The Year of Disillusion

Despite its bad reputation, the word “disillusion” is a beautiful, positive concept. “Dis” means to free or divide and thus dis-illusion to free of illusion or false ideas. The German translation, “ent-täuschung”, is the same. I like it: die Täuschung ist vorbei. Let’s get over it.

It’s been a tough road, but here I am in December 2009. I’ve had a fabulous, exciting year. I affectionately call it my year of disillusionment.

My year began in a remote monastery at a retreat for meditation and rejuvenation. The theme was “letting go and starting new”. Over the following months as I grudgingly let go of the illusion. Illusions may appear beautiful, but sooner or later they bust apart. Then you are left with reality. And reality is … well it is what it is. Once I accepted that my life seemed to grab me and pull me back into its stream. Miraculous things began to happen.

I have a very good man in my life who showers me with affection, support, and encouragement. I have tremendous respect for him, as he does for me. We’ve shared a lot of amazing adventures together this year.

My 14-year-old daughter is a source of joy and light for me. She’s in the eighth grade this year. Although her friends and social life are pretty much the main focus of her life at this point, she does make time for her mother and I treasure every moment. There is a special wisdom about her – an old soul and a young spirit. She’s one of my greatest teachers.

As everyone knows, you don’t just loose your spouse in a divorce, you typically loose other people that once played an important role in your life as well. There are disappointments, but your real friends remain and you also make new ones. Time has passed and I find myself surrounded by a lot of sincere, warm hearted and caring people; inspiring people that are making a positive difference in their communities and our environment.

Surrounded by all this support and inspiration, life began to happen again. And it has swept me off my feet! It has taken me to three continents and 12 countries this year. I am a student of the Institute Masters of Wine. Work has been productive: I co-authored and/or edited several wine books and numerous articles. I was able to re-unite with old friends and extended family members and kindle new friendships.

The highlights of this year were certainly my two trips to North America. The ultimate highlight was my trip to the USA with Sophie. She was able to get an inside view to “my culinary San Francisco” before enjoying many memorable experiences with family and friends in the Pacific Northwest and tons of family she never even knew she had in my State of birth, Minnesota. Another fabulous trip was with Gerhard. We began on Vancouver Island and travelled down the west coast to San Francisco visiting lots of friends and family and all the wine regions along the way. As far as my studies and work go --- it’s pretty amazing. Success can be measured in many ways. I may not make a lot of money, but I get to travel to a lot of beautiful places and meet inspiring people and support projects that contribute positively to our environment and society. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to make a living at something I love, at something where I feel I make a positive difference in this world, however small. To top it all off this year, I won the prestigious IMW Yalumba Scholarship which took me to Australia for studies and an internship.

With all this travelling, the frequency of extensive mountain tours on skis or by bike have decreased dramatically. I’ve been hiking and walking, but that is not vigorous enough for me. I don’t really like to run, especially alone in unfamiliar places, so I’ve started doing early morning aerobics wherever I happen to be. It’s a compromise, but not a long-term substitute for what vigorous mountain activity does for my soul.

My goals for 2010? A more sustainable lifestyle. A return to more mountain tours. Increased engagement in my community, in particular for immigrant integration. Working to make the wine industry a leader in environmental and social responsiblity. A new website. A couple new books. Good results on the MW exams.

And my most important duty of all? Just plain loving and living a good life! I owe that to myself, my partner, my daughters, my parents, and all the people around me!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Weinverkostung für Frauen

„Die Presse“ veranstaltet gemeinsam mit dem Weingut Höpler ein hochklassiges Weinseminar. Durch den Abend führt Weinakademikerin Julia Sevenich.

Das Seminar kostet nur 55 Euro (statt 120 Euro).

Donnerstag, 21. Jänner 2010, 19 Uhr
SAS Radisson Blue, 1010 Wien, Herrengasse 12
Anmeldungen an leservorteile@diepresse.com bis 17. Jänner
2009 Kennwort „Weinseminar“

diepresse.com

Impressions of Australia 2009

Big Bertha

embarassingly heavy luggage

Yalumba Viognier Breakfast

Louisa Rose, the chief winemaker at Yalumba has invited me for a Viognier Breakfast today, or better said, she has arrived here at Percy’s with a chef and several appetizing looking bottles in tow.

