just a few hours’ drive from Queensland’s glittering coast, the Granite Belt in the Darling Downs is fast emerging as one of Australia’s most significant and dynamic wine regions.
Imagine, for a moment, a world without champagne. For many, it doesn’t bear thinking about. But that’s a reality Mike Hayes wants wine lovers to consider. “In the future, we will still be drinking sparkling, but it won’t be from the traditional French varieties. And I’ll make a statement now: you will see the day that it becomes too warm to make traditional sparkling champagne in Champagne in France,” he warns.
Hayes is one of Australia’s most important winemakers, so it might surprise you to learn that he lives in Queensland. Stanthorpe to be precise, at the heart of the so-called Granite Belt.
“People think we grow pineapples at the end of the road,” he says. “Little do they know the Granite Belt is, in actual fact, one of the highest-elevated wine regions in Australia.”
The important work Hayes is doing isn’t simply about making good wine, although he certainly does that – he is chief winemaker at both Sirromet and Balancing Heart Vineyard and influences vintages elsewhere as a consultant. It is about protecting the entire industry. The 2017 Australian Society of Viticulture & Oenology Winemaker of the Year is the architect behind the ‘Vineyard of the Future’, a project aimed at safeguarding the industry against climate change.
“I won’t lie. A lot of people [in the beginning] said to me it’s a stupid project,” says Hayes. “Now it’s become one of the most important projects going around and there is talk about replicating it in other regions because it’s a living piece of history which will evolve as the planet evolves.”
A collaboration between the Queensland College of Wine Tourism, based on the Granite Belt and which Hayes helped establish, as well as the Queensland Wine Industry Association and Wine Australia, the Vineyard of the Future includes more than 80 different grape varieties, each selected for its ability to handle climate change.
The varieties have been clonal selected and virus tested, minimising potential health issues, and DNA tested to ensure they are true to variety. The result is a healthy and resilient ‘mother plantation’ that can
be accessed by winemakers looking to diversify, something Hayes sees as critical if the Australian wine industry is to have a future. “Australia is in a very precarious situation,” Hayes says. “We were founded by Englishmen who had a favour for French wines.
“If we were discovered by Spaniards or the Portuguese, our wine industry would look remarkably different and I think remarkably stronger against climate change because we would have inherently planted those hotter varieties.”
Hayes is alluding to varieties such as alvarinho, verdelho, graciano and mourvèdre: varieties that Australians, broadly speaking, are considerably less familiar with. Varieties that haven’t cut through in the same way as shiraz, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and so on. Varieties that are, perhaps, a challenge to pronounce.
Varieties, though, that you will find on Queensland’s Granite Belt.
SAME, SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Sun, surf and snow. Not a slogan on Queensland Tourism’s shortlist, I’d wager, but not entirely inaccurate either. While most visitors flock to the sunshine state for, well, exactly that – sunshine – the Granite Belt in the Darling Downs experiences four distinct seasons, including occasional snowfall in winter. With elevations peaking at more than 1,000 metres, the region is home to some of the country’s highest-altitude vineyards, as Hayes has pointed out. Add mild, low-humidity summers and cold winters, decomposed granite soils, and passionate wine people, and you have a solid recipe for premium wine.
Shiraz and chardonnay, for example, grow well. But shiraz and chardonnay grow well in numerous Australian wine regions.
Setting the Granite Belt apart was the challenge local winemaker Peter McGlashan had in mind when he co-founded the region’s now synonymous ‘Strange Birds’ concept. Strange Birds is the collective term for a curated selection of Granite Belt wines that best represent the region’s penchant for alternative varietals. To be considered an alternative, a wine
“THEY’RE COMING HERE IN DROVES AND DISCOVERING WHAT THEY’RE MISSING.” LEEANNE PUGLISI-GANGEMI
variety must represent no more than one per cent of the total bearing vines in Australia, and to be a Strange Bird, grapes must be locally grown. It is an ever-evolving catalogue – recent additions include roussanne, petit manseng and montepulciano – and its popularity is increasing.
“The emerging wine drinkers are looking for wines that their parents or their grandparents weren’t consuming,” says McGlashan. “They are looking for new things, they’re wanting to explore what wine regions and wine varieties can do, and I think we developed [Strange Birds] right on the cusp of [that trend]. And I think it works brilliantly because those people are wanting to explore and experience non-mainstream things.”
McGlashan, who is head winemaker at Ridgemill Estate, might describe his own journey as ‘nonmainstream’, too. Asked about his entry into the industry, he lets out a laugh of disbelief, which is usually a sign of a good story. Although he initially had his eye on a career as a mechanic or carpenter, the Ipswich product found himself working in bars and bottleshops, a job that took him all over Queensland, until he landed in Stanthorpe in the early ’90s. On days off, he would lend a hand pruning or picking fruit in local vineyards and “it just kind of snowballed from there”. At 55, McGlashan is racking up his 17th vintage with Ridgemill. And while he might have been a latecomer, he was certainly an early bloomer – his first in a string of awards coming just one year into the new career.
That award-winning drop happened to be a chardonnay, a household name in Australia and, according to McGlashan, the most interesting drink on the planet. Still, diversification has become one of McGlashan’s trademarks. Likewise, the Granite Belt. “As time has progressed, the … more modern, classically trained winemakers are now here [on the Granite Belt], there’s more investment into winery cooling and better processing machinery and all that sort of stuff … so the quality is getting better. People look to the past and say, ‘Well, look what our forebears have done. They diversified and tried all these new things. Why shouldn’t we do it?’ I think that’s the Granite Belt’s strength – that kind of that patchwork quilt is our strength. It’s the diversity, it’s the points of difference.”