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rufusdawes · 7 years

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Grape Expectations

I’ve never really been much of a wine drinker. Growing up I would eschew my parents’ offerings of a Sunday glass with our weekly roast dinners in favour of a sparkling grape juice. Only recently have I been able to tell the difference between red and white, and that’s with my eyes open. Wine was always something other people did. In fact, by the time I was living on the Sunshine Coast, alcohol was something other people did. But then I moved to the Northern Territory. Here, in the spiritual home of VB, where their green cans litter every roadside stop and every bit of roadside in between, I reacquainted myself with the amber nectar. On the Barkly cattle stations, XXXX was my beer of choice. On trips south to the Alice, something more boutique, like a Coopers Pale. Upon returns to the coast, I’d partake in beers made by men that spend too long grooming their beards and call their creations names like ‘Sad Dog IPA’ or ‘Duke of Gloucester’ or some other such nonsense.

Once I’d made the permanent move to Alice Springs and more specifically, as I started having regular meals chez Aaron and Kate, I made the move onto wine. And not just any wine. Good wine.

Naturally, I started off knowing it was good because it cost more than Yellowtail, but in time I came to know it was good because it tasted better than Yellowtail. I think I was developing a palate but without knowing what that meant. It mirrored our steak evenings (https://rufusdawes.tumblr.com/post/157518431764/fillet-oafish) in that now, it has been impossible to match our home scotch standards in any restaurant we have since attended. And so with the wine. On ordering at our local watering hole I can taste the relative inferior aspects of their offerings. Though to be fair, during our winter months, I’m not downing pub bought vino for its quality.

A year into weekly steak nights and my meat and wine standards have risen. Aaron has slowly been pulling a ‘My Fair Lady’ on me. I think he stands to win a wager if he can pass me off as an oenophile during our trip to the Barossa. Which brings me on to our trip to the Barossa.

In early December, the Alice Springs Steak Lovers of Aaron, Jurgen and myself along with Kate and Jo, though sadly missing Dave and Maddy, had two nights at Tanunda in the heart of the Barossa Valley an hour or so north of Adelaide. From here we would have the opportunity to tour a smattering of the myriad wineries on offer. Prior to Jurgen and Jo’s arrival the rest of us snuck in a few early tastings at Rockford, Turkey Flat and at Artisan where I was first introduced to the word ‘tannins’ in a wine context and encouraged to use descriptors such as smoky. Also, on how to swirl a glass so that it looks like you know what you’re doing before sniffing, swirling some more, supping, sniffing, swirling, supping, and then discarding the remains nonchalantly, rather than openly weeping as the most expensive wine you’ve ever tasted gets tipped into a spittoon. I even started holding the wine up to the light to confirm that it was indeed red or looking at the legs as they glided down the inside of the glass and confirming to myself that, yep, this wine has legs. My education had begun.

However, this was only the entrée to what was to follow for our one full day in the valley. On Wednesday morning, at 10am on the dot, a black 1962 Daimler Majestic Major Limousine pulled into the gravel driveway of our accommodation. An hirsute and impressively moustachioed gentleman, in his early 50s stepped out to introduce himself as John, our guide and educator for the day. He acquainted himself with the five of us and discussed each of our wine tastes. I could confirm that I did indeed like wine and would like to taste some. Essentially, Jurgen, Jo and I tried to defer to Aaron and Kate for whom this was not their first trip in John’s Daimler.

To start us off was a trip to Tscharke and things were already looking up. Set in a German timbered style cottage amongst some of their productive vines, they were selling one particularly quaffable Shiraz (a three vineyard Shiraz called ‘Shiraz, Shiraz, Shiraz’) at just $10 a bottle, which even fell within my budget.

On to Greenock Creek where we were introduced to our first ‘Mum and Dad’ winery. A phrase that John used regularly to describe the small, family owned and operated establishments that are numerous throughout the region. Unlike the large winemakers such as Jacob’s Creek, which are running industrial scale productions and cater accordingly, the family run ones offer a more intimate setting and connection to their products.

Langmeil was our final stop of the morning, home to what are thought to be the oldest Shiraz vines in the world. Planted in 1843 by Langmeil’s German migrant founder Christian Auricht, they have earned the reputation as the oldest following the Great French Wine Blight of the mid 1800s which laid waste to the French wine industry. As such many Australian vines, especially of the Shiraz variety, are now among the oldest producing vines in the World.

