Dark Horses

Expect the unexpected as an industry stalwart serves up a few surprises.

Brown Brothers

Some might consider it a case of the sublime to the ridiculous, but I had an interesting experience at Brown Brothers at Milawa recently. I was there to taste their new 2008 Brown Brothers Cienna (A$14.50/NZ$15) because it intrigues me, but I ended up getting a whole lot more than I bargained for.

The thing that intrigues me about the Cienna is it’s a brightly coloured, well-flavoured red with only 5 per cent alcohol.  Although low-alcohol white wines are not new, essentially all red wines have to spend a reasonable amount of time resting on their skins during fermentation for the skin’s colour to leech out into the wine.  Without this process red wines would be white because the juice of just about all red grapes is clear.

This time left in contact with the skins is usually enough for the fermenting sugars to turn into quite a lot of alcohol.  For a grape to produce natural colour and flavour at low alcohol is a bit of a wine miracle.

A deliberate miracle as it turns out.  The cienna grape is an Australian invention by the CSIRO.  It’s a cross between cab sav and sumoll (a Spanish variety) and it’s designed to grow in warm, dry conditions.  Brown Brothers grow it in the Riverland region and make it into a fresh, fruity, sweet red that tastes best when young and chilled (even in winter).

In terms of flavour, it’s all about fresh raspberries with a light, cabernet-like dustiness.  It’s not the kind of wine we usually talk about in these pages because it’s mostly meant to be just sweet and fun.  But apart from being a great introduction to red wine for folks who usually don’t like reds, its sweet fruitiness goes a treat with spicy Asian dishes and curries.  If you ignore a wine like this then you ignore a particularly handy piece of wine armoury, although its sweetness means that it is not a wine for everyone.

That said, I wasn’t expecting to taste anything extraordinary at Brown Brothers on this trip – but I did.  It came in three parts.  The first was the 2004 Brown Brothers Shiraz Mondeuse & Cabernet (A$40), their current release until June 2009.  It’s 52 per cent shiraz with roughly equal parts the remaining varieties.  This is a classically regional wine in a fine, medium-weight, personality-laden form.  It has tannin and balance and all those important things, but mostly it has quality and uniqueness aplenty.  I took one sip and wondered “Where has this been hiding and where can I buy some?”  It has aged classic written all over it.

The follow-up 2005 Brown Brothers Shiraz Mondeuse & Cabernet isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s still a very good quality wine.  Malty oak comes across as a touch heavy, though time should sort this out.

And then came the final act:  Ross Brown opened a bottle of 1961 Brown Brothers Shiraz & Mondeuse from his personal cellar. It was in mint condition and had aged magnificently.  This, and the equivalent 2004, changed my view of Brown Brothers in a snap of the fingers.  I dare say that Brown Brothers is an even more important regional- quality champion to the cause of Australian wine than even it is aware.