There’s about ten of us huddled under a tin roof on the Pfeiffer Wines property in Rutherglen, Victoria, and the heavy smattering of rain creates the perfect soundtrack to a two hour muscat blending experience.
“It’s Australia’s gift to the world of wine,” says Chris Pfeiffer, managing partner and senior winemaker of Pfeiffer Wines, as he holds up a glass of the deep red fortified wine known as muscat.
As I blend and taste and blend some more, I learn there is literally no other muscat in the world like that of Rutherglen. It owes this great honour to a parasite, the louse phylloxera. You see, Rutherglen was one of the dominant wine regions in Australia back in the 1800s when it produced more than one quarter of the country’s vino. A fortified wine made from the grape Muscat a Petits Grains Rouge was chief among its output. The grafts from this European grape varietal had been transplanted from American soil, which was lucky. When the phylloxera plague hit Victoria in the 1870s, only those vineyards grown on American root stock were immune. The rest were lost. And so muscat became one of the only wines Rutherglen could produce for some time.
It just so happens that Muscat a Petits Grains Rouge loves the Rutherglen climate. The weather, soil and geography allows a ripening of the fruit on the vine that provides the depth and intensity of flavour distinct to a Rutherglen muscat. However, it’s the blending skill of its makers which really sets a Rutherglen muscat apart from the rest. Honed over 150 years and passed down through generations, blending muscat is “a dark art”, winemaker, Jen Pfeiffer explains. And it’s not for the faint-hearted – Jen will taste from 100 barrels over the course of around 10 hours to create just eight blends. By the end of it, she’s usually desperate for something salty.
About nine kilometres down the road from Pfeiffer Wines is All Saints Estate, run by fourth generation wine family Eliza, Angela and Nicholas Brown. All Saints is home to a 100-year-old muscat (the going rate for a 500ml bottle is $1000). It’s deliciously thick and concentrated but Nicholas echoes Jen’s words – Muscat is rarely sold as a single vintage in Rutherglen, and the quality of the final product is all in how it has been blended with other vintages.
To provide consumers with some consistency in a product that relies on blended vintages, 19 Rutherglen wineries including All Saints and Pfeiffers have formed the Muscat of Rutherglen classification system. Every year, the collective gets together for an activity that sounds decidedly more fun than anything I would call ‘work’, to taste each other’s wares and agree on classification.
There are some winemakers in the region who produce muscat but are not part of the collective. This is the difference between a Muscat of Rutherglen and a Rutherglen muscat. I suggest you get familiar with the dialect before you go.
Australia’s best kept secret
I hadn’t heard of Rutherglen until last month when I was invited to visit the region. I’m not alone, according to fifth generation winemaker Amanda Jones, who runs Jones Winery.
“We got a fancy consultancy to do some market research for us and it turned out that no one knew about us,” Amanda laughs, pouring me a glass of Jones’s Correll, an aperitif named after Amanda’s mother. Orange-scented with spices and served best with soda, Correll is a tribute to Amanda’s youth spent in the Mediterranean. You can only purchase Correll online or by visiting Jones Winery. I suggest you do the latter and book in for dinner at the Jones restaurant, which I guarantee will be a highlight of your visit. Head chef Briony Bradford brings to Jones 15 years of experience working with some of the best Michelin star chefs in the world. Briony’s French-style, nose-to-tail menu perfectly suits the restaurant’s antiquated country barn setting. Weeks later and I’m still talking about the rolled goat belly and house-made bread.
It’s not all muscat
There are plenty of reasons to visit Rutherglen which have nothing to do with muscat.
The region is a melting pot of traditional and modern Australia, which carries through from its wine to its food to the attitude of the locals. Muscat aside, the region is characterised by delicate whites and softer, more elegant reds than other regions of Australia. Durif is a dominant varietal, and I promise you that if you try a sparkling red from any of the cellar doors, you won’t be disappointed.
Rutherglen might be built on artisanal skilled honed by past generations but it is not stuck in the past. Rowley Milhinch is consistently referred to by the locals as ‘one of the young blokes doing interesting things’ with his winery Scion. Rowley talks about a ‘progressive’ and ‘creative’ approach that considers a modern (read: millennial) lifestyle. His Daylight Red, for example, was born of a desire to comfortably drink a red during the day when the birth of his first child put an end to late night dinner parties. It’s Rowley’s ‘Skins’ that has everyone in my party talking. Skins is a wild-fermented Voigner crafted into a dry, textural white that is funky in all the right ways. Rowley is also venturing into a muscat gin under a collaboration with Backwoods Distilling Co called Still & Stem.
If a mention of gin has piqued your interest, put Buller Wines on your to-do list. Operating at a much larger scale than its neighbours, Buller is more a ‘Victorian’ brand rather than a ‘Rutherglen’ brand. Buller produces Three Chain Road Gin and offers an immersive gin-making experience.
The region is deliberately and accidentally pioneering sustainability in Australian winemaking
Lake Moodemere is another example of tradition meets global modern practice in Rutherglen. The vineyard was established in 1886 by the Chambers family and is the first in the north-east Victorian region to be certified by Sustainable Winegrowing Australia. The winery began a massive undertaking five years ago to reduce its fuel use, electricity and water waste. Through regenerative farming practices and carbon cropping, it estimates that it is close to carbon neutral, and it hasn’t used pesticides for at least 10 years.
The sheep dotted across the property are a familiar site around Rutherglen; Many vineyards are also lamb and honey producers. It’s how they’ve been unintentionally pioneering sustainability for years; The grazing lambs provide a sustainable method of weed management and soil fertilisation. At Lake Moodemere Estate, the lamb are tagged soon after birth and never leave the pastures of the property. I did not get a chance to try the lamb at the Lake Moodemere café, but you can bet I will be back to do so.
All in all, explore this beautiful part of Australia while it remains free of all the trappings of fame that has beset the country’s more known wine regions.
QUICK TRAVEL NOTES
Do:
Visit the Muscat Mile to see all the tastings, food-matching and flight experiences on offer by the Winemakers of Rutherglen.
Sip:
I tasted close to 100 wines over three days. My stand-outs are: Verrier Saperavi 2017 by Anderson Wines, Snarts Block Shiraz 2017 by John Gehrig Wines, Shiraz Malbec 2017 by Olive Hills Estate, The 1928 Block Shiraz 2018 by Buller Wines, Chardonnay 2020 by Campbells, Arinto 2021 by Stanton and Killeen, of course, Skins 2019 by Scion.
Eat:
Stop in for a casual lunch at Cofield Wines, or find more elaborate fare at Tuileries, Buller Wines, and Jones Winery and Vineyard. Thousand Pound on the main street gives a vibrant small bar experience. Mop up any hangover with breakfast and coffee at Valentine’s, a bakery thriving off a sourdough culture now 55 years old and originally from Germany.
Stay
Try out Lake Moodemere, Tuileries as there’s a plethroa of beautiful accomodation options in the region.
Ilona Marchetta visited Rutherglen as a guest of Winemakers of Rutherglen.
For more from The Carousel on wineries, visit here.
