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Listen to Brian’s live podcast “Cork Talk” with Tim Atkins MW on Brian’s thoughts about Australian fine wine and the future of fine wine world:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XSErrxRTCziVWJziLbmjw?si=57ErAnmzQRmdN3oUGtzt-A

This parcel has performed so impressively in 2020, with trademark white-peach aromas and a subtle lemon-cream edge. The oak is so well integrated here. There’s impressive seamlessness on the palate with citrus-nuanced stone fruit carrying so long and fresh. Thrilling chardonnay. Drink or hold.

97 points

This offers the same blend of lemon and white peach seen in the old-vine Tiers Chardonnay from this vintage, with greater oak influence reading in the wine for now. The intensity is impressive, with acidity driving a vivid, powerful palate. Drink over the next five years. Screw cap.

94 points

On September 30 I retire by decree, as a director of Wine Australia after an eventful seven years including three quite different iterations of the board and two chairpersons, not counting an interim chairperson.

I am the only soldier left standing from the initial board of Wine Australia, beginning as an amalgamation of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and the Australian Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation in July 2014.

I have described elsewhere the successes of Wine Australia over, at that time, the six-year journey now a seven-year journey.

Until these past turbulent 22 months, the performance of Wine Australia has been exemplary from both board and management.

A strong strategy was established, consistent with the requirements of our primary stakeholder, Australian Grape and Wine and executed with profound effect.

Even over those past 22 months, punctuated by Covid, bushfires and the China snub, from July 2019 to June 2021 the value of Australian fine wine (>$10/litre) sold in markets other than China grew from $378 million to $499 million, +32 percent.

After 40 years of involvement in wine community politics some things haven’t changed despite the enormous regional and varietal change in our vineyards and wineries, reflected in our export and domestic markets.

That’s a disappointment to me.

The 75 percent of volume and 48 percent of value of winegrapes produced in Australia’s hot irrigated inland regions are made into wine by a few winemakers who are Australia’s largest producers.

That wine is largely sold as bulk and branded commodity everyday wines.

This type of wine business requires the economies generated by scale and the special skills in the vineyard and winery to produce a consistent wine true to the consumer’s expectation of the brand.

There is great value for the whole Australian wine community in the success of this sector providing the Australian wine community at large with economies in the supply chain and presence in markets.

The biggest challenges for this section of the Australian wine community are the impact of climate change in already very hot dry regions, availability and cost of water and distance from market.

Seven years ago, we were still hotly debating the existence of two industry segments.

It is finally now recognised there are two segments with large-shared interests but clearly different dimensional, regional, production and marketing attributes.

Those segments are branded commodity wine and fine wine. Recognition of the differences has been a major advance in determining wine industry strategy.

We can also now talk about Australia’s fine wine terroirs without embarrassment.

The two enduring bones of contention for the important group of inland winemakers are firstly the inequity of the volume-based levy system where 48 percent of the value of Australian winegrapes pays 65 percent of the research and marketing levies because that wine represents 75 percent of the volume of Australian wine.

Fine wine has been the growing market segment in volume and even more in value for decades. By tying levies to the static volume of Australian wine production we lose the opportunity to protect the levy against erosion of spending power as money loses value over time. Also, our research and export marketing agendas do not benefit from the ever-increasing value of Australian wine.

The 2,500+ small and medium winemakers of Australia should acknowledge they need to shoulder a greater share of the levy burden, relieving the mere dozens of large commodity wine producers by supporting a more efficient value-based levy system.

The second enduring issue is the ongoing crusade by some winemakers and regions to change the tax applying to Australian domestic wine sales from the ad valorem WET to a volumetric excise system. If successful, this selfish push would see the price of fine wines come down and the price of everyday wines go up significantly in the domestic market.

The price elasticity of demand for branded commodity wine is large and for fine wine it is much smaller.

A volumetric tax would decimate sales of branded commodity wine with very small increases in sales for fine wine.

It would severely damage a vital component of the Australian wine community with little net benefit to fine wine producers.

These are two very legitimate and vital issues that need resolution for the long-term health of the whole Australian wine community.

There is a third crusade of the inland winemakers with which I partially agree. The hot inland irrigation dependent vineyards do make some very fine wines.

