With Ed Carr, winemaker for House of Arras concentrating for the past 27 years on just this one style. Louisa Rose from the Hill-Smith Family Vineyards is also renowned for her skills and is the winemaker behind Jansz Tasmania. Both talked to Tessa Nicholson about their love for this style of wine and the many challenges involved.
Could Sparkling wine be the most challenging of all styles? Both Ed Carr and Louisa Rose believe so. Not only because of the “living near the edge” due to the necessity of requiring cool climate fruit, but also because of the extended time it takes for the finished product to evolve.
As Rose says, all winemaking requires a degree of weighing up the risks, particularly the risks of mother nature.
“But the cooler your climate is and the closer you are to that edge, the more risk there is. And arguably, the more work you have to put into the vineyard. When we are working in a climate like Tasmania, the work that goes into the vineyard throughout the 12 months is absolutely critical. You have to hone everything you do in the vineyard to minimize risk, because you want to make sure your vines are going to be really well set up so they ripen the grapes as early as they can. It is no good being the last in the area to harvest your fruit, you want to be the first to do so.”
While that work is not dissimilar to what is required for still wine production, Carr says there are subtle differences.
“For a Sparkling style we are generally happier with a slightly more elevated crop and larger size berries, as we are looking for tannin, acid balance. For Sparkling slightly larger berries seem to suit the style.”
In terms of fruit, House of Arras uses all three traditional varieties, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, with the latter playing a major role in their younger release wines.
“In Australia in the past, the focus has been on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, which I think people were viewing as the premium of those three varieties. But in our younger release wines, those that are four years on lees, we find Pinot Meunier really fits in, advancing the blend more rapidly and adding a softer, more approachability to it at a younger age, which is exactly what we want to do.”
Currently 10 percent Pinot Meunier is added, which he says is well below the percentage used in traditional non-vintage French wines – which is normally 30 percent. That smaller addition is mainly due to the lack of Meunier available.
“We seem to be a bit on our own with Pinot Meunier, so we are actually planting more as we are trying to build that up and take it one year at a time to see how far we can push the Meunier while it is still an advantage.”
Given how important aging on lees is for Sparkling wine, how important is the age of vines supplying the fruit.
“I think it is important,” Carr says, “although maybe not pushed so far in years. Generally by the third and fourth crop we are thinking the vine is very stable and the canopy set-up should be very strong. It is not so much the age of the vine that we look at, more how we can manipulate the canopy so the fruit has the right amount of canopy to fruit and light infiltration, as we are working in areas of very high sunlight intensity.”
So with the region and sub region playing a vital role and the viticultural work critical, the next stage on the long road to producing a Sparkling wine is what happens in the winery.
It is a style that is not for the impatient. Given four years on lees is nothing unusual, there is a lot of work and waiting before a winemaker can determine how good the end product is.
“People don’t often realise that some of the oldest wines that they can buy in a normal wine shop are often Sparkling wines,” Rose says.
“People think about red wines being cellared in the winery before they are released, and they are. But Sparkling wines are often cellared for longer, or certainly as long, depending on the brand.
“They may well have spent, in the case of really premium wine, four or five or even 10 years on lees.”
House of Arras’s top wine spends 10 years on lees and the 2007, 2008 wines are now the ones coming onto the market. While Carr jokes that he wonders every year if he will ever get to try the current vintage’s premium wines, it is part and parcel of creating a high-quality product.
“It’s part of the game. If you look at the best Sparkling wines around the globe, to me, they are the ones that are current releases from 2007, 2008 and 2009 in general. That’s the sort of age frame you have to be working in.
“For me particularly with premium Sparkling, there are two stages (in the winery). The base winemaking and then the time on lees for whatever maturation period you think is right for that wine, and then looking at the d’expédition stages with the tailoring of the liqueur to that particular wine. I guess it’s that long production cycle and the multiple phases that get you to the final product that is the biggest challenge.”
But with such a long time frame between picking the fruit and tasting the final product, does it make it more difficult for winemakers to make changes to style or winemaking techniques? Rose thinks there is something in that.
Especially when you compare making other wine styles, that provide winemakers almost instantly with some form of prediction.
“Take Sauvignon Blanc for example, you can taste how that wine is going to turn out, in the grapes. And over here it would be varietals like Riesling or even Viognier, where you can taste really what that wine is going to taste like, when you taste the grapes. But with Sparkling wine there is a lot of complexity and a lot of things that come not just from the grapes. Looking at the base wines, it is very difficult to tell if you are not experienced, what the final wines are going to look like, so experience is absolutely paramount. I think (Sparkling wine) could be the ultimate challenge.”
With both looking forward to crossing the Tasman to take part in the Sparkling Symposium, Rose in particular was keen to point out that they are not coming here to tell anyone how they should be making wine.
“The key is that anyone attending can adopt anything they hear, or vice versa if we hear something that is happening in New Zealand we can come back and adopt it. But at the end of the day there is something nobody can copy and that is what our terroir gives us. There is nothing Ed or I can do to change the underlying characters and balance of the grapes that inherently comes from the place that the vines grow, and the same goes for people in New Zealand. You can adopt as many techniques as you like, but nothing will change your terroir – that is what makes us unique and makes each of us very special.”
Sparkling Wine Symposium – Joining the Dots
Venue: Marlborough Vintners Hotel, Blenheim
Date: Tuesday 28th August
Speakers: Ed Carr, Lousia Rose, Mike Collins, Jeff Clarke, Andy Frost, Jamie Marfell, Evan Ward, Andy Petrie, Bruce Abbott, Sharon Goldsworthy, Jane De Witt, Steve Voysey, Lee Dobson.
Registrations: www.nzsvo.org.nz
