Australia's chardonnay gets a much-needed makeover

Once, Australian chardonnay was as sunny and amply buxom as Dolly Parton. Now it is more Nicole Kidman; still luminous, but lean and toned. Wines used to be rich and buttery, reminiscent of pineapple chunks or vanilla; stodgy, rich with oak, much of it showy and new, flaring with alcohol. These days they are taut, streaked with citrus, the oak gentle but firm in the background.
It’s hard to think of any other region or country that has taken its stereotype style and turned it on its head quite so effectively and in such a short space of time.

Just as well, too. “Australia was crying out for something to do with chardonnay because it was a dead dog,” says Mike Aylward, the young winemaker at Ocean Eight on the Mornington Peninsula.

Post-Bridget-Jones Brits, for whom much of the deep yellow, barbecued-banana-flavoured stuff was made in the first place, haven’t had a good word to say about Aussie chardie for ages. Remember when John MAjor declared himself an ABC – Anything But Chardonnay – man? Even the Aussies sent up “cardonnay” fans in the raucous sitcom Kath & Kim.

I like the new chardonnays. They are still shot through with Australian sunlight but they glitter in a way the old ones did not. You taste them in the morning and want to drink them for breakfast (I promise I do not feel this way about many wines). They make me fantasise about sitting, glass in hand, legs dangling from a high stool, at a white marble bar, ideally looking out across a turquoise sea with a crayfish salad on the way.

Even more, I like the fact that these wines haven’t been designed by marketing men and brand managers; it’s a revolution driven from the top end by winemakers pursuing a more nervy, delineated style that has filtered down to reach the supermarket level.

It’s created partly by winemaking choices – less reliance on malolactic fermentation, for example, which converts sharp, appley malic to the creamy lactic acid that can give such flavours, and picking grapes earlier, when acid levels are higher, sugar is lower and their taste veers more towards green or citrus than tropical sumptuousness. Picking early is a big decision. “I was really nervous at first,” admits Aylward. “You feel edgy, under a microscope.”

It’s also about where the grapes come from, and a move towards cooler climate vineyards. The grapes in the Australian chardonnay I want to buy are likely to have come from Margaret River on the west coast; Tasmania; Adelaide Hills; Henty; the so-called “Dress Circle” – the arc of regions around Melbourne (Geelong, Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland) – or Tumbarumba and Beechworth, which lie between Melbourne and Canberra.

“The most exciting thing about Australian chardonnay is that it’s in its infancy still,” says Peter Gago of Penfolds. “There are places that haven’t even been planted yet. Is there going to be more planting in north as well as south Tasmania? In Gippsland? Hunter, even?”

Penfolds’ flagship (for which read most expensive) chardonnay, Yattarna, is superb. The grapes for it are sourced each year from whichever vineyards in whichever areas Penfolds can access and are deemed best/most suitable, so its make-up gives some indication of the areas performing well for chardonnay. Since 2003 it’s been made with grapes from Henty, Adelaide Hills or Tasmania in various combinations.

The 2008 (89 per cent Tasmania; 11 per cent Adelaide Hills) won the inaugural James Halliday Chardonnay Challenge – a competition whose very existence shows just how serious the Australians are getting about their chardonnay.

One other characteristic some of the new wave chardonnays possess is a struck match, or gunflint smell, which to my taste can sometimes be excessive, though I do like a little bit of what I call “sexy sulphides”. Some also have that nebulous quality known as minerality.

“Our wine style is often likened to chablis,” says Tessa Brown at Kooyong, one of the most well-followed producers on the Mornington Peninsula. “It’s nothing like chablis!” No, it’s not, but I suppose the point really being made is that here is a style that confounds the expectations of anyone who has not tried Aussie chardonnay in the past decade.

The change has been incremental but is so marked there has even been criticism that in some cases it’s gone too far. “Two words you hear sometimes now in Australia to describe chardonnay: emaciated and anorexic,” says Michael Hill-Smith of Shaw and Smith, whose M3 chardonnay from Adelaide Hills has been on my drinking list for some time now.

Who’d have thought it? “Occasionally people say to me,” continues Hill-Smith, “'Where do I get a big, old-fashioned Aussie chardonnay from?’ And do you know what I tell them? “America.”