Aussies still rule with Boutique Wines
The formula blew the Old World out of the water when Australian winemakers arrived on the scene in the early 1980s. But just as they ambushed the Old World wine industry, Australia is now being sniped at by Chile, Argentina and beyond.
Emerging countries like India and China are within five years of becoming reputable wine producers, a move that will cause financial worries for all other NewWorld producers. However, Australia has hit on another formula - boutique wineries - which are becoming an important growth area for its bruised wine industry.
With many Irish ex pats involved in this emerging wine scene, Ireland is playing its part in Australia's swing towards quality and a return to its wine crafting roots.
One wine in particular, Legend, a hot shiraz and a cool chardonnay, has a more direct connection with Ireland.
The cool, temperate climate of Enfield, Co Meath, is now a midwife to Legend Shiraz 2004 and Legend Chardonnay 2004, as it is being bottled in the lush Enfield hinterland.
The bottling process was set up for Australian boutique wine importer, APW, on the recommendation of Irishman Martin Moran. Moran sourced and blended wines across theNewWorld for Gilbeys, the wine wing of Diageo/Guinness UDV, and now heads the European sales office of APW. Australian winemaker Chris Pfeiffer came to Ireland to oversee the bottling process in Enfield. As the following sampling shows, his long flight was worth it:
The Legend Shiraz 2003 (88), around €10, available in good wine shops and inO'Donovan's off-licences This luscious, sweet fruited and supple wine veers towards strawberry and black pepper tones, rather than an inky concentrate. It should be ideal with food and was developed with the local Australian bistro market in mind.
The Legend Chardonnay 2004 (89), around €10, is a very clean, crisp and modern chardonnay that exhibits bright ripe fruit wrapped in a wonderfully balanced wash.
Selling at €10 each, these are wines of ambition and focus at a price that large branded Australian wines cannot match in the price quality ratio. The wine for Legend makes its way to Ireland in a high-tech container, before being poured into steel tanks in the Celtic Brewery Bottling plant, where it is inspected and bottled. The move marks a return to past methods of wine transportation. Up until the 1920s no one anyone would have batted an eyelid in Dublin, Cork or Drogheda docks at the sight of barrels of French, Portuguese, Italian and Germanwines being unloaded and shipped off to bonded warehouses across Ireland.
Rich wine consumers those residing in the Big House would have had a hogshead, which is a Bordeaux barrel size, delivered to their own cellar.The wine would be drawn, tap-like, into decanters for service to the household.
Larger merchants, such as Findlater and Mitchell & Son, would have bottled and labelled their own wines. Indeed, before its amalgamation with C&C, the Findlater Museum in Harcourt Street, Dublin had labels of Lafite that were marked as Findlater bottled. Pictures of these labels can be seen in Alex Findlater's excellent book, Findlaters: The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family 1774-2001. One impact of bottling in the country of consumption was that it slowed down the maturation process. The larger the container that wine isput into,the lower the percentage of the wine that is in contact with any air that might be present.Thus, smaller bottles will mature or go off more quickly than large format bottles, and wine in a barrel will outlast wine in a bottle.
There was competition among the importing wine merchants for the best bottling of any particular wines. For example, the Findlater bottling of Lafite might claim to be better than bottlings in Glasgow or Bristol. Certainly Berry Brothers & Rudd claimed to have the best Bordeaux bottlings in Britain.This was achieved by having longer, better quality corks, cleaner bottling rooms and better quality bottles. However, it was this variety of conditions in which barrelswere held and bottling took place that made Baron Philip de Rothschild break ranks in the 1920s and bottle every drop of MoutonRothschild on site,under his supervision. Pretty soon everyone else followed suit. Berry Brothers & Rudd continued bottling until the mid 1970s, but the tradition faded quickly in Ireland until the Enfield arrival. A further Irish link toAustralian wine is a former deputy premier of Victoria and the owner of Burramurra Wines, Patrick McNamara.