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Geoffrey Dean reports direct from South Australia on the aftermath of the troubled 2011 vintage

Published:  04 December, 2012


The 2012 vintage in Australia is being widely touted as one of the very best in the last 20 years, but what of the ill-fated 2011 vintage? The south-east of the country got so much rain in late 2010 and in the lead-up to harvest in 2011 that downy mildew and botrytis ran amok, heavily reducing yields and causing swathes of fruit to be left behind in the vineyards. Some boutique producers made no wine at all, and many bigger ones switched from single vineyard wines to blends, but having tasted a good many South Australian offerings, I can happily report there are many good, and some excellent, releases just coming onto the market.

The 2012 vintage in Australia is being widely touted as one of the very best in the last 20 years, but what of the ill-fated 2011 vintage? The south-east of the country got so much rain in late 2010 and in the lead-up to harvest in 2011 that downy mildew and botrytis ran amok, heavily reducing yields and causing swathes of fruit to be left behind in the vineyards. Some boutique producers made no wine at all, and many bigger ones switched from single vineyard wines to blends, but having tasted a good many South Australian offerings, I can happily report there are many good, and some excellent, releases just coming onto the market.

Take Wirra Wirra's Church Block, for example. As the biggest selling red wine over A$20 in Australia, and a very popular one in the UK, where it retails for between £10-12, it is the winery's "most important wine" according to winemaker Paul Smith. Unseen as yet in the UK, this blend of Cabernet (47%), Shiraz (44) and Merlot (9), is still, to use the Aussie vernacular, a "ripper" of a mid-market wine: lovely fruit without being too full-bodied, good length and balance and not too alcoholic at 14.3%. It has benefited from having some fruit originally destined for Wirra Wirra's Angelus and RWT labels.

Smith revealed that the McLaren Vale, where Wirra Wirra is situated, was much less affected by the 2011 rains than the Barossa and Clare Valleys to the north. "We weren't completely immune, but we were often getting 20mm when they were getting 67 plus," he said. "I saw growers who did everything they could to protect their grapes but still got disease. A lot of our biodynamic preparations helped give thicker skins. For those who want blockbuster wines, maybe 2011 is not going to excite them, but they're not the wines we're trying to make."

Peter Gago, chief winemaker for Penfolds, told me that there was "plenty of Grange" made in 2011 but no Bin 707, the A$250 (£160) Cabernet Sauvignon single varietal. Fruit for Grange comes from several dozen sites in South Australia. "It was a good year for Shiraz, which has to make up 85.1% of Grange," he said. "We still used a little Cabernet in Grange. The last time it was 100% Shiraz was back in 2000. The 707 is still frowned upon by the purists as it's multi-regional but people love it, so why change the style? Both wines go into 100% American new oak and we are never going to alter that."


Harpers, after an exclusive pre-tasting of the 2008 Grange, can reveal that it is one of Gago's best but tasting notes cannot be published until its official release next February.

Conditions in the Eden Valley led Stephen and Pru Henschke to make an early call that there would be nothing made in 2011 of Australia's other great icon wine, Hill of Grace. They also decided to produce no single vineyard wines at all, declassifying all the fruit that was picked into blends. "We made two and that's it," said assistant winemaker, Josh Pfeiffer. "But they're settling down well enough in bottle, and we're really happy with them."

Another pre-eminent Australian winemaker, Ben Glaetzer, did, however, manage to produce a small amount of his outstanding flagship wine, Amon Ra. "I made only 250 cases of it, compared to 1,000 in 2010 and 1,100 in 2012," he said.

"We bottled it at the end of October - it's clean, has some nice tannins and texture with a white pepper note. It was my only red from 2011, and the only Heartland white was some Pinot Gris, as I'm not prepared to release my labels with sub-standard wine. We normally get 1,500 to 2,000 tons of Heartland fruit but we dropped 1,200 tons on the ground in 2011, with about 500 sold for bulk wines or distillation."

Further south in the Coonawarra region, one of Australia's most consistently excellent producers, Majella, were hamstrung by botrytis. "This was our worst year for it since 1995, and we had to work bloody hard to get as much fruit as possible in while it was still sound," said Brian Lynn, co-owner and vineyard manager.

"Botrytis affected our Shiraz, and we lost all the Merlot. We'd have liked to pick the Cabernet a week later but it wasn't green. We did leave about 10-15% of it on the ground. But it's right up there with the good years, albeit in a different style - quite Bordelais. It's lower in alcohol and will last relatively well as it has good acidity." Having tasted several old vintages of Majella back to 2002, it has to be one of Australia's best buys for value and quality. Just ask the IWC's judges - they adjudged the 2005 cabernet to be the best in the world in its category.

* Geoffrey Dean is in Australia covering the Australia vs South Africa test series for the Times, and visting the country's major wine regions for a series of reports for Harpers.co.uk as part of his second year of MW studies.

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