Nocino

Nocino is one of my favourite things to drink after dinner. Gentle, complex, faintly herbal, more cola-like flavour than anything particularly nutty; my first batch is three year old and drinking well.

Nocino, or its French walnut-liqueur relations, is an easy thing to make. A delivery of a couple of kilograms of green walnuts turned up on the doorstep yesterday, so it was time today to put down another Nocino batch.

Pick at least 24 green walnuts before the inner shells develop (test this with a skewer, which should be an easy push-through). Halve them and pack into a clean glass jar of about two litres in capacity. As you fill the jar, add in 8 cloves, a cinnamon stick, one whole nutmeg, the zest of a large lemon and a vanilla pod. Fill the jar with vodka or other neutral spirit (I used a one litre bottle of Absolut this time) to cover the walnuts, spices and lemon zest completely.

Leave the jar in a sunny spot for 40 days. Then strain the infused spirit through fine muslin or coffee filter paper. Make a sugar syrup, cool it, and add the syrup to the strained spirit base until you reach the level of strength and sweetness you like.

Add to clean bottles and store for at least a month before sampling. For my tastes, this is best left for a year to mellow and smooth out, then drink neat as a digestivo. It will keep for years.

Isole e Olena Chianti Classico 2008 (Tuscany)

I cannot say I have my head around 2008 Chianti. Some big wines, some quite light & sprightly. No picture has gelled yet, so more shopping, tasting & drinking clearly needed.

Tonight, after a book launch and flying visit to Ainslie Cellars to taste Bryan Martin's new Ravensworth releases (including my second look at his 2011 sangiovese), it was time to grab a bottle and head to Pulp Kitchen for dinner. The bottle being the 2008 vintage Chianti Classico from Isole e Olena, one of my favourite Tuscan producers.

Deep, rich, dark. There are lots of purple fruits in this Chianti, with red fruits accents only to the main theme. But there is a beautiful wash of tannin; drying, ripe, nutty tannin, all through the wine. Ripe, but varietal. No loss of the sangiovese refreshment factor, even with the purple-fruited richness of the thing. Handled bread and oil, handled roast spatchcock, handled confit duck. Handled good conversation.

Not much more to ask of a Chianti, really.

$40, cork.

Yarrh 2004 sangiovese (Canberra)

The Yarrh vineyard is an attractive, gum-treed site wrapped around by bush and not far from Ken Helm's Murrumbateman cellar door. Sangiovese is a strict mistress in regions marginal for it, such as Canberra. Everything has to line up: soil, water, vine health, bud counts, shoot vigour, shoot length, fruit load, season. Bryan Martin, of Ravensworth fame (and a big part of Clonakilla) has shown how sangiovese can perform in Canberra, but this wine fleshes out that story.

Maybe a sign of the Canberra roots I've put down, I've been having a bottle or two of this most years for the past seven years. Like old jackets shift smells and change their fit over years, seeing and feeling the aging path of this wine has been a satisfying thing. Tight and red-fruited, with a hint of something dried-herb & tobacco as a younger wine, this has aged well (though my bottle before this one had largely fallen over). In it's old age, this has become more local and less varietal, without losing overall appeal. The wine now shows aged red fruit, a touch of leather & mint, and something elusive, nutty & sweet, like a toffeed hazelnut. A good showing, from what I think is my last bottle. Congratulations to the winemaker, Fiona Wholohan, and the site.

A satisfying, if surprising pairing for this: bucatini in a sauce of onion, zucchini dice, black pepper and gorgonzola dolce, thinned with pasta water. The aged, nutty, toffee character of the wine made an excellent fit with the sweet yet blue cheese of the sauce and the comparative bitter of zucchini skin.

Canberra Italians (at the wine show)

So, what does the 2011 Canberra Regional Wine Show results have to say about Italian grapes in the Canberra District and surrounds? Surrounds includes Tumbarumba, Hilltops, Gundagai, Southern Highlands and the South Coast of NSW, give or take.

Class 4 covers 'other' white varieties and blends, from the 2011 vintage. Pinot gris and grigio took the top gongs: gold for the Mount Majura Pinot Gris; silver for Lerida Estate's pinot grigio; and silver for Southern Highland Wines'gris. The Mount Majura is my pick: tight, expressive, fragrant with green pear.

