Sarah Ahmed led a thoughtful tasting of a dozen wines cherry-picked from the Margaret River at the London Wine Fair. There was great homogeneity in the wines shown, something of a characteristic of this region that sits below Perth in Western Australia.  There is an obvious maritime influence with the Margaret River vineyard strip being between 3 and 7 kilometres from coast, and the entire area being an effective peninsula surrounded by the Indian Ocean. The season starts early and ends late, and the soils are generally gravelly and lean.

Brokenwood’s Graveyard Shiraz upgraded to ‘Exceptional’

Last week saw the publication of Langton’s classification ‘V’ of the highest performing Australian wines as defined by their movements on the Australian auction market. Although essentially a market guide, the Langton’s classification is generally regarded as a list of the very finest and most collectable wines made in Oz. Revised every five years the classification was first introduced in 1991. Back then 34 wines were included, last week 123 wines made it to the list – 33 more since the last classification in 2005, reflecting the increased demand for fine Australian wine on the secondary markets in general as well as the sheer quality of the product at the top end.  

Jim Barry’s decadent Armagh Shiraz

Despite the perception that the country has in recent years lost out to South Africa and the combined forces of Chile and Argentina as the world’s cutting edge wine making powerhouse, Australia remains one of the most exciting places to make wine. Partly it’s because it is a unique place – the country is huge with some of the most diverse terrior in the world – but also importantly because of the open-mindedness and energy of the Aussie wine makers themselves – especially when you get amongst the privately owned wineries.