In terms of wine, Australia and Tasmania has it all: cool and warm climates, French and American oaks, white and red varieties. Australia also makes the top wine imported into the United States. Survey its popular wines, including a Riesling-like Semillon from Hunter Valley and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawara.
Wait before I knew anything about wine and shortly after my first wine Epiphany I woke up and thought to myself what’s the all talk about Chardonnay everyone talks about it and they keep saying things like Fruity buttery and Oak what does all that mean at the time I was still living in
London so after I went uh to work I went to a store called oddbins and asked the man behind the counter for a fruity buttery and Oak chardonay now here I felt all important because I knew three things to ask for in a Chardonnay fruity Oak and buttery although I had
Absolutely no idea what it would taste like I also asked him how can you tell if it’s got Oak in it he said that it would taste Oaky all right well that didn’t help me very much but he did direct me to a wolf blast chardonay a South Australian Chardonnay so I ran
Home excited to try it and you know something it tasted even better than I expected for the first time I felt like I was on the inner circle I knew what fruity buttery and Oak meant so Australian charday has a little special place in my heart now knowing what I know I really
Have to tip my cap to the Australians as I said at the end of the last lecture Australia does it all white red sparkling sweet fortified wies that age wies at every price point every noble variety and then some if you haven’t found an Australian wine you
Like you’ll have a great list of new wines to try after this lecture for today’s lecture you’re going to need the following wines a reasing preferably from Eden or CLA Valley a semal either from the Hunter or Barosa or you may even have a semal Chardonnay blend an oak chardonnay from anywhere in
Australia a shz preferably from Barosa or Mclaren Vale from South Australia a rone valley SRA from France and a cabernet sool from kunara the rule in tasting is that you taste dry before sweet white before red and light bodied to full bodied a tasting order is particularly important in professional
Tasting why because sometimes when you taste a full bodied wine the medium bodied wine tastes dilute in comparison your palette is affected have you ever tasted orange juice before or and after brushing your teeth it’s the same kind of thing we don’t have any sweet wines here
They’re all dry but we’re going to taste a tiny bit out of order today because different regions have different Specialties we’ve done this before so feel free to hit the pause button take a sip of water eat a plain cracker just to recalibrate your pallet and then come
Back the first Vineyard in Australia was planted in 1788 with vines from the Cape of Good Hope yes South Africa they were picked up by its first European governor and planted in New South Wales in the garden of the government house just north of Sydney New South Wales from 1788 to 1823
Was officially a British penal colony comprised mainly of convicts Sailors and their wives given this it’s not surprising that a support for wine making was slow and coming for example the first Vineyards were showing some promise so the governor asked for some technical assistant from England to establish some
Groundwork to develop The Vineyards as The Story Goes England sent two French prisoners of War to provide technical expertise I guess they assumed all French people know how to make wine but it backfired terribly one prisoner was so ignorant he was sent back to England immediately the other one made cider
Instead of wine and then used peaches instead of apples so it took a little while to develop Australia’s now flourishing wine industry we’ve come a long way since then realizing their own untapped potential Australia’s wineries banded together in the 1970s to create a 25-year plan to become one of the
World’s top wine producing and wine exporting Nations but they did it in 15 since the 1970s they increased their production over tfold and in 2005 they were the sixth largest wine producing nation in the world and today the number one wine brand in the United States is an Australian wine called Yellow
Tail this is particularly amazing considering that Australia although it’s about the same size as the United States is 40% desert the Outback takes up 70% of its land mass and the country has only 7% of the population of the United States you may remember we talked about
The flying wine makers a while back the term began when a team of Australian wine makers was commissioned to consult for some French co-ops they lent their expertise and Innovative Spirit to more traditional French wineries to create more modern style wines with an international appeal one reason the Australian wine
Makers were able to do this was because their Harvest is at the opposite time of the year of the French so they were available it also seems to be part of their their makeup um the Australian culture to to share and to help people learn I know that because when I began
