Autumn Days Of Wine And Roses
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday April 13, 1988
OF ALL the Australian wine districts, the picturesque and the prosaic, Sydney's nearest - the Hunter Valley - is the most tourist-oriented.
You can stay in inexpensive, self-catering cabins or international-calibre luxury. There are package tours. You can fly, bus or drive. There is even a horse-and-carriage winery tour incorporating a picnic lunch. Good restaurants abound.
If you are a hard-core wine buff go on a weekday. You will get better attention, frequently from the winemaker. If fun is what you seek join the weekend throng.
The Lower Hunter vineyards in the Cessnock-Pokolbin district are 2 1/2 hours' drive from Sydney's North Shore. Those who prefer scenery to comfort take the Wollombi Road. This degenerates into dusty, bone-shaking corrugations for several kilometres, but if you are lucky you may see a lyrebird crossing the road.
Freeway freaks with heavy pedal-feet stay on the Newcastle tollway. Turn off near Cooranbong for Cessnock.
There are about 34 wineries in the Lower Hunter and seven in the Upper Hunter, which centres on Muswellbrook. They are amazingly diverse, from the tiniest hobbyist to the quite large satellites of multi-regional conglomerates.
Lindemans, Tyrrells, Tulloch, and McWilliams Mount Pleasant persevere with the full-bodied dry reds from the shiraz grape (called hermitage locally) and light-bodied, bone-dry whites from the semillon grape. Only the most avant-garde newcomers to the valley would dare suggest that the district better suits reds from cabernet sauvignon or whites from chardonnay. Murray Tyrrell, for one, would bite their heads off.
The one drawback of these classic Hunter wines, exemplified by Lindemans'Hunter River Burgundy, Chablis, Riesling and White Burgundy, Tyrrell's Vat 1 Riesling and McWilliams Mount Pleasant Semillon, is that they need to be aged in the bottle for several years before they show their best.
Nowadays Hunter winemakers are churning out chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon or cabernet-merlot blends in a modern style, known colloquially as "up front" - a soft, open-flavoured, fruity wine which can be drunk and enjoyed when comparatively young.
Lindemans is among the most traditional. Under its famous Hunter River labels have come some of Australia's greatest wines. The reds, labelled Hunter River Burgundy with a mysterious bin number, are somewhat plain when young but develop marvellous complexities reminding some people of tobacco, tar, earth, cigar-boxes and old leather. The grape is always shiraz.
Its opposite number in white wine is semillon, where again the Lindemans styles develop wonderful character with age, reminding some people of the smell of buttered toast or grilled almonds.
Tyrrell's semillons, labelled either as riesling or semillon (Vat 1 Riesling is the best), make a more resiny style with a bouquet of dried grass or hay. It also benefits greatly from aging in the cellar. Tyrrell's shirazes, also labelled hermitage and with a vat number (the best are vats 5, 9 and 11), are often softer and occasionally lighter.
Despite its dogmatic traditionalist stance Tyrrell's has been one of the more innovative Hunter makers, introducing first chardonnay then pinot noir(the two great grapes of French Burgundy and Champagne) to the Australian public.
Tyrrell's Vat 47 Chardonnay is one of the best. The pinot noir is less consistently good, reflecting the problems most Australian winemakers have with this grape.
Tyrrell's is one of the most atmospheric Hunter wineries to visit, with its old buildings and dirt floor. If you are a member of the large mailing-list clientele you can qualify for the special treatment in the back room, where Murray Flanagan holds court.
One company which has taken tradition to extremes is McWilliams Mount Pleasant, which makes several big-selling wines in the Hunter, among them Philip Hermitage and Elizabeth Riesling. Elizabeth is a semillon, always sold with several years' bottle age when it shows typical regional straw-like and toasty nuances. The great character of MacWilliams's semillons is seen at its best in the cream of Mount Pleasant wines such as Anne Riesling, Maria Riesling, Mount Pleasant Semillon and other aged varietal labels like the 1967 traminer-rhine riesling, still on sale at the winery and great value.
The same philosophy is applied to its Mt Pleasant Sauternes, sweet dessert wines also made from semillon grapes, which are made in the traditional old-fashioned way perfected long before anyone tried to use botrytis-affected grapes, as many do now. Late-picked grapes were fermented dry, the wine aged in big, old casks for two years then sweetened with unfermented grape juice and bottled, then aged for many more years. The 1978 on current release is a magnificent example and only costs about $8.50. There is also a great '72 which is still value at $18.
'Mac's' is now making some modern, fruity varietal whites as well as some excellent fortified wines. The mature 1977 vintage port is perhaps the Hunter's best; there is the inevitable tawny in a crock and, for something very special, try the 1976 madeira which is positively scrumptious.
Tulloch has one of the best chardonnays in the Hunter. The current vintage 1986 is a typically peachy/toasty wine which I recommend highly. Tulloch"champagne", made from semillon, is one of the best Hunter Valley sparkling wines.
Treading the middle ground between tradition and modernism is the Rothbury Estate, which has mostly made much better whites than reds although I think some of the hermitages now being made there by David Lowe will turn out beautifully with age.
Rothbury semillon at its best is what Len Evans calls the vanillan style rather than the straw style. It is a fine, trim and slightly fruity wine (not sweet) which develops into something as good as, but subtly different from, the great Lindemans and McWilliams.
At Hungerford Hill there is everything the wine lover could possibly need and, judging by the hordes of people, some never get any further than this landscaped wine village. You can taste wine in the underground bar, eat an excellent dinner in the Cellar Restaurant and flop into bed in the motel.
Ralph Fowler makes some interesting Hungerford Hill wines, including a structured pinot noir which takes bottle-age well and a buttery, unctuous chardonnay which is often re-released after several years extra age.
Perhaps the most modern of the newer arrivals is Wyndham Estate. The name and crest of a very old vineyard have been adopted by the McGuigans, who are fast building a large empire. Hollydene, Hunter Estate, Elliott's, Richmond Grove and Saxonvale are all parts of the Wyndham group.
The Wyndham Estate wines are not traditional Hunters: they are fruity, up-front, young-drinking and often slightly sweet wines designed to appeal to the broadest section of the wine-drinking populace. Best known are the Chablis Superior and Bin TR2 Traminer Riesling.
The tourist is well catered for at Wyndham's Branxton cellar and a motel is under construction. There is also a restaurant and motel accommodation at Hunter Estate, which is the main centre of Wyndham winemaking.
Rosemount has evolved as a predominantly white wine company - in fact, a chardonnay specialist. The yellow label is the mass-produced family model; significantly dearer and more flavoursome and complex is the Show Reserve label and the top of the range is Rosemount's Roxburgh, a state-of-the-art chardonnay which has KO'd expert tasters the world over.
Rosemount is a little out of the way, being in the Upper Hunter - an extra 20 or 30 minutes to get there - but the effort is worth it.
While you are in the Upper Hunter visit Arrowfield for some more excellent modern varietals, again with the accent on whites, and Hordern's Wybong Estate, one of the Hunter's most picturesque properties.
I could also recommend that you drop by Brokenwood, but this small outfit is often embarrassed for wine. You have to be on the mailing list to secure their best reds.
Finally, a trip out to Broke will be rewarded by some of the Hunter's best cabernet and shiraz reds from Alasdair Sutherland at Saxonvale. His 1985 hermitage is a ripper. Bin 1 cabernet of the same year I also liked.
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald
