Euro culture vultures

Tim White

Big picture ... for Sue Bell, her trip to France was all about wine combination rather than isolation.

L’Envers du Décor is a wine bar in the heart of the medieval town of Saint-Emilion in Bordeaux that specialises in tasty, regional cuisine. It has a shady courtyard where you can enjoy local wines by the glass.

The establishment’s website, incidentally, does not do justice to the spirit of the place. I know this because I’ve got a poster from L’Envers du Décor on my wall. I’ve not been there, but my partner has, and loved it.

So, too, has Sue Bell, who crafts Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon and Tasmanian chardonnay for her Bellwether label.

She fondly remembers visits to the bar when “doing vintage” at Chateau Poujeaux in Bordeaux, which is the home of the world’s most lauded – and expensive – cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc-based wines.

“Amazing andouillette sausages,” she recalls.

Bell was not in Bordeaux for a holiday of eating and drinking, of course.

She was there to embellish her winemaking skills and vinicultural understanding: tasting fruit and wine, observing what goes on in the vineyard, and how fruit is handled in the winery.

Many Australian winemakers travel to Europe to do a “stage” or two, as there are always new things to learn in wine and old things to study.

Andrew Marks of The Wanderer in the Yarra Valley says: “The most challenging aspect of going overseas to work with different varieties is allowing yourself to relax and surrender to the [local] wine landscape.

“Flavours are different – typically more savoury – and production methods, grape growing and climate are all so alien that if you aren’t able to relax and let it wash over you, you can end up in an antagonistic relationship with the environment,” he says.

Marks’s relaxed approached is evident in his El Wanderer Carinyena red wines from Empordà, just outside Barcelona. They smack of Spanish sapidity, but also show an Australian exuberance.

The connection in Europe with food is tantamount to understanding its wines – indeed it is impossible to talk of one without the other.

“I am very lucky that my Catalan friends are real foodies,” Marks says. “Anna Espelt, who owns the winery I work at [in Spain], and her partner, Victor, are both great in the kitchen and love eating out.

“Over the years we have enjoyed memorable experiences at El Bulli [five kilometres from Anna’s vineyards], El Celler de Can Roca, Mas Pau and Hotel Empordà. All within a 40-minute radius by car.”

But it’s not just about fine dining experiences.

“The local lunch menus are affordable and represent traditional Catalan food,” he says. “For €10 ($12) to €15 you get entree, main and desert with coffee. Every pueblo [town] has a number of these . . .  and they make for great everyday eating.”

The same can be said of the wine regions of France, Portugal and Italy. Understandably, given the remoteness and sparse population of many Australian wine regions, this is impossible to emulate in Australia.

Rose Kentish, of Ulithorne in McLaren Vale, decamped with her family to France (mainland and Corsica) for more than a year and it changed her outlook forever.

“I’m always looking for the soil to speak, for the culture of the soil to come through the wines and the practices of the region to show,” she says.

“I’m wanting the Aussie winemakers to allow these aspects to come through more in their wines, more than just regionally, but site-specific if possible.”

Food, local food, looms large in the appraisal of a region’s wines.

“Up the road [in Chiatra di Verde on Corsica] there is a little tavern serving excellent authentic pizza. In Bonifacio, in the south of the island, there’s a fabulous seafood restaurant called U Campanile – extraordinarily fresh and delicate flavours,” Kentish says.

“My favourite was walking into the cave [that is, the ground floor of a Corsican house] and seeing two to three years’ supply of home-cured prosciutto hanging with various amounts of mould growing, depending on curing age.”

This, again, is something rarely encountered in Australia, although homemade sausage- and charcuterie-making is taking off in many Australian wine regions.

For some, a vintage in Europe is life changing.

“I would not be making the wines I make in Australia if it was not for working in the Rhone valley,” says Adam Foster of Victoria’s Heathcote-based Syrahmi.

Foster had been both an accomplished chef and lauded sommelier before succumbing to wine. “I would say 95 per cent of wine made in Australia is . . .  made to a recipe. Whereas in France it is made from knowledge, understanding of vineyard, climate and the piece of dirt the grapes are grown in – [with] respect.”

And again, against a backdrop of food and environment.

“In Lyon, you must go to Antic Wine, the greatest wine shop in the world,” he says. “They also have a wine bar called George 5, a few doors up – amazing small-plate food with wines from the gods at crazy inexpensive prices.”

Few winemakers return from a vintage without learning something about viticulture or oenology – the technical aspects of winemaking. But the stuff that invariably excites them most is the broader cultural immersion.

Steve Pannell of S.C. Pannell, McLaren Vale, sums up the richness of his European experiences: “It’s the greater association of the way you live with the wine you make and the food you eat.”

The most profound impact on his winemaking and food sensibilities came from an extended stay in Piemonte in north-east Italy, the home of nebbiolo and white truffles. Pannell suggests a visit to Schiavenza in Serralunga d’Alba and to a high-quality but modest little restaurant in Carasco called Rosa de Vini.

“If you want truffles on things, it’s the cheapest place in Barolo.”

Like all of the above, for Sue Bell it is all about wine in combination rather than isolation.

She recalls a visit to the Tronçais Forest annual oak auction: “It was memorable for the whole process of oak grain and quality selection from parcels of land with trees of varying age and ultimate use. But also for a spectacular cèpe [mushroom] hunt . . . The excitement of grown men hunting for this delicacy was a lot of fun – eating them even better.”

It’s not a one-way street. Since Australia emerged on the world stage as a wine-producing nation to be taken seriously, many an overseas winemaker has temporarily migrated south for vintage. Some have even elected to stay permanently.

The Australian Financial Review