The wonderful wines of Clonakilla in Canberra
A visit to the Kirk family in Canberra who make the legendary wines of Clonakilla and the most iconic and original Australian Shiraz/Viognier blend
A visit to the Kirk family in Canberra who make the legendary wines of Clonakilla and the most iconic and original Australian Shiraz/Viognier blend Today is a killer. Up at 4am – late, incidentally as I had not finished packing – and onto the bus for 4:30am to make a 6am flight. I had 15 minutes from opening my eyes to having to board the bus, so my hair was soaking wet, no make up applied and I may have been standing upright and lugging a suitcase about, but I was in no way fully awake. This is not a promising start.
We flew from Adelaide to Melbourne, got off the plane, boarded another and then flew to Canberra. This is not a sequence of events which makes a sleep deprived, unmade up person feel any better about the day.
Canberra – from the 5 minute glance I had from the bus window - is a very neat, orderly place where (almost certainly) absolutely nothing of great interest every happens. We drove through it in record time and were soon on the road again, on our way to Murrambateman. I very much wanted to keep my eyes wide open on the drive, carefully noting the scenery but I had work to do firstly, and secondly kept dozing off, so I am afraid that to all intents and purposes, I was magically transported from the airport, straight to Clonakilla and can tell you nothing about how the terrain looked.
The region of Canberra is still very small and is pretty much exclusively a place of very boutique wineries. While there are temperature variations in the various micro-climates here, the climate on the whole is Continental and cooler than many regions we have seen. Indeed, in some vintages, some varieties struggle to ripen which is not the case is most of Australia. Soils range from shale and clay loam to free draining, sandy and granite based. Rainfall is generally in Spring time and the climate is extremely dry.
I woke fully just as we drove up the to the Clonakilla winery – another low, modest tin roofed building. Something about this place reminds me of the American mid-West – the crisp bite to the dry air (although the sunshine was beautifully warm), a feeling of being really and truly in a very small, remote town. I have not encountered that anywhere else on a this trip yet – rustic, yes but that is not exactly the same thing.
Clonakilla today is run by wine maker Tim Kirk, who’s father John built it by hand in the 1970’s. John Kirk is Irish born, to parents who owned hotels and had the foresight to put their son, when he turned 14, in charge of the wine cellar. This was the beginning of a life long passion and when he emigrated to Canberra to work as a research scientist for the government in the late 60’s, he could not understand why there was not more of a wine industry around the city. So he did what any self respecting wine lover would do in these circumstances – he purchased this block of land and planted vines. There was nothing at all here so everything he learnt, he learnt from scratch and he certainly encountered all the hardships – frost, drought. In this disastrous year for Australia, the Kirks have lost 95% of their fruit to frost – a terrible blow but one which they are taking on the chin. The fruit quality is fantastic, so they have not lost everything, but the quantities will be minute. The reputation Clonakilla has across the world will hopefully help to soften that blow although sadly for those who love the wines, it will almost certainly mean hefty price increases, I would imagine.
John persevered as a weekend grape grower and wine maker despite the hardships, his longer term ambition always being to make wine to sell to others. Everything then was very traditional and very hand made. He was ambitious in his plans for growth but a very limiting factor here is water – it is naturally a very dry climate which has huge impact on vintages and there is a high evaporation rate which considerably worsens the problem. A bore was sunk in 1978 which allowed for some small expansion.
Tim Kirk became involved in late 80’s, early 90’s. Wine was always on the table and always offered when he was a child but he decided that he did not like it until he moved away from home aged 18 and found, suddenly and miraculously, that he actually liked it very much indeed and that he was quite a good taster. At that point it became a real passion and for the first time, he started to get more involved on the family farm. At the time, he was training in theology and he subsequently became a RE teacher in a Jesuit school in Melbourne. During the extensive school holidays though, he would come up here to work with his father on the wine making.
