Last month we started an exploration of Australia’s Hunter Valley with a trip down memory lane of the brief months we spent living in Sydney and a visit to Hope Estate. Today we’re continuing the journey with a look at my other favorite stop from the visits we made to the Hunter Valley: Tyrrell’s.

It was hot and muggy out when we visited Tyrrell’s Wines on Christmas Eve in 2009. Walking outside felt like moving through soup. My mother-in-law Carolyn and my good friend Marc were both visiting, taking advantage of the final weeks of our stay in Oz. Thinking that wine tasting would be an activity that could please everyone in the group, we headed up to the Hunter Valley, but the intensity of the summer’s heat and humidity was formidable and it did us all in. We ended up cutting our day short and I recall us all being kind of grumpy and sticky on the drive back to Sydney. The fact that Tyrrell’s stands out as a bright spot in the day says a lot. The wines were good enough to cut through all the bad moods and stuck in my memory as my favorite winery visited during our time in New South Wales. 

Marc, Greg, and Carolyn at Tyrrell's on the day we visited. Everyone has a bit of a sheen from the heat, but we hadn't yet melted at this point in the day.

Happily, these days I’m also able to fairly easily find their wines stateside. 

HUNTER VALLEY’S TERROIR

Last month we took a look at the history of Australia’s oldest wine region – check out this post for more background. This month we’ll take a look at the terroir. 

Hunter Valley’s climate is a bit of an anomaly for a wine region. We simply weren’t unlucky in picking an unfortunate day to visit the area – the heat and humidity are defining characteristics of the region’s climate. This isn’t a combo you usually look for in a fine wine region. Grapes like a temperate climate that allow them enough heat and sunshine to allow them to ripen, balanced with time to cool off so as to maintain acidity. Grapevines also shut down in extreme heat.  For this reason, most fine wine regions sit between 30° and 50° latitude. The Hunter Valley is right at the edge of this range, sitting at a latitude of 32/33°S.

Zeroing a bit further. Map courtesy of Wineaustralia.com.

Wet conditions can also bring problems. First off, disease pressures from things like molds and fungus go up in wetter conditions. Also, if grapes take in a lot of water from rain close to harvest time, the juice inside can become diluted and less flavorful. 

Luckily, there are several mitigating factors to help conditions in the Hunter Valley. Cloud cover and gentle breezes from the Pacific Ocean tend to roll into the area from the coast in the afternoon. Evenings also grow cooler during the fall and winter. It also tends to rain quite a bit during the growing season, which also helps to cool things off and give the grapes a break. Thankfully, most of the rain comes during the summer, although rain at harvest can definitely be a problem. As you might guess, climate change is also a definite concern in this area.

This image is of Tyrrell's Old Patch Vineyard (borrowed from their site). It was planted in 1867, making it almost 150 years old. It is the oldest vineyard in NSW and one of the oldest in the world.

The terrain for most of the Hunter Valley is made up of gently sloping hills with the Hunter River and its tributaries running throughout it. Many of the most prestigious vineyards are located in the foothills and valley of the Brokenback Range, which is part of the Great Dividing Range. The terrain of the Upper Hunter area is considerably flatter than other sections. The Goulburn River (a major tributary of the Hunter) runs through the region and helps to provide water for irrigation in the drier parts of the region. 

The Hunter Valley sits on an ancient seabed, giving it rich and diverse soils. Volcanic soils also run through various parts of the region. Pokolbin, where our winery today is located, has red volcanic soils on sites on higher ground that is particularly good for Shiraz. White grapes like Sémillon and Chardonnay tend to be planted on white sands and loam located on the lower ground. 

A BIT ABOUT SÉMILLON

Sémillon is an interesting grape. Wines made from this variety tend to undergo complete personality changes as they age, even more so than most other grapes. When they’re young, the wines show lots of citrus, green apple, and peach, along with notes of blanched almond, beeswax, or a lanolin component that gives the grape a lot of texture and mouthfeel.  As the wines age, the flavors deepen and become riper, deeper, honeyed, and more tropical, and the nutty flavors become toastier. They’ll also often start to taste like they spent time in oak, even when the wine never got close to a barrel. 

The Hunter Valley is a benchmark region for the grape. (In general, we look to Bordeaux and Australia for the premier examples of this variety.) The style the Hunter Valley is known for doesn’t seem like it should be possible under the growing conditions – super zesty, bright, and crisp. The typical Hunter Valley Sémillon (HVS) is picked early, handled gently to reduce skin and seed extract, fermented at cold temperatures in stainless steel, and is then transferred to bottles as soon as fermentation stops. As a result of being picked early, the wines tend to be lower in alcohol – around 10 to 11%. Wine Australia describes the HVS in this way:

When first bottled, Hunter Valley Semillon is almost water-white in appearance with aromas of citrus, grass, straw, lanolin, and subtle green herbs. It’s crisp and delicate with a chalky minerality. Patience pays great dividends, however, and the finest examples with high acidity and low alcohol transform after as little as five years in bottle, revealing honeyed, toasty, grilled nut characters – almost as if the wine has spent time in oak (even though it hasn’t). It’s these wines that make Hunter Valley Semillon one of the wine world’s great collectible wonders. Prices of these age-worthy Semillons are well within reach of most wine lovers and, under the right conditions, the transformation that occurs over time is substantial. The key point of difference in aged Hunter Valley Semillon is that the best examples will retain an identifiable stamp of primary fruit and a nucleus of fine acidity even after decades in the cellar.

