Artifice . . . whither the winemaker?

Artifice. It’s a word that I’m pretty sure was sparingly used a few years ago in wine writing. Now it’s seemingly everywhere. Every second wine writer or commentator is using it in reference to winemaking input. An example below from a winery’s website is the kind of comment that has become common place

“no more than the bare essentials of winemaking artifice and intervention.”

What’s the definition of artifice? From the Oxford dictionary, “clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others”. From the Cambridge dictionary “(the use of) a clever trick or something intended to deceive”. Not exactly flattering, so to my mind if you are discussing winemaking artifice it’s not really a positive comment on the wine or the winemakers efforts. Using artifice to describe winemaking that does indeed trick up a wine and perhaps make it appear more impressive (at least in the short-term) than it is in reality makes sense to me. The issue I have is that it has come to be used more and more to simply describe winemaking input. And while wine insiders might kind of understand what is being said, I’ve got no doubt that the average consumer understands artifice in its proper usage, and would be unlikely to view it as a positive description in a tasting note. Moreover, the inherent implication of using artifice to describe any kind of winemaking input, is that "natural" wines are the only truly authentic wines (being without artifice). This is pretty binary and to my mind an unhelpful view of wines and winemaking.

One wine writer wrote of a premium Margaret River Chardonnay “Lots of winemaking artifice involved here – needs time, but this should be fascinating to watch as it evolves”. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. A wine with a lot of artifice is unlikely to evolve well at all. I’m sure what this wine writer is actually referring to is fairly standard winemaking, in that this Margaret River Chardonnay sees a fair bit of new oak and undergoes partial malolactic fermentation. Well, to me this is more than legitimate winemaking input, not some attempt to trick up a wine. These are the same winemaking techniques that many of the greatest white Burgundies undergo. If it must be argued that this is indeed artifice, then a Chardonnay needs to be aged in a neutral stainless steel and undergo no malolactic to be regarded as without artifice (a sad, sad world if that is the definition of Chardonnay that isn’t tricked up).

While I understand the reaction to the very real artifice of many industrial Australian wines over the past couple of decades, it’s disappointing to see an overreaction that has the word bandied about and seemingly diminishes the entirely positive contribution of many passionate winemakers. Without wanting to define specifically what techniques are of artifice (everyone will have their own personal matrix), if someone states that a wine that goes through reverse osmosis to reduce alcohol, and then has some tannin chucked in, is a wine of artifice, then that to me would make some sense. But winemaking decisions about stems or no stems, how much new oak, lees stirring, levels of malolactic fermentation etc. are to my mind not winemaking artifice. To argue that they are, is to say there is something disingenuous about these inputs. For many winemakers, however, there’s not a hint of deception in any these decisions, but rather choices as to what will in their opinion produce great wine. They might bugger up one of these inputs and produce an unbalanced wine, but that’s another point entirely.

This may all be considered English language semantics on my part. Perhaps, but I think there are still plenty of wines out there that ought to be called out for their artifice, and that the affect of the term shouldn't be lessened by incorrectly applying it to all and sundry. To do so diminishes the efforts of many passionate winemakers endeavouring to make great wine.


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Yelland and Papps Devote Greenock Shiraz 2010

The 2010 Yelland and Papps Devote Greenock Shiraz was made using grapes from a single site in the northern Greenock sub-region of the Barossa Valley. Inky purple in colour and with a fruitcake spice and black fruit nose, the wine has impressive, silky blackberry, spicy dark plumb fruit flavours flowing through from the front to back palate, some milk chocolate and chinotto flavours on the finish and pliant, ripe tannins.

The fruit flavours are powerful and sweet, though balanced with the sensitive (and relatively understated) use of new and old American and French oak. This is not a subtle wine, more seductive and overt than demure and suggestive. However, the result is not confected or overwhelming, just enjoyable and moreish.