His seminal moment came in 1991 when holidayed in the Rhone valley with his wife and they were invited to visit Guigal, who’s wines he already loved. He visited the vineyards and winery and tasted extensively, including out of barrel and in a relative flash, everything changed. He had never tasted wines of such beauty, dignity, power and finesse – indeed, he did not realise that such wines could exist. He was sure of one thing though – if he ever had the opportunity to produce wines which came close to those than he would be a very happy man.
At around the same time, one of his younger brothers told his dad that the family business had to find a point of difference, re-invent themselves slightly in order to keep up with a rapidly changing, increasingly competitive market. John did some research and discovered Viognier which he then sourced and planted it 21 years ago. It took forever – it is a slow variety to establish – but true to form, he persevered. There was no crop at all from this for 6 years but that year coincided with Tim’s return from the Rhone and he persuaded his father to use this fruit in a Shiraz/Viognier blend. The initial Viognier proportion – only 1% in 1991 then increasing year on year until 1995 when they used 10%. They then decided that lovely as it was, it really was a bit too much and since then, have used 5 – 9% usually.
Clonakilla became the Cote Rotie of Australia and is regarded as the iconic example of this in the country. Miracullously, the character of Shiraz here is not chocolate, plum, blackberry but more savoury spice and then a cool climate violet character but the blend works best when Viognier is a subliminal influence and does not over-ride. This blend has now become an phenomenon and there are many bad examples about, particularly in warmer climates.
Tim finished teaching completely in 1996 and took over as winemaker completely in 1997.
We started in the tasting room with two wines not currently exported into the Uk as they are made in such tiny quantities.
2006 Sem/Sav – 60% Sem
Very closed on the nose. High but balanced acidity, some honeyed melon fruit with a crisp grapefruit edge. Fine but really nothing special although the length is very good and the finish is pleasantly, delicately honeyed.
2006 Riesling
Very good conditions for Riesling here – huge temperature extremes and slightly cooler than even Eden Valley – which is cooler than Clare.
Delicate melon nose. Very high acidity with piercing grapefruit and lime, balanced by smoky honey. Light, supple body with great length and very smoky finish.
Very light and fresh – this is still too young but should age absolutely beautifully and even in just a year or two, should be quite a pleasure to drink.
This year, they have had to get some fruit from the Hilltops district because of the frost disaster. Fruit is sourced from other vineyards in Canberra district fairly regularly and Tim is planning to make a completely different label with this fruit as demand so far exceeds supply for the Clonakilla range.
2005 Ballindery
Only 250 cases of this is made with fruit from the original1971 vines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Not getting much on the nose today – is that just complete exhaustion? Balanced high acidity, structured but velvet tannins, medium body, earthy black and and red fruit with liquorices and black coffee. There is a lovely earthy character to this which I find much more in South African reds than in those from Australia and which I like very much, it adds a lot of complexity. There is also real freshness to these wines which is like manna from heaven after the gloop from yesterday.
After tasting these, Tim took us on a tour of the small winery and various barrel cellars. This was another one of the calm, quiet wineries (in the Grosset and Mount Horrocks mode) Although they were in the middle of fermentation (usually an amazingly noisy time of year), the atmosphere was serene and everything seemed neat and orderly – no people cluttering about with pipes and pumps and plungers etc. A long table was set for lunch right in the middle of the winery and Tim explained that this assistant winemaker, who was also apparently an amazingly talented chef, would be cooking for us.
We had a quick poke at the cap on a small vat of Shiraz/Viognier. The smell was absolutely incredibly – rich and alive and amazingly fragrant spice, dried fruit, peach, red and blue fruit – much more intense than the cap the day before at Willunga and S.C.Pannell. The Shiraz and VIognier are always fermented together here – as is the way in the Rhone – as there is much better integration thqt way. The proportion of Viognier will vary from year to year depending both on what Tim feels is appropriate given the fruit character of the vintage but also dependant on practical considerations like how much is ripe at the required time.
About a third of the shiraz is whole bunch fermented, with the balance being destemmed. Because of this, there is some carbonic maceration which gives some lifted aromas.