Studying wine whenever I read Australian wine magazines or or spoke to an Australian wine maker it was always a breath of fresh air they’re really forthcoming and sharing information about their wines so let’s start with the region of New South Wales where Sydney is New South Wales is by far the most populated
Ated state for example there are more people in Sydney than the entire state of South Australia but it’s not the largest producer of wine about 80 mil or 128 km north of Sydney is the hunter Valley which is a great wine Excursion for people visiting Sydney the region is
Separated into the sub regions of the lower Hunter Valley and the upper Hunter Valley the lower Hunter Valley is one of the warmest most humid and wetest climates in Australia it gets about 800 to 950 millim of rainfall annually the upper Hunter Valley is a is a touch
Drier and even a little warmer this region also has quite a bit of cloud cover so what varieties do well here well believe it or not seal does we spoke about semone in lecture 9 and 10 it’s from Bordeaux where it makes some incredibly longlived dry Oak wines and
Some lusciously deliciously sweet wines Hunter semal is a dry uned new world classic that can absolutely last decades and the best vintages are generally the wetter ones it’s been described as having the structure and acidity of reasing so get out your reasing but I also want you to
Take out your Oak Chardonnay as well I really want you to see the the differences in the flavors and the structure of these wines and to to fully appreciate it you’ll have to compare and contrast these so here I’m comparing the color of the sem and the reasing they’re fairly similar in
Color now picking up the Chardonnay the oak chardonay is a bit deeper in color but if it wasn’t Oak it probably would be somewhere in between now let’s smell the semal it’s not very aromatic definitely no definitely not as aromatic as the reasing but a little bit more
Aromatic than the Chardonnay now the types of Aromas I get with uned semone is a little bit of a citrus and lemon character which is similar to what you see in reasing but you get a beeswax kind of of character so why don’t you taste through all three
You’re probably going to find that the Chardonnay is much bigger in body and the acidity of the seal is higher than the Chardonnay but the reasing is even higher than the semal in the hunter Valley the acidity for seal is much higher than other parts of Australia say like Barosa and um it
Can be quite austere here and can be quite tight remember what we mean by tight and auster is that you have a high level of acidity light body and it’s a a bit angular it’s not releasing a lot of its Aromas for Hunter Valley semal they
Usually wait a few years to kind of loosen it up a little bit so that some of those Aromas can come out and be more enjoyable this is one of the reare new world whites that’s not only known for Aging for a long time it’s expected to
As it gets older it takes on flavors of honey and toast and and that lime Citrus character kind of Fades outside the hunter you see SE Oak in other parts of Australia and it has a richer body and tastes uh less of beeswax and more like a a vanilla uh
Lemony custard obviously without the sweetness as they are dry wines you’ll also see wines that have semul as part of a blend such as SE sovol Blanc or seal charday now on Australian labels if you see more than one variety listed the one mentioned first is a predominant
Variety with the highest percentage of that Variety in the BL here it says SE chard so that means it has more SE than chard but here it says chard semal which means it has more charday than semal another white grape you see in New South Wales is called verdello you heard
Me mention the name briefly in connection with madira and it seems to be uh the same great variety as godello in Spain it’s medium bodied with stone fruit character and some light floral tones and some people say that they get flavors of of lime cordal the big red great Variety in the
Hunter Valley is shiras but I’ll talk more about that in a little while when we compare it to Barosa in South Australia now hund Valley is one of Australia’s GIS or Geographic indications so you’ll see the name on the label this is similar to the appal
Cont or AC you see in Europe although Australia has its own classification system speaking of terms you see on the label um sometimes Southeastern Australia this means it’s a multi- regional blend you see this on more modestly priced Wines in general it means that the grapes could come from anywhere in Australia
Meaning from Queensland New South Wales Victoria or South Australia If This Were the United States it would be like saying it could come from anywhere between Virginia and Texas often though the grapes come from from the region of riverina in sou New South Wales or Riverland in South
Australia and just as in California and pretty much everywhere outside of Europe the word Reserve has no legal definition as a side note remember in the beginning of this lecture when I said I felt all important because I knew three things about chardonay fruity buttery and Oak
Gallow did a study several years ago on how many adjectives it takes to sell a wine can you guess the answer it’s three so if you’re ordering wine at a restaurant and you want to convince your friends that it’s the right choice just give them three adjectives you’ll love