They should make more.

They feel aggrieved their fine wine efforts don’t receive the recognition they deserve. Despite these laudable efforts their stock in trade is and will remain the production of economical bulk and branded commodity wine.

On the other side of the coin the Australian wine community cannot afford its fine wine image to be dominated by the vast irrigated vineyards and ‘wine factories’ of the inland as it was to the detriment of the 2,500+ small and medium producers and their diverse, mainly coastal regions, for the first decade of this century.

We must promote our finest wines and regions to regain international credibility as a fine wine producing country. All Australian vineyards and wineries of all sizes and regions win if we can achieve that.

The alternative of spending Wine Australia’s very scarce marketing dollars on the large, branded commodity labels with their own larger marketing budgets is one of the chip-on-the-shoulder issues promoted by some inland producers.

Another chip-on-shoulder gripe is the claim of the imbalance of the expenditure of research dollars in the cooler coastal regions versus the inland regions. Any audit of Wine Australia’s research program would demonstrate the expenditure is about even for the two industry segments with many programs relevant to both.

Finally, while dealing with the current gripes of some inland producers, they claim that excluding China, export premium wine sales have retreated by more than 40 percent in volume since 2009. That is true but it is a deliberate obscuration of the circumstances over time.

The combined effect of the GFC in 2008 and the pricking of the Parker induced bubble for Australian warm region Shiraz led to a massive shift downwards of the demand curve for Australian fine wine in the US from 2009 to 2013.

Since 2014, excluding the large growth of Australian fine wine in China, the export value of Australian fine wine (>$10/litre) has grown consistently by 11 percent per annum from the low of $214 million in 2013 to $499 million in 2021. 2014 was the year Wine Australia was formed and when it began the project to elevate the international image of Australian fine wine and with it all wine.

I am not claiming credit for Wine Australia for the non-China fine wine growth of the last seven years but its efforts to elevate Australia’s fine wine image have certainly helped.

Over the same time period (2014 to 2021) Australian wine exported to non-China markets at <$10/litre has grown at one percent per annum.

My probably unwanted advice to the inland winemakers is to push hard to achieve levy reform instead of pushing to gain control of the expenditure of Wine Australia’s marketing and research dollars under the current levy system.

What’s next after September 30 other than my unemployment?

The AWRI and the University of Adelaide need to work hand in hand to achieve better vine and wine education and research, to be the best in the world.

They need a new cutting-edge teaching/research winery to optimise this opportunity.

The most powerful key to Australia improving its image and position in international markets is the continuous improvement of the quality of Australian grapes and wine.

Wine Australia needs to continue funding grape and wine quality research as the number one priority.

Wine Australia has achieved a lot for the Australian wine community over the past seven years, the time it has been in existence. It has been an honour and a privilege to serve the Australian wine community as a director of Wine Australia for that entire period.

The Australian wine community has always been independent and resilient.

It has been massively successful across the 50 years I have been part of it, by virtue of its own energy and ingenuity.

It is the primary stakeholder of Wine Australia providing the majority of funds and ideas.

I advise all grapegrowers and winemakers and their organisations to not let their stakeholder primacy be diluted.

The danger of that happening has never been more acute as the industry fragments over the issues addressed here that should have been resolved a long time ago.

Don’t let the politicians and their servants, informed by special interest groups, take over the investment agenda of Wine Australia.

Disunity will invite them to do that with predictable far less than optimal results.

We can never know About tomorrow Still we have to choose Which way to go

You and I are standing At the crossroads Darling, there is one thing You should know

When I joined a wine publishing house 21 years ago my boss Paul Clancy gave me his old tuxedo for all those dinners he didn’t want to go to, along with a ticket to Vinitech Bordeaux and a copy of Making Good Wine by Bryce Rankine and a dozen other books. “By the way,” he said. “I don’t like Pinot Noir.” Neither did I, mainly because I’d never heard of it. I didn’t know anything. Or anyone. But I did have an important wine connection that I had mentioned in my CV. My brother-in-law’s best man “Yacka” went to uni with Grant Burge. I told Grant that, but going by his blank look he didn’t find it as interesting as I did. I had bad days. Wanted to quit. The wine industry appeared to be a closed shop. Demoralising. My resolve to stick with it cooincided with the appearance on my desk of a polystyrene box of wine samples. Two of each in case one was corked. Come to think of it, perhaps I could make a go of this tough industry!