Three of the 14 wines entered in Class 17 (2010 other varieties or blends) were sangiovese. Both Ravensworth and Pankhurst Wines entered a straight sangiovese, with a shiraz sangiovese blend from Little Bridge Wines. Both the Little Bridge and Ravensworth wines picked up silver medals, with the Ravensworth being my pick of the bunch.

In the next class (#18, 2009 and older other reds or blends), the 2009 Ravensworth sangiovese picked up a bronze. The other Italians (A.Retief's shiraz, sangiovese, malbec from 2008 and Grove Estate's 2009 Sommita Nebbiolo) in this class didn't grab a medal. For what it's worth, I preferred the 2009 Ravensworth sangiovese over the 2010 version - both wines crying out for food and a bit of time.

And that was it. Given the small number of Italians or blends of Italian and other varieties entered, the hit rate was not too bad, but none of these wines really took the event by the scruff. Out of what I tasted, the Mount Majura pinot gris and the Ravensworth sangiovese wines are what I would recommend and buy.

2011 Canberra Regional Wine Show

I had a look at the entries to the 2011 Canberra Regional Wine Show last night. This wine show is a 'feeder show' now for the National Wine Show later in the year, and is a well-run affair rather than a tidal wave of samples and judging panels. Judges this year included Ben Edwards, Jim Chatto and Mike Bennie (doing his ninth show this year, Mr Bennie told me).

A bit of added drama this year: both from the chemical fire and explosions that had cut off parts of North Canberra, as well as a mercy dash attached to the judges lunch on Friday. Out at lunch, another diner managed a nasty compound fracture and judges Chatto and Bennie went in to help. The subsequent exhibitors and sponsors tasting seemed quite sedate in comparison.

Bryan Martin's Ravensworth took home a bunch of gongs for his excellent 2009 shiraz viognier. Mount Majura took the prize for best exhibitor of show, in part due to the trophy-winning show their 2010 TSG blend of tempranillo, shiraz, graciano. Riesling, shiraz, chardonnay and the 'other whites' brackets stood out - not just for the Canberra fruit, but also for Tumbarumba chardonnay and wines from Hilltops and Gundagai. The latter region's showing being an eye-opener for me.

For full show results, see www.rncas.org.au

In my next post, I'll home in on how wines from Italian varieties fared in the show this year.

In the interests of transparency, no Quarry Hill wines were entered in the show this year.

New friends, Italian & Sons

A nice night with a table of eight people at Italian & Sons where half the people are completely new to me and the venue.

We started with rosemary focaccia and a plate of mixed olives. The bread, fresh from the wood-fired oven, even a touch undercooked, had a beautiful light slick of crunchy, savoury olive oil, sea salt & rosemary. Some of us has beer (Menebrea for me), others most of a bottle of 2008 Anselmi Soave (garganega) ordered (well) by an American in the party.

After my beer, a glass of Orvieto for me while the table plowed through entrees in share mode of kingfish carpaccio, sardines in saor, whitbait fritters and bresaola with rocket. Lovely. Groans from the table, especially the first time visitors to Italian & Sons.

Then a bottle of the 2009 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba. Please don't tell me it's a typo on the menu when I have had the 2008 here before and you've clicked over but not changed the wine list. Not as richly fruited as the 2008, even a touch warm, but good drinking with the food.

Part way through the food (Wednesday night is tagliata night, of salt/pepper crust eye fillet cooked in the wood oven, served with a horseradish aioli on rocket), we have drained the Barbera and move to a beautiful bottle of Rosso di Montalcino. Close to Montepulciano (not d'Abruzzo) in flavour, this wine (I will have to check the maker, this was a Tony suggestion) had an astonishing fit with the acid tang of the fresh horseradish sauce that went with the thin strips of wood-fired eye-fillet. Newcomers to Italian wine got this, straight off the bat. Well done, sommelier Tony.

Then the dessert round. I had cannolli with quince marmeleta. Beautiful. And the gambit of a few Italian digestivo for the table. First, Cynar (artichoke liqueur) over ice with a wedge of lemon. Second, a deceptively complex limoncello, chilled and neat. Third, a nocello (disappointingly dominated by insipid sweet hazelnut, rather than complex green walnut flavours). And Vince pulled a good short black.

I suspect Italian & Sons got a few new repeat customers tonight, and perhaps some coverts to Italian wine, even if not Italian digestifs. And great conversation with people from around the world, pulled together at this impromptu table. Another reminder of how lucky it is to live in Canberra.