This because it’s fruity concentrated and rich or it tastes like apples butter and vanilla but remember it’s just three But be sure to pick out three good ones probably not like cats pea Barnyard or diesel now let’s go to the state of Victoria there are quite a few wine
Zones here we tasted a wine from the state in in in lecture 8 remember the Australian sticky these sweet fortified wines are best known in the Victoria regions of rlen and Glenn Rowan these wines last for up to 3 months in your refrigerator so if you have some still
From lecture 8 go ahead and taste it at the end of this lecture as a little sweet ending for a job well done farther south from R Glenn or Glenn Rowan is a cool climate zone still in the state of Victoria around the natural Bay of Port philli near Melbourne the
Second largest city in Australia again a winery tour throughout the region of Victoria would make a wonderful day Excursion away from the big city this region is farther away from the equator and closer to the South Pole so it’s cooler given its latitude however Port Philip also provides a maritime
Influence this is where we see cool climate varieties such as as P Noir and charday and it’s no surprise that you also see some sparkling lines here Moet and Shandon have set up shop here um and remember they also have a presence in Argentina now as well Yara Valley and the Mornington
Peninsula are the best known Australian regions for cool climate pinoir and charday the average daily temperature during Harvest is about 67° F or 19.4 de C so that’s quite cool this allows the Chardonnay and the pinoir to show incredible acidity and finesse now if you tasted a a yar Valley
Or Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay versus let’s say a hunter or Adelaide you would taste more a more delicate body a higher level of acidity and more modest Al alcohol it’s a cooler region so if you prefer cool climate chardonay look for these regions on the bottle farther south still and a short flight
From Melbourne is the Australian Island and state of tasmia it’s much closer to Antarctica than the equator and the wine regions in Northern Tasmania start at about 41° south latitude this puts Tasmania in the pathway of the so-called roaring 40s winds that hurl through the 40 to 50 degrees south latitude they’re
Called The Roaring 40s because they’re um there are no land masses to slow them down besides Tasmania itself in the northern hemisphere this latitude would land at about a a Porto in Portugal but here in comparison it’s quite cool the average Harvest temperature here is 63° f or
17.2 degrees C and it and gets cooler As you move to Southern Tasmania the two main regions here are easy to remember you have Northern Tasmania and Southern Tasmania Tasmania has huge potential for Quality cool climate varieties such as P Noir and charday as well as aromatic varieties
Such as reasing and pag gree now in the last decade Tasmania has caught the eye of many investors both Moet and Shandon and and Louis rorer champagne houses use some Tasmanian grown grapes for their Australian sparkling plants and with increasing Vine age and better quality clones being brought the quality should continue to
Rise Tasmania is known somewhat for its reasing and some producers make them in a more German style with some residual sugar and and lower in alcohol now the P noirs for Tasmania are even more more delicate but also quite fragrant fresh and crisp unfortunately you don’t see too
Many Australian p noirs in stores or restaurants because there’s a preconceived notion that Australia is too hot for pin Noir but I guarantee you it’s not too hot in Yara Mornington Mornington Peninsula and especially not Tasmania going back to the mainland let’s revisit the reasing we tasted
Before hopefully the one you have came from either Eden Valley or or Clair Valley as those are the two best known regions for reasing both Eden Valley and Clare Valley are located within the state of South Australia with Eden being closer to Adelaide the capital these regions have a a hilly topography and
The altitude here makes a difference it’s not as high as salta in Argentina like we discussed in last lecture but it’s relatively high for Australia and its nights can range from cool to quite cold all of these fact S Help the reasing stay quite crisp and delicate
And make and the best reasing coming out of Australia so let’s taste it all on its own again we saw as before it’s a a pale color and we already had seen that it’s quite aromatic we get some lime notes some Citrus notes quite floral and if you compare it to let’s
Say the sem like we were doing before you you can get a little hint of petrol and if you hadn’t smelled it before go back and forth and see if you can get it now because Australian reings are known for getting that petrol Aroma a little bit earlier than some other regions
Around the world let’s taste it this is quite dry it’s very very dry and it’s a little austere it reminds me of let’s say Austrian reasing with a with a little more fruit and less minerality the acid is quite high and it’s a it’s alcohol is is not as warm um
As let’s say in Austria but um but it is a bit warmer than let’s say in Germany if you tasted this side by side with an Elian reasing the Australian would be more upfront in its fruit but it would be more focused in its character and less round in its in its