Louisa, or “Lou” as she is affectionately called by her friends and colleagues, has been a winemaker since graduating at the top of her class from Roseworthy in 1992. Since 2006 she is the chief winemaker here at Yalumba. I’ve been able to observe Lou at work this week. She’s a no-nonsense woman that shoots straight from the hip. She’s honest to the point of being blunt, but the reason she can pull this off with such admirable grace is that not only does she have an impeccable palate and is extraordinarily good at what she does, she is also a very fair, honest and warm-hearted boss and colleague.

One of Lou’s great achievements at Yalumba has been her work with the Viognier grape variety and the creation of one of Australia’s great icon wines – “The Virgilius” Viognier. Indeed, the amazing popularity and success of Viognier in Australia is largely due to the efforts at Yalumba.

It is worth recalling that back in 1968 there were only 14 hectares of Viognier growing in the northern Rhône in the tiny appellations of Condrieu and Côte Rotie. Not much of it was growing anywhere else in the world. Due to the variety’s demand on climate and difficulty in the vineyard, it had become nearly extinct, having been replaced by easier and more predictable varieties.

I heard that the Hill-Smith family family fell with the variety on a trip to the Northern Rhône. I wasn’t able to confirm that, but I do know that they planted 1.2 hectare of Viognier on their Vaughan property in Eden Valley in 1980. They experimented with it quietly for about 10 years before subsequently extending their Viognier vineyards not only in the Eden Valley, but in the Riverland and Limestone Coast regions of South Australia. Much of Australia’s Viognier vine material actually originates from the Yalumba estate nursery.

The clone used for nearly all of the early plantings was the Montpellier 1968. In the late 1990’s Yalumba initiated discussions with other great Viognier makers around the world and placed cuttings from their best vines into a clonal development program at the Yalumba Vine Nursery. This work continues today where Yalumba, after years of observation, have selected 11 of the most successful clones for its youngest Viognier plantings in the Virgilius Vineyard on Flaxmann Valley Road in Eden Valley.

The original vines in Eden Valley were planted on their own roots, but these new vines have been grafted just as Yalumba’s other subsequent Viognier plantings have been grafted. Although there has not yet been phylloxera in South Australia, that pest is not the only reason to graft vines. In a replanting environment in the Riverland, Ramsey rootstock is used to help combat nematodes, salinity and drought. In the Limestone Coast Teleki 5C and Paulsen 1103 are used as they have good lime tolerance and reasonable, but not excessive vigour to cope with the shallow limestone soils.

Louisa Rose says, “Getting the cropping levels right early in the season is the biggest challenge. If the vine is left with too much fruit it will struggle to develop sufficient canopy to set the berries and ripen the crop. If the vine is struggling then leaf health is severely affected. If over cropping occurs on young vines it can take a number of years for the vine to recover due to poor cane development and the vine ends up with stunted growth and poor spur or cane positioning.”

The Virgilius

The flagship Viognier was conceived as the white partner to the flagship Barossa Shiraz called Octavius. The name “Virgilius” stems from the Roman poet Virgil who was also friend and mentor of the first Emperor of Rome, Octavius (Augustus). After nearly twenty years of experimentation, the Virgilius made its debut in 1998.

Virgilius is sourced from the best Viognier vines from the Eden Valley. Viognier can be notoriously high in alcohol and flabby due to it inherently low acid. This is because it needs to be really ripe before it develops all those lovely peach and floral aromas. And when Viognier finally does ripen, it ripens very fast. Louisa monitors the ripening progress diligently and gets her team out there to pick quickly in the cool early morning hours to preserve that precious acid.

To minimize the high phenolic content, she practices whole bunch pressing. Structure, balance and longevity are her goals with this big-bodied wine so it is fermented slowly with indigenous yeast in used French oak barrels. The wine remains on its lees for 9-10 months. Only the best barrels are chosen for the final blend.