(For those of you who have not done School of Wine :- a red wine maker can either leave his bunches of red grapes intact, if he wants more tannin and usually a slightly longer, cooler ferment; or he can ‘destem’ – rip the berries off the bunch before fermentation, which gives a softer, richer wine. If they choose to leave some or all bunches intact, there is naturally occurring carbonic maceration. This is when an anaerobic fermentation starts inside the grape berry and sugar begins to be converted to alcohol. There is much less tannin extraction, as you can imagine – and sometimes the flavours are consequently lighter and more aromatic. It is very rare these days that a whole ferment will be done this way – it used to be widely practised in Beaujolais – but most red wine fermentations that have some whole bunches will have a small percentage of grapes which undergo this.
We then moved into a new shed which is the barrel room for Viognier and the Ballindery. Tim was very proud of this shed, which he informed us was very Australian phenomenon (this inordinate pride in ones shed) but to my untrained eye it merely looked like a large warehouse which was rather cold inside.
Only French oak is used here, from a variety of coopers with 35 – 40% being new in any given vintage.
We started out with a tasting of the various components of the 06 Viognier. All vineyard blocks are kept completely separate, half of the fruit being destemmed and half whole bunch pressed. (White wines work almost the opposite to reds as far as the whole bunch/destemmed question goes. Destemming before pressing means more skin contact, so less delicate flavour and texture. If bunches are kept whole and pressed as gently as possible, there is more delicacy and elegance in the wine). All of this wine is barrel fermented and only natural yeast is used.
The 98 block is very smoky with excellent acidity and a hint of grapefruit flavour but no overt honeyed, spicy notes at the moment. This was completely destemmed.
We then tasted the same block, but fruit which has been whole bunch pressed and the difference was astounding. This was much more aromatic and floral, with a silky, spicy body.
The Old Vine Block was completely the opposite – the destemmed barrel had much more intense fresh peach and honey flavour while the whole bunch was courser with a shorter length.
Finally, the TL vineyards (this belongs to Tim and his wife) which is plated to a clone from Chateau Grillet, had the most perfumed aroma of any of them with rich honey and toffee character in the destemmed and a lot less perfume but much more texture on the whole bunch.
Tim believes that as the TL vineyard matures, this will become their best fruit for the straight Viognier and I think he is right.
W then proceeded to the barrel cellar for the Hilltop Shiraz – their ‘second label’ made from fruit from the Hilltop sub-region which is not blended with Viognier. There are four different vineyards which they make use of in the Hilltops area, which is slightly warmer than their own vineyards in Marrumbateman. There was a range of styles and flavours in the 4 we tasted – rich black fruit with lots of black pepper in one, finer floral, spicy flavours and structured tannins in another; very smoky with good mid palate weight in a third and finally very dense and closed and ever so slightly reductive on a fourth.
The final frontier was the barrel room with the Shiraz/Viogner. This is where, according to Tim, we left Australia and went to the Rhone. These wines are unfined and it was quite amazing how very elegant and sleek they already were. There was more finesse in these than many producers manage to achieve in bottle, after fining. The final barrel we tasted was pure smoky bacon and black pepper and Tim told us afterwards that this had no Viognier in it – an interesting look at what Shiraz on its own does here.
After these, I was rather thankful to leave the cellars – which had been rather chilly to head back into the warm sunshine. John Kirk joined us for the lunch, served by one of Tim’s daughters (aged 11) and one of her friends.
We started with very good oysters again which were served with 03 and 05 Clonakilla Viognier. The 05 was wonderfully silky with peach, honey and floral notes ,mid palate and a smoky finish. This went surprisingly well with the oysters, with were small and sweet.
I was no as keen on the 03. It had grown meatier and richer in bottle, to the extent that I found it, while still perfectly balanced, just a touch too big for my liking. The youthful aromatics that I love about Viognier had also faded somewhat.