One day Clancy brought a mate back to the office after another lunch. This big man with a booming voice and ready smile barged through the door and spread cheer and laughter, shaking hands with all 17 workers. He lifted the mood of everyone except the proof readers. Then he was gone. Father Christmas in July. Sir Lunchalot. Big Bob McLean. At last I knew someone famous in wine. And Bob knew everyone. Soon I had met every weird and wonderful character from Zootopia. The intense Robert O’Callaghan, the chilled-out Charlie Melton, the conscientious Tyson Stelzer, the gentle Geoff Weaver, the renegade Dave Powell, the articulate Di Davidson, the nurturing David Ridge, the thoughtful Peter Leske, the humble Louisa Rose, the distinguised Peter Dry, the gracious Peter Gago, the generous Iain Riggs, the deep-thinking Chester Osborn and the bloody f**king Wolf Blass. The shop was opening up. I started to feel part of it. I made mistakes. Got carried away. Wore a suit and tie to a media interview in a Macedon vineyard! After 10 years I still hadn’t met Brian Croser. I wasn’t going out of my way. That brain box would chew me up and spit me back to Port Pirie.

I’d heard the Croser stories. That he was opinionated; prickly; intimidating; an enigma. At a Tech Conference once I ducked into the interview room to fill my pockets with free Minties again for me and the kids and there was Croser, studying his notes for yet another speech on fine wine. That stern face, those intense eyes, that Hogan’s Heroes moustache screamed, “Don’t even think about distracting me.” I finally got to have a proper chinwag with him at a Maurice O’Shea dinner. Friendly enough. Encouraging and supportive. He can write! He’s always lobbed the odd hand grenade in the comfortable lap of the Australian wine industry. I think Croser still is Australia’s #1 thinker in wine; still a visionary; still cares more about fine wine than anyone. On 30 September Croser will retire as a director of Wine Australia. He tells WBM, “After 40 years of involvement in wine community politics, some things haven’t changed despite the enormous regional and varietal change in our vineyards and wineries, reflected in our export and domestic markets. That’s a disappointment to me.” Croser says many other things, too. It’s another hand grenade. Read Croser’s departing essay here. If you’re starting out in wine and finding it hard to crack, don’t give up. Zootopia is your oyster. And if you need a tuxedo, yell out. Never been (re)used. 4XL. Was always far too big for me. – ED

• Last night at the Barossa Wine Show the Bob McLean Memorial Trophy was won by Henschke 2020 Five Shillings Shiraz Mataro. Big Bob would approve.

Tiers Vineyard replanted in 2003 to clones 76 and 95 at 1.5m row spacing. Close planting produces earlier ripening and fuller flavours, yielding a generous style in this warm year. Pristine white peach fruit glimpses at mandarin exotics, underscored by toasty, spicy, honeyed French oak. The signature tense acidity of this cool site defines a lively, long finish. Drink now. 

450m elevation; planted 1979, the first vineyard in the modern Adelaide Hills. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of its planting, this fabled site experienced a much warmer vintage than average in 2019. Classic fig and white peach notes have edged toward orange and mandarin exoticism, carrying all the power of Tiers in a full-bodied palate of spicy, honeyed magnitude. Fermented in 33% new barriques, oak joins the party in full voice, bringing up a long finish of considerable length, depth and breadth. 

Characterful and energetic, this is probably the most distinctive pinot that Brian Croser has drawn from his Foggy Hill Vineyard yet. The best clones in the best part of the site unite in a savoury style, filled with beetroot, Moroccan souk and bay leaf. Juicy strawberries and red cherries of a warm season offer flesh and body, well countered by fine tannin bite. Sap and potpourri of whole bunches is well contained, delivery crunch and drive to a long finish.

Signature Wrattonbully, from menthol-tinted aromatics and cassis-defined palate to fine-grained, powdery, chalk-dusted tannins. A cool season heightens tang, freshness, endurance and beauty. Everything works together confidently for a future as long as the cork holds out. 

