Tasmania: Postscript #2

Tasmania: Postscript

The rest of my Tasmanian journal arrived today, looking like Chinskirin's dog tried to eat it. I was able to recover these few fragments...


Newly arrived and have just had a taste of the Kreglinger Vintage Brut, 2003. Why am I going on a big search for sparkling wine? This is fantastic!

... local pinot noir is much touted, but not all that good. I'm hopeful to find exceptions...

The real destination for our quest should rightly be Stefano Lubiana Wines. I have it from several sources that these wines are hand-crafted and brilliant. But we received sad news this morning. Winemaker Steve Lubiana suffered the loss of a close family member and our visit must be rescheduled...

No real emphasis on a) keeping track of own-rooted vineyards; b) keeping phylloxera out of Tasmania (where it apparently does not presently exist). What's wrong with these people?

... enormous potential for wine here in Tasmania, but there seems to be too little focus on viticulture (sustainable, organic, etc). And the hobbyists seem to outnumber the professionals, for the moment...


(notebook: © Loraliu | Dreamstime.com)

Kurtz's Bubbles

Sorry to keep you waiting.

Chinskirin is recovering comfortably in hospital. The doctors assure us there is little permanent damage.

We have reached for and grasped our sparkling grail. All that's left is to determine whether it is worthy of the journey.

Moorilla's owner may be circumspect about his art purchases and reluctant to discuss his casino winnings, but he is enormously forthcoming with technical notes on his wines (thanks Danny).

I jotted down a few which I reprint from my notebook in toto:

Moorilla 2004 Muse Sparkling Brut.

The fruit is from two vineyards, the St. Matthias (West Bank, Tamar River) and another in Winkleigh. Both sites are low yielding.

St. Matthias Vineyard fruit was all hand-picked on March 19, 2004.

Winkleigh Pinot noir was hand-picked on March 27, 2004 and the Chardonnay was hand-picked on the 30th.

Blend: 64% Pinot noir, 36% Chardonnay.

Fruit was whole-bunch pressed. Cool ferment in stainless steel tanks. Fine lees for six months except 32% which was held in oak barriques for maturation. No malo. Secondary fermentation in bottle. Disgorged in October, 2008. Total time on lees: 4 years, 5 months.

On the nose, the Brut has distinctive autolytics that I'm beginning to associate with the region, grape must and brioche. The fruit is bright and fresh, lemon and its zest. There is a faint mineral undertone throughout that emerges like cool granite on the finish. This is very elegant, very interesting and very, very young.

I have laid several down in Chinskirin's cellar. I think this, like Tasmanian wine in general, has huge potential.

And the Brut Rosé was even better!

Heart of Weirdness

April, I'll tell you when it's May.

As we moved further into the remote, upper reaches of the river, even the birds seemed to taunt us with the name.

Moorilla.

A great sparkling wine. Or just the hallucinatory dream of one. We'd been on the river too long to know the difference. Chinskirin hadn't spoken for days. He just sat on the bow of the boat, mumbling to himself.

Until he sat up pointing, face flushed, eyes wide and wild. I followed his point. There it was. We had made it.

Moorilla.

The site of one of Tasmania's oldest (modern) vineyards, planted in 1958, by an Italian textile merchant, it is now owned by David Walsh. If ever you dreamed of your own private Kurtz, the dream would be of David Walsh.

Walsh is enigmatic and outrageous. His extensive wealth was amassed through gambling schemes that left him banned from casinos all over the globe. He's building a museum for his collection of radical and controversial art. He makes his own beer. His winemaker, Conor van der Reest, is converting the vineyards to organics and bio-dynamics. I'm just waiting for him to shave his head and stack on 20 kilos.

But what of our quest?

We are so close. But Chinskirin has stripped nude and is dancing through the vines. Notes up as soon as he is recaptured and sedated.

Up Another Creek

All of this happened in April.

We left the Tamar Valley (catch up on our voyage here) and headed south, further south in fact than I have ever been. Any further south and I'm a penguin.

Though we were still searching for the perfect Tassie sparkler, I couldn't shake the taste of the Riesling we'd had at Goaty Hill.

Maybe it was an early sign of the fever, or maybe I was just feeling greedy, but I made Chinskirin stop at more than one cellar door along the way. I couldn't help myself from wondering, what if all the Rieslings here are that good?

Turns out they aren't.

But we did find one other gem. Winemaker Kate Hill, who has worked at Stefano Lubiana Wines and Riverina Winery, has recently launched her own label. Working with fruit sourced from several vineyards around Tasmania.

Her first Riesling vintage (2008) is, as the locals say, a fair dinkum beauty. The nose is lemon verbena, lime pith and Oolong tea. It's slightly off-dry, with a nice balance between sweet (passion fruit) and acid (tangerine). There's pear and glycerin mid-palate, and a flinty, mineral finish.