Mouth feel what you may want to do use to compare your tasty notes from this lecture to those of uh 11 and 15 this can tell you a lot about how you perceive the wine and can help you make buying decisions later on I generally
Find the wines from uh CLA Valley a bit rounder and weightier than the ones from her sister Eden Valley which have a stronger limey note but both are quite delicious you may also see some San Blanc from this region um and the Adelaide Hills which includes Claire but runs a bit farther
South now it’s time to come to the flagship red of Australia sharz we talked in previous lectures about the sarra style from the Ron Valley and the shz style from Australia let’s show you firsthand what this means let’s take a look at the color well here the shz is deeper in
Color than arone Valley sarra it’s probably has something to do with the amount of new Oak that’s in the the on the Australian shz smelling both of them now the in its Aromas we get both have the SRA character to it so you got those raspberry tones and some black
Pepper however the r style or the rone valley SAR is much more reserved in its fruit the Australian one is but much more powerful much more in yourr face it’s it’s more upfront which again comes to the new world versus old world and the Australian doesn’t really have
Minerality to it the Ron Valley sarra actually has more aromatics of of Olive and an herbal character and some Savory notes while on the nose you smell much more of sweet vanilla and and some coconut notes to the Australian shz now let’s taste it I’m going to taste the rone
First first off the body of the Australian sh is much bigger and it’s um it’s has more dense tannant than this particular cros Heritage and the this impression of fruit is quite sweet it’s not actually sweet it has no residual sugar but the impression of its fruit is quite quite
Sweet however remember that trick I told you um do the hold your nose test to see if it has any residual sugar so because your tongue will not lie but you notice also too that in this wine you get a slight eucalyptus note this is quite common in Australian
Wines Australia is home to more than 700 species of eucalyptus trees as the wind blows through the trees it picks up the oil from the leaves which then lands on the grapes for years people debated whether eucalyptus trees in the area really did affect the grapes and and the
Resulting wine Gallow did a study in California to investigate this and they made wines from specific Vines at various distances from the eucalyptus trees do you know what they found yes the wine made from the the the rows of vines closer to the eucalyptus trees had a more herbal almost minty complexity
It’s probably for the same reason that in the ran you have the Aromas of olives and rosemary there are lots of herbs growing nearby now in the Australian Chaz you may have noticed a very sweet vanilla and coconut flavor which I talked about but you may also get Dill
Now I don’t get this particular Aroma I’m not sensitive to it but you may be and there are a lot of people who are this vanilla coconut and Dill character is associated with um American Oak which we talked about in lecture 16 we’re talking about the differences
Between French and American oak look on the back label for Australian Brands if it only says Barrel maturation it generally means American Oak because if they’ve coughed up the cash for the French barrels they’d be the first to tell you now notice on the pallet in between these two wines notice in the
Ron SRA the tendons are smaller and finer but you you may have um you may have more of them in this one I didn’t but you may have one that has much more of them so they feel different notice in the Australian um shz that has American
Oak in it it the tenants feel bigger we talked about you know the larger size marbles as as an analogy now press your tongue up on your pallet and really move your tongue in a way that you’re really feeling the size of those tannins but you also notice a warmth on the back
Pallet uh sharz has a higher level of alcohol than Ron style sarra and this is the difference between sarra style and shiras style I hope you were able to see Sniff and taste the difference if not don’t worry about it you’ll get there I mean I couldn’t tell
The difference between a Pina Noir and a Cabernet Sanol when I first started and speaking of Barrels in lecture 19 we mentioned that barrels can be quite expensive not surprisingly some modestly priced producers want the impression of Oak flavor for their wines but without the cost so they use Oak Alternatives
Such as Oak chips or Oak Barrel staves the producer places the chips or staves in the fermenting or maturing wine to get some Oak flavor it’s much more economical while you do get some Oak flavor the the flavor is less well integrated and the tants feel coarser
For red wines and you may feel dryness for whites as well but that’s how you’re going to get some Oak flavor and complexity at a lower price point producers throughout the world use these techniques so it’s not just Australia but how can you tell if Oak alternatives are being used look at the
