The Playground series from Teusner is available from their cellar door outlet – Artisans of the Barossa – and presents an opportunity for the winemaking team to explore parcels of grapes with an increased sense of freedom. From the press release:
“Eden Valley…high altitude…2011, a cooler, wetter year than ever known…’Spog’ Forrest’s Shiraz…late March…fruit at 10 baumé and losing the battle with mould…a vineyard barely alive. Enter Kym Teusner…”Gentlemen. We can rebuild this Shiraz. We have the technology. We have the fruit and the capability to make a Shiraz that will have those cool climate loving, skinny jean wearing, beard growing hipsters doing donuts on their Vespas. Spog’s Shiraz will be that wine. Different to what it was last year….spicier…more north Rhone….less south Rhone…Maybe we should have entered it in the Jimmy…?”
I shave every morning, am several months away from being able to fit into skinny jeans and cringe at the idea that someone might refer to me as a hipster…but the truth of the matter is that my current vinous preferences aren’t that different from what seems to be in vogue at the more meaningful wine shows in Australia. Meaningful to the extent that the results are less scattergun and a quick look at the judges make the medals and awards interpretable. I’m not convinced you can ask for much more than that. Anyway, in short Teusner have hit their target market by sending me this wine.
It’s thoroughly regional. Typically spicy with boysenberry, violets and raspberry. No sign of grubby wet vintage fruit. A splash of Viognier is obvious in terms of mouthfeel, tannin and aromatics but there isn’t any stonefruit flavour – or much in the way of slipperiness. Enough flesh to envelop the cool climate acidity. Quite savoury and complex with herbs, black olives, roast peppers and brown leaf. Lots of firm and fine tannin. Only just medium-bodied. It’s an elegant, angular wine that takes time to unfold. Looked its best on day three. I can’t see everyone loving what it offers but I was captivated…albeit beardless and lacking a beret. 91+
Region: Eden Valley
Alcohol: 14.5%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $30
Tasted: January 2014
Not a bad effort, 14.5% from the 10 baume start. I wouldn’t mention the technology to the hipster target market though.
Funny you should mention that Tom. Here’s a bit more of the story that I couldn’t fit into the tasting note:
“When things are going as pear shaped as they were in the Eden Valley late in the 2011 vintage, it’s usually hasta la vista baby, the fruit stays on the vine and we move on. But walking through tasting this crop, it looked strangely spectacular, very reminiscent of the northern Rhone Shiraz…So then and there the decision was made to have a crack at the Barossa’s first 10° baumé Shiraz! In went the harvesters to pick the fruit…. also venturing into a patch of Viognier reckoning the extra richness and aroma from a splash could be handy. The fruit was crushed straight to the press and straight away half the juice was run off, increasing the skin to juice ratio to concentrate flavour and intensify color. The separated juice was shipped off to a mates place to be subjected it to all sorts of stuff to remove as much liquid as possible…and we got it back to the winery at a whopping 960gms per liter of residual sugar…pretty much sugar syrup which when added back to the ferment increased the baumé to around 14°. By the time we pressed the ferment, we were left with about half the wine volume we’d normally expect. 18 months sitting around in some nice shiny new Radoux oak and hey presto, we have a beautifully balanced cool climate styled Barossa Shiraz.” – Kym Teusner
Not a wine for dogmatic minimal intervention hipsters I guess.
I dunno – I think reverse osmosis is totally romantic.
It’s funny isn’t it, how a lot of effortless, very natural wine may take a sh#tload of effort to get made. That doesn’t make something less authentic and more artificial. Hard work is not inherently artificial.
I’m not sure if concentration fits into the effortless very natural category, but…. I do feel that winemakers sometimes undersell themselves a bit banging on about how little they did, minimal intervention etc. etc. etc. when in fact an awful lot of intellectual effort, hard work and winemaking craft has gone into making their wine. Even if a good wine hasn’t received techno trickery, cultured yeasts, filtration and the rest of the winemaking kit bag, it hasn’t just made itself. It’s admirable to hear Kym Teusner outline the efforts he made and celebrate the result.
Tom, I’m very sure it does. I think many of the best wines I’d consider effortless and very natural have immense concentration. Principle but not a rule here: concentration does not in any way shape or form have to result from some form of intervention, a pushed extraction, artefact enhancement or many other things the word “concentration” may imply to some.
Sorry, I think there’s some confusion. I wasn’t referring to concentration as a description of a wine, but concentration as in removing water with reverse osmosis or vacuum distillation as has been alluded to in Kym’s description of the winemaking. I wasn’t passing any sort of opinion on the matter, it was just a light-hearted observation. I’m not disputing that wine can be naturally intense and concentrated.