A cooler season works its magic, lifting the violet perfume of cabernet, the black pepper of shiraz, the bright tang of acidity and the fine-ground energy of enduring, chalk-bound tannins. Regional menthol assumes its rightful place. Medium-bodied effortlessness is refreshing. A keeper.

15% of the fruit was placed at the bottom of the fermenting tubs, progressively crushed. Each block was pressed separately, and clonally, then settled and matured on full lees in one-third new barriques for 10 months. A darker note of berry here – blueberry and black cherry. It’s fully fragrant, with the stems adding their woody spice and seasoning. What happens on the palate is unique, the structure of the wine taking your senses deeper into the flavour well, where a gastronomic heart of subtle amaro-like bitters dwells. Learned palates will want to sit on this and watch it unfold for hours, if not years.

If you cast your mind back to the very beginning of Covid last year you might think the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse got a head start when fires ravaged many vineyards in the Eastern States. But their work was only beginning

With extreme heat, fire, smoke and then rain, you could assume that as vintages go this was close to Hell. But one thing I have learnt in the years of this wine writing caper, is that it can be a serious mistake to make rash judgments on vintage based on initial perceptions. Dig deeper and more is revealed.

And such was the case for 2020. Sure, it  was tough, dire a disaster for some, but not everyone suffered. I was reminded of this recently when a cluster of the latest releases from wine legend Brian Croser’s Tapanappa from Piccadilly Valley near Adelaide.

The three chardonnays I have featured from Piccadilly are all quite different but with a strong affinity to the distinctive terroir of this region. I prepared for disappointment. How wrong.

Even Croser said in a covering letter to me referencing the bushfires and Covid, said: “How something so good could emerge from such a traumatic vintage is akin to a miracle.”

Once the first went and things got back to normal, it was a very good vintage, provided you still had vines and smoke hadn’t tainted the crops.

In fact, to take the Four Horseman analogy a little further – these Tapanappa chardonnays are something of a revelation.

2020 Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard chardonnay 2020

Winemaker Brian Croser is pretty excited about this wine, and a quick sniff and extended sip, and I think I know why. Like the rest of Australia, it was a very small crop resulting in a wine of deep fruit concentration. Once again, the wine spent an extended time until February this year on full lees, allowing pick up of further complexity and textural mouth feel. The striking feature is the palate power and length. I have tasted many of these wines but I don’t think I have tasted better. 98/100 ($110)

(Best drinking: Now to 2033)

Describing himself humbly as a ‘single vineyard vigneron’, others in the wine trade might call Tapanappa’s Brian Croser ‘a vine and wine visionary’ or ‘innovator’. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years he has arguably done more than anyone to shape the Australian wine industry – a true trailblazer, mentor and industry leader. Writing for The Buyer from his home at the Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley, the first vineyard he planted, he describes what winemaking in the COVID environment has been like for him and how the future is shaping up. This is the second instalment in our Adjusting to the New Normal series in which we discuss the impact of COVID with winemakers around the world. We want to know from the people who actually make the wine how has their life been in the past 18 months? What additional challenges have they faced as winemakers? And how are they adapting to the new normal?

“The impertinence of our Prime Minister suggesting China should openly engage in the search for the source of the virus inflamed the Chinese response of trade restrictions that were in political formulation anyway. That will have a bigger immediate effect on the Australian wine community than COVID or climate change,” writes Croser.

Winemaking in the COVID environment (More will stay the same than will change).

Winemaking from single vineyards is already a lonely business. It is a communion between vigneron and vineyard across vintages – an incremental learning experience. In contrast, commercial winemaking is a team effort, involving specialist viticulturists, winemakers, logistics managers and marketers. Quality and wine style is determined over the tasting bench involving much discussion and iteration of blends.

Single vineyards, or “distinguished sites” as I like to call them, are only declared after many vintages of consistent production of a unique wine style and quality – the expression of a single vineyard terroir. There is no blending flexibility here, the vigneron is committed to accepting what the vineyard delivers through hot and cold, wet and dry vintages.

