By Farr New Releases

 The whites of the new releases are from 2023, the reds from the 2022 vintage. Both vintages were cool in Geelong, in particular 2023.

I start with the 2023 By Farr Viognier. Viognier can be difficult, often a bit flabby, and tasting of fruit salad. This wine avoids it, helped by the cool vintage. It is quite tight, tasting of citrus, ginger, and apricot. So there is good complexity, and firms acidity brings it home in style (94 points).

The 2023 By Farr Chardonnay is interesting. It is certainly different from most in this country. While it is a young wine, it features ripe stone fruits, even some honey, and an overall savoury mouthfeel. It is quite a rich wine. I recommend to drink it young (93 points).

The most highly regarded By Farr wines are certainly the Pinot Noirs. The 2022 By Farr ‘Farrside’ Pinot Noir shows very lifted and pretty aromas. On the palate, strawberry, mushroom, and earthy flavours dominate. This is a very light wine, due to the vintage. The 60% whole bunch brings some body. The wine is smooth with a soft finish. It is quite different from the typical powerhouse performance of this wine (92 points).

The 2022 By Farr 'Sangreal' Pinot Noir is always the more savoury wine. Vines are grown on volcanic soil. In this year, it is quite fruity. There is the expected savoury undergrowth, but it is nowhere near as powerful as in most years. The firmer tannins and resulting structure gives it the lead over the 'Farrside' (93 points).

The real surprise is the 2022 By Farr Shiraz. This wine has never been on my radar. But in this year, where the Pinots do not hit their usual heights, the Shiraz shines. The wine is quite light, but in beautiful balance. Red berry fruit, a bit of spice, and some creaminess deliver a beautiful tender mouthfeel. This is cool climate Victorian Shiraz, but without the strong spice component of the typical Victorian profile. Soft tannins finish this graceful wine (94 points).

Overall, an unexpected experience. The Pinots were outshone by the bookends, the Viognier and the Shiraz. This is what vintage variation can do.

Guigal Tasting (part 1)

I am very sorry about the lack of new posts lately. I have not had time for this, unfortunately. As the next Rioja post will be quite comprehensive, I will report on a Guigal tasting in the interim. In this first part, I will review a couple of whites from 2017, and a couple of reds from 2015.

The 2017 Guigal Condrieu La Doriane is a 100% Viognier wine (as required from Condrieu), matured in 100% new oak. It is a fresh wine with vibrant acidity, engulfing the flavours of pear, vanilla and light spices. The wine has an oily character with a long elegant finish. This is a good wine, but as always with Viognier, I never quite know what it stands for (92 points).

The 2017 St. Joseph Lieu-Dit Blanc is a single vineyard wine, 95% Marsanne, 5% Roussanne. This is a terrific wine with a bigger mouthfeel and richer character, such as ripe melon, toast and almond. Still, this is balanced with lively acidity before a very smooth finish (95 points).

The 2015 St. Joseph Lieu-Dit Rouge is a lighter wine from this warm vintage. It is dark fruited, with vanilla and spice adding complexity. I find it a bit upfront, yet it has an elegant texture (92 points).

The 2015 St. Joseph 'Vignes de l'Hospice' is a big step up. This Shiraz is aged for 30 months in new oak. The dark fruit is intense and ripe, but the palate has great shape, and is driven by underlying acidity. You can hardly notice the oak in this full-bodied wine. The smooth tannins deliver an attractive finish (96 points). 

More, including the La La La wines, in the next post.

M Chapoutier

The legendary terroir of Hermitage

The next tasting was an extraordinary tasting at M Chapoutier. Similar to Guigal, the business was started after the second world war. It has been growing strongly in recent years and stands now at about 8 million bottles per year. The range of wines is wide, with mainly estate wines from the Northern Rhone and a negotiant business from the Southern Rhone (like Guigal). 

We start with a 100% Viognier from Condrieu, the 2014 Invitare. The fruit flavours are dominated by peach and exotic fruit, very true to the variety. The wine is obviously quite young, fresh and well balanced (90 points).  In contrast, the 2014 Petite Ruche is a 100% Marsanne wine, grown on the flats of Crozes-Hermitage. This wine is also fresh and fruity, with a mouth-coating texture (89 points). The 2012 Payrolles is quite different. This 100% Marsanne, from the less well known area of Saint-Peray, is golden in color. Its notes are quite floral, and the flavours mainly of pear and minerality. Although this wine only sees large old oak vats, I found the oak influence quite noticeable (89 points). 

