THE WINE FRONT

By Campbell Mattinson

 
When you stand at the steep-sided top of the Jansz vineyard in northern Tasmania it’s easy to get swept away in it all. Turn one way and Bass Strait spreads out before you, the tiny Ninth Island sitting small in the wind – turn the other way and be challenged by a set of hills and mountains that for a good part of winter are splattered in snow. This is wine in a cool climate landscape, highlighted best perhaps by the fact that the average maximum temperature in January here – the area’s warmest month – is just 21 degrees.

As a scene it’s a sweep of beauty, but wine grapes as a rule don’t much care for a view – or not in itself anyway. But as Jansz winemaker Natalie Fryar succinctly explains, “What Bass Strait does – apart from give great surf – is create a perfect heat seat. It helps moderate the temperature in summer, and also helps moderate it in winter. We’re really very lucky that we’ve got it there – well, not lucky, because we didn’t truck it in, the vineyard was planted here for a reason – but it’s a big key to the site.

“It’s not the only thing though,” and she turns to face the mountains, which sprawl and turn and rise like high-yeast loaves, “we get a bit of frost around here, but it rolls down the hills and settles in the damn in the crook of the valley there, which is another heat seat. If you look out over the vineyard you’ll see that there’s a slight dip over near the entrance to the place – frost will settle in there and we have to watch that, but in most ways it’s a magical site, really well placed.”

No wonder then that it’s a site that’s been set on a quest – to produce top quality sparkling wine.

And a long quest it’s been. Graeme Wiltshire AOM started it all back in 1975, which is why he’s affectionately and respectfully regarded as one of the principal founders of the modern Tasmania wine industry. What he first planted was cabernet sauvignon, which because of the cold didn’t work well (“was altogether a pain”, in Wiltshire’s words), which then led to chardonnay and pinot noir. “We had problems with the vines being over-vigorous though,” he now says. “For a time it seemed like the vines here were a lot more interested in growing leaves than grapes. But they settled down and when you look at them now, they appear in perfect balance. Back when we started we used to think that if the vines failed, at least it would be a decent place to grow potatoes.”

The name for the site back then was Heemskerk, a name that still exists as a Cellarmasters (Tasmanian-based) brand but which now has no association with this original vineyard. This vineyard is now owned and run by Yalumba, the “fourth custodians” of the quest, who follow in a slightly confusing line of owners of the site that include top-line French Champagne house Louis Roederer, multi-pronged Tasmanian businessman Joseph Chromy (former owner of Tamar Ridge, and who Wiltshire smilingly describes as someone who “buys and collects vineyards like some people collect stamps”), and for a very short time, Tasmanian wine industry leaders Pipers Brook. The confusing part is that, when Pipers Brook sold the (now named) Jansz vineyard to Yalumba, they still kept half of it for themselves, so that both Pipers Brook and Jansz both now have the Heemskerk vineyard name as key figures in their history. Both still share roads and access to the vineyard; the entrance gate to Jansz also prominently displays the Pipers Brook name.

The story of how one of South Australia’s most beloved wine families, in the Hill-Smith’s of Yalumba, came to own a sparkling wine vineyard in Tasmania is too an interesting one in itself.

Robert Hill-Smith in particular had been keen on Tasmania for a time – ever since he’d sat in the waiting room at Pol Roger in 1978, to be exact, on a day when he’d been systematically beguiled by what was poured for him. It made him wonder: why wasn’t Australia taking a serious crack at sparkling wine, at making wines with structure and flavour and complexity? Robert Hill-Smith then became even keener when in the 1980s he stumbled across a report compiled by France’s Moet and Chandon on the suitability of Australia for the production of sparkling wine – which concluded, after a detailed Australia-wide search, that from a pure quality perspective, the Pipers River region of Tasmania held the greatest potential.

“The report was unashamed in its support for Pipers River – except that it didn’t suit the economic model that they were looking for at the time, which was that an Australian venture should also be close to major tourism markets and so on. But from then on, I tracked the progress of Pipers River – and if we’d had the money, we would have invested in it earlier.

“Then one day I got a call from Andrew Pirie in London, telling me that he’d just bought the Heemskerk vineyard off Joe Chromy. I told him that was fantastic news, apart from the fact that he’d now have to sell the Jansz label. Why? Andrew Pirie asked. And I said to him, Because you’ve just launched Pirie – if you keep Jansz, it’ll just confuse things. So I’ll buy Jansz from you.”

The Jansz brand itself had been devised by Graeme Wiltshire when he was in partnership with Louis Roederer. Yalumba, when they took over in 1998, changed the named to Jansz Tasmania – to make it sparkling and clear that this was a wine from Tasmania. This is a move that would, no doubt, have pleased Graeme Wiltshire, who’d been “made redundant” of his own dream by the powers at Roederer – because, in his own words, “we had great differences of opinion. They wanted to make a replica of French sparkling wines from here, while I wanted to make Australian wine, and more specifically, Tasmanian wine, unique to Australia.”