Back label again if it says Oak influence or influence of oak or Oak maturation without actually saying the word Barrel or the word BS this would be a clue that an oak alternative may have been used now back to our South Australian regions Barosa Valley is next to Eden
Valley and it’s another region you should know it’s famous for its giras but its producers um it produces far more reasing and uh than the Eden and Clare Valley combined and makes more semal than the lower or upper Hunter Valley some experts have pointed out that bosa’s total effective temperature
For ripening is identical to bordeau but in Barosa there is more Sunshine lower humidity and less rainfall as well as much a wider dial temperature variation these conditions make for very powerful Reds and more voluptuous whites the shiras that comes from Barosa is very deep concentrated and rich in
Raspberry fruit with a chocy texture and velvety tennants and just that hint of UK as we saw here these are much more robust than the shz from the hunter Valley which is a bit higher in acidity than Barosa Barosa has also received a lot of attention because it’s home to
What many consider Australia’s first growth wine penil gr or you may say gra in 1951 Max schuber created an experimental shz bottling after fermenting an American Oak and he called it gr Hermitage in 1956 he unveiled this new wine to the the Sydney trade and the results were
Disastrous so management told him to stop production so he made it in secret in 1962 penfolds entered GR shage in competitions and in the year since it’s won 50 gold medals you see it today with just the word gr as they dropped the name Heritage from the label in 1988 today
I’ve seen bottles priced at $300 and I’ve seen a 1976 for over $1,000 a bottle as I make this course there’s a penfolds gage selling for $40,000 another style of wine from this area is a blend of granache shz and MRA um affectionately referred to in the
Industry as GSM in Barosa there are ungrafted ganache Vines up to 150 years old which makes it a Heritage area these wines are rich and and concentrated however the flavor is uh the profile is quite different with ganach being the predominant grape variety it will have more red fruit more
Cherry fruit a lower level of acidity and a higher level of alcohol remember ganache loves the Sun for a good shz look South to the coastal region of McLaren Veil because of the proximity to the water uh wine from this region will have a little less body than a similar wine from
Barosa still farther south is the Limestone Coast so named because of it’s soil there are six regions within the Limestone Coast Zone but you may see um on the label Limestone Coast which means that the grapes could come from anywhere in that entire region now the region of
Kunara which we mentioned in lecture three which has that beautiful terarosa soil that bright red clay LOM is over Limestone the climate in kunara is a bit cooler than Barosa so Cabernet svol does very well here we have a kunara Cabernet SEL let’s take a look at the
Color as we might expect Cabernet svol it’s a deep Ruby and this one’s slightly opaque it’s moderately intense in its aromatics definitely get that black current and ciss notes some some dark fruit some Plum uh getting a little bit of cherry notes but I also get some of the
Herbaceousness the uh the green bell pepper but it’s not as strong as let’s say Chile but I do get the mint and Eucalyptus here let’s taste it it’s full bodied very very concentrated very rich the tannins are dense and they’re slightly gripping but it also has a really nice level of
Acidity I’d like to think that comes from the Limestone soil and the terarosa soil now for the last state we go to Western Australia on the west coast here there is a range of climates from the very hot Swan Valley to the cool Margaret river which exports a lot of
Wine to the United States the Margaret River has a stronger Maritime influence than any other region in Australia because of this climate their shiras is not as hedonistic as Barosa I I’ve mentioned hedonistic this term before four and it refers to a wine that’s that’s quite round and big and
Voluptuous think of a Marilyn Monroe versus an Audrey heern that’s what I mean by hedonistic the Aromas of the Margaret River shz are slightly different than that of Barosa my Benchmark for Western Australia uh Western Australian Shiraz is that it’s a bit more black pepper in its Aromas the overall climate however
Is similar in temperature to pomal and Santa in bordeau the soil here is pretty grally which is also reminiscent of Bordeaux although the base is granite soil and not Limestone therefore it’s no surprise that this region is also known for highquality cabinet sveno next up we go to New Zealand and
South Africa these countries are home to New World Classics and we have some new great varieties here to unveil as well you’re going to need the following wines a New Zealand sovon Blanc a s from France a New Zealand pinoir a South African Steen also called shenen Blanc a South African
Pinotage and a South African Cabernet sool preferably from stellin bos until next time I have a trivia question for you which wine producing country closes more than 85% of its wines with screw caps instead of cork think you know the answer well you have to find out in our
Next lecture until then cheers yes