Sultans of Shiraz 2005
Tasting Shiraz from Australia

Bill talked about the differences that oak barrel types can make on a Shiraz. American oak adds a sweeter, vanilla flavor, while French oak makes the wine drier, with a nutty, spicy aspect. Hardy's avoids new barrels, as they will overpower the flavor of the Shiraz. They instead use barrels that are 1-4 years old, to add a more gentle flavor.

In fact, because Hardy's makes such a wide variety of wines, they are able to use barrels for far longer than most wineries can. First, they start a new barrel out on a white wine. Then for the next four years, the barrel is used for red wines. Next they break the barrel down, scrape its inner area, refire the boards and rebuild the barrel. The barrle is now used to age brandy for 15-20 years, and finally it is used for aging port.

2000 Yarra Burn Shiraz
We began with the Shiraz from the Yarra Valley in Victoria, outside of Melbourne. Bill explained, "for Australia, this is mountainous - it actually has hills." This is the coolest climate area on Mainland Australia. This creates a spicy, fruity nose, with plum and cherry - as compared with the warm-climate flavors of licorice, chocolate, coffee and anise found in other Shiraz.

The Yarra Burn had a nice, spicy flavor, with the fresh cherry and plum flavors, including a nice finish.

2001 Brookland Valley Verse 1 Shiraz
Next, a wine from the Margaret River area. Southern Australia is made up of two distinct areas. There is the southeastern area of Australia, where 95% of wines are grown. Then there stretches 1,000 miles of desert before you reach the tiny southwestern vineyard area, near Perth. At the absolute southwestern corner is a peninsula. Bill commented that "this is probably the most maritime climate we have in our country. To the west lies 6,000 miles of Indian Ocean. To the south is 4,000 miles of Arctic ocean. This peninsula does not get frost, does not get extreme heat. It has a lovely, mild climate throughout the growing season."

Brookland Valley is a small estate, but occupies a prime location. "I still think it's better cabernet country," admitted Bill, but the consensus in the tasting room was that this was quite delicious. Flavors of chocolate, coffee, dark plum predominated, with medium tannins and a gorgeous, juicy finish. Highly recommended. The wine runs around $25/bottle.

2002 Barossa Valley Estate Spires Shiraz
Bill began by explaining, "We Australians think this is our best known wine area - even though it doesn't produce big volumes of wine." The Barossa Valley Estate is unique because Hardy's only owns half of the winery interest. The other half is owned by a cooperative of 60 different grape growers.

To understand this, it's necessary to step back in time. In the 1840s, German Lutherans settled this region of Australia, seeking religious freedom. They built churches in each town, and the spires of those churches gave this wine its name. "This was the heart of cooperative viticulture in Australia," Bill continued. The cooperatives ran for many years, but five years ago they needed help with reaching the next level of production. Hardy's teamed up with 60 of the oldest families in the region, to work together on creating the finest wines. The group encompasses some of the oldest vineyards in Australia. This particular wine is made from the young vines - only 10-30 years old.

Barossa is a warm country - the Shiraz vines here create fuller, riper grapes that provide chocolate and coffee flavors. "The flavor falls between Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon in terms of tannin content," added Bill.

Wow! What a gorgeous, nice bright cherry, plummy flavor. The balance is just right, and the juicy finish lingers and pleases. Amazingly, at only around $10 a bottle, this was the least expensive wine poured all night. I quickly decided to track down a case of it to be my house wine.

2000 Barossa Valley Ebenezer Shiraz
Where the last wine came from the young vines, this Shiraz comes from vines that are 30-60 years old. As the vines get older, the crop drops away. A vine tends to hit its peak yield at around 25 years old, then slowly tapers off as the vine ages. By the time the vine hits 50 years old, it has gone from a yield of 4-5 tons per acre down to only 1 1/2 to 2 tons per acre. This means the bunches are smaller, the skin is thicker, and the wine takes on more body, tannins, and concentrated flavor.

The Ebenezer was very rich, with a full aroma and black olive, chocolate and coffee flavors that I really enjoyed. Even so, this wine can still age for another 5-10 years before reaching its peak. This wine runs around $40/bottle.

We asked why the Germans planted Shiraz, rather than the grapes they were more familiar with from Germany. Bill explained that back in the 1800s, Australians were planting grapes to make port with, for the English market. So this would have been Grenache and Shiraz. They were not thinking about table wines at the time. It is our fortunate luck that Shiraz is so tasty as a table wine as well, and we can now take advantage of the old vines.

1999 Leasingham Classic Clare Shiraz
Hardy usually owns only 10-20% of the vineyards used in a given wine, but in premium areas they try to own much larger amounts to retain control over the grape quality. In the Clare valley, they own 70-80% of the vineyards they use. Bill called these vines "bush vines", as they grow untrellissed, in large bushy clumps. For this wine, they buy 50 liter (US) bourbon barrels from the US, to give them a larger surface area ratio. This gives a smoky vanilla oak flavor to this wine.