It’s a point Robert Hill-Smith is keen on too. “Internationally, the market for premium Australian sparkling wine is very, very small – though one day we think this will turn. But for now, the idea of trying to make a great Australian sparkling wine is an Australian story – we want to make something sensational, but with a truly Australian thumb-print on it. We’re happy to bleed the French dry of information on how to go about it, but its Australian-ness is an essential ingredient.”

The scene looks rosy at Jansz Tasmania today – they’ve just opened an impressive new cellar door “interpretative centre” in the building of the old Jansz winery, though it’s been extended and razzled-dazzled and although purposely designed to look weathered and in-tune with its local environment, it still looks pretty damn swish and celebratory on the inside. From the days when Graeme Wiltshire was first playing around with vines here the prospects of Tasmanian sparkling wine have torn a whole lot higher too, so much so that about a third of all wine grapes grown in Tasmania today are headed for sparkling wine. It’s a situation that Andrew Pirie describes as “exciting. We’re still at embryonic stage in the overall scheme, but the potential of the raw material cannot be doubted”. And one that Robert Hill-Smith puts like this: “We’ve made great headway, and there’s already a great lineage, but we are on a course that’s aimed entirely towards making great wines.”

But, as is the case with all great quests, turning that potential into reality is unlikely to come easy – as Hill-Smith knows full well: when Yalumba first took Jansz over in 1998 they stepped straight into a terrific vintage, which looked superb in tank and had all jumping with excitement – only to see it all lost down the drain one night when a vandal broke into the winery and unscrewed the taps on all the tanks, setting it all free. It breaks your heart just imagining it.

Which brings us to Natalie Fryar, the winemaker in charge at Jansz Tasmania. She’s got the credentials: ever since she was 12 years old she knew that she wanted to be a winemaker, and since 1988 (when she started at Roseworthy) she’s been just that. With stints at Wirra Wirra, Lindemans, Seppelt Great Western (as sparkling winemaker) – she’s been on the right course. And spend ten minutes speaking and tasting with her and it’s clear that she’s not just impressive: she’s a gem. In one breath she’ll describe a wine as “hubba hubba”, in the next she’ll twirl into the finer details of rotary fermentation, in another she’ll run you through a list of what’s good and what isn’t about Italian wine. The point is: Natalie Fryar knows wine. A wide gamut of it. And she just happens to be dead keen on Tasmanian sparkling wine.

Which is what made tasting through a line up of every sparkling wine ever made under the Jansz label recently so interesting: from the first vintage (in 1989, which was so tart and acidic when it was released in 1991 that drinking it made your mouth curl: interestingly, it still pulls austerely through your mouth, but has become honeyed, floral, fresh and delicious) through to pre-release samples of the 2003, there has been a significant progression of style, from a lean, almost minerally, acid-based style to a richer, fuller style that takes significant lead from the chardonnay component of the blend (which now includes pinot noir, as it always has, and minute percentages of pinot meunier). In terms of flavours many of the later wines show an increasing flourish of pink grapefruit and rosewater complexities too, which only serves to ratchet up the interest.

Which is exactly what Fryar is trying to do. “Expressing the place in which the grapes are grown is the primary focus for all of us here. We’re making Tasmanian sparkling wine from this particular vineyard, so both in the winery and in the vineyard we’re trying everything we can to express the soil here, the site, the individuality of it. This place is all about elegance, about almond and honeysuckle flavours in the chadronnay – we get great ripeness in our fruit, which allows for great mid-palate power, but because of the acidity that the grapes naturally maintain here we’re able to maintain delicacy. The more I look at it the keener I become on a slightly chardonnay-dominant style from the vineyard – because I think that our chardonnay with four years on lees works absolutely beautifully.”

For evidence, look no further than the 1996 Late Disgorged release, with its big swings of meal and cedar, burnt butter and almond composure. Others to look out for include the sweeter 1999 Vintage Cuvee, riddled with a ravish of Turkish delight scents; the 2000 Cuvee with its superb pour of full-on flavour; and the 2002 Cuvee with its tremendous length, bite, power and pure fruit flavour.

Current Reviews (April 2006)

Jansz Vintage 2000: It’s come along in leaps and bounds in recent years, in no small part due to the exceptional winemaking skills of Natalie Fryer. The 1999, which was excellent, nonetheless had a distinctive, overt, sweet Turkish Delight character to it – the 2000 here is drier and more refined, while still carrying rosewater and sweet meal, toast and honeysuckle. Drink: 2004-2006. 90.