We then moved onto different vintages of Hilltop, starting with the 06. This was lovely – sweet red and black fruit with smoke and spice aromas – rich, but very well balanced by the acidity and structured but fine tannins.
The 05 Hilltop was much meatier and gamier and the tannins were a touch more integrated on the palate. This had greater development on the palate with rich liquorices and black coffee flavours coming out more towards the back.
05 and 06 were apparently both good vintages and these are both lovely wines with at least medium term ageing potential.
This was followed with a vertical of the Shiraz/Viognier – a wine to really loose your heart over when it is good.
2005 Shiraz/Viognier
Smoke, black fruit, sweet spice and dried peach aromatics with high but balanced acidity, very fine tannins and more dark coffee and spice further black with a peppery finish. Still very young but already good.
Highly recommended
£35.00
2003 Shiraz/Viognier
Lighter, much more floral aromatics than on the 06, with a slightly lighter body as well but on the palate, the florals fade somewhat and are replaced with a more savoury spice. The tannins are incredibly fine but very structured and more angular than on the 05. This still has lots of life in it and I am sure will develop into one of those amazingly lean but beautifully elegant older wines.
Recommended
2001 Shiraz/Viognier – from Magnum
Absolutely amazing nose – black olives, game, peach and underlying this, still incredibly fresh black fruit. The acidity is still very fresh and the tannins, as always, incredibly fine. The aromas on the nose carry though to the palate with more spice and fresh and dried fruit and a very subtle white pepper spice towards the back.
Highly recommended
1998 Shiraz/Viognier
Animal, game, peach, mineral, smoke and spice on the nose. The acidity is still very fresh but the tannins have softened considerably. Game, spice and red and black fruit on the palate. This is holding up well and is still good to drink but lacks the verve and intensity of the 2001 which was a very special vintage indeed.
We finished lunch with a Muscat that is only sold at the cellar door. Made in a solera, it was a thing of great beauty. So beautiful that, quite overcome, I managed to throw half of the glass all over myself.
Actually, perhaps that was the wine with lunch. I rarely drink at lunch, even on wine trips, limiting myself to a few bird-like sips for appearances sake. However, when the wines are this good, it is quite impossible not too. I was not exactly rolling in the isles but was definitely slightly less steady on my feet than I usually am at 3pm.
Father John remarked, as we were leaving, that is was really pure luck that they stumbled on this place which obviously has a very unique terroir, but that they had the nous to take develop and build on that luck.
I for one am amazingly pleased that the Kirks did stumble on this place and that they then went on to develop such an amazing wine. Most of the range is good but the Shiraz/Viognier is outstanding – rich but amazingly balanced, with not a single thing about it that is attention seeking or pumped up. A wine of integrity which is also a great pleasure to drink.
After lunch we again boarded the bus, in high spirits, for the long drive to the Hunter Valley. This was supposed to take 4 hours. In the end it took 7 and very nearly finished quite a few of us off, I think.
The mood was jovial enough for the first 3 hours or so. Francois invented the fruit game – the rules of which are so complicated, I could not begin to explain them, but it kept 4 of us amused for about half an hour.
Then the air conditioning broke down – and it was a very hot day. We stopped, in the intense heat, while various handy types worked on repairing it. They managed to do this but about 45 minutes after we started the journey again, there was a dreadful smell of burning rubber and that was that.
The bus was stupidly slow – we seemed to crawl along the roads with other coaches and huge lorries thundering past us and then the driver informed us that we were going to have to divert slightly so that he could pick up another bus in Sydney.
It got dark. Most people fell asleep in horribly unnatural positions and a chorus of snorts and snoring played like a symphony. It went on and on and on and on, interminably, and it was only at 10pm that we finally reached Brokenwood – stiff, starving, achingly tired and thoroughly sick of travelling.
After a quick bowl of soup, we again piled into the bus and were ferried to various local places to stay. Feelings were running high anyway and I think we came dangerously close to an explosion when it seemed, briefly, that two people were going to have to share a double bed, but thanks to a selfless offer to sleep on the sofa (thanks Tim Tweedy), tragedy was averted.
