Posted Nov 13th 2009, 16:36
The Otto family flew to London with excitement in knowing we were going to the 2009 World Decanter Wine Awards dinner and would be collecting the Regional trophy for the best Bordeaux Varietal wine for the 2007 Fraser Gallop Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. On the night of the awards we had good friends from Perth, Carla and Tom Love and our winery neighbours from Woody Nook, Peter and Jane Bailey to share our table. I joined the other five finalists for the International Trophy on stage - France, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile and USA. They announced the winner, and with hoops of joy I leapt like Usain Bolt to accept the trophy from Steven Spurrier the chairman of the Decanter World Wine Awards.
The next day we were on the plane to Bordeaux to spend a few days exploring this beautiful city on the Gironde River and its brassieres and cafes and playgrounds.
We then commissioned “Barry” (who I proclaimed my love for him after finding our way out of Bordeaux quickly and safely) the voice of our GPS on our mobile phone to guide us down to Barsac and Langon to the wine and cheese festival. It was our first of many festivals in Bordeaux with fantastic regional foods and wine. Epicurean delights such as oysters from Cap Ferret and Champagne were a good start to the day, amongst Bayonne hams, Basque sausages filled with truffles, fois gras, duck confit , snails and other fresh seafood’s such as mussels and amazing cheeses beautifully packed at the fromagerie stands. The wine negociants had selections that were from all regions of France, so we sampled from Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Alsace and Loire.
We had an entourage of Australian friends to join us for a few days at our rural Gîte within the confines of Chateau Dudon, an organic producer of Sauternes style wines (very good and hard to find). This was to be home for Bridget, Harry ( 3 years old), Amelia ( 6 months old) and I for 4 weeks, while I explored and observed the vintage techniques of the production of Bordeaux white wines ( Oaked styles of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc) and Bordeaux Reds ( Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Cabernet Franc/Petit Verdot).
My main contact in Graves was Domaine de Chevalier. Fraser Gallop Estate had struck up a friendship with Olivier Bernard the proprietor when we staged a tasting of Bordeaux whites against oaked styles of Australian Semillon Sauvignon Blancs in November 2008. The winemaker Thomas Stonestreet was very helpful and generous with his time especially considering the busy nature of vintage time. I went out into the vineyards to watch the hand pickers bend down low to select only the golden bunches of grapes of well exposed Sauvignon Blanc bunches on trellises that were only as high as my waist. The pickers often went back over the same ground up to 3 - 4 times over the vintage to select the best bunches. This is the main difference in quality of their grapes versus Australian grapes which are generally trellised on wider and higher vertically positioned trellis systems that can be managed by hand or mechanically. I would say that they are getting riper flavours arriving at lower sugar levels and higher acid levels because of the nature of these closely planted low trellis systems which require incredible amounts of labour to maintain and use. (This explains why these wines are so expensive!)
Once the grapes are picked, the buckets are hand delivered to the press. The reductive use of CO2 was interesting to see at the press. The next day oxidative techniques were employed on the pressed juices to barrels. This was never quite explained why they do this suffice to say it works for Domaine de Chevalier. A close eye on their techniques was noted on juice turbidities, yeast types, barrel cooperages and press cycles.
I was then given contacts to other Chateaux in the area, which over the next 4 weeks I visited - Laurent Le Brun at Chateau Olivier, I admired very much their wines both white and red. I also had an opportunity to visit Chateau Carbonnieux, Chateau La Louviere, Chateau Couhins Lurton, Chateau de Cruzeau and Château de Rochemorin. By this time the harvest of the red grapes had begun and it was interesting to watch the grape sorting machines, conveyors and the teams of people sorting out the grapes by hand on its way to the fermenter. The 2009 vintage in Bordeaux was spectacular in regards to quality and many are hailing it as the finest one in 40 years, as a result not many berries were rejected over the sorting tables this year!
Finally in Bordeaux, I was fortunate to see the botrytised grapes come in for the production of Sauternes at Chateau Dudon. This is a wine where rotten grapes are allowed. Again a very laborious process of hand selecting the right bunches of grapes in up to 8 passes in the vineyard over the season. The botrytised grapes looked terrible and you didn’t initially want to eat them. They had a wonderful flavour of marmalade, flowers, minerals and lime all mixed in. From my experience of Barsac and Sauternes, in Australia we are picking our dessert styles way too sweet. By picking them slightly earlier than we do in Australia these wines are incredibly well balanced not too cloying, fresh fruit and floral aromas and great oak/fruit integration and incredibly long flavoured palates.
The Otto family then moved onto, Beaujolais and Maconnais - less adored than many other regions and very undervalued in my book. We caught up with our old friend Bill Weingart (a Californian who helped us for the 2008 vintage at Fraser Gallop Estate) who is working for the well regarded Maconnais producer The Bret Brothers. Their speciality is Chardonnay and Bill led us through a tasting of 30 Chardonnays from different vintages and vineyards around Burgundy/Maconnais. All this the night before I had to get up at 4.00 am to fly to London and back in one day from Julienas (thank God for “Barry” the GPS guide as it was very foggy and finding my way to Lyon Airport at 4.00 am in the morning almost impossible). The other wines of Beaujolais (Chardonnay and Gamey) were incredibly cheap given the high quality coming from bush vines planted on steep slopes in poor bony soils. If the Beaujolais were allowed to plant Pinot Noir I would suspect Burgundy would be worried!
Our final week was spent in Switzerland, to catch up with an old friend Willi Frei who used to distribute Vasse Felix Wines through his company Barossa Weinhandels; we had many a lunch and dinner with Willi, tasting the great wines of the world from his nuclear bunker wine cellar.
The trip was an invaluable experience for developing my knowledge about winemaking and understanding of what it takes to make world class wines.
Clive Otto
November 2009