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On Wine: Western Australia’s wines win over restaurateurs with food-friendly drinkability

On Wine: Western Australia’s wines win over restaurateurs with food-friendly drinkability

As popular as Australian wines are in the United States, they still are in many ways a new frontier. Aussie wine producers continue to bring new surprises, and their work reveals new facets beyond the mainstream business of inexpensive Chardonnay and Shiraz.

In Australia’s wild west—the faraway state of Western Australia, about five hours’ flight time from Sydney—the realm of cool-climate whites such as Riesling and Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc blends and sleek reds including trim Shirazes and Cabernets represent a fresher, lighter style of wine than those from Australia’s warmer regions.

Western Australia covers a territory roughly as large as the United States west of the Rockies, but it is home to only 2.5 million people. About two-thirds of those people live around the city of Perth. Winemaking stretches from north and east of Perth—the Swan Valley and Perth Hills wine regions, respectively—south to the bottom of the continent and continuing east along the coast.

The climate varies quite a lot among these regions, growing cooler and damper the farther south and east that you travel, with somewhat warmer pockets inland. Margaret River, three hours south of Perth by car, is the state’s best-known wine region.

Riesling has become a signature of Western Australia. Producers grow that grape, which needs a cooler climate, in a group of wine districts known as the Great Southern region and in the neighboring southerly Pemberton region. Despite Cabernet’s reputation in Australia’s west, Shiraz is very strong, especially in the interior southern regions of Frankland and Mount Barker, which make a structured, spicy style of Shiraz. As is common in states with cool climates, Sauvignon Blanc is popular and successful, but here it is blended with Semillon more than it stands alone.

Two types of wines struck us as particularly noteworthy: Riesling and the blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. The Rieslings are all dry, crisp and sleek—a huge departure from the big-shouldered, full-bodied Rieslings of Australia’s Clare Valley.

They have an unusual combination of high acidity and fairly rich texture, and their aromas and flavors are vivid and pronounced. These flavors are generally citruslike, but in some wines the character of tropical fruits emerges, and the very finest wines have traces of mineral accents.

WINE OF THE WEEK

2006 Mad Fish Riesling, Great Southern

Named for an inlet off the Southern Ocean where currents are said to drive the fish mad, this Riesling is medium-bodied and dry, with rich and concentrated lemony flavor. Its fruitiness is restrained enough to match with meat or fish that have earthy or savory accents.

Wholesale case price: $120

Western Australia’s whites blended from Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc are more varied. Rarely is the wine a rich, full-bodied, majestic white similar to a Semillon-rich white Bordeaux. Typically, these wines are medium-bodied and very fruity, with high acidity and yet soft texture.

Flavors of lemon and orange peel predominate, with notes of fresh herbs or cut grass in some wines. Others suggest slight sweetness, which their producers attribute to natural fruit sugar.

The wine producers of Western Australia say their wines represent a disproportionately high share of Australia’s premium-wine production—only 3 percent of Australia’s total production, but more than 23 percent of its premium wines. In other words, these wines don’t seek to compete in supermarkets but to reign in restaurants.

They are food-friendly because they are moderate enough in weight to be easy to drink, and even the reds carry enough acidity to complement many dishes. Furthermore, the producers are small or medium-sized wineries whose names do not populate the off-premise discount shelves.

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