Rutherglen's Fortifed Wines

Visiting Rutherglen was on the must-do list for my trip to Australia, despite being over three hours from Melbourne and another six to Sydney. Once the centre of the Victoria wine industry, remote Rutherglen is now best known for its world-class fortified wines made from Muscadelle and Muscat. These are some of the most extraordinary wines in the world, intense, long-lived, and not quite like any other. I had to go there to see in person how these wines are made. Doing so gave me an even greater appreciation of the time and dedication required to make these wines.

Pfeiffer: on the site of an old distillery

I visited two producers: Stanton & Killeen, who have been going for seven generations since 1875, and Pfeiffer, who are just on their second generation. History is important here, not least for the styles of wine produced. Fortified wine, here as elsewhere, is often a blend of different vintages going back decades and more. Chris Pfeiffer started with 400l of stock in the mid-1980s and now has 160,000l of wine that he has built up over the last thirty-five years - and he is one of the newer producers. Winemakers have to nurture these wines, passing them on for future generations, and ensuring that the wines produced reflect the past as well as today. This may seem a romantic notion - and it is such romance about fortified wines which appeals to me - but this is a practical, everyday concern which requires the investment of maintaining wines for decades, as well as blending them together to create a consistently high-quality wine. The production of table wine seems short and easy in comparison.

tawny 

I came for Muscat, tasted a lot of dry table wine, and came away with a new-found appreciation for Australian ‘port’. This term can no longer be used, but Australians have been making their own style of port for generations. Under pressure from the EU, they renamed it Tawny. This can be misleading as the wines are not always tawny in colour, but I think it's a good thing that Australians were forced to rename the wines as it emphasises how unique the Australian styles are. Tawny is very different from Portuguese fortified wines: depending on their age, the wines are intense, oxidised, often amber in colour, with lots of toffee and dried fruit aromas. They are made all over Australia, not just Rutherglen, and style varies according to producer. Outside Rutherglen, Yalumba's Tawny Museum Reserve, made from Grenache and other Rhône grapes, is a great entry into this style of wine. Within Rutherglen, Pfeiffer have just released their first Rare Tawny, with an average age of 25 years, which is an extraordinary example. Such a wine is best thought of in comparison to a Scotch whisky: the long barrel ageing, deliberate oxidation affecting the colour and aroma, and a leathery, nutty, sweet texture.

topaque 

intense tasting: young Topaque on the left, old on the right

This is another style that has undergone a forced name change, this time in response to the Hungarian wine industry. Australians traditionally called this style Tokay (pronounced toe-kay), which Hungary protested was too similar to Tokaji (toh-kai). Both styles are sweet, but other than that they have little in common. It's a great shame that the name was switched to Topaque, as this doesn't really evoke the aromatic, complex nature of the wines (not that Tokay did either). These wines are seriously underrated. Made from the Muscadelle grape, which produces erratic yields, the wines are unique, with cold tea and fish oil aromas. These may not seem pleasant attributes, but it's the best way to describe the tangy, viscous quality of the wines. The wines change a lot with age, fresh and aromatic when young, darker and more developed with age. These changes best evoke how wines develop in Rutherglen, as a young Topaque is hugely different from the oldest wines.

muscat 

solera style system

In an obscure category, Muscat is what Rutherglen is most famous for. Made from Brown Muscat (red-skinned strains of the Muscat variety), the wines maintain the floral, grapey aromatics even through the oldest wines which can be decades old. The wines are even stickier and sweeter than Topaque or Tawny; they also lack the tangy nature of Topaque and have lower acidity, instead being more robust and forward in their fruity aromas. In appearance, Muscat is at first darker than Topaque, though they share a similar, almost black colour when old. That colour comes from deliberate oxidation which takes place in cellars that aren't protected from the warm outside conditions. Such exposure to heat not only changes the colour, but adds nutty, toffee, caramel, dried fruit aromas. All of these wines are intense, sweet, and rich. The oldest wines are the most complex, but require little more than a glass before the syrupy sweetness overcomes the palate. Drink them with dessert (the older the style, the richer the dessert), smoke them with a cigar, or let the richness soak into the stomach after a heavy meal. These are food wines, and should be appreciated as such. Any restaurant, especially within Australia, that doesn't offer one of these wines as a digestif or as an accompaniment to dessert is falling short.

Port

The Diploma is finally nearing its close! I have just one unit left to complete which is on fortified wine, one of my favourite subjects. The main focus of the unit is port and sherry, but I will also be studying madeira, the vins doux naturels of southern France, and the unique and often extraordinary stickies of Rutherglen in Australia. This week I have been focusing on port, its history, and its different styles, indulging in a tasting of five different wines to help understand the varied styles.

a bit of history

Like sherry and madeira, port emerged through trade and war. When England and France were at loggerheads in the seventeenth century, French goods, including wine, were subject to sanctions and high taxes. To sate England's thirst for wine, the English turned to one of its European allies, Portugal. After finding the coastal red wines of Vinho Verde too astringent, English merchants went further inland to the Douro Valley and its rich, ripe, full-bodied red wines. The wines were shipped to England in barrels (the practice of bottling wine on site and shipping it in bottles had not yet been developed); to ensure that the wines arrived in good condition, brandy was added to the wine.

