SO, I'm just going to come straight out and say it; the 2006 Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay may well be the greatest white wine ever made in Australia.
SO, I'm just going to come straight out and say it; the 2006 Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay may well be the greatest white wine ever made in Australia. This is a big statement on a very subjective topic, but bear with me as I stumble through my reasoning.
Most wine in Australia is made with the head - boardrooms, budgets, an identified cost of production to hit a required price point - kind of like the way I would imagine the Toyota Corolla was born. Nothing wrong with that of course, I sell and drink these wines all the time. This approach produces wines that are often very good, satisfy a demand, but can be formulaic.
Some wine is made with the heart, usually by family owned wineries that toil for generations to understand their piece of land and the varieties on it. The wine is made with a zealous pursuit of excellence, the price a result, not a cause; this wine invariably reflects the affinity these farmers have with their land, there is a unique sense of place to them. To stick with the car analogy, more like Ferraris than Corollas.
Which brings us to the biggest sticking point - price. While the Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay is on the shelves for about $100, you can get your hands on a bottle of 'boardroom blanc' that wins gold medals for, say, $20. A dispassionate analysis of price versus quality is going to point you in the direction of the latter. And hey, price is important, now that we are all spending more nights in.
But I reckon there's a bigger picture here than just the consumer's wallet. These producers, who fanatically pursue excellence with such intensity, are doing much more than making wine; they are raising the bar for the whole industry.
Their passion beams up from the glass, the reverence with which these wines are made from bud to bottle is shouting to the world that not all Aussie wine relies on a cute animal label to sell it. They are creating a global buzz that positions Australian food and wine as some of the very finest in the world. This naturally spills over into tourism revenue and all the associated benefits therein. It's like they are the only ones in the industry currently playing offence while the rest are busy with defence.
There is a small group of producers that shares the same ideals and drive (but not quite the price) as Leeuwin. Companies such as Vasse Felix, with its stunning 2006 Heytesbury chardonnay, while Ashbrook, Picardy, Pierro and Voyager Estate are also producing sublime chardonnays.
I once asked Tony Devitt, owner of Ashbrook Estate, if he ever considered making a 'reserve' range of wines to which he laughed and said, "I only make a reserve range". That kind of attitude deserves to be rewarded with our loyalty as customers.
So the reason I feel Leeuwin's 2006 Art Series Chardonnay should be seriously considered as Australia's greatest-ever white wine is not just its technical exactness or its blinding fruit quality or its seamlessly long intensity. It's more than that. I feel that this wine is now judging itself not against its own past vintages but against the very finest wines in the world.
In doing so it carries the global flag for Australian wine and elevates our industry's opinion of itself and what we think we can achieve.
