Riesling Report

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(Guest Riesling Reporter Mark Smith is Tasmania's most widely published wine educator and Riesling lover.)

The frenetic activity of the past 14 hours has finally let up, and the cement concourse of John Thomson's Crawford River winery is all but quiet now. The Bucher airbag press has turned its last revolution, and a steady trickle of rinsing water flows along a shallow drainage channel.

Darkness has long since descended, and the evening's cool air is ripe with the fragrance of the day's reward – a few modest tonnes of Riesling fruit, each bin hand-picked and processed by Thomson and a small band of itinerant labourers.

Within minutes, the last remaining signs of harvest will be hosed away. The roller door will glide into place, signalling the end of yet another demanding work schedule on the 2,000-hectare pastoral property that has been home to four generations of Thomsons, and the source of one of Australia's most widely acclaimed Riesling wines.

Located at Condah, in the far south-western corner of Victoria, Thomson's vineyard boasts just 11 hectares of vines. Four plots of Riesling totalling four hectares began with an initial planting in 1975, and are the most clearly identifiable by virtue of their dramatically arched canes.

One hundred metres above sea level, and less than 60 kilometres from spectacular coastlines dotted with rugged rock pillars and myriad luckless shipwrecks, the site lies at the edge of an ancient basaltic lava flow, and has a distinctly maritime climate. Grape bunches here experience a leisurely ripening period as the effects of summertime temperatures – occasionally nudging 35° Celsius – are moderated by cooling sea breezes during mid-afternoon and early evening. Crop yields are typically low, rarely more than 10 tonnes per hectare.

Tomorrow, the business of picking and pressing will begin again, to be repeated throughout the coming weeks until the end of May. Any thoughts of a break in the routine are pushed to the remotest parts of Thomson's consciousness. A small crop of Riesling at such a critical stage of development can achieve optimum ripeness within a matter of days. Leaving it to over-ripen – or to be drenched by sudden downpours – only brings compromises in fruit quality.

Time and Mother Nature wait for no-one, says Thomson. "You can't half-do this job. You've got to do it to perfection. Anything less than professional and you get run over. We're not interested in just making a mediocre bottle of Riesling." Nor are the clients who take the four-hour journey by road from Melbourne to snap up Thomson's handiwork.

A graduate in viticulture and wine science from Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga, Thomson's wines are frequently compared favourably to those from Jeffery Grossett, Howard Park and Petaluma. Australia's best-known wine critic, James Halliday, rates them very highly indeed, and in any given year there is often a place for Crawford River's Riesling wine among Halliday's Top 100. During two consecutive editions of Halliday's best-selling Australia and New Zealand Wine Companion, Crawford River Reserve made it right to the top of the tree as his best Riesling wine of the year: the 2000 vintage topping the 2002 edition, with the 1999 doing so in the preceding one. "I wasn't actually going to release our '99 Reserve as a young wine until Halliday came along and gave it 97 points," says Thomson with a mixture of pride and bemusement.

The former sharebroker's enviable skill and consistency – both as grower and winemaker – is underscored by the fact that his property's standard label invariably ranks close to that of the Reserve on Halliday's august wine rankings. Technically, there is little that separates the two wines. Each sees fruit that is picked according to flavour, rather than the simple measurement of grape sugars through a refractometer. "I'm conscious of the scientific side of things," says Thomson, "but one day I'll just walk in the vineyard and say, ‘Yes, it tastes right.' That mightn't necessarily mean there's been a significant change in some of the scientific parameters. It just means the fruit tastes like my Riesling ought to taste."

At that stage, lime and floral characteristics will become the hallmarks of each wine that is created. A certain spiciness is also highly prized, together with the steely acidity Thomson says is needed for longevity. With the oldest wine in the Crawford River cellar dating back to 1979, longevity is valued, and often achieved.

Thomson's key goal is to craft a wine that maintains its youthful colour and flavour profile over many years, while steering well clear of the fat, oily styles that he feels are typical of the warmer regions of mainland Australia. In maturity, toast and honey characters are preferred to those of petrol and kerosene.

Priced in Australia at $39 a bottle, the Reserve wine comes from the property's oldest vines, and gains an advantage from recent trials in whole-bunch pressing. "We've been experimenting with whole-bunch pressing since 1996, when we got a new airbag press, and we've found we get some lovely textures from that," Thomson said. "What we've been doing lately is making small quantities of wine with virtually nothing else but whole-bunch pressed fruit in order to assess the quality parameters.

"The wines are really very interesting. We don't tend to get the sexy fruit at the front of the palate, but the juice flavour and the mouthfeel are so much better than before. Always. On the other hand, the nose is not always better, so I'm still playing around with them a bit."

Ever conscious of the need to maintain his high standards of quality, Thomson is appreciative of risks that can come from separating wines into standard and Reserve product ranges. "What I'm really trying to do is to put the best possible wine into the bottle," he said. "What I'm not trying to do is to put so much of one wine into a Reserve bottling that it downgrades the quality of the standard $30 wine. My job here is to try and make sure that I don't tarnish my reputation."