The acidity is so racy in Hunter Valley Sémillons that they were often referred to as Hunter Rieslings – don’t let this confuse you, it is a different grape. The typical style here is dry, however, the grape is susceptible to botrytis and the humid conditions in many parts of the Hunter Valley are perfect for it, so excellent sweet versions are also made here.  

TYRRELL’S WINES

Tyrrell’s history dates back to the early days of wine production in the Hunter Valley, and by extension, Australia. It shares the position of being the second oldest continuously owned and operated family winery in Australia. Edward Tyrrell settled on the original property and began planting Shiraz and Sémillon in 1858. He harvested the grapes for his first vintage in 1864. The company has been handed down through four generations and is now managed by Bruce Tyrrell. He began working at the winery in 1974, at the age of twenty-three alongside his father Murray. 

Throughout his long career, he has become a major force in Australian wine. In 2006, Bruce Tyrrell was recognized with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism, and export opportunities. In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. He is also currently a Director of the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association and the Hunter Valley Research Foundation. His children Jane, John, and Christopher are all currently working in the business, taking it into its fifth generation.

Tyrrell’s puts a large focus on sustainability and has built a program that takes into account sustainable vineyard management and seeks to reduce energy usage, water consumption, and waste. They established their Environmental Management System in 2009 and they lay out the following stats showing their improvements in energy usage since that time:

Since 2009, we’ve achieved a 68 percent reduction in our fuel usage and a 70 percent reduction in our consumption of coal-fired electricity, which adds up to a 70 percent reduction in our total greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of more than 2,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This translates to a 32 percent reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions per liter of wine produced.

In recent years, they’ve also focused on reducing waste and note that their recycling program has resulted in a 60 percent reduction in the amount of solid waste sent to landfill. They also dry-farm whenever possible, with about 90% of their vineyards being unirrigated. Wastewater is collected and recycled. These are only a few examples of their sustainability efforts. They lay out their practices in great detail on their website here. (I always appreciate it when a winery takes the time to share the nitty-gritty of their sustainability practices.)

They also point to the fact that they have a high percentage of old vines that are healthy and continue to produce quality wine as a good indicator of the sustainability of their vineyard management practices – 36% percent of their vines are more than 50 years old and 11% are more than 100 years old. 

The grapes for their Hunter Valley Semillon come from a selection of their top Sémillon vineyards around the valley, with an average vine age of 40 years. The wine is made very much in the classic style for the region – grapes are gently pressed and then fermented in stainless steel tanks. The wine then spends a short amount of time on its lees to gain extra complexity and mouth feel. It sees no oak during fermentation or maturation. Additional details for the current vintage here and for the 2015 vintage here.

We recently opened a bottle of Tyrrells’ Hunter Valley Semillion 2016 and at six years old it was still in firmly in its youthful vibrancy and hadn’t started to move into the secondary characteristics, showing the longevity of this grape. On the nose, it showed notes of lemon, lime, green apple, and blanched almond. All those notes came back on the palate with the citrus notes expressing themselves in both juice and a bit pith. The wine had the characteristic lanolin/beeswax texture that gave it a medium body and it had a chalky minerality carried through the finish. There was also plenty of acidity to keep things vibrant. The alcohol level was characteristically low at 11%. As the wine warmed up, notes of white peach emerged and the wine’s mouthfeel plumped up and broadened a bit more.  

I think this is a great example of the style at a great price. I can’t recall what I paid for this bottle as it was a couple of years ago, but the price usually hovers around $20ish. (Wine_searcher.com lists the average price for this vintage at $24, and $18 for all vintages.)  I can’t help but wish I’d purchased another bottle to open in a few more years to see where it goes. 

I often see Tyrrell’s wines at K & L  and on Wine.com, or use Wine-Searcher.com to find additional options.

THE PAIRING: SEARED SALMON STEAKS WITH LEMON MYRTLE, LIME, & MACADAMIA OIL 

Usually, when I share a “Cooking to the Wine” post, I taste the wine and then create a recipe from scratch to match the wine based on that tasting. This time I thought I’d show how you can do essentially the same thing by selecting a recipe and tweaking it just a bit to match the wine. In this case, I decided to explore a cookbook I bought during our time in Sydney – Rainforest to Table - A Taste of the Bush by Jill Richardson. The books seek to help the reader incorporate native Australian herbs, spices, and fruits in contemporary cooking. The nice thing is that nowadays, it’s much easier to get your hands on many of the ingredients the book discusses via a simple search on the internet. Amazon has quite a few. 