An altogether different proposition is the 2011 Les Granilites from Saint-Joseph, also a 100% Marsanne. This wine has a deeper, golden color. There are floral notes on the nose. The flavours are pear, but also marzipan, quite complex. This is a more powerful wine with a long finish. The potential of Marsanne is coming to the fore here (94 points). We finished the whites with a 2006 Le Méal. This Marsanne comes from a single vineyard site, with the vines at least 50 years old. This is a very big white, quite unfamiliar to me, with roasted almond and toasted flavours. This wine is powerful and needs food (92 points). It was quite fascinating to experience these different expressions of Marsanne, but now I was ready for the reds. I would not be disappointed.   

We started with the 2013 Deschants from Saint-Joseph. This is a fruit forward Shiraz, fresh, but a little rough around the edges (86 points).  This was followed by the 2012 Les Arènes from Cornas. This wine has a spicy nose, giving away the Northern Rhone origin. The tannins are very powerful, and the fruit struggles against them (89 points). A real step up is the 2011 Les Varonniers from old vines in Crozes-Hermitage. This wine has blackberry and plum flavors, creating an elegant mouthfeel. Soft tannins lead to a fine finish (94 points). The 2008 La Mordorée from the Cote-Rotie borders the famous  Cote-Blonde vineyard. The colour of the wine has garnet elements, showing some age. Black fruits are accompanied by secondary flavours, such as forest floor. This is a very seductive, elegant wine, with soft tannins and a long finish (95 points).

We now come to the legendary wines of Hermitage. This site, as shown in the photos above, is a unique terroir. It is on a steep hill, with granite and large rocks soil, and a southern orientation, on the banks of the Rhone. The first wine from here is the  2011 Sizeranne, a blended wine. Red and black fruits combine to an elegant mouthfeel. The tannins are soft, and the wine is a delicious drink (94 points). I then have a chance to drink two of the famous Le Pavillon. This wine comes from a 4ha vineyard on steep slopes, as shown on the top photo on the left hand side. The 2008 Le Pavillon shows an exotic mix of  intense raspberry, tobacco and cocoa flavors. This wine is not too powerful, despite the old vines and low yields, but delivers superb balance and elegance with silky tannins and a long finish (96 points). The 1999 Le Pavillon develops this flavour spectrum further. Minerality, such as wet stone, takes over. The wine is still quite intense, with a good structure, and feels very content at its age.

M Chapoutier has received more 100 point scores from Robert Parker than any other winery. This might be due to the special terroir and the respect given to it. This means these wines are quite unique, expressing a rare combination of elegance, intensity and finesse. The winemaking style shows across the range. I left the tasting deeply impressed.  

Tahbilk White Rhone Varieties

 Tahbilk has bottled Marsanne long before it became more fashionable to drink white Rhone varieties. There are three such wines in the current offering.

The 2013 Tahbilk Marsanne is refreshing on the front palate. It has pear flavours, and some sweetness on the back, but the wine is more about its balanced texture. This is a very clean wine. I would drink it well chilled and have it with Thai food or even desert.

Score: 90/++

The 2013 Viognier is equally clean, but I find the flavour profile a little nondescript. The acidity on the finish is pleasant, but otherwise there is not much of anything, really.

Score: 88/-

The single vineyard 2004 Tahbilk 1927 Vines Marsanne uses some of the oldest Marsanne vines in the world. The style of this wine is different from typical Rhone wines of this variety. The wine is picked early and has more acidity than is common for Marsanne. The 2004 shows pear fruit, blended with toasty characters. The wine carries quite a bit of fruit characters, but finishes dry.

Score: 92/+

Clonakilla New Releases

Listening to Tim Kirk, Clonakilla's winemaker, is always very interesting. Not only is he a very intelligent person, but also a very good marketer. Yet in contrast to the spin employed by many of his colleagues, he prefers to 'under-promise and over-deliver'. So you listen to all the challenges that Clonakilla had to face in 2011 and 2012 and then get to a set of very good wines. Sure, he has done better, but these are very worth while wines.

The 2012 Clonakilla Canberra District Riesling comes from a wet year. The wine is citrussy and floral, quite zingy with acid covering the small amount of residual sugar. It is not is the class of a top Clare Riesling, but a refreshing wine with a clean finish (90 points).

The 2011 Clonakilla Canberra District Viognier is a welcome departure from other 'fatty' Viogniers. It shows the expected apricot flavours, but the wine is quite linear and not big. There are traces of oak in this wine and it finishes with a good round mouthfeel. I am not sure that it is Australia's best Viognier, as it is sometimes claimed, but it is certainly a good one (92 points).