Reflecting their owner's attention to the finest detail, new vine plantings are beginning to appear on the property as part of Crawford River's ongoing program of quality control. Their ultimate destiny will be to enable the replacement of old or infirmed vines that have become economically unsustainable. Better to replace a 40-year-old vine with a 15-year-old vine than with one that has yet to produce its first crop.

As someone who experienced the deep troughs of rural recession during the 1970s, and the piling up of substantial bank overdrafts in the following decade, Thomson is a hard-bitten realist in spite of his aspirations and the considerable acclaim given to his Rieslings. "Right from the beginning, John wanted to make his own wine here," explains wife Catherine Thomson. "The thing that he reiterates again and again is that for all of our years in the wool and beef industry, we have been price-takers. We have had to accept what we can get in the market place. John felt that if he produced his own grapes, made his own wine, and was good enough at it, he was going to be able to be a price-maker." Making wine from what he regards as the most noble of all white grape varieties, Thomson says the job may have its romance, but it must also pay its way.

Harvest at Crawford River is slotted into a tightly-framed schedule of on-farm activity. Late-picked Riesling juice occasionally vies with cabernet sauvignon and merlot for fermentation space in the winery. The subsequent rituals of racking and cold-stabilisation are invariably carried on during the property's lambing season. And with some 22,000 head of sheep – and 700 cattle – all demanding Thomson's undivided attention, there is little room for manoeuvring if weather conditions fluctuate wildly at the tail end of a growing season. "We don't want to be nursing sick vintages through if we can help it," says Thomson.

The property's first wines were made in the shearers' quarters of the woolshed in 1979 and 1980. Mindful of the importance of their new venture, the Thomsons then commissioned a purpose-built winery in 1981, a facility that has continued to grow in size and complexity as Crawford River production has expanded.

Occupying steep hillside slopes first sighted by John's great grandfather way back in 1884, the winery has been complemented by the addition of a new cellar, door sales and tasting room. Visitors here can take in all the action of harvest and subsequent cellar work by accessing an elevated walkway overlooking the winery and red wine barrel store.

Externally, the facility has managed to combine a contemporary appearance with a distinctively Australian outback ambience. Internally, its lighting and paintwork – mostly warm ochres and terracotta in the dying rays of the afternoon sun – all help to emphasise the natural colours of its environs and its bucolic Victorian setting. It is certainly not your average Australian cellar-door facility, by any stretch of the imagination. "Then again, we're not trying to be average," admits a justifiably proud John Thomson.

Amen to that, Riesling lovers.

Crawford River Tasting Notes

(These notes are from James Halliday's Australia and New Zealand Wine Companion, 2002 edition)

2000 Crawford River Reserve Riesling

"Very light green-yellow; intense lime and herb aromatics lead to a similarly intense yet fine and very long palate, which is beautifully poised and balanced. How John Thomson achieves this with such a high level of alcohol is beyond my comprehension." Best drinking 2004 – 2014. Rating: 97

2000 Crawford River Riesling

"Less fashionable than the Clare Valley Riesling icons, perhaps, but every bit as consistently outstanding, year in, year out. A fragrant and very pure mix of lime and a dash of passionfruit fills the bouquet, followed by a palate of piercing delicacy, with apple adding to the mix." Best drinking Now – 2010. Rating: 95

Map courtesy of Dept. of State and Regional Development, Victoria.

About Victoria

Victoria lies in the south-eastern corner of Australia, and is a good place to begin a visit to the Land Down Under. It borders the states of New South Wales and South Australia, and is only 12 hours away from Tasmania by ferry across the Bass Strait. Victoria's capital city of Melbourne is just a 12-hour drive from Sydney and barely nine hours from Adelaide.

The smallest state on the Australian mainland, Victoria comprises just three percent of the country's continental landmass. It has a land area roughly the same size as Great Britain or the U.S. state of Minnesota. Rich in cultural diversity, Victoria has the second largest population of any Australian state. Almost 4.5 million people live there, and they account for a quarter of Australia's total population of 19 million people. Most Victorians live in Melbourne, the nation's largest city after Sydney.

In spite of its largely urbanised population, Victoria is a place of great natural beauty. It produces almost a quarter of Australia's total agricultural output, and has more than a third of its area covered by forest. Visitors to the state will find its lifestyle relaxed and easy-going. Temperatures vary widely across Victoria, but most of the state falls within the warm, temperate belt of the southeastern corner of Australia, and is characterised by warm and dry summers and cool to mild, wet, winters. Melbourne's average rainfall is about 660 mm a year.

Daily summer temperatures range from 14°C to 23°C in the coastal areas to 16°C to 31°C inland. In winter, temperatures range from 7°C to 14°C in coastal areas, and 5°C to 16°C inland. Snow settles on the Australian Alps in northeastern Victoria between June and September.

Victoria boasts some of Australia's most picturesque scenery, and has almost 1,800 km of dramatic coastline bordering on Bass Strait, the wild stretch of water that separates the mainland from Tasmania. The breath-takingly beautiful Great Ocean Road – which winds its way along the south-western coast of Victoria for 180 km – is just one of several gateways to Crawford River Wines. No road trip to Australia will be complete without spending some time touring these parts.

For further tourist information, log on to http://www.visitmelbourne.com.au.

All contents © copyright 1981-2009 by Robin Garr, www.WineLoversPage.com

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