Nina Caplan
‘Even if not sent there at Her Majesty’s pleasure, 19thcentury Australia would have driven a man to drink’
AUSTRALIA’s WHITE SETTLERS barely drew breath before planting vines: even if they hadn’t been sent there at her Majesty’s pleasure, 19th-century Terra Australis, hot and harsh, would have driven a man to drink.
south Australia was founded in 1836 on principles of free immigration, free trade and religious freedom, but the idealism was rickety: the British government declaring the land ‘waste and unoccupied’ was news, surely, to the Aboriginal people who had productively occupied it for 30,000 years.
The state’s relationship with Europe was complex. its capital, Adelaide, was named for England’s Queen; a century later, Penfolds called its top wine Grange hermitage, after the northern Rhône’s most famous appellation. Grange (just Grange, now) is still mainly shiraz, but the grapes come from a range of vineyards, blended according to whim and weather.
‘No two Granges are the same, but the style is distinct,’ says Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago. ‘it’s always 100% new American oak, always off skins quite early, so you can taste the relationship between 1953 and 2010.’
Adelaide grew around Magill Estate, where we now sit, drinking Penfolds’ Bin 51, Eden Valley Riesling. Gago’s spanish grandparents left Bilbao’s shipyards for those in Newcastle, and his parents were ‘Ten-pound Poms’, lured here by sunny propaganda and cheap fares.
A glass wall displays the Magill vines. stand outside, says Gago, and the restaurant disappears: you see only the old building behind. Beneath are underground cellars, equally invisible, where the first, clandestinely made Granges were hidden until management could be persuaded that they might, just, sell.
Gago remembers the journey to Australia, and a performance celebrating the ship crossing the equator, with mermaids crawling onto the decks. utterly terrifying: he was five. Now he travels frequently, moving from the earthy practicalities of winemaking to the rarified atmosphere of wealth and celebrity.
he recalls spotting the musician Joe Cocker at the next table while dining in Aspen: ‘My companions suggested i take a bottle of wine over, but i decided not to intrude.’ Years later, Gago went backstage after a concert and found Cocker drinking a red liquid that turned out to be raspberry cordial. ‘he grabbed me by the throat and yelled: “i could have done something with it then – now i can’t!”’
Dr Christopher Penfold would have disagreed. in 1844, he arrived from london, bought the estate and began making wine, seeing patients, and feeding the one to the other as ‘strengthening tonic’. Most Australian wine then was fortified, to withstand the long journey across the equator to the thirsty old country. why they used Rhône varieties rather than, say, Portugal’s Touriga Nacional is unclear, but ‘shiraz is what grew easily here and still does’. Anyway, why follow tradition? Especially here, in a colony founded precisely to throw off the shackles of ancient rules.
it’s no surprise that Penfolds’ Yattarna Chardonnay 2006 works with King George whiting, a meaty fish native to Australia’s south coast: this golden equivalent of Grange, made with grapes from three states, has both citrus zing and a pleasing bitterness. later, we try Grange 2005 (96% shiraz from various Barossa vineyards and 4% Cabernet sauvignon) with slow-cooked pork belly in a pear and ginger-beer sauce. The wine is aromatic and rich, and stands up staunchly to those bold flavours as a Rhône syrah would not.
For dessert it’s Great Grandfather Tawny – a raisiny, solera-aged digestif that nods to those 19th-century fortifieds – and Anzac biscuit ice-cream, named for the Corps of Antipodeans who fought and died for Britain in world war i. My glass contains a bead of the first vintage (1915, the year of Gallipoli), just as Gago has a drop of spanish shipbuilder and i an echo of the Jews who fled Russia’s pogroms for Australia. we all encompass the past, however free we wish to be, and wine is remembrance – even for those who drink to forget.
‘He began making wine, seeing patients, and feeding the one to the other as ‘strengthening tonic’