Riesling Report

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(Riesling Reporter Mark Smith is Tasmania's most widely published wine educator and Riesling lover. If ever you have questions about Riesling in Australia or New Zealand, you can contact him by e-mail: winesmith@bigpond.com)

"Do you want an earful, or do you want something a bit more succinct?" comes the voice down the telephone line. It's a slightly agitated John Thomson. He's just been asked to comment on the outcome of vintage 2002 on his celebrated Crawford River property in southern Australia's Henty wine region, and it's immediately clear from the rising tones of his reply that he is not a happy camper.

Yet who can blame him? The man who arguably vies with Jeffrey Grosset as Australia's numero uno in Riesling production says he's just put behind him one of the worst vintages he can remember in 27 years of cool climate viticulture. On his 2000-hectare grazing property in southwestern Victoria, production across all grape varieties was down by more than a whopping 85 percent.

"It was just a shocking year. It didn't feel like I even had a vintage," he adds, his annoyance softening now and being replaced by words of resignation. Pay careful attention and it's plain that the consequences for the clientele of his award-winning wines will be similarly dire for the next 15 months or so – or at least until the new wines of vintage 2003 appear in the marketplace. Normally regarded as a reliable performer, Thomson's four hectares of Riesling failed to live up to the variety's reputation for being the grower's grape during indifferent weather conditions. Instead, they produced barely 100 cases of wine, a very significant reduction from the total of 2200 cases of Riesling he made in 2001.

If you think that's OK, try this for size – Crawford River eked out more than 100 cases of Riesling under a limited-release Reserve bottling program last year, and the resulting wine scored 95 points from the inscrutable James Halliday. This vintage there is just a single wine, the tiny volume enabling it to be whole-bunch pressed, and handled in the winery with fastidious care.

"The problem is, I can't tell you at this stage which wine I've made," says Thomson. "I certainly won't be putting it out as a Reserve unless I'm really happy with it." Like many growers in the southeastern corner of mainland Australia – and on the island vineyards of Tasmania, further to the south – Thomson blames the uncharacteristic weather patterns of the past growing season for his Riesling vines' low levels of production.

He says last year's cold, wet spring – and the low sunshine hours during the cool damp summer that followed – resulted in poor flowering and fruit-set. The prevalence of straggly, unfilled bunches with small berry sizes made handpicking an arduous task, also adding considerably to the wine's ultimate cost of production. "We did get a few bunches, but they were the exception to the rule. Fortunately, we were saved by some very nice warm, sunny weather in late March and early April, and we managed to ripen everything we had on the property at the last minute," he says.

For quality-driven producers like John Thomson, the best news out of the late-ripening 2002 season is the exceptional quality of Riesling fruit that finally made its way through to a successful harvest. With disease pressure low during the season, and high levels of natural acidity still evident in fruit at the end of picking, this year's Rieslings out of south-eastern Australia should produce some outstanding table wines with great flavour intensity, and many with a capacity for long bottle-ageing. That will be a turn up for the books given the concern being shown by many Riesling growers around Christmas time and the New Year.

Richmond Grove's John Vickery has seen almost 50 vintages of Riesling production in Australia. He says the past year had few peers when it came to posing challenges to growers in the coolest parts of the country's eastern states. Gladly, those in the heartland of Riesling territory – the South Australian regions of the Barossa, Eden and Clare valleys – fared considerably better than those with marginal winegrowing climates like southern Victoria and Tasmania. As the most northerly of South Australia's premier Riesling districts, the Clare Valley managed to avoid much of the inclement weather that dogged vineyards further south during spring and the record-breaking cool summer. Crop levels here were little short of normal says Vickery, but quality looks to be very promising indeed.

"This year, we don't have the big ripe citrusy styles that we usually get out of our Watervale sites. They're leaner and more minerally/citrusy because of the later ripening. In fact, on a couple of vineyard sites – where they have a southerly rather than a northerly aspect – the wines are quite elegant and lean, and more typical of the Eden Valley style."

Spokeswoman Jane Mitchell says growers that make up her district's Clare Valley Winemakers Association are especially happy with the quality of Riesling wines they made in 2002. It was a trouble-free vintage in general, cool but with very low disease pressure. "The Clare Valley didn't get hit like the Barossa Valley, the Eden Valley and Coonawarra did this year, and I suppose we were very lucky. Considering we were almost wiped out by hail two years ago, we were pretty glad that 2002 turned out to be our year," she said.

For his part, Vickery is particularly pleased with the outcome from sites dotting the floor of the Barossa Valley surrounding his home-base in the township of Tanunda. Often overlooked in the marketplace by Riesling lovers favouring wines from cooler locations like Polish Hill and Watervale to the north, Barossa Rieslings this year will be among the best to come out of South Australia. "It was a cool season here, which really suits the Barossa Valley. It made beautiful wines – generous, easy-drinking styles, yet ones that will still age gracefully. Instead of being ripe tropical wines, they're much more citrusy and limey," he said.

By contrast, vineyards throughout the nearby but cooler Eden Valley endured a nervous wait for much of the season in spite of their light crops, says Vickery. "We didn't get ripe fruit flavours until we reached relatively high sugar levels this year, so we're going to see wines with alcohols around the high 12s, making them more generous wines than normal. Overall, I think there's going to be some pretty good Rieslings coming out of the Eden Valley in 2002."

Merv Lange is glad he's not had to suffer the fate of his counterparts some 2000-plus kilometres to the east of his property in far-off Western Australia. His classy Alkoomi Rieslings readily sell-out on Australian markets, leaving little left over for the small but receptive export markets he has cultivated over the past decade or so.

Western Australia's Mount Barker and Frankland River districts of the Great Southern region are among the unsung heroes of the Australian Riesling scene. This year looks to have produced a winning combination of high quality and moderate volumes from sites that typically enjoy cool climates, and the long-ripening seasons that are associated with them.

"It was a terrific year for us," says Lange. "We had a really good year, and just a couple of weeks later than normal on our Frankland River sites. We're only a month away from bottling now and already our 2002 Riesling is showing all those wonderful cool climate characters that we look for in the variety." More intense and focused than the wines made in 2001 and 2000, he says the latest Alkoomi Riesling is easily the best the company has produced here since a string of very successful vintages in the late 1990s.

And the volume? Around 6,000 cases. Just don't mention that to Crawford River's John Thomson. He's suffered enough already.

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