De Bortoli first came to notice in the early 1980s with some wonderful, history-making botrytised white from their Riverina vineyards. Did very nicely out of it, too. They are still moving right along, not only putting out a fine pair of interesting blends, but announcing them in contemporary style.
Yep, it was an on-line launch, as near as your correspondent can recall to an electronically facilitated wine tasting. The two bottles had arrived by courier, along with instructions on how to use the “virtual platform’’. Easy it was, and at 10 in the morning up on my screen came Leanne De Bortoli and Steve Webber on the back deck of their Yarra Valley home, with bottles, monitor and cameras.
They talked, opened bottles, poured, sipped, did the things they do in old-fashioned wine tastings. Your reporter took a modest sip or two after a good sniff and didn’t spit. Other people were sending in comments.
Leanne kicked it off as follows: “In 1994, my family planted the newly named BellaRiva vineyard on the King River at the base of the Victorian snowfields. The 200-hectare vineyard is planted on sandstone and shale deposits washed down by the river over time. It is planted to Pinot Grigio, Vermentino, Sangiovese, Merlot, Tempranillo, Moscato Giallo as well as some more traditional varieties.“Making seriously interesting wine for $16-18 per bottle sounds easy, but we find it extremely challenging. At this price, Australia has typically produced dried out dense red wine with lots of oak, which just doesn’t cut the mustard in the food stakes. And we have done to death both the fuller styles of white wine at one end of the scale and the very neutral styles at the other.
“Hence, Steve and I have been dreaming about some grown-up blends that are dry, savoury, interesting and proudly medium-bodied in both white and red format. The wines are more about style than variety. The white blend is light, faintly aromatic, dry and textural; the red blend bright, rustic and savoury. We think both are seriously delicious!”
Winemaker Steve got to the details, starting with the 2010 BellaRiva Pinot Grigio Vermentino (below): “In our vineyards we think this blend works. Grigio doesn’t have much flavour but is dry, vinous, thirst- quenching while Vermentino, which we have completely fallen for, is faintly aromatic, medium bodied and gives real interest to white wine. We could have used Malvasia and /or Fiano for a similar flavour profile.
And on the actual winemaking: “Grapes are both whole bunch pressed as well as crushed to give a range of phenolics for complexity and texture. The juice is allowed to ferment in used French oak casks as well as some higher solids tank fermentation. Lees are stirred regularly until final assembling of the blend.”
And on its taste: “Light straw in colour with a green edge. Complex, slightly nutty, faintly aromatic, fresh. Pear like fruit with nutty undertones. Clean but good texture and complexity, quite fine, almost salty, gluggable. : Alc/Vol: 12.5 per cent.
“For 2009 BellaRiva Sangiovese Merlot (above right), we admire the rusticity of Sangiovese. It is the king of peasant wine – light to medium bodied, savoury, slightly naughty, dry and can be drunk as ‘new’ wine or lovely as semi mature red (3-5 years). Blend in a bit of Merlot that has more Italianate than standard ‘right bank’ characters and you have something pretty interesting. Fruit is hand-picked and fermented in 15T static fermenters for 10-12 days. The fruit is then pressed, settled and matured in used oak casks for 10 months before bottling. Some wine is retained in tank for freshness."
And for its taste: “Red with good garnet edge. Complex, slightly rustic earthy aromas, autumnal, brooding. Savoury palate with good texture and length. Chalky tannins. Dreaming pasta! Alc/Vol: 13.5 per cent”
All your reporter can add is that they went down very nicely indeed later in the day.
But back to the King Valley, which is yielding some of the more interesting new wines on the Australian market.
To refresh your memory, it’s in the hills of north-east Victoria, south of Wangaratta, on the way to major Victorian snow fields. Tourist publicity tells us it has a history which features bushrangers and Chinese and Italian immigrants.
The Chinese came from the Goldfields in the mid-1800s as market gardeners, tobacco growers and merchants. The Italian followed in the 1940s and 50s, grew tobacco for a while but soon realised they would do better with European wine grapes.
There are some 25 wineries here at last count. Best known are two of our country’s strongest and most innovative family-owned wine producers, Brown Brothers of Milawa and De Bortoli, which is where we came in.