It has been a long time since I have longed for my bed quite as ardently but, stupidly overtired, it took a few hours to get to sleep, so I lay awake and listened to the sound of nocturnal Australian insects.
We flew from Adelaide to Melbourne, got off the plane, boarded another and then flew to Canberra. This is not a sequence of events which makes a sleep deprived, unmade up person feel any better about the day.
Canberra – from the 5 minute glance I had from the bus window - is a very neat, orderly place where (almost certainly) absolutely nothing of great interest every happens. We drove through it in record time and were soon on the road again, on our way to Murrambateman. I very much wanted to keep my eyes wide open on the drive, carefully noting the scenery but I had work to do firstly, and secondly kept dozing off, so I am afraid that to all intents and purposes, I was magically transported from the airport, straight to Clonakilla and can tell you nothing about how the terrain looked.
The region of Canberra is still very small and is pretty much exclusively a place of very boutique wineries. While there are temperature variations in the various micro-climates here, the climate on the whole is Continental and cooler than many regions we have seen. Indeed, in some vintages, some varieties struggle to ripen which is not the case is most of Australia. Soils range from shale and clay loam to free draining, sandy and granite based. Rainfall is generally in Spring time and the climate is extremely dry.
I woke fully just as we drove up the to the Clonakilla winery – another low, modest tin roofed building. Something about this place reminds me of the American mid-West – the crisp bite to the dry air (although the sunshine was beautifully warm), a feeling of being really and truly in a very small, remote town. I have not encountered that anywhere else on a this trip yet – rustic, yes but that is not exactly the same thing.
Clonakilla today is run by wine maker Tim Kirk, who’s father John built it by hand in the 1970’s. John Kirk is Irish born, to parents who owned hotels and had the foresight to put their son, when he turned 14, in charge of the wine cellar. This was the beginning of a life long passion and when he emigrated to Canberra to work as a research scientist for the government in the late 60’s, he could not understand why there was not more of a wine industry around the city. So he did what any self respecting wine lover would do in these circumstances – he purchased this block of land and planted vines. There was nothing at all here so everything he learnt, he learnt from scratch and he certainly encountered all the hardships – frost, drought. In this disastrous year for Australia, the Kirks have lost 95% of their fruit to frost – a terrible blow but one which they are taking on the chin. The fruit quality is fantastic, so they have not lost everything, but the quantities will be minute. The reputation Clonakilla has across the world will hopefully help to soften that blow although sadly for those who love the wines, it will almost certainly mean hefty price increases, I would imagine.
John persevered as a weekend grape grower and wine maker despite the hardships, his longer term ambition always being to make wine to sell to others. Everything then was very traditional and very hand made. He was ambitious in his plans for growth but a very limiting factor here is water – it is naturally a very dry climate which has huge impact on vintages and there is a high evaporation rate which considerably worsens the problem. A bore was sunk in 1978 which allowed for some small expansion.
Tim Kirk became involved in late 80’s, early 90’s. Wine was always on the table and always offered when he was a child but he decided that he did not like it until he moved away from home aged 18 and found, suddenly and miraculously, that he actually liked it very much indeed and that he was quite a good taster. At that point it became a real passion and for the first time, he started to get more involved on the family farm. At the time, he was training in theology and he subsequently became a RE teacher in a Jesuit school in Melbourne. During the extensive school holidays though, he would come up here to work with his father on the wine making.
His seminal moment came in 1991 when holidayed in the Rhone valley with his wife and they were invited to visit Guigal, who’s wines he already loved. He visited the vineyards and winery and tasted extensively, including out of barrel and in a relative flash, everything changed. He had never tasted wines of such beauty, dignity, power and finesse – indeed, he did not realise that such wines could exist. He was sure of one thing though – if he ever had the opportunity to produce wines which came close to those than he would be a very happy man.
