Medium-bodied is no longer a dirty word in Coonawarra, as some winemakers use modern science and a recent run of cooler vintages to nudge back to the claret style of the 1980s. Dan Redman, fourth generation winemaker at Redman, a producer in Coonawarra, Australia, pointed to a recent vertical tasting of his family’s wines reaching back to 1970. “The ‘83, ‘85 and ‘89 were opening up beautifully and drinking amazingly even though at the time they were seen as lesser vintages,” he remarked. “They were that lighter style, that ‘claret’, probably a little more leafy, medium-bodied, yet 30-odd years down the track they’re the wines that were really going well.” Attributing the “riper” styles of the ‘90s primarily to climatic conditions, Redman nevertheless suggested: “A lot of winemaking now is probably paring back to what Bill Redman and Owen Redman were doing in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and really trying to express the fruit. But we have a lot of knowledge now around the scientific side of things.” Newer clones Paul Gordon, senior winemaker at Leconfield, outlined advances in clonal selection to support this trend. Focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon, which accounted for 51% of Coonawarra’s total grape crush in 2023, he pointed to increasing interest in alternatives to the region’s dominant clones such as SA125, which was widely planted a generation ago. “There are newer clones available now, often from French sources, which have attributes of maybe freshness of fruit and more tannin development,” Gordon observed. Gordon also highlighted the
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