This strong, high alcohol wine proved extremely popular and the practice of fortifying the wines became standard. Although at the height of port's popularity practices were wayward - the wines were fortified to an extra strength for the English market and often had elderberries added - various styles of port emerged which exist today.

the area

Port is made in the Douro Valley, whose boundaries still mostly follow local politician Marquis de Pombal's 1756 designation. The soils are schist, a form of slate, on steep terraced slopes on the banks of the river. The valley is divided into three areas: the Baixo Corgo, which is cool and wet and produces the lightest, most inexpensive ports; the Cima Corgo, which is warmer and drier and produces the most complex wines; and the Douro Superior, which is hot and dry and the focus of recent plantings as it is flatter and easier to maintain.

how it's made

Port is a sweet wine because it is fortified with a grape-based spirit (called aguardamente in Portuguese) during the fermentation. The high alcohol (77% ABV) kills the yeast in the wine with sugar still remaining. There are over 80 permitted grape varieties allowed for port, which were traditionally grown together in vineyards without anyone really knowing what was what. Since the 1970s, five varieties in particular have been identified as being ideal: Touriga Nacional (low yields, high tannins, very perfumed), Touriga Franca (the most planted), Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo, adding colour and body), Tinta Barroca (high alcohol, low acidity), and Tinta Cão (literally "red dog"). Port is always a blend of different grapes, each of which brings different qualities to the wine.

the styles

ruby

Simple, inexpensive, fiery, fruity, and young, ruby was until the 1960s drunk by the British with lemonade. It's now most popular in France where it's served as an aperitif. There's also ruby reserve, a higher quality version introduced in the late 1960s by Cockburn's after the British taste for ruby and lemonade faded.

late bottled vintage

LBV for short, it's a port which has been aged for four to six years in old oak barrels before release. It comes in three different styles. The most common is filtered before bottling and has a stopper; the second isn't filtered, has a cork, and generally needs decanting; the third is aged in bottle for three years before release and can be similar to a vintage port in style. Like vintage port all the grapes come from one year and the wines have a similar fruity, tannic intensity, but even the best LBVs lack the heady concentration of a vintage port as they are made every year, not just those that are outstanding.

vintage

Made only in years a producer considers outstanding, when a warm summer produces grapes of optimum ripeness. Vintages are declared around three times a decade, although some producers will declare a year a vintage while others may not. The wine is aged in old oak barrels for three years before bottling (unfiltered, which is why vintage port needs decanting). After that, it's up to the customer to age the wine: vintage port can be at its best at fifty years' old even though it's released so young.

tawny

This is my favourite style of port, perhaps because it's deliberately oxidised like sherry. Its name comes from its colour, the deep ruby port fading in the barrel due to the exposure to oxygen. Inexpensive tawnies are put out in the sun to quicken the ageing, but the best wines are aged gradually over time to develop a nutty complexity. These usually have an age indication of 10, 20, 30, or 40 years (which is an indication of the wine's average age, as tawnies are non-vintage). A vintage tawny is called a colheita (Portuguese for harvest), which has to be aged for at least seven years. It displays the character of the vintage as well as the nutty maturity of an aged tawny.

the tasting

 

Passagem Ruby Reserve NV ($18)

Simple, but at this price very appealing. Fruity, jammy red and black fruits with spicy alcohol on the palate. ✪✪✪

Quinta do Infantado Late Bottled Vintage 2009 ($24) 

For a few dollars more and from an extremely good year, this wine offers a lot more complexity with aromas of liquorice and cloves, irises, blueberries and blackberries, and dried fruit aromas of figs and prunes, with a gripping tannic structure. Intense, but very approachable. ✪✪✪✪✪

Quinta do Infantado 10-year-old Tawny ($41)

My wine of the tasting. Incredibly pronounced, concentrated aromas of every dried fruit imaginable: cranberries, strawberries, raspberries, figs, prunes, currants, and raisins, with spice aromas of cinnamon, cloves, anise, and liquorice. The tannins are faded, but the acidity is high enough to balance the sweetness. ✪✪✪✪✪✪

Niepoort 1999 Colheita ($52)

After the tawny, this was somewhat disappointing - perhaps a reminder that just because a wine has a vintage on the label doesn't make it superior (the same is true in Champagne). The aromas were similar to the tawny - floral and with dried fruits - but lacked the same intensity. ✪✪✪✪

Quinta do Infantado 2007 Vintage Port ($50) 

When I bought this wine I knew it would be far too young, but old vintage port is not easy to come by at an affordable price. This wine was really closed and tight and difficult to assess, but nevertheless lots of complex aromas emerged: brambles and blackberries, mint and lavender, cloves and nutmeg, black pepper and liquorice, sultanas and raisins, and strawberries, redcurrants, and raspberries. I'd love to taste this in another ten or even twenty years. ✪✪✪✪✪

It's remarkable how different these styles of port are: the fruity, hot ruby, compared to the closed, difficult, and still young vintage, in contrast to the tannic, concentrated LBV; and then there's the faded colours of the tawny and colheita, offering a reserved, intense maturity. The range of these styles are perhaps confusing to many consumers, but understand the label and there's a wealth of choice in these wines.