Sunday, 17 May 2009
Brown Brothers: 2006 Petit Verdot
Wine labels, back in the dim dark days when I started drinking, used to be straight-forward affairs. If you drank Australian reds, you had a choice of Claret or Burgundy with the odd Cabernet or Shiraz thrown in for a bit of variety. On the white side of things we had Riesling, as well as a bit of White Burgundy, Moselle or Chablis and the odd Hock. At that point we were still using the labels and other terminology acquired from our British heritage, and whatever was being made had to fit into a predefined universe where French styles, as far as red wine was concerned, were all the go.
They might have called it Burgundy but there wouldn’t have been too much Pinot Noir in the red, and the white version probably would have been pretty light on for Chardonnay. When they were talking Claret they really meant Red wine more or less along the lines of Bordeaux, which should indicate a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend with lesser amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Franc thrown in. The reality was probably Shiraz-dominant since there wasn’t a great deal of Cabernet being grown back in the early seventies.
But we’ve come a long way over the past thirty years. The days of generic labelling are long gone and as we’ve become used to varietal labelling we’ve also become familiar with red varieties other than Cabernet and Shiraz.
If you look back, Bordeaux reds used to be made from a mixture of six different varieties. You can probably guess three of them (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot), but what about the others?
Malbec has been grown in Australia in smaller quantities for years. Then there’s Carmenere, which at one time was thought to have completely disappeared from the face of the earth, and is well worth an article in itself. And the sixth?
Since this entry’s labelled 2006 Petit Verdot, no prizes for guessing.
Petit Verdot under French conditions is, however, a bit of a handful. While it adds flavour, colour and tannin to the middle palate of a Bordeaux blend it ripens much later than the other varieties, and needs the right weather during flowering. In some years growers can lose the entire crop. By itself it should be a big, full-bodied style, very deep red, high in tannin and alcohol. Many Bordeaux growers, under the circumstances, seem to have decided that the variety is more trouble than it’s worth, and plantings declined significantly in the 1960s and ‘70s. Away from France it’s a different story.
The characteristics of the grape suggest, according to my basic research, Petit Verdot originated in a warmer climate. Since it ripens a week or two later than Shiraz it would look like a natural fit for some of Australia’s warmer regions. Actually, the variety arrived here in 1832 in James Busby's collection, was producing wine in the 1840s and is currently spreading through the warmer areas of inland Australia - Riverland, the Murray Valley and the Riverina, as well as the Barossa and McLaren Vale.
The Brown Brothers version is largely drawn from the company’s vineyard at Heathcote, (which is rapidly gaining prominence as a shiraz-producing area) with some fruit from Whorouly in north east Victoria.
It’s an intense red in the glass with a perfumed floral nose, concentrated flavours on the palate with firm tannins and well-integrated oak A big red to go with a strongly-flavoured dish. We sampled the first of the two bottles from the Latest Release Pack with a substantial chunk of wagyu rump and based on that match I’m looking forward to trying the other one with something along the lines of a hearty stew some time over the next two months, preferably on a night when the mercury has taken a substantial nose-dive.
Oh, and I’m keen on reordering, too....
