Pinot players step up

BEING a pinot fanatic is like being a West Coast Eagles fan, you’re never sure what’s going to happen on game day. It is either exquisite perfection, flowing poetry, graceful nuance and universal mastery or a thunderously clumsy, disjointed jumble that makes you wince. When buying a ticket to see our boys in the blue and gold you face the same conundrum as when choosing Australian pinot – unfortunately over the past few years, the result for both has been nothing short of patchy.

Hang on though – let’s not be too hasty here, Woosha’s boys have a great pedigree, and wasn’t that our beloved cellar dwellers flashing and sniping in the semi final of the pre-season cup? So if we are not jumping out of our seats with excitement for this year’s season, there’s still a bit to get excited about, right? The good news is, it also seems the Aussie pinot scene is also running in to a bit of form.

Let me just clarify; there have been moments of brilliance from some of this country’s cool climate pinot producers in the past. Names such as Bindi and Bannockburn have produced some really exciting wines, but far too often the rest of the pack have made wines that are simply too ripe and alcoholic. The result is wines that just don’t look like pinot.

Pinot is supposed to be delicate, ethereal and subtle. It’s a feminine drink that should teasingly reveal its layers, woo you like some mythical siren; not bludgeon you with alcohol like a biker chick. If you want these big-style wines, there are plenty of them out there. Pinot should look like pinot, not shiraz.

There’s a reason Central Otago pinot has eclipsed our offerings – it’s because they are making pinot ... proper pinot.

And now for the good news. Things are changing. There is a raft of small Aussie proper pinot producers that are putting out some seriously exciting wines. Top of the list is William Downie with three really interesting single vineyard wines. Mayer from Mornington makes an absolute ripper. The Norien from the guys at Scorpo is stunning and the new Gibraltor Rock Pinot from Marchand and Burch is the best pinot to come out of Western Australia ever. These wines are not cheap, you won’t find them in the big chains, but they are worth hunting for.

The Australian wine industry is built on its big, rich, ripe, alcoholic wines. They are great, I love them and so should you, but that doesn’t mean we should tar every wine we produce with the same brush. Proper pinot producers are starting to understand this variety, that it grows best on elevated, cool sites at low yields, that minimal new oak and minimal secondary fermentation is the way to go to produce a wine that is not French or Otago in style but is very definitely Australian – very definitely worth getting excited about.

I know what I’ll be drinking this September when the Eagles are 20 points clear of Collingwood in the grand final.