The ability to influence outcomes from a single vineyard in a given vintage relies on the vigneron’s ability to forecast future weather conditions and to interpret the visual signals from the vines of the effects of the current environmental conditions. The vigneron can only make management adjustments of viticultural practice after extensive walking of the vineyard – reading the leaves.

By the time the grapes are harvested the single vineyard vigneron already knows how much sugar and acid, how much colour and tannin and the potential flavour profile of the wine that will be made. Walking, observing and tasting extensively and frequently has already informed the vigneron of the winemaking tweaks that will be required to elicit the truest expression of the single vineyard’s terroir.

What has this to do with COVID?

For me, as a single vineyard vigneron, COVID has not changed my life much. I can still walk my vineyards in isolation and safety although communication with the pruners, tractor drivers and grape pickers has become a more formal COVID-safe process. Casual skilled workers have become harder to find in a timely fashion and more expensive to hire. For the labour-intensive single vineyard this has been the most acute effect of COVID.

In the winery, I have an established team of younger winemakers who do the processing of the grapes – the filling and emptying of the barriques, the analysis and all other winemaking actions that I decide on for each of my vineyards. As a fairly senior citizen, my involvement in running presses and pumps has been much less since the onset of COVID. The younger team have active social lives and I have tried to minimise the chance contraction of the disease should any of them unfortunately become a carrier.

Living next to the winery I can take the valinch and two and/or three glasses, in the hours before and after the team working hours, to taste and ponder on the results of the day’s work and formulate a strategy for the next day’s work. That’s COVID different, not being able to freely share a pub lunch or morning tea to discuss the winemaking program. Instead, communication is more by telephone and email. Happily, however, I am weeks away from my second vaccine shot so my winery life will return to a more normal interaction with my winemaking team and I can’t wait for that to happen.

Being the champion of the brand Tapanappa and of its single vineyards used to demand many hours in aeroplanes both international and interstate, conducting tastings and talking to consumers and retail and restaurant customers. Travel has ceased completely for me, except by car locally within South Australia.

Tastings are now conducted through Zoom or other electronic means and I have devoted more time to the written word on the Tapanappa website and elsewhere and to email contact with the wine media in particular. I love to write and read, so the travel respite has been an opportunity to research the many ponderables of grape-growing and winemaking, to think on their application to Tapanappa’s vineyards and winery, and to write as I am doing now. I miss my overseas friends, but the travel restriction is not all bad.

Predicting the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic

In June of 2020, a year ago and four months into the COVID era, we were all wondering what it would mean for the Australian wine community? Being a board member of Wine Australia, I was involved in many industry Zoom meetings trying to second guess the effect of COVID and to develop strategies to alleviate detriment. I wrote a paper called “More will stay the same than will change.”

Essentially, I argued that vignerons would continue to nurture their special vineyards and make their unique terroir-driven wines, and that the demand for authentic and unique wines would continue to grow as it has for the 50 years I have been a vigneron.

The only major change for the fine wine community would be where and how the fine wine consumer would obtain the product. With restaurants closed, or severely restricted, a major avenue to the fine wine market for small vignerons was closed. Specialist bricks and mortar retail became less accessible and direct to consumer and local wine tourism in the place of international and interstate travel would drive alternative sales for small vignerons.

None of these predictions were especially clever insights, but what happened in the marketplace exceeded expectations. Fine wine consumers have more avidly sought unique high-quality wines as an antidote to the privations of COVID restrictions. Direct to consumer methods of communication, sales and distribution have rapidly become more sophisticated and effective. Long may it prosper!

South Australia and Tapanappa has just finished one of the very finest vintages of my 50 years of experience and it delivered quantity with quality. COVID only indirectly contributed to China slamming the gate on Australian wine imports. The impertinence of our Prime Minister suggesting China should openly engage in the search for the source of the virus inflamed the Chinese response of trade restrictions that were in political formulation anyway. That will have a bigger immediate effect on the Australian wine community than COVID or climate change.

The implications of climate change

The longer-term implications of climate change for my vineyards are scary, and climate change amelioration urgently needs to be addressed at an international level. I take some solace in the fact that 2016 and 2018, the hottest vintages of my career and comparable to the predicted norm of the future, delivered wines true to the variety and terroir of the vineyards. Again, I suspect for the foreseeable future, that in the choice of variety for the vineyard “more will stay the same than will change.”