At around the same time, one of his younger brothers told his dad that the family business had to find a point of difference, re-invent themselves slightly in order to keep up with a rapidly changing, increasingly competitive market. John did some research and discovered Viognier which he then sourced and planted it 21 years ago. It took forever – it is a slow variety to establish – but true to form, he persevered. There was no crop at all from this for 6 years but that year coincided with Tim’s return from the Rhone and he persuaded his father to use this fruit in a Shiraz/Viognier blend. The initial Viognier proportion – only 1% in 1991 then increasing year on year until 1995 when they used 10%. They then decided that lovely as it was, it really was a bit too much and since then, have used 5 – 9% usually.
Clonakilla became the Cote Rotie of Australia and is regarded as the iconic example of this in the country. Miracullously, the character of Shiraz here is not chocolate, plum, blackberry but more savoury spice and then a cool climate violet character but the blend works best when Viognier is a subliminal influence and does not over-ride. This blend has now become an phenomenon and there are many bad examples about, particularly in warmer climates.
Tim finished teaching completely in 1996 and took over as winemaker completely in 1997.
We started in the tasting room with two wines not currently exported into the Uk as they are made in such tiny quantities.
2006 Sem/Sav – 60% Sem
Very closed on the nose. High but balanced acidity, some honeyed melon fruit with a crisp grapefruit edge. Fine but really nothing special although the length is very good and the finish is pleasantly, delicately honeyed.
2006 Riesling
Very good conditions for Riesling here – huge temperature extremes and slightly cooler than even Eden Valley – which is cooler than Clare.
Delicate melon nose. Very high acidity with piercing grapefruit and lime, balanced by smoky honey. Light, supple body with great length and very smoky finish.
Very light and fresh – this is still too young but should age absolutely beautifully and even in just a year or two, should be quite a pleasure to drink.
This year, they have had to get some fruit from the Hilltops district because of the frost disaster. Fruit is sourced from other vineyards in Canberra district fairly regularly and Tim is planning to make a completely different label with this fruit as demand so far exceeds supply for the Clonakilla range.
2005 Ballindery
Only 250 cases of this is made with fruit from the original1971 vines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Not getting much on the nose today – is that just complete exhaustion? Balanced high acidity, structured but velvet tannins, medium body, earthy black and and red fruit with liquorices and black coffee. There is a lovely earthy character to this which I find much more in South African reds than in those from Australia and which I like very much, it adds a lot of complexity. There is also real freshness to these wines which is like manna from heaven after the gloop from yesterday.
After tasting these, Tim took us on a tour of the small winery and various barrel cellars. This was another one of the calm, quiet wineries (in the Grosset and Mount Horrocks mode) Although they were in the middle of fermentation (usually an amazingly noisy time of year), the atmosphere was serene and everything seemed neat and orderly – no people cluttering about with pipes and pumps and plungers etc. A long table was set for lunch right in the middle of the winery and Tim explained that this assistant winemaker, who was also apparently an amazingly talented chef, would be cooking for us.
We had a quick poke at the cap on a small vat of Shiraz/Viognier. The smell was absolutely incredibly – rich and alive and amazingly fragrant spice, dried fruit, peach, red and blue fruit – much more intense than the cap the day before at Willunga and S.C.Pannell. The Shiraz and VIognier are always fermented together here – as is the way in the Rhone – as there is much better integration thqt way. The proportion of Viognier will vary from year to year depending both on what Tim feels is appropriate given the fruit character of the vintage but also dependant on practical considerations like how much is ripe at the required time.
About a third of the shiraz is whole bunch fermented, with the balance being destemmed. Because of this, there is some carbonic maceration which gives some lifted aromas.