The Breakfast

Lou presents the entire line-up of Yalumba Viognier with our breakfast. We have two variations of eggs Benedict: one with spinach and Barossa ham and the other with smoked Pacific salmon. All three of the dry white Viognier wines pair superbly with the eggs. We began with the 2008 Yalumba Y Series which exhibits excellent varietal character with jasmine and white peach flavours. The 2008 Yalumba Barossa Eden Valley is a bit more rich and intense with apricot and peach laced with a little citrus and orange blossom – I really enjoyed this with the Florentine version of the eggs. The Virgilius is a really sexy wine and I really have to hold myself back. (It would be easy to sit for a few hours enjoying this, but do still have a day of work ahead of me.) The 2008 Virgilius has intense aromas of peach apricot and ginger spice. It is wonderfully textured and displays well-balanced structure with vibrant acid and integrated alcohol. The finish is very long and mineral and while this wine is generous, it is by no means blowsy. I adore it with the salmon and the Hollandaise sauce. In the tradition of the northern Rhône, Yalumba also produces three dry red wines that are Shiraz blended with a small amount of Viognier. This adds a discreet floral components and bright yellow stone fruit to dark briary Shiraz. The 2008 Y Series Shiraz Viognier is reminiscent of crushed raspberries and rhubarb with a bit of cinnamon and jasmine. This is a jazzy medium bodied wine with soft juicy tannins and actually goes pretty well with the salmon. The 2006 Yalumba Barossa Eden Shiraz Viognier is a deeper darker wine with plum and black raspberry fruit and a cedary juniper berry component. The 2007 Yalumba Handpicked Shiraz Viognier is a complex wine with blackberry, honeysuckle, wild heather, dried apricot and a hint of roasted coffee. The tannins are abundant and very fine-grained and the finish lingers long with an array of spices and fruit. Yalumba also produces a sweet botrytized version of Viognier in adequate vintages. The 2008 Wrattonbully Hand Picked Botrytis Viognier is absolutely delicious with the fresh fruit. The superb ending to our meal is the Yalumba V de Vie, which is the pure, clear distilled Viognier.

Yalumba - The Tasting Lab

The stately main Yalumba building clad in blue stone from the Angaston Marble Quarry is just opposite my current home at Percy’s.  The pretty clock tower reaches cheerfully towards the turquoise South Australian sky. Kirsty Gosse arrives at 9 AM to introduce me for my first official day at Yalumba.  After a little over a week of cloudy weather with occasional rain showers, the temperatures remain a cool 16°C.  The lawns are still damp, so we keep to the brick pathways that lead to the Yalumba headquarters.

Here I meet Brian Walsh, the Director of Winemaking, and his team of 12 winemakers.  The young and competent Chief Winemaker, Louisa Rose, leads the team in each year’s master classes in which all winemakers participate.  Today we taste the entire line-up of white wines.  Yalumba has several series of wines and each of the twelve winemakers is responsible for specific wines or specific series of wines and presents these wines to his/her colleagues.  Everything from flagship reserve wines to entry-level bag-in-box is tasted.  Quality and suitability for its price point, market segment, and desired style is discussed for each wine.

The discussion is critical and to the point – no pussy-footing allowed!  Despite this, it remains very respectful and quite positive.  Logically, things like oak, malolactic fermentation, alcohol, sugar and acid levels are discussed, but marketing themes are also included.  For example, Yalumba not only produces a series of wines made from organically grown grapes, it also produces wines suitable for vegans. “For vegans,” you ask?  Yes, indeed!  What many consumers do not know is that in food and beverage production certain processing agents are often employed (often for stabilization purposes) that do not remain in the end product.  Some of these processing agents are derived from animals.  That includes things like albumin (from egg whites), isinglass (from fish bladders), casein (from milk) or gelatine.  Wines that are suitable for vegans have not employed these processing agents.  The Yalumba team of winemakers agreed that the food pairing suggestion of one of the vegan wines “to serve with fish” was probably not a well-chosen labelling scheme.

For each of the 45 wines we taste, there is a data sheet.  After the name and region of each wine comes a single word which should be different for each wine in the Yalumba family and represent the essence of that wine. This is followed by a more extensive style and sensory description. The datasheet for each wine further includes all of the winemaking procedures from picking criteria and fruit processing to clarification, fermentation, fining, stabilization and maturation.  Viticultural and oenological challenges and future plans that were discussed in the previous white wine master class summarized at the end.  

The datasheet, the tasting, and the lively discussion with the winemakers are extremely valuable for my Master of Wine studies.  There are often questions on the practical exams in which we must make conclusions on production procedures and link them to what we taste in the glass and follow with assessments of quality, longevity, and strategic market positioning.

The tasting is sorted according to variety.  I soon discover that each flight begins with the premium wines and ends with the entry level categories.  This is a rather merciless way to taste wines.  Among experienced tasters, it is known that one is usually over-critical of the first wine in each category.  On the other hand, a lesser wine always has difficulties after a wine that is by far its superior.  Yalumba winemakers are not easy on themselves or their wines.  It becomes clear that efforts for improvement and development are an inherent part of the Yalumba company culture.