I would love to see what Kate might do with a single-vineyard. I made vague efforts to argue the point, but the whispers were growing louder, the rumors emerging as truth. Chinskirin was anxious to keep moving. Our quest now had a name.

Moorilla.

A Surprise Along the Way

April Again.

Never sure what might lie around each bend, we made our way deeper into the lush country. And after a long day along the river, Chinskirin convinced me to stop, I suspect, hoping I would come to my senses and turn back.

Instead -- oh, happy accident -- we found ourselves at the foot of the vineyards at Goaty Hill. So I pulled a reluctant Chinskirin along to see what was on offer. And -- oh, happy accident redux -- they had just opened a bottle of the 2006 Goaty Hill Riesling.

It had a brilliant goût de pétrole on the nose, with bright lime and grapefruit acidity, a dense and honeyed glycerin quality and sweet granitic finish. Perhaps my senses had been weakened by the miles, but I thought it was outstanding.

We also tasted the current release, the 2008. It was less Spätlesen in character, and more in line with the bright, fresh Rieslings I associate with the region. And also very good.

I asked how long they'd been making such charming Rieslings this far from the Mosel, and the fellow told me I was drinking their introductory effort. I noted it was an impressive first try, and he proudly admitted they'd had some help. An up and coming talent, Fran Austin, who makes wines (but not the Arras Sparkling) at Bay of Fires, had been contracted to do the wine-making.

The grapes were grown in sandy soils, "rubbish" the fellow called them, implying the low quality of the dirt might be responsible for the high quality of the fruit. When I asked about vineyard pests, he offered us stories of an ongoing combat with thieving possums they were battling with with owl boxes and .22 caliber rifles. I had actually meant phylloxera, but I suppose possums are a more romantic foe.

It was when we thanked our host and made to continue on our way that I heard again the name I'd heard rumored of in Melbourne; it was nothing more than a whisper that chased us further up river.

Southern Exposure

April.

We have at last landed safely on Tasmanian soil. Touched down upon it, as it were, at the Launceston Airport.

We waste little time in heading straight for the Tamar Valley. The Tamar River connects Launceston to the Bass Strait, across which lies the mainland of Australia. The valley is home to Tasmania's original (modern) vineyards, planted in the mid-1950s by a lost Frenchman.

It is, as Chinskirin reminds us, "a cracker of a day." At the outset of the antipodean fall, the winding valley is beautiful, a base of rich green forests against which a patchwork of autumnal hues have been laid. The vineyard crops are near to their harvest, and nets have been scattered across the vines to discourage the birds.

Our quest for sparkling wine will begin just east of the Valley, at the Bay of Fires winery. At Bay of Fires -- or rather not at Bay of Fires, as they ship the pressed juice from Tasmanian grapes to South Australia for the wine-making -- they produce Tasmania's most celebrated sparkler: Arras Sparkling Chardonnay Pinot Noir. We tasted the 2002 vintage.

The Arras wine is methodically produced in true champenois style, and spends at least three years on lees. We were told this was disgorged in the summer of 2008 (which I later realized could have meant four months ago in December, or more than a year ago in January; damn the antipodes!).

The nose is citrus oil, pastry dough and a cardamom spice note that I would later come to recognize as the vineyard signature. The lemon/apple fruit is elegant in a tall-ships-at-sea, briny sort of way. The finish is very nearly Cramant chalk.

The Arras is good, but not cheap, and not the traffic-stopping, cold climate sparkler that we sought. If the shorthand is meaningful to anyone, it was more like Veuve Cliquot than Agrapart Terroirs in taste and sensibility.

Chinskirin had a faint look of worry when I told him we would need to continue further up river to sight our goal.

The Heart of Sparkling

April 2009

After our long Pacific crossing, we arrived in the antipodes only slightly bruised. We began at once making our final preparations for our search for sparkling wines in the wilds of Tasmania.

Already we'd heard whispers of a great wine to be found on the banks of the Coal River and were anxious to make our way South.

But we quickly discovered there was little to do but wait for the arrival of our guide and the turn of the tide.

In the meanwhile, safely ensconced at Eagle's Landing, our amiable and generous hosts there provided welcome sustenance in the form of two distinctive Pinots from nearby New Zealand. A 2006 Ata Rangi and a Pegasus Bay from 2004.

Notes after I've finished stitching my mosquito netting.

Lab Road Trip

I've perhaps gone overboard in taking my own advice about getting out of the Lab more often.

But I've booked a drinking tour of Tasmania. Off the Southeast coast of the Australian mainland, Tasmania affords the perfect combination for making sparkling wines: A cool climate and a bunch of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay planted in the ground. I begin my assault tomorrow, map in hand (my Aussie readers will tell you that's a pretty good line).

I'll be gone until after tax day.

At least.