When nursery owners Bruce and Jenni Chalmers proposed a range of alternative grape varieties to Southcorp, Penfolds, Orlando and Pernod Ricard, “they were laughed out of the boardroom,” says their daughter Kim Chalmers, director at Chalmers Wines Australia. It was the late 1990s and Australia’s largest companies were making money selling classic varieties such as Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay and had no use for anything new.
Homogeneity of vines
Longtime farmers, the Chalmers had established a grape vine nursery in Euston, New South Wales, in 1989. In the decade that followed, Australia’s total vineyard area more than doubled, growing 136%, from 59,235ha to 139,853 ha, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Chalmers’ operation became the largest wholesale grape vine nursery in the country. “In a single year, we propagated 4m vines, and 30m during the 20-year life span of the nursery,” says Kim Chalmers. She estimates that this accounted for 10-15% of Australia’s plantings.
But they were sending the same small handful of international varieties to growers in geographically and climatically diverse areas, from the Hunter Valley to the Yarra and Barossa valleys. The incongruity didn’t escape Bruce and Jenni Chalmers. They reached a turning point when they met Dr Rod Bonfiglioli while collaborating with him on grape vine virus research at the University of Adelaide. Dr Bonfiglioli had Italian ancestors and a connection with the Vivai Cooperativi Rauscedo (VCR), the world’s largest vine nursery, located in Italy’s Friuli region. In 1998, Chalmers became the agent for VCR in Australia, eventually propagating and marketing 70 clones of Italian varieties selected for a range of climates.
Undeterred by the large corporations’ rejection of these new imports, the Chalmers turned their attention to smaller wineries making small-batch wines. By 2008, Italian grape varieties represented just 5% of their business – but the Chalmers decided to focus on them.
After selling their original 650ha vineyard to the Macquarie Group, an investment bank, the Chalmers bought an 80ha vineyard in the Victorian region of Heathcote, and planted their first vines in 2009. They began making their own wines, the first of which – the Montevecchio range – was released in 2011. Today they produce about 10,000 cases per year and sell the remaining 90% of fruit to other winemakers. The family also established a new nursery site in Merbein, close to Mildura. This 35ha is a source block for their Italian varieties.
Why alternatives?
Sitting in the heart of the Murray-Darling river basin, the area around Mildura is a sunny, phylloxera-free zone with low disease pressure, accessible irrigation water and summer temperatures that rise above 40°C. These warm inland irrigated regions have long been considered the engine room of Australia, fit only for high-volume, commercial wine. Kim Chalmers aims to debunk this perception. “There are certain parts of the world that grow premium wine in warm places,” she says, pointing to Sicily and the South of France. “If you get your viticulture right, you can make great wine anywhere.”
According to Chalmers, this starts with choosing suitable varieties. A fellowship trip to Italy’s south in 2011 reinforced her conviction about the Mediterranean’s heat and drought tolerant native grapes. Heat tolerance refers to the capacity to resist hot weather; for example, does the fruit sunburn easily? Does the foliage collapse? Is it drought tolerant, and able to grow with less water? She recommends bigger-berried varieties such as Vermentino and Negroamaro for Australia’s hottest, driest climes, because they are less susceptible to dehydration.
Above all, Chalmers looks for grape varieties that retain naturally high acidity even in the heat. “This eventuates in higher-quality wine with a longer shelf life and less need for acidification,” she says. She also favours late-ripening grapes like Aglianico. Besides allowing for the development of complex flavours, the slower accumulation of sugars results in balanced, lower-alcohol wines.
Equally important is how the grapes are grown; for example, it is important to maintain an open yet shaded canopy and keep enough fruit on vine. “This is another counter-intuitive aspect of warm climate viticulture,” Chalmers says. “In Burgundy, lower yields equal better quality, but we’ve got a big vine that is photosynthesising intensely because there is lots of sun.” In these conditions, low crop levels result in rapid ripening with high sugar accumulation but green flavours.