At the end, back home, time for a real digestif. A glass of my own nocello. Made from green walnuts, grown two suburbs away, redolent of cola, nuts, lemon & dry spice, it's better than what I had tonight, and a fitting capstone to a good evening with new and old friends.

'Noble' grapes

I attended the 7th ANU Wine Symposium yesterday, which continues with Canberra District vineyard and winery tours today, concluding with a gala dinner tonight at which James Halliday is the after dinner speaker. The speakers at the symposium included Brian Croser talking riesling, Dan Buckle from Mt Langhi Ghiran talking shiraz, Nick Stock on why alternative varieties aren't a path to great wine, Libbie Tassie on alternative varieties suited to Australian regions and an excellent presentation on climate change (Andy Pitman).

Lots to think about and discuss, including content relevant to Italian grapes and wines in Australia. But to start, a few comments on some ideas threading through the day, as well as through discussions out of session. Brian Walsh from Yalumba tugged at some of the inconsistencies of wine thinking, especially that the arguments valuing single site wines of 'terroir' often advocate avoiding winemaking interventions that efface diversity, yet also hold that those single sites should be managed for consistency (rather than diverse expression across that single site, or over time). So managing for consistency to express vineyard terroir, then swinging round to avoiding managing for consistency in the winery to also express vineyard terroir.

Threading through some of the day, especially conversations I had out of session, were continuing ideas that some grapes are 'noble'. This can be an inherent claim to nobility (the genetic argument), a claim that only some grapes have made 'great wine' (the historical argument), and a muddy two-step starting with the idea that great wine is basically French wine so therefore the noble French grapes are the path to making great wine.

For me, when people argue for terroir expression as how great wines are made (akin to Andrew Jefford's 'wines of place' category) and argue that only some grapes are 'noble', there is a rift through the middle of their arguments. If great terroirs and wines are found and made through a lengthy process of trial and attunement, surely the starting point can be the broadest possible set of grape varieties capable of optimal expression of that terroir? Wouldn't starting with a small set of 'noble' grapes to try against and within a terroir actually reduce your chances of finding best fit?

My own small experience since 2005 has been that at Quarry Hill sauvignon blanc is less of a good fit that savagnin; shiraz a better fit in most seasons than pinot noir. The 'noble' grape thinking, for this specific site, has to me effaced what's positive and distinctive about our terroir. The ignoble, here, speak more clearly. Perhaps this means we can never produce 'great wine'?

[The Francophile list of 'noble grapes' is usually riesling, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon & merlot. If the categorical belt goes out a notch, nebbiolo, sangiovese (Brunello mode) and shiraz might sneak in.]

Trio Italian

Three simple things, Italian and local, coming together well:

- fresh hazelnuts, picked myself from a planting close to the vineyard, including a couple of Italian varieties that have reddish skins or are flattened out and pointed, rather than round.

- fresh figs, from the coppiced tree at my back steps.

- nocello (or nocino), an aromatic liqueur I made from green walnuts picked two suburbs over, steeped in neutral alcohol with spices, lemon zest & balanced out with some sugar.

Makes a simple, local, Italian and good dessert. Bite of ripe fig, a hazel or two, then a sip of nocello.

Yarrh 2004 Sangiovese (Canberra)

This wine, along with several of Bryan Martin's Ravensworth sangiovese wines, convinced me that sangiovese could be a good fit with the Canberra District. I bought a six pack and have followed them over the last six years.

The Yarrh vineyard is in Murrumbateman, closer to Ken Helm's site than it is to Clonakilla or Quarry Hill. It's a sloping site, wrapped around with native vegetation, including reveg plantings, topped off with a well-designed winery and cellar door. While the vineyard has some good air drainage, frost, disease and drought pressures, as well as sangiovese being a tricky prospect in the district, mean that a crop of quality each year is far from certain.

The 2004 as a younger wine had expressive cherry fruit and an attractive mix of nutty tannins and dried herb varietal characters. Through the bottles had between 2006 and 2009, these characters remained, topped up by a little tannin softening and bottle development. But this bottle suggested a wine on the downhill run. The nose has unstitched itself from the rest of the wine, turning dry-reddish rather than varietal. The varietal characters are still there on the palate, but they are fading, with the bones of the wine poking through.