On a very cold and windy day in the Piccadilly Valley, I look out of my office window at the pruners bending their backs to the intricate task of carefully selecting and gently bending and tying the new canes to the wire. This signals that the start of the next season is imminent and the lonely vigil of the vigneron in the single vineyard is about to resume for another season of who knows what!

The Tiers Vineyard Old Block in the Piccadilly Valley is 41 years old, planted in 1980.

The oldest planting at The Tiers was planted the year before in 1979 and was pulled out in 2003 to make way for the new Tiers 1.5m planting of Dijon clones on rootstock at the high vine density of 1.5 metres between rows and 1.5m metres between vines in the row (4,444 vines/hectare).

The irony of this is that having carefully chosen the University of California Davis Chardonnay clone FPS 1A, their oldest clone called Chardonnay OF when it arrived in Australia in 1969, we have unwittingly pulled out the only authentic block of OF we had planted. The rest of Tiers was planted in 1980 and 1981 with rootlings sold to us as OF clone. The Australian Wine Research Institute have genetically typed the plantings related to Davis FPS 1A (OF) and found a family relationship between the Gingin clone shipped to Western Australia in 1954 and the OF and Mendoza clones shipped to South Australia in 1969.

The Old Tiers clone was found to not relate to this Davis family of clones nor to any of the other Chardonnay clones tested. It is a very different Chardonnay clone of unknown origins, but we know it makes very good wine. Its origins remain a challenge for future genetic research by the AWRI.

The Old block of Tiers was planted in 1980 on own roots at the then radical vine spacing of 2.1 metres between rows and 1.5 metres between vines in the row (3,175 vines/hectare).

At 41 years the Old Block vines are beginning to show their age. The heads of the vines show the scars, lumps and bumps and the atrophied trunks expected of vines undergoing the annual amputations called pruning for 41 years. The life-giving sap from the roots has to follow a tortuous path to the new shoots emerging in the spring and the vine’s arteries are sclerotic in direct analogy to a human at twice the age of 41 years.

Again, there is irony in this vine ageing process because as the vines’ capacity and productivity have diminished with age, the quality of the grapes and the wines they make has increased inexorably year on year. These old vines are now too valuable to lose to the deprivations of time and even if we replanted, we would have to wait decades to achieve the same wine concentration and quality. So, the Tiers Old Block represents both an irony and a dilemma.

The questions are how do we rejuvenate these precious senior citizens and give them the longevity to bridge time until the 2003 1.5mX1.5m Dijon clone block achieves sufficient age to produce grapes of equivalent quality?

Also, when do we start replacing in small sections, the Old Block with grafted vines on closer spacing of the wonderful unknown clone from that block?

The answer to the first question is we are giving the old vines a hip replacement and heart valve replacement at the same time. Grape vines share in common with our native Eucalypts the habit of burying buds in the expanding trunk as they grow. These are called adventitious buds and are an evolutionary defence mechanism against the loss of the new shoots to fire, frost and all of the other deprivations nature invents. When the new foliage is lost the plant stirs these buried buds into growth and although weakened the vine lives for another vintage.

We are taking advantage of the random appearance of these new shoots from old-buried buds to rejuvenate the old vines. Normally as they sprout from near the base of the vine, we would cut them off the trunk as they usually don’t bear fruit and are competitive for the root supplies of water and nutrient. Now they are a valuable resource as we select the strongest and bring up a new trunk alongside the old sclerotic trunk to the fruiting wire. After two or three seasons the new uninhibited healthy trunk is strong enough that we can carefully amputate the old trunk above the starting point of the new. We have a vine with the old root system and a new trunk. Productivity returns without detriment to grape and wine quality. O’ that we humans had adventitious buds!

Pinot Noir doesn’t need to taste like Burgundy to be good. This Tapanappa Definitus Pinot Noir 2018 is the example of this.

It’s a Pinot of rippling power. Of tannins and conviction. A Bordeaux drinkers Pinot Noir, if you’re still looking for a French connection, that arguably trades less in seduction and more in structure.