The 2011 Clonakilla O'Riada Shiraz is made in the same way as the famous Shiraz/Viognier, but the fruit comes from other growers around Canberra. This wine is incredibly peppery and savoury and quite strong. Underneath sits beautiful red berry fruit. 2011 delivers a lighter style, but not a watery wine and the tannins deliver good length (93 points).

The 2011 Clonakilla Shiraz/Viognier is still peppery, but the flavours are rounder than in the O'Riada. The wine is very elegant and harmonious, dominated by red berry flavours. This wine will live a long, long time. This wine rates very high on clarity, grace, balance, deliciousness, modesty and paradox. The paradox is the lighter style, yet intensity of the wine. It would rate a bit lower on distinctiveness, persistence and complexity  (95 points).

In this tasting, I 'got' the Clonakilla wine style. The wines are about beauty. The French would call them feminine wines, but they are more than that (see above).

Clonakilla New Releases

The three wines I am going to review here are being released on 17 October as far as I know. As usual, you will have to be quick to get them.

The 2010 Clonakilla Canberra District Viognier is an interestingly made wine. Half the fruit is whole bunch pressed. This is a gentle process and delivers soft, pure fruit. The other half is crushed and left on skin for some time to extract the flavours close to the skin where they are most intense. The final wine is seamless and elegant. It tastes predominantly of apricot with a bit of ginger in the background. This amounts to a very stylish Viognier (it is just that I don't like the Viognier flavour profile).

Score: 93/0

The 2010 Clonakilla O'Riada Shiraz is made from vines in the Murrambatemen area. Like its famous cousin, the Shiraz Viognier, it includes 5% co-fermented Viognier, and it is made in the same way. The wine is medium bodied, tasting of redcurrant and red cherries. There are earthy and savoury flavours as well. This wine is very fresh and vibrant and has a strong tannic and acidic backbone. The wine is feminine, yet strong with great length. This wine has great character and in a few years, with tannins mellowing a bit, will be a well balanced, expressive red wine. Outstanding value for money it is, too.

Score: 95/+++

The 2010 Clonokilla Shiraz Viognier, from the Estate, has a similar flavour profile, slightly darker fruit, and  a softer and silkier texture. This is a classy wine no doubt, but I felt the O'Riada was more expressive, had more personality. An unexpected outcome, but I score them on par.

Score 95/++

Clonakilla 2008 Range

Tim Kirk, owner and wine-maker of Clonakilla, presented his wines with a lot of passion,which is good to see. He spoke of capturing the beauty of his place in liquid form and his objective of celebrating the savoury, as they do in the Northern Rhone.

First up was the 2008 Viognier. This is a serious wine. It has predominantly apricot flavours, but also a fair bit of tannin and acidity. The taste falls off a bit at the end, but nonetheless I liked the mouthfeel of the wine.

Score: 90/+

The 2008 Hilltops Shiraz is quite fruity and forward, but has savoury aspects as well, which will better develop in a couple of years. It does not have much of a finish, but is very good value for a $25/bottle wine.

Score: 88/+

2008 is the second year of the O'Riada Shiraz. The wine includes about 6% Viognier and really is the baby brother of the flagship wine. The wine has predominantly red fruit character and is a bit fleshy, as a result of better ripening conditions than 2007 and larger berry sizes. There is spice and a silky feel to the wine. The mouthfeel is nice, although this is not a big wine. I liked it a lot.

Score: 93/++

In many ways, the 2008 Shiraz Viognier is similar, but a bit finer, more elegant, excellent structure and length on the palate. The flavour stays for a long time. The wine is very approachable now, but will improve in complexity over time. If I had a criticism, I would have liked a bit more fruit concentration, but it is a minor point.

Score 95/+

Overall, the line-up demonstrated excellent wine-making skills and an expression of medium bodied wines which has not many peers in Australia.

Torbreck Viognier Marsanne Rousanne

Getting the white Rhone varieties right is no easy task. If the wine is made in a fuller bodied style, the Viognier often tastes like an undefined fruit cocktail, and the others can be dull. The lighter styles often lack character.

The 2008 Torbreck Viognier Marsanne Rousanne hits the spot. It is quite full flavoured, with complex stone fruit characters, like pear and white peach, but also very nutty. The key is the mouthfeel. The wine fills the mouth beautifully without being heavy or overripe. This is certainly not a low percentage lunch drink, but it holds enough fruit and interest to carry the 14% alcohol well.

Score: 92/++