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Producer
Good Intentions -
Region
Wrattonbully
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RRP
$35
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Vintage
2024
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Variety/Varieties
Gewürztraminer
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Alc./Vol.
13.7%
Amber-copper coloured, with hypnotic aromas of tangy fruit, exotic spices and Turkish delight. It tastes of orange marmalade, with some walnuts and a little bitterness like orange peel, and a dry, tea-like finish that lingers.
Andrew Burchell has made at Good Intentions Wine Co. Burchell has built a reputation as one of the Limestone Coast’s most exciting emerging producers, farming the vines himself and working with a minimal, old-world hand. This gewürztraminer is a genuine reinterpretation of the variety: tamed, textured and thrillingly deepened by skin contact.
Gewürztraminer is one of the most instantly recognisable grapes in the wine world, and one of the most divisive. Its name gives it away – “gewürz” means spice in German – and in the glass it delivers exactly that: a heady rush of lychee, rose petal, Turkish delight and warm spice, usually paired with a plush, oily texture and a low-acid, off-dry sweetness that’s made it a love-it-or-leave-it proposition for decades. Done conventionally, it can tip into blowsy, perfumed excess. Done with restraint, it’s one of the most hedonistic aromatic whites you can pour.
Skin contact winemaking – leaving white grape skins in contact with the juice during fermentation, the way red wine is made – has quietly reshaped Australian white wine over the past decade and a half. What started as a fringe, natural-wine curiosity has become one of the most interesting technical conversations in the country, as winemakers use skin contact to bring texture, grip and savoury complexity to grapes that might otherwise lean simple or one-dimensional. Tannin, colour and a certain wild, unpolished energy are the trade-off for the bright, clean fruit of conventional whites — and for the right grape, in the right hands, it’s a trade worth making.
Few grapes reward that trade like gewürztraminer. Skin contact takes all that natural perfume and sweetness and gives it a spine — fine, tea-like tannins reining in the aromatics, oxidative “rancio” characters adding a savoury, almost sherry-like edge, and the sweetness recast as texture rather than sugar.
Tasting note
Deep amber-copper in the glass, glowing like evening light through a stained-glass window. The nose is a Turkish sweet shop in full swing – rosewater, jasmine and Turkish delight tangle with cut mango, orange blossom and a whisper of clove. Cognac-like warmth and dried apricot add an old-world, almost Madeira-edged complexity, while the palate turns savoury with orange bitters, bergamot tea and pomegranate. Fine, black-tea tannins give it grip and length, finishing long, spiced and utterly moreish.
When to drink it
If you were at a wine bar, you’d be ordering this faster than you can say ‘charcuterie,’ and enjoy it alongside the croquettes and all sorts of toasted snacks. Or maybe it’s BYO to your favourite yum cha, where you slurp it alongside servings of dumplings and that smoked duck bao bun you’ve just eyed on the menu. Or maybe it’s at the beach: seagulls overhead and sand between your toes while you reach for the esky to sneak another dose of this liquid bliss. You’re feeling charitable so there might even be some left when your mates get back from their kiosk-run with the Chiko Roll you were promised. Jeez, how good’s summer?
Themes of this wine
Skin contact
The skins hold the colouring matter and lots of tannin. Leave them in contact with the juice/wine and you’ll extract those elements. Most conventional white wine sees no skin contact, rosé a little bit to get a blush, and red wine plenty to get the colour and structure. Skin-contact whites… well, they have some skin contact. Yep. More colour, more tannin and a different flavour profile.
Gewürztraminer
Gewürztraminer is a pungently aromatic grape, scented with lychees, rose petals and musky bath salts. It’s a variety that has long been thought of as ‘nanna’ wine, perfumed and often sweet, but the best expressions from Alsace are some of the world’s greatest wines, and cutting-edge makers in this country are fine-tuning it into exciting new expressions, both solo and as a part of blends.
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