The wine is very smooth, with dark chocolate flavors and hints of berry and licorice. The flavor was bright and mouth filling, very nice, with a soft, gentle finish.

1999 Eileen Hardy Shiraz
The final wine in the seminar tasting portion of the evening was a special, tribute wine. Eileen Hardy took over the Hardy winery operations when her husband was killed - and also raised four children who were all under 14 at the time. "She became the Veuve Cliquot of the Australian wine industry," Bill reverently commented. She was even awarded the Order of the British Empire, given to her in Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth.

As a present for Eileen's 80th birthday in 1973, the family created 500 cases of a top notch wine. The resulting four day party went through a large number of those bottles, and it was so well received that it became an annual tradition. At first the wines were named for each year of Eileen's life - the first was "Special Bin 80", the second was "Special Bin 81". But soon they simply called it Eileen, and focussed solely on Shiraz grapes. They skipped 1978 and 1983 as the grapes were not up to quality standards in those years.

The wine is blended from the very best plots of all of the Shiraz vineyards in Hardy's portfolio, and carefully blended. It is made in 100% French oak, and aged for up to 2 years to add a "real finesse" to the wine's flavor. The results are stunning. There is a symphony of flavors, including cinnamon, currant, mint, blueberry, eucalyptus, very fresh and refreshing. There are hints of nutmeg and mint on the finish. The wine runs around $90 a bottle and has won countless awards. "This is literally the best that we can do," said Bill with a smile. "It is one of the few wines that will support new oak - it has a good body. Not new American oak, though - that would be much too powerful."

Bill talked about the process that is gone through to select the grapes for this wine each year. "We have a pretty good feeling which blocks will make it or not make it," he began. "At the end of June we hold a classification tasting. All winemakers go around to every other cellar, and assign a classification to each plot as to which wine it will go in. We age them all separately in barrels. Later, we retates them all. At that point we might reject a third, and are now down to 7 or 8 parcels. Then we bledn them, put them back in oak, then age them for six months with slow oxidation. Finally they are bottled and sit for one year to bottle age before they are released to the market."

The original lot was of 500 cases, and for the last ten vintages production has ranged around 400 cases. This compares with most Bordeaux estates that create 10,000 to 25,000 cases of wine. This is literally a wine that tends to sell out as soon as it is released.

Port Making
Bill spent 8 years making all of Hardy's fortified wines, and had many tips of the trade to share with us. First, for tawny ports, the wines are famous for their light color and long ageing. They should therefore be fortified with neutral spirits, not brandy. If brandy was used, the wine would have to be aged for 2-3 times longer to remove that darker color. They do often top-fortify the wine at the end with brandy, to bring the alcohol up to the proper level.

When they press the grapes, they press away from the skins. If they added spirits to the skin during fermentation, the alcohol would extract extra color and tannin from those skins that are not desireable in the tawny.

For vintage ports, they do add brandy since they will be bottling it in only 1-2 years anyway and want that complex color and fruit flavors. They also fortify on the skins for the same reason - to draw the extra flavors and fruit from that skins. In fact they often let the mix sit for a week or two before pressing. They make sure never to age the ports in small or new oak barrles, because they don't want a heavy oak character. They use very old, used barrels, to make sure that the fresh fruit flavors come out in the result.

Malolactic Fermentation and Shiraz
Bill discussed how "our policy is 100% malolactic fermentation for red wines. You almost can't avoid it. The only way to remove lactic bacteria is to push it through a fine filter - .45 micron. You'd end up with rose, basically." The filter would strip out all of the large molecules - including the rich colors, flavors and tannins - that make a red wine so special.

"You don't want malolactic fermentation to begin in the bottle, so you have to finish it before bottling," he continued. "You want to do it as early as possible."

Malolactic fermentation is all about starting with the natural malic, or "apple" acids found in grapes and converting them to the softer, creamier "lactic" acids. As Bill indicated, it can happen quite naturally on its own, as long as there is lactic bacteria and malic acids in the source wine. The winemakers would rather do this on their own terms, rather than let it spontaneously happen and change the character of the wine.

Another issue winemakers in Australia pay attention to is the pH of the wine. Australia tends to have very warm climates, which causes the acidity to drop away and the pH to rise. This causes microbiological problems and issues with the color. To combat this, they often add natural tartaric acids at the beginning of the winemaking process to balance out the pH. This helps to naturally avoid Brett contamination, and to maintain a strong character in the color.

Sultans of Shiraz Introduction
Shiraz Dinner Pairing by Chef Daniel Bruce

Master Wine Event Listing