Matched with a tray-roast of chicken thighs, onion, carrot, tomato, thyme, rosemary, oil and red vinegar, the wine clearly had its best days behind it. Still drinkable, it has lost the characters that attracted me to it over the past four bottles. Still good to follow these wines over time though.

Yarrh Wines, $25, screwcap, 14% alcohol.

Picking savagnin at Quarry Hill

Savagnin was planted at Quarry Hill in 2006. Thought at the time to be 'real' albarino, it has since looked well-suited to the site. A tiny amount of fruit was picked in 2009 for a micro-ferment of 27 litres. In 2010, more fruit (most rack-dried to make an experimental dessert wine, some off to Brian Schmidt at Maipenrai).

For vintage 2011, the savagnin vines were cane-pruned back to 6-8 buds per cane, with double or tirple buds flicked out by hand. Later in the season, the vines were shoot-thinned to control yield but also to shape the canopy and ensure good airflow in this wet year.

Picking happened on Monday March 7, along with the sauvignon blanc, and the savagnin plantings provided 2.4 tonnes of good quality fruit. Tasting the fruit at picking, then the juice from the press that evening, the main impressions were of citrus and crunching through a green-skinned apple.

So from planting vines in the winter of 2006, we should have a dry, textural new white wine available around August 2011. It's important not to rush these things.

Alinga 2009 Sangiovese (Canberra)

This is the first sangiovese I have had from the Four Winds Vineyard at Murrumbateman that provides fruit for the Alinga wines. Advertised as hand-pruned and basket-pressed, the fruit is from vines of the 'Yarra Yering' clone (no longer grown at Yarra Yering, if I recall correctly). I am unclear as to whether this clone is the H6V9 clone brought in from UCD Davis in the late 1960s, or of one of the later imports from Italy in the 1980s.

The wine is attractive. Very much at the lighter end of the colour and fruit-weight spectrum, it shows best without being too cold. Red fruits, slightly medicinal cherries, good acid and some clear tannin. On night two, it had put on weight in the bottle and went well with beef dumplings, showing less acid and tannin and more the characteristics of a generic dry red. While more clearly varietal when first opened, it went well with food and is decent value at $19 a bottle.

Blind tasting of 23 Canberra District shiraz from the 2009 vintage

Last night I got to do a fascinating horizontal blind tasting of 23 Canberra District shiraz wines from the 2009 vintage. First, a big thanks to Len Sorbello and the Winewise crew for putting this on. I won't post scores, and will wait until Winewise publishes before I make specific comments on particular wines, but it was a fascinating exercise. I thought the idea of a wine publication conducting a horizontal tasting, but inviting winemakers and growers involved in producing the wines to come along and participate, was a really good one, and not something I have seen before. Seeing the similarities and differences in fruit flavours and aromas across sub-regions, makers and styles was eye-opening for me. Thankfully, I could pick the Quarry Hill wine out of the blind lineup. It is a strong vintage for Canberra, including for shiraz, with the average standard of the wines high.

We tasted, in order of serving, not any ranking or scoring:
1 2009 Lerida Estate Shiraz
2 2009 Capital Wines Frontbencher Shiraz (Tank Sample)
3 2009 Brindabella Hills Shiraz (Tank Sample)
4 2009 Lambert Vineyards Shiraz
5 2009 Quarry Hill Shiraz
6 2009 Mount Majura Shiraz (Tank Sample)
7 2009 Eden Road The Long Road Shiraz (60% Canberra)
8 2009 Collector Reserve Shiraz
9 2009 Dionysus Winery Murrumbateman Shiraz
10 2009 Bourke Street Shiraz
11 2009 Capital Wines Kyeema Reserve Shiraz (Tank Sample)
12 2009 Nick O’Leary Shiraz
13 2009 Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier
14 2009 Alinga Shiraz
15 2009 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier
16 2009 Dionysus Winery Estate Shiraz
17 2009 Collector Marked Tree Red Shiraz
18 2009 Lerida Estate Shiraz Viognier
19 2009 Long Rail Gully Shiraz
20 2009 Jeir Creek Shiraz
21 2009 McKellar Ridge Basket Press Shiraz Viognier
22 2009 Clonakilla O'Riada Shiraz
23 2009 Ravensworth Shiraz Viognier

Well done Winewise for doing this, and Frank Van de Loo from Mount Majura for hosting. Made me feel lucky to be involved in Canberra District wine.