I like
Australian wines a lot, which I believe makes me unfashionable. That doesn’t
bother me in the least. In my youth, I guzzled Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet
Sauvignon with abandon. When I first lived in Tokyo, I regularly drank Yellow
Tail Shiraz, with Japanese beer serving as a pleasant aperitif before the main
event. Eventually I moved on to the really good stuff.
One such wine was the Peter Lehmann Mentor Cabernet Sauvignon 2014, from the Barossa Valley. I hoovered up stock of it when I worked at Majestic Wine. I remember opening one of my last bottles the first time I had Covid. I couldn’t really taste it, and it could be argued that I squandered a fine bottle of wine, but it cheered me up enormously.
I told
Brett Schutz, the senior winemaker at Peter Lehmann Wines, about my enthusiasm
for the 2014 Mentor when I had the good fortune to taste with him recently.
This happy turn of events was occasioned by Peter Lehmann switching importer,
from Liberty to Boutinot.
Like
the other wines in the Peter Lehmann Masters Collection, the Mentor Cabernet
Sauvignon 2021 matured for five years before release, Well, almost. I sampled
it in September, so you work that out. The Cabernet fruit comes mostly from the
north of the Barossa Valley and the wine had more of a menthol, eucalyptus
tinge than I remembered in the 2014. (I was told that, contrary to my
assumptions, the eucalyptus flavour is more common in the Barossa Valley than
in Coonawarra.)
I asked
Brett Schutz if eight years after the vintage was the ideal time to drink the
Mentor, for I had gone through Majestic’s stock of the 2014 like a wrecking
ball in 2022, and it was hard to believe it could have improved beyond that
point in time. He said that he thought the wine would have been even better a
couple of years later. I made a solemn vow to refrain from drinking the 2021
until the 2030s. Given that I’ve never succeeded in holding on to a bottle for
longer than 18 months, however, it’s reasonable to doubt my resolve.
There
are two whites in the Masters Collection, the Wigan Riesling and the Margaret
Semillon. Apparently, Semillon was a big seller for Peter Lehmann a few decades
ago, before it was eclipsed by the ‘Savalanche’ from New Zealand. The Margaret
Semillon 2017 is ‘still quite tight’, in the words of Brett Schutz. It does indeed
have an awful lot of acidity. I asked when it would hit its sweet spot, and the
answer was 15 to 20 years after the harvest, or ‘crush’, as I think they say in
Australia. The wine ‘requires significant time (and patience)’, or so I read on
the Peter Lehmann website. No kidding.
The
Wigan Riesling I sampled was from 2018, a high acid vintage. The fruit was
grown in the Eden Valley, which is next to the Barossa Valley and a prime
source of Riesling. According to Brett Schutz, the Wigan reaches its peak about
ten years after the harvest. He said that it doesn’t retain its structure as
well as the Semillon, so it isn’t as long-lived.
‘Is the
writing on the wall for Australian Shiraz?’ asked The Drinks Business in
January. If so, it’s further proof that our civilisation is in a downward
spiral. The Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz is the winery’s flagship. The
average age of the vines used for the wine is around fifty years, and some of
the fruit is from vines planted in 1893. The ageing potential of the wine is
considerable: Brett Schutz said the 2010 and 2012 still need time. It was very
interesting tasting the 2018 alongside the Masters Collection Eight Songs
Shiraz 2021, for I detected a significant difference in tannins. The tannins from
the Stonewell were far more evident on my front teeth, despite it being three
years older. Even so, the Eight Songs Shiraz should last for 20 years.
I went
to the Barossa Valley once, on a minibus tour. We visited four wineries, none
of which I remember. One of them may have been Peter Lehmann, but maybe not. My
main recollection is not of the estates, but of my fellow tourists: they were
all Brits. I suppose Australian wine was a lot more trendy back in the day.