After three days on the tasting bench, the wine didn’t budge much, other than for the tannins to assert themselves some more and the sultry fruit cake spice.

This is another example of Yelland and Papp’s enjoyable, fruity and flavoursome Devote range, and from a very good vintage – it has enough restraint, expensive oak treatment and structure to suggest it will age nicely in the cellar, yet will please a majority of wine drinkers right now – a ‘win-win’ approach.

Rating: 93pts

RRP: $32
ABV: 14.5%
Website:
Source: Sample

A week with Jim Chatto and the Pepper Tree crew (Part II) . . .

(In my previous post I focused on vineyards and the 2012 vintage during my week with Pepper Tree. This post I look more at the winery and their chief winemaker, Jim Chatto)

The Pepper Tree story and situation is an interesting one. Having started in 1991, it’s a winery that doesn’t have the history that a Tyrrell’s or Mount Pleasant does. Nor does it perhaps have the name or cache of some of the newer breed of Hunter wineries. Moreover, Pepper Tree make wines from the Hunter, Orange, Coonawarra, and Wratonbully, not an approach that necessarily gains kudos in an age in which people are increasingly looking for greater focus and greater regional specialisation. The corollary of this is that Pepper Tree is a medium sized winery that hasn't had a strong image or brand name within wine circles. And yet over the past 5 years, they’ve increased sales by 20% year on year, the quality of the wines have undoubtedly improved, and I think the Alluvial Semillon and the Coquun Shiraz are fast becoming Hunter benchmarks. So in a tough period for many Australian wineries, Pepper Tree is a quite uniquely positive story.

Jim Chatto, chief winemaker at Pepper Tree, has been the driving force behind this improvement of Pepper Tree’s fortunes, and is I believe beginning to make some truly great Australian wine. In taking over the show at Pepper Tree 5 years ago, he was taking control of a portfolio of wines that were arguably overpriced and underperforming. He has since turned this around and Pepper Tree wines have received wide acclaim in the past few years. Improving things in the winery, including cleaning up a problem with Brettanomyces, as well as both accessing better vineyards and improving things in those vineyards, have all led to better wines. Looking through the history of Pepper Tree wines reviewed by James Halliday (which go back to a 1993 Pepper Tree Frost Hollow white!) there are 39 wines that have received 94 points of more. Of those wines, 29 have come since the 2007 vintage. Moreover, there has been plenty of acclaim from other wine critics for Pepper Tree wines of recent vintages. The two wines that arguably stand out are the Alluvius Semillon (off the Braemore vineyard), and the Coquun Shiraz (off the Tallawanta vineyard). Neither wine quite has the history to sit in the lexicon of great Hunter wine just yet. But based off the past few vintages I can see that both wines are on track for a place amongst their peers given a few more vintages of similar quality. If that is the way things do pan out over the next few years, then I think Pepper Tree if perhaps never becoming a trendy label, will at least become a name synonomous with benchmark Hunter wine.

The other part of the Chatto winemaking story is his own Pinot Noir vineyard in Tasmania. He has a passion for Burgundy, and this little plot will be the outgrowth of that. He spent a number of years finding the site he wanted, eventually settling on a warm site 5 years ago that is one of the most southern vineyards in Tasmania. He was looking for latitude rather altitude. It has been planted with a number of different Pinot clones and 2012 will be the first vintage where he makes wine from the vineyard. It’s his personal long-term wine project. Given how long he took to find his site, the length of time he has waited to produce his wine, and the quality that can be seen in his winemaking more generally, it will be a Pinot Noir I follow with keen interest.