(For those of you who have not done School of Wine :- a red wine maker can either leave his bunches of red grapes intact, if he wants more tannin and usually a slightly longer, cooler ferment; or he can ‘destem’ – rip the berries off the bunch before fermentation, which gives a softer, richer wine. If they choose to leave some or all bunches intact, there is naturally occurring carbonic maceration. This is when an anaerobic fermentation starts inside the grape berry and sugar begins to be converted to alcohol. There is much less tannin extraction, as you can imagine – and sometimes the flavours are consequently lighter and more aromatic. It is very rare these days that a whole ferment will be done this way – it used to be widely practised in Beaujolais – but most red wine fermentations that have some whole bunches will have a small percentage of grapes which undergo this.
We then moved into a new shed which is the barrel room for Viognier and the Ballindery. Tim was very proud of this shed, which he informed us was very Australian phenomenon (this inordinate pride in ones shed) but to my untrained eye it merely looked like a large warehouse which was rather cold inside.
Only French oak is used here, from a variety of coopers with 35 – 40% being new in any given vintage.
We started out with a tasting of the various components of the 06 Viognier. All vineyard blocks are kept completely separate, half of the fruit being destemmed and half whole bunch pressed. (White wines work almost the opposite to reds as far as the whole bunch/destemmed question goes. Destemming before pressing means more skin contact, so less delicate flavour and texture. If bunches are kept whole and pressed as gently as possible, there is more delicacy and elegance in the wine). All of this wine is barrel fermented and only natural yeast is used.
The 98 block is very smoky with excellent acidity and a hint of grapefruit flavour but no overt honeyed, spicy notes at the moment. This was completely destemmed.
We then tasted the same block, but fruit which has been whole bunch pressed and the difference was astounding. This was much more aromatic and floral, with a silky, spicy body.
The Old Vine Block was completely the opposite – the destemmed barrel had much more intense fresh peach and honey flavour while the whole bunch was courser with a shorter length.
Finally, the TL vineyards (this belongs to Tim and his wife) which is plated to a clone from Chateau Grillet, had the most perfumed aroma of any of them with rich honey and toffee character in the destemmed and a lot less perfume but much more texture on the whole bunch.
Tim believes that as the TL vineyard matures, this will become their best fruit for the straight Viognier and I think he is right.
W then proceeded to the barrel cellar for the Hilltop Shiraz – their ‘second label’ made from fruit from the Hilltop sub-region which is not blended with Viognier. There are four different vineyards which they make use of in the Hilltops area, which is slightly warmer than their own vineyards in Marrumbateman. There was a range of styles and flavours in the 4 we tasted – rich black fruit with lots of black pepper in one, finer floral, spicy flavours and structured tannins in another; very smoky with good mid palate weight in a third and finally very dense and closed and ever so slightly reductive on a fourth.
The final frontier was the barrel room with the Shiraz/Viogner. This is where, according to Tim, we left Australia and went to the Rhone. These wines are unfined and it was quite amazing how very elegant and sleek they already were. There was more finesse in these than many producers manage to achieve in bottle, after fining. The final barrel we tasted was pure smoky bacon and black pepper and Tim told us afterwards that this had no Viognier in it – an interesting look at what Shiraz on its own does here.
After these, I was rather thankful to leave the cellars – which had been rather chilly to head back into the warm sunshine. John Kirk joined us for the lunch, served by one of Tim’s daughters (aged 11) and one of her friends.
We started with very good oysters again which were served with 03 and 05 Clonakilla Viognier. The 05 was wonderfully silky with peach, honey and floral notes ,mid palate and a smoky finish. This went surprisingly well with the oysters, with were small and sweet.
I was no as keen on the 03. It had grown meatier and richer in bottle, to the extent that I found it, while still perfectly balanced, just a touch too big for my liking. The youthful aromatics that I love about Viognier had also faded somewhat.
We then moved onto different vintages of Hilltop, starting with the 06. This was lovely – sweet red and black fruit with smoke and spice aromas – rich, but very well balanced by the acidity and structured but fine tannins.
The 05 Hilltop was much meatier and gamier and the tannins were a touch more integrated on the palate. This had greater development on the palate with rich liquorices and black coffee flavours coming out more towards the back.
05 and 06 were apparently both good vintages and these are both lovely wines with at least medium term ageing potential.
This was followed with a vertical of the Shiraz/Viognier – a wine to really loose your heart over when it is good.
2005 Shiraz/Viognier
Smoke, black fruit, sweet spice and dried peach aromatics with high but balanced acidity, very fine tannins and more dark coffee and spice further black with a peppery finish. Still very young but already good.
Highly recommended
£35.00
2003 Shiraz/Viognier
Lighter, much more floral aromatics than on the 06, with a slightly lighter body as well but on the palate, the florals fade somewhat and are replaced with a more savoury spice. The tannins are incredibly fine but very structured and more angular than on the 05. This still has lots of life in it and I am sure will develop into one of those amazingly lean but beautifully elegant older wines.
Recommended
2001 Shiraz/Viognier – from Magnum
Absolutely amazing nose – black olives, game, peach and underlying this, still incredibly fresh black fruit. The acidity is still very fresh and the tannins, as always, incredibly fine. The aromas on the nose carry though to the palate with more spice and fresh and dried fruit and a very subtle white pepper spice towards the back.
Highly recommended
1998 Shiraz/Viognier
Animal, game, peach, mineral, smoke and spice on the nose. The acidity is still very fresh but the tannins have softened considerably. Game, spice and red and black fruit on the palate. This is holding up well and is still good to drink but lacks the verve and intensity of the 2001 which was a very special vintage indeed.
We finished lunch with a Muscat that is only sold at the cellar door. Made in a solera, it was a thing of great beauty. So beautiful that, quite overcome, I managed to throw half of the glass all over myself.
Actually, perhaps that was the wine with lunch. I rarely drink at lunch, even on wine trips, limiting myself to a few bird-like sips for appearances sake. However, when the wines are this good, it is quite impossible not too. I was not exactly rolling in the isles but was definitely slightly less steady on my feet than I usually am at 3pm.
Father John remarked, as we were leaving, that is was really pure luck that they stumbled on this place which obviously has a very unique terroir, but that they had the nous to take develop and build on that luck.
I for one am amazingly pleased that the Kirks did stumble on this place and that they then went on to develop such an amazing wine. Most of the range is good but the Shiraz/Viognier is outstanding – rich but amazingly balanced, with not a single thing about it that is attention seeking or pumped up. A wine of integrity which is also a great pleasure to drink.
After lunch we again boarded the bus, in high spirits, for the long drive to the Hunter Valley. This was supposed to take 4 hours. In the end it took 7 and very nearly finished quite a few of us off, I think.
The mood was jovial enough for the first 3 hours or so. Francois invented the fruit game – the rules of which are so complicated, I could not begin to explain them, but it kept 4 of us amused for about half an hour.
Then the air conditioning broke down – and it was a very hot day. We stopped, in the intense heat, while various handy types worked on repairing it. They managed to do this but about 45 minutes after we started the journey again, there was a dreadful smell of burning rubber and that was that.
The bus was stupidly slow – we seemed to crawl along the roads with other coaches and huge lorries thundering past us and then the driver informed us that we were going to have to divert slightly so that he could pick up another bus in Sydney.
It got dark. Most people fell asleep in horribly unnatural positions and a chorus of snorts and snoring played like a symphony. It went on and on and on and on, interminably, and it was only at 10pm that we finally reached Brokenwood – stiff, starving, achingly tired and thoroughly sick of travelling.
After a quick bowl of soup, we again piled into the bus and were ferried to various local places to stay. Feelings were running high anyway and I think we came dangerously close to an explosion when it seemed, briefly, that two people were going to have to share a double bed, but thanks to a selfless offer to sleep on the sofa (thanks Tim Tweedy), tragedy was averted.
It has been a long time since I have longed for my bed quite as ardently but, stupidly overtired, it took a few hours to get to sleep, so I lay awake and listened to the sound of nocturnal Australian insects.
