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A heavenly pair from Hahndorf Hill

It’s time for Whitey’s annual dance with the devilish dainties at Hahndorf Hill.

Nov 17, 2016, updated Nov 17, 2016
Photo: Philip White

Photo: Philip White

Hahndorf Hill Zsa Zsa Zweigelt Nouveau 2016
($33; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap)

Now we’re talking. The bridge between rosé and more conventional red wine is not attempted by many Australian winemakers: bad experience with dodgy Beaujolais Nouveau in the 1980s seemed to deter most for life. Only Stephen Hickinbotham had it nailed with his delicious, easy- drinking Cab Mac, but he was killed in a plane crash before that decade ended.

Zweitgelt is an Austrian variety grown now by Larry Jacobs and Marc Dobson at Hahndorf Hill. To make this lovely flirt of a schlück, Larry waited till the stalks had lost their greenness, picked by hand, put the whole bunches in a tank, covered them with CO2 and let them ferment within their intact skins. Once the ferment was slowing the must was pressed and the wine finished its job during 14 weeks in old French barrels.

The wine is cheeky, but it never smells pink, and while translucent, is not typically rosy in hue. Even its bouquet has plenty of dark tones: it smells a little like black tea leaves and tomato leaf; maybe an entire blackberry bush.

It has that lovely nutty, cherry-pit flavour typical of wines made by this carbonic maceration technique, and is almost free of tannin: it’s that nuttiness that tangles with the acid in the tail that tantalises. If there’s fruit apart from cherry, think along the lines of tamarillo, feijoa and pomegranate, but it’s never too plump or gushy, dollink.

You could have this wine in an ice bucket if you wanted. I can imagine it doing heavenly business with spaghetti vongole. Very cool.

Hahndorf Hill Winery Adelaide Hills Blueblood Blaufrankisch 2015
($46; 14% alcohol; screw cap)

Blaufrankisch, another Austrian red, has grown at Hahndorf Hill for 25 years! While a few other makers are beginning to play with it, the HHW blokes are the grand masters. Their take on it often reminds me of a particularly fruity borscht.

This bouquet is more complex than earlier ones I recall: it has more dark leaf – laurel/black tea/tomato leaves atop the plums and borscht – giving its aroma a velvety feel. It’s not shiny. It’s deep and sultry.

The more I sniff it, the more I detect faint hints of curry, like turmeric, cumin and maybe even the curry tree. It’s a tantalising, highly individual wine to inhale.

But it’s a drink. And yes, like the bouquet, the drinking is distinctive and individual, and I think, without showing any more weight, it’s a little more complex than most other vintages. Call it complex and lithe.

Those dark leaves frolic here in the background of the flavour and the fruit: a bacchanale that reminds me of Syd Long’s Pan, that early rare Australian art nouveau work in the Sydney Gallery which shows the old boy’s cloven hairy gang dancing to his pipes with the sylphs: before them is a deep pond of violets and purples and the earthy, swampy, simmering hues of decay.

This Blau’s a bewdy right now, but it’ll really swing in two or three more years. If you’re not careful, it’ll swing you right into that dark pool, as deep and alluring as beautiful badness itself.

Baby beetroot, borscht with yoghurt, blueberries, fresh marshmallow, black peppercorns, many unlikely components sit together in blissful harmony

As usual with the annual offerings from HHW, the bouquet starts out with that ozone prickle of blackberry bushes that have just been smacked by lightning. The further in you go, you get cool beetrooty borscht with a swirl of yoghurt and the pickling juice from a jar of black kalamata. And that distinctive Hahndorf Hill prickle of podsolic dirt and grapeshot ironstone in the heat of summer.

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