Stepping back a bit, this is Brian Croser’s Pinot Noir flagship – drawn from a select few rows of the Foggy Hill Vineyard that yield the best fruit. It’s a much more defined and convincing wine than the ‘standard’ FoggyPinot too.

Here, the fruit tips into plum, more dry red than classic elegant strawberry-fruited Pinot, complete with a sense of blackness. It’s almost Grenache! Proud density, a very nice viscosity and thickness. It’s not delicate, but impressive as a drink, the tannins twiggy and firm, the dark fruited finish even and long. I admire this wine, even if it doesn’t fit the Pinot mode (and it didn’t seduce me). It’s a Pinot wearing a double breasted suit, with shoulder pads, and maybe a pocket square. Such a step up from the normal Foggy too.

Tapanappa Definitus Pinot Noir 2018. Best drinking: now to ten years or more. 

18.5/20, 94/100. 14%, $90. Tapanappa website. Would I buy it? A few glasses.

If you’ve got elite fruit power, don’t be afraid to show it. This has an Olympic athlete’s body: big frame, strong muscle, yet supple. The palate gently flexes a range of flavours through the long ride – stonefruit orchard, a bite of fleshy pear, golden apples, lemon pith. Completely seamless…

97 points

The Piccadilly Valley has a proud history of crafting great Australian Chardonnay, and was the original home of Petaluma. This wine shows the same combination of bright, youthful and complex fruit in an elegant style. The wine is pale golden and a pretty, understated and finely detailed style. There are many layers – citrus, apple, grilled nut and praline fruit with an attractive gunflint edge. It is then dry, mid weight, savoury and juicy on the palate with the creamy texture and savoury elements seen from barrel ferment. It is also tangy, with palate impact, and finishes with good length. 

92 points

Brian Croser’s vision of a great Right Bank Bordeaux, realised. Or at least that’s the drift with this Tapanappa Whalebone Vineyard Merlot Cabernet Franc 2017. Sometimes this Wrattonbully red can seem too ripe and too ambitious, but it feels rather right with this ’17 iteration. Sadly the Cab Shiraz I tasted alongside it was corked, and I’m having a bad run of TCA in top end Aus reds lately. ’16 Octavius days later corked too. Just put them all in screwcap, please.

Anyway, this Whalebone spends 20 months in 69% new oak. 65% Merlot, 35% Franc. Coffeed and oak-laden wine it is too, with the enveloping, slightly bitter but sweet chocolate and vanilla bean palate the mark of expensive wood. It’s plush though. A long, lavish flow of dark, chocolate cake flavour. None of the drying tannins or alcohol warmth of some recent vintages either. Just a mass of richness, a wave of molten dark fruit, rich oak and ripe tannins. It’s pretty silken really, even if it’s a singular wine. It chugs on and on. Plenty to admire with this lavish beast, and it will live forever.

Tapanappa Whalebone Vineyard Merlot Cabernet Franc 2017. Best drinking: likely better in two or three years time. Then it will go for decades. 18.5/20, 94/100. 14.5%, $90. Tapanappa website. Would I buy it? I don’t know if I’d buy a bottle. A glass maybe. I’d gladly have in my cellar though.

I haven’t read the press notes on this wine but 2020 in the Adelaide Hills was an interesting time, no doubt. There’s plenty of fruit power here. And texture. And form. It feels powerful and well honed and, indeed, has a quartz-like aspect to it. Yellow peach, grapefruit, nectarine, woodsmoke and cedar characters shoot convincingly through. Candied citrus too. There’s a smoky element to the aftertaste but fruit notes crush right through it. This is dry, this is taut, this makes an impression. When it relaxes it could yet score higher. 

92 points

The chardonnay vines on the Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley are all now well over 30 years old though some were planted in the late 1970s. This is an intense glide of beautiful chardonnay flavour. It had me hooked straight up. There’s an amount of struck match character here too, for the record, though the pear, white peach, grapefruit and citrus characters are where the main action is at. This is delicious. This is powerful. This is lengthy. It feels a it wild, in a good way, but it simultaneously feels pure, somehow. It’s terrific. 95 points