Preserving quality in ever-increasing heat and drought conditions is a concern across Australia. Growing up on a farm, Chalmers has long been aware of the changing climate. In 2006, she trained with Al Gore, participating in what has now morphed into his Climate Reality Project. Speaking to the effects of climate change on Australia, she says, “Overall, rainfall is lower, heat extremes are hotter and longer, and when rain does fall there is more all at once.” Harvest is also earlier and more compressed with everything ripening at the same time. “Wineries have to rethink what they do,” she says. This is where Chalmers has been advocating for diversifying varieties to include both precocious (early) and late-ripening grapes.
While many alternative varieties may be better able to cope with extreme conditions, the other consideration is how and if they can contribute to more sustainable viticulture. “The largest input requirement in a hot climate is water for irrigation. Decreasing water reduces environmental impact and costs,” Chalmers says. The average precipitation in the Murray-Darling and Riverland is 250mm/year. Last financial year, from July 2018 to June 2019, Mildura had only 134mm of rain. For Chalmers, dry farming is not an option, especially where the company is carrying higher crop loads for commercial volume wines. She estimates that Nero d’Avola needs about 70% of the water that Shiraz requires using the same cultivation practices. There isn’t much difference between Fiano and Chardonnay, on the other hand. “But the wine quality would be much higher with the Fiano because of other attributes like high natural acidity.”
“Water efficiency is more down to cultural practices than variety,” she continues. According to the NSW Department of Primary Industries, the annual average amount of water used to irrigate a vineyard in the Murray-Darling Basin was 7.5ML/ha in the first decade of the millennium. Bruce Chalmers estimates that this has dropped to 6ML-6.5ML/ha. Depending on the year, Chalmers applies 50-80% of this. He attributes the lower than average water use to switching from overhead to drip irrigation, only watering at night, mounding up underneath the rows, avoiding tillage and maintaining a high content of organic matter in the soil to improve water retention. Water is applied daily but at a very low rate. “While watering every day sounds like a lot, you actually use only half the water,” Kim Chalmers says.
Working with alternative grape varieties also has sustainability considerations from a business perspective. To date, the Chalmers nursery has propagated more than 2m vines of 40 different Italian varieties for more than 300 clients.
The process
Before a new variety can be commercially propagated in Australia, the foreign supplier sends four to five cuttings which are fumigated upon arrival, sent to a government-run quarantine nursery and grown for one to two vegetative cycles. After that, if the wood tissue clears virus testing, the importing nursery receives one potted vine from which it must create a nation of vines. Each selection costs A$3,000-A$5000 ($2,026-$3,377) for a single plant.
The nursery then needs to find customers for its new selections. “Our agreement with VCR is as an agent to their proprietary clones, so buyers on this end have to sign a non-propagation contract forbidding them from taking cuttings or propagating in any way from their vines,” Kim Chalmers explains. In addition, growers also pay a royalty of A85 cents per vine which is remitted to VCR.
It is a financial gamble for both nursery and grower. “Traditional export markets such as the UK and USA are accustomed to seeing French varieties dominating this landscape,” she says. Lesser-known varieties challenge consumer perceptions of Australian wine, and there isn’t a great demand for them. It is unsurprising that corporate wineries with shareholders to answer to have yet to embrace them. Instead, it is “large family owned ones like Casella, Yalumba and Brown Brothers that generally lead the way with changes”.
For the time being, alternative varieties remain in the realm of boutique producers. Made in small quantities, they are predominantly sold domestically at cellar door and to restaurants and independent retailers, rather than to large retail chains like Dan Murphy’s. Nevertheless, as a category, alternative varieties are on the rise. When the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show began in 2001, it attracted 110 entries. Now there are 800 from more than 100 different varieties, with every region in Australia represented. “Someone somewhere is doing something different,” Kim Chalmers says. “It is a good indication of what is going on.”
Michaela Morris
