2022 Stefano Lubiana ‘Chicane’ Merlot Malbec Tasmania
Tasmania’s most lauded red wines may be its pinot noirs, but the first red wine grapes to be planted there in the modern era were Bordeaux varieties. This wine shows that there’s also plenty of joy to be found in Tasmania’s richer reds.

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Although pinot noir has taken the mantle of Tasmania’s signature red wine, its ascendancy in the Apple Isle was anything but destined to be. In the early to late 1980s – after some groundbreaking cabernet sauvignons from both Heemskerk and Pipers Brook took home gold medals at the 1981 Royal Melbourne Show – the island’s winemaking community largely ignored pinot and focused instead on the potential of Bordeaux varieties, particularly cabernet. While Tasmania’s marginal climate shortly put paid to the idea that cabernet and its relatives could be widely grown, these varieties can thrive in warmer pockets scattered across the island – and this wine is proof that finding those sites is worth the effort.

Tasting note

The weight and ripeness of the fruit in this wine is evident in its aroma – a sumptuous unfurling of mulberry, blackberry, and other bramble fruits, accompanied by a lick of blueberry. A small hint of fresh green capsicum and mint tea intimates that this was grown in a cool climate, and savoury hints of leaf tobacco and kola nut add earthy depth. It’s silky-smooth on the palate, the unctuous fruit weight borne aloft by surprisingly fresh acidity – another cool-climate tell. The tannins are soft and woolly, and the finish is delightfully long, with the pyrazine/green capsicum note held in check throughout. This is not your typical ‘lean, mean and green’ example of what happens when Bordeaux varieties are grown in cooler climates – rather, it’s a masterclass in juxtaposing ripeness and freshness to create a compelling take on richer red varieties.

Themes of this wine

Merlot

Merlot has developed a reputation as a grape that produces soft and gentle wines, but it is far more than that. Although it’s capable of making wines of great elegance and detail when bottled solo, merlot more often makes a major contribution to blends, buffering cabernet sauvignon’s sterner side, adding depth and filling out the palate with fruit. Merlot has a had a bit of a hard time finding an identity in this country, with cabernet sauvignon reaching ripeness somewhat more easily in many of its prime Australian growing areas than in the ancestral home it shares with merlot (Bordeaux, France). To make matters worse, the merlot cuttings that were first imported in the 1960s was a clone that favoured yield over quality. Despite these setbacks, a small number of producers – mostly clustered around Coonawarra, Wrattonbully and Langhorne Creek – are determined to show what merlot can do in Australian terroir.

Malbec

Aside from a starring role in the French appellation of Cahors and its ascension to the status of national grape variety in Argentina, malbec is generally relegated to bit player status in blends – traditionally in Bordeaux and also in the Loire Valley, where it is called ‘côt’. Unusually, malbec didn’t come into this country with the Busby Collection, but rather in 1844, courtesy of the Macarthur family. Frank Potts planted it in the 1850s in Langhorne Creek when he founded Bleasdale, and it is still proudly made at the winery in several iterations. Malbec also made some inroads into the Clare Valley, where it is famously made solo and in a blend with shiraz from Wendouree’s ancient vines. Malbec is typically dark-fruited, with grippy tannins a major feature. With better vine material arriving in Australia and new thinking, malbec’s personality here is emerging from the shadows.

Hang time

One of the paradoxes of cool-climate wines is that they can – when grown under the right circumstances – taste exceptionally ripe. Chalk this up to what viticulturists and winemakers call ‘hang time’, or the duration that bunches of fruit stay on the vine. In cooler climates such as Tasmania’s, wine grapes can take a leisurely stroll towards picking time, allowing sugar levels to gradually accumulate while the grapes build extra layers of ‘phenolic’ or flavour ripeness, and cool nights keep the acid levels nice and high to balance the finished wine. It sounds like a dream in theory, but in practice it’s a high-wire act: the longer the grapes stay out in the vineyard, the more likely they are to be decimated by weather, disease, or pests – and in cooler years the bunches may never quite arrive at their theoretical destination.

Tasmania

Tasmania is the only state that is also a wine region, one rather vast region, and, naturally, only a fraction of it is under vine. In truth, Tasmania can be more helpfully divided into its seven subregions, with three in the north around and either side of Launceston, the fourth stretching down the length of the east coast, and with the last three clustered around the southern centres of Richmond, Hobart and Cygnet. Tasmania’s wine industry may have been founded on Bordeaux varieties, but it has been the grapes of Burgundy that have emerged triumphant, and by quite a margin. Towering over all is pinot noir, with chardonnay easily the next most planted variety, with it comfortably filling more sparkling bottles than pinot noir does. Aromatic white grapes complete the general picture, with riesling, sauvignon blanc and pinot gris all well represented.