Decanter magazine Nov 2011 issue cover story is “New Elegant Australia”. To many, the image of Australian wines is that they are high in alcohol and extremely full bodied. This is true to wines from some wine regions such as Barossa Valley and MaLaren Vale. In addition, most of the high score Australian wines from Robert Parker are with this style. It is not surprising that many people would have this image about Australian wines.
However, recently there is a trend in Australia to produce more elegant and lower alcohol wines. Among different grapes produced in Australia, I’m particularly impressed with their Chardonnay. I have even started to collect some outstanding Chardonnay for cellaring and see how they evolve with age.
A few years ago, I have tried to think if the high alcohol is related to the climate of Australia and unavoidable. While this may be true to areas such as Barossa Valley, Australia is a very big country with widely different climate in different regions. For example, Tasmania is really a cool climate wine producing region. Some producers also have started to have vineyards higher in altitude in order to produce more elegant wines.
Furthermore, viticultural and winemaking method will also have significant influence on alcohol level. For example, after adopting biodynamic farming, the alcohol level of Cullen Diana Madeline has fallen from its previous 14% to 12.5% in the last two years. Biodynamic farming has helped grapes to ripen without having too high sugar level. Furthermore, many producers now prefer to pick grapes earlier than to wait for overripen grapes. This helps to preserve natural acidity in grape allowing more elegant wines to be produced.
This bottle of 2005 Domaine A Stoney Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is produced in the cool climate region of Tasmania. Frankly, this surprised me a bit. The most famous region for producing Cabernet Sauvignon is definitely Bordeaux. Even though Bordeaux is warmer than Tasmania, Cabernet Sauvignon still failed to ripen every year. Will Tasmania be too cool for Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen fully? Maybe because of this reason, I found this bottle has strong aromas of green bellpepper. Not sure if this is because of climate being too cool. This is unfortunately a flavour I don’t like. Still, the wine is quite complex with lots of different aromas such as blackcurrant, blackpepper, herbs, violet and vanilla. It is quite smooth in palate and really quite elegant. If I were to blind taste the wine, I may guess it is coming from Bordeaux! If you don’t mind the green bellpepper aroma, this is really a wine with good value for money at HK$218 a bottle.
Purchased from Watsons Wine Cellar (Special price: $218)