Since this wine seemed like it would be a safe match for many kinds of seafood, I decided to start in that section of the book. I very quickly found a recipe for tuna steaks that featured lime juice, herbs, and macadamia nuts, all of which seemed like they’d resonate with elements I tasted in the wine. Zesty lime was a shoo-in, and macadamia nuts seemed like a good choice since they’re a lighter-tasting nut, much like the blanched almond. I made a few tweaks based on the availability of ingredients and what I thought would work with the wine. The original recipe called for stronger use of chilis, but I chose to tone this down as spicy heat is often tricky to pair with wines. As it turns out, I think this wine could have handled a bit more, so feel free to turn it up a bit if you’d like. I thought the wine’s texture would match nicely with a meatier fish like tuna. Unfortunately, the grocery store was out of tuna steaks, so I went with salmon instead and these worked quite well – feel free to use either.

Lemon myrtle, the herb the recipe showcased, comes from a sub-tropical rainforest tree. The leaves are the part most commonly used, as is the case here, but the flowers and seeds can also be used. The leaves are most typically dried and used ground. It has a strong lemon/lime flavor with warm, savory herbal notes. If you can’t find it, lemongrass should make a good substitute.

The company that produced the book makes a Lemon Myrtle Lime and Chilli infused Macadamia Oil that was included in the original recipe and sounds delicious. 

I loved this pairing. The lemon myrtle, lime, and macadamia nuts all mirrored flavors in the wine, just as I’d hoped they would, and the herbs along with the greens in the accompanying simple salad brought out herbal notes in the wine. The char on the grilled salmon provided a nice counterbalance to all of the citrusy flavors and resonated well with the wine's beeswax texture.  

*****

*****

The rest of the World Wine Travel (#WorldWineTravel) Blogging Group is exploring white wines from New South Whales this month. Check out the rest of their posts for more great pairings:

• Jeff with Food Wine Click is sharing "Why Does WSET Love Hunter Valley Semillon?"
• Wendy with A Day in the Life on the Farm shares "Yellow Tail Wine Round 2 and the Weekly Menu"
• Terri of Our Good Life shares "Simply Summer's Best: BBQ Pork Steaks and Rock It Like a Redhead Sauvignon Blanc"
• Nicole at Somm's Table shares "Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon and Seared Salmon Steaks"
• Gwendolyn Alley of Wine Predator shares "Burning Man 2022: Waking Dreams, Secretly Abandoned Spaces, Minstrel Cramp, and the Fox in the Henhouse"
• Deanna with Wineivore shares "Korean Bar Snacks with Biodynamic Somos Orange Verdehlo Wine"
• Cam of Culinary Adventures with Cam shares "A Sémillon from New South Wales + A Snack from Japan"

A bottle of Shiraz from Hope Estate and a meat pie bring back happy memories from time spent in Australia.

Once upon a time, in 2009, Greg and I spent four months in the land down under. Greg took advantage of a study abroad program while in business school and spent a semester at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. I quit my job and went with him. They were four of the best months of my life.

He arranged his schedule to give us plenty of time for exploring while we were in Sydney, and I’d spend the days he was in class wandering Sydney on my own. When the schedule allowed for more time, we’d rent a car and go road trips to branch out further. On top of that, the other students at the business school, the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), were a very welcoming, interesting, and fun lot. They planned many events and excursions that we were able to join in on. Among these was a wine tasting tour of the Hunter Valley, which is only a couple of hours north of Sydney. 

On that particular excursion, one winery stood out from the rest – Hope Estate. It was definitely our favorite of the day. We were also distinctly aware that we’d been a bit tipsy by the time we got there, as it was the last stop in a long day, so it was possible that our preference had been set thanks to the extra good vibes we were feeling by that point in the day. However, we’d brought back several from the trip, and our favorite was borne out as we tried the wines again back at our flat over the next few weeks – this time with clearer heads. 

Hope Estate back in 2009

This was all before I’d dived into the wine life, but the name stuck with me – it is a fairly easy one to remember. I’ve recently seen an occasional bottle from the estate pop up at local wine stores and on Wine.com, which has been a fun blast from the past. 

A Brief History of the Hunter Valley 

Map borrowed from Winefolly.com

We’ll be talking about the Hunter Valley again soon, so I’m going to break up the discussion on the region into two parts. Today we’ll take a look at its history. 

The Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest winemaking region. This makes sense, given the region’s proximity to Sydney, where the first Europen arrived and established the first penal colony. Prior to their arrival, the Wonnarua  ("people of the hills and plains") inhabited the upper Hunter region for at least 30,000