By John Rozentals.
Mark Kirkby … obviously a fan of the slightly unusual.
Topper’s Mountain proprietor Mark Kirkby was obviously a fan of the slightly unusual when he selected varieties to plant in this high-altitude vineyard in New England, not all that far from the Queensland border.
His contract winemaker Mike Hayes, equally obviously, applauded Kirkby’s approach.
Tannat is a red variety that appears in a few Australian vineyards and I’d heard of that one, but petit manseng was a new one on me, though it turns out that it appears in a few other Australian vineyards, too.
It’s apparently an underrated white grape variety native to the Jurancon asnd Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh areas in south-west France.
Its abnormally thick skin allows quite extraordinary accumulation of sugar without encouraging botrytis development in quite shrivelled berries, and in that corner of France petit manseng is normally used to produce naturally quite sweet white wines.
These wines apparently possess quite a distinctive character of stonefruit, citrus and sweet spice.
I did find some quite refreshing citrus character in the Topper’s Mountain 2016 Wild-Ferment Petit Manseng (about $35) but otherwise it seemed to bear no relationship to these wines from south-west France, except perhaps in some aspects of winemaking approach.
All of the juice was fermented using just the wild yeasts from the vineyard, then Hayes matured the wine in old puncheons, where it was also allowed to undergo malo-lactic fermentation.
What I really like about the Topper’s wine is the very lack of the pronounced varietal aromas that you normally get from Australian dry whites made from, for instance, riesling, sauvignon blanc or chardonnay.
In that sense, it’s a very subtle wine, one dependent largely on texture and structure. And that makes it a very food-friendly wine, something we could do with plenty more of in a day when many restaurant wine lists have been taken over NZ savvies.
WINE REVIEWS
Tyrrells 2015 Vat 47 Chardonnay ($75): According to local legend, the late Murray Tyrrell claimed his first chardonnay vines in the 1960s by jumping a fence in Mudgee at full moon and pinching some cuttings. Whatever, this is sensational dry white, with delicate spicy fruit overlaid with the attractive complexities of modern winemaking, such as fermentation in French oak barriques.
Tyrrells 2013 Vat 1 Semillon ($85): I wait with baited breath each year for my sample of Australia’s greatest aged semillon to arrive. It’s a line that has dominated the country’s show rings for years and this vintage already has a fist full of gold medals — and I’m sure will win many more. It’s a superlative dry white from an excellent semillon vintage in the Hunter. Shows powerful fruit just beginning to soften.
WINE OF THE WEEK
Topper’s Mountain 2014 Wild-Ferment Nebbiolo ($38): No commercial yeasts were added to the mix of juice and skins which was initially left to cold soak. It says heaps about the exemplary fruit character that only old barrels were needed for maturation. Nebbiolo is the king of Italian red varieties and it shows in this lovely, beautifully balanced wine that seems to shift between full- and medium-bodied on each tasting.