Back to Pepper Tree, and the portfolio starts with a $15-$18 varietal range and goes through to single vineyard wines in the $40-$50 range. In having such a portfolio, Chatto's winemaking ranges from the commercially made through to premium wines where less intervention and expression of site are the aim. Those in the varietal range are likely to see more winemaking as such. Fining and filtration, acid adjustments, concentrate, enzymes etc. All of which may be viewed as untrendy winemaking, but to me makes perfect sense for your cheaper, commercial wines, where consistency and flavour are going to be more valued by the consumers who will buy the wines than notions of authentic site and vintage expression (not that these are mutually exclusive ideals). Importantly these wines can be pretty good to. I tasted the 2011 Chardonnay, a blend of Orange, Wratonbully, and Hunter fruit, just before it was about to be sent off for bottling, and it had a balance and elegance to it that would happily see me handing over $18 for it. I also got to try it pre and post filtering, and the post-filter sample tasted slightly cleaner and better. For someone looking for an affordable and good drinking Chardonnay, this post filtering example would likely be the more appreciated outcome.

The wine I was most directly involved with, also in the varietal range, will become the 2012 Semillon Sav Blanc blend. If it’s a brilliant wine for the price, it will have obviously been the result of a bit of “Red Love”. If it’s not . . . then blame Chatto. Jokes aside, the Semillon for this wine came off the Quayle vineyard in the upper Hunter. The fruit when it was harvested was largely ripe, but had small pockets of greenness in it, which Chatto says he doesn’t mind for a Sem Sav Blanc blend (conversely he likes to make sure his straight Semillons achieve full ripeness before picking). The Sav Blanc will actually come from NZ (apparently even with transport costs it is cheaper to get good quality Sav Blanc from NZ than it is to source it from somewhere like the Adelaide Hills or Orange). It’s one of their top selling wines, and from a commercial perspective as important as any of their more premium white wines. I got to taste the fruit before it came off, crushed the fruit when it came into the winery (at night and in the rain . . . hardcore), tasted it as juice, racked it between tanks, and made the yeast preparation to kick off the ferment. Sounds like I did quite a bit, but in reality I will have had very little to do with end product, but just the fact that I was involved makes me very keen to see how it turns out once released later this year.

The wines with minimalist winemaking if you like, are the single vineyard wines. Wines like the Coqunn Shiraz. A single vineyard wine off Tallawanta, which in recent vintages has not required any acid additions, uses a neutral yeast, goes into large format oak (mostly old), and might see some minor fining and/or filtration just depending on the vintage. Gentle winemaking, but there’s no attempt by Chatto to make a “natural” wine, but rather a practical approach to making wine that best expresses its site. And on this point, I get the sense from Chatto and a number of other Hunter winemakers who I talked to while in the Hunter that week, that not many of them are not about to jump on the “natural” wine train. Given the history of the Hunter with Brett, and the fact that they’ve got to the point in the past 5 years where the Brett problem has largely been cleaned up, I don’t think Hunter winemakers are about to let their wines run their “natural” course. That being said, Chatto, and indeed many Hunter winemakers are keen to show off their great vineyards and make wines that are true to their site. To do this they are engaging in low intervention, yet pragmatic winemaking. Wines like the Coquun Shiraz and Alluvius Semillon are fantastic examples of this.

Beyond the things I gleaned about winemaking, the other thing I gained an appreciation of during the course of the week was just how much cleaning goes on in the winery. Cleaning grape bins, cleaning the destemmer, cleaning the press, cleaning tanks, sulphuring barrels. There is a constant and consistent process of cleaning whatever it is you’ve just been using. As much as there is the interesting side to winemaking, there is the equally important and time consuming effort to ensure everything in the winery is clean.

There were no winery mishaps while I was there, apart from one early morning when I got a faceful of Chardonnay. We were pumping the 2011 Chardonnay into a truck to go off to bottling when the hose sprung a leak and afforded me a chardonnay shower. If I wasn’t fully awake beforehand, I certainly was afterwards. Had it been captured on video it would have made for a good Youtube post.

A big thanks to Jim for giving me this opportunity, and a special thanks also to Luke, Leon, Joe, and Todd for showing me the ropes and putting up with all my questions. All up a great week.


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