A morning of three cellar door visits meant the lunchtime feast was eagerly anticipated and hoovered down. Naturally, the four meat eaters at the table chose the steak but of course, it could not fulfil the lofty standards of the Alice Springs Steak Lovers. As we dined however, John was making a couple of phone calls to set up our afternoon. We were to be in for an absolute treat.

After a quick stop at a cheesemakers which served as dessert to our two course luncheon, we were off to Cimicky Wines. Owned by husband and wife Charles and Jennie Cimicky, it was John’s personal connection to the family that got us in through the door. We were greeted by Jennie before Charles offered to take us on a tour of the production. This included a visit to a couple of barrels soon to have their contents bottled. Charles’ generosity knew no bounds as he poured us each a taster somewhere in the region of a couple of hundred millilitres. This was before we went back to the main tasting area where again, each glass was bordering on a regular serving. Charles was an incredibly unassuming fellow, modest, generous and open and it was to my misfortune that I declined a visit to the Cimicky cellars to try a port that has been aging for 25 years and never bottled, due to the time restraints that we were readily accruing thanks to Charles’ existing hospitality. Aaron’s incredulity at such a refusal will never be matched.

Fortunately, the day was still only to get better despite being on an upward curve ever since waking, since we left Charles and Jennie to meet with Dave Powell.

Dave and his General Manager, Paul, met us outside a pub where they’d been watching Australia polish off England in the Adelaide Test match. A few rum and cokes to the good and watching an Aussie victory had them both in good spirits. Piling into their Toyota Hiluxes we drove the couple of kilometres down a dirt track too dirty for a 1962 limousine and into the hub of Powell & Son wines. Here Dave regaled us with the story of his youth, his marriages, his success in founding Torbreck wines, his anger at being pushed out of Torbreck wines by his American billionaire partner, the money earned, the money lost, and his success at starting again in a more boutique operation with his son Callum.

As he told his stories, he would stop to introduce us to one of his wines and tell us a bit about its history. Like Charles, he would pour generously and all wines were opened for our benefit. Moving from the Riesling through the GSM and into the Shirazes, we were getting into the bigger and bolder wines. The cost of each was rising too and as a $125 bottle of 2015 Loechel Eden Valley Shiraz was opened, I hoped that my wine naivety would not be overtly evident. It was at this point that I made the decision not to be pouring away a single drop of anything that was offered, especially since I noticed that a bottle of the Powell & Son flagship Steinert Flaxman’s Valley Shiraz was sitting at the end of the table.

Sure enough, with corkscrew in hand, Dave reached over and opened up this $750 a bottle wine. Again, a large glass was poured and I was thankful that I’d spent a day and a half learning what I liked in a wine and how to appreciate a good one. I’m delighted that this was the best yet.

Asking if we’d yet made dinner plans, Dave suggested FermentAsian back in Tanunda. He made a call, secured us an 8pm booking and then offered us the opened bottles of the Steinert Flaxman and the Grenache to take with us, and we left with a third after Jurgen asked if we could also take his favourite, the Loechel Eden.

Sitting in the office, I don’t think any of us had any idea just how revered Dave Powell is in the industry. To finish with a quick tour, see the wine barrelled and ready to be shipped to Tetsuya’s in Sydney (one of the finest restaurants in the world) and then talk vine management and maintenance on the way back to the limo with one of the great winemakers of his generation was the icing on the cake of a day already with more icing than a Swedish hockey festival.

John dropped us back in Tanunda an hour and half later than scheduled, such was our overrun. We headed off to FermentAsian for our degustation where we were met by the house sommelier whose opening words were ‘so, I hear you were with Dave earlier’. It’s fair to say that they looked after us after that.

As a newbie to wine and looking back on this day, I found it wise to heed the words the American satirist P.J. O’Rourke attributes to his co-drinker, Christopher Buckley; “You know this trick about wine tasting? If you’re at a loss, describe someone who’s in the room”. https://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/1999/1030/112.html As far as the Steinert Flaxman’s goes though, if I should ever meet the person in the room who I can describe to do that justice, I might just have met the love of my life.

Enjoying the hospitality of Dave Powell; Entity, Riesling, the author, Sparkling & Tawny.

#wine #barossa

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