Australia’s other Red Centre

WINE ... with David Bray

Coonawarra came to town and it was good. It was good to see that this long-established and highly respected wine-producing area is determined not to be left behind by comparative newcomers.

Coonawarra – from a local Aboriginal word meaning honeysuckle – is the source of some our best wines, especially the reds. So much so that the enthusiasts like to call it Australia’s other Red Centre.
The reputation is built on a cigar-shaped ribbon of red soil, about 27 kilometres long and 1.8 kilometres wide. This long skinny strip contains the most sought-after vineyard dirt in the country. The locals call it terra rossa and reckon that when the sun hits the soil, it positively glows a vibrant rusty red.
But wait, there’s more: this fabulous topsoil covers a bedrock of porous limestone, helping winter drainage and summer moisture retention. Over many years this has made Coonawarra one of the world’s great cabernet sauvignon regions, producing low-yielding and intensely flavoured grapes, helped by the cool to moderate climate of long dry autumn days and cool nights. This happens quite a long way from the big smoke, in south-east South Australia, about 375 kilometres from Adelaide and a bit more from Melbourne.
There are about 20 wineries here, a few more cellar door outlets. Some of them have been here for a long time, by Australian standards.
Go back to 1890, when the enterprising settler John Riddoch set up the Coonawarra Fruit Colony. The son of a Scottish crofter, Riddoch made his money as a storekeeper on the Ballarat gold fields before buying Yallum Estate from where he represented his district in parliament and entertained members of the royal family.
Good times and ordinary ones followed. In 1936 a glut of grapes, especially from irrigated areas, together with Coonawarra’s distance from the market, led to the government offering Coonawarra growers $9 an acre to rip up their vines and convert the land to dairy farms. By the end of the 30s, only 600 acres still stood.
Things really began looking up with major development here, as in the Australian wine industry generally, in the early 1960s. In 1993 the first moves took place to have the Coonawarra region determined as a Geographical Indication in Australia. This designation describes a specific region, protecting the integrity of the label and safeguarding consumers. Big controversy, but that’s another story.
There are now about 13,590 acres of vineyards planted, half of them to cabernet sauvignon. The southern end of the Coonawarra terra rossa soil enters the township of Penola, which has been home to such notable people as the poets John Shaw Neilson, Will Ogilvey, Adam Lindsay Gordon, the prominent theologians Mother Mary MacKillop (soon to be Australia’s first saint), Father Julian Tennyson Woods, the explorer Larry Wells and later, the noted Australian arctic explorer John Rymill.
As I said earlier, all this happens quite some way from Brisbane town and those southern cities. So the grape growers and winemakers have to co-operate and work particularly hard to promote their wares.
Hence the Coonawarra Cabernet Celebrations and Barrel Series Wine Auction, which are scheduled for October 15 to 17. The Coonawarra Vignerons Association brought its people to Brisbane (and to the other capitals) to showcase their wares, specifically more 100 wines, including those of vintage 2009 that will be auctioned. There will be 20 cases of each wine on offer, sold in five-case lots. The average price last year was $60 a bottle.
Here were names you would know and some you might not. Seven of them were chosen for this year’s auction to “represent the vintage and style variations within Coonawarra”. They are DiGiorgio Family, Katnook, Lindemans, Penley, Reschke, Wynns, Yalumba The Menzies. The others on show were Balnaves, Banks Thargo, Blok Estate, Bowen Estate, Brand’s Laira, Flint’s, Highbank, Hollick, Hundreds of Coma, Jim Barry, Kidman, Koonwarra, Ladbroke Grove, Leconfield, Magellan, Parker, Patrick T, Penley Estate, Petaluma, Punters Corner, Raidis Estate, Redman, Rymill, Zema.
They are an impressive lot, wines of real quality. One more thing. Proceeds from the auction go to prostate research, a subject quite close to my heart.

• More information about the cabernet weekend, including the auction is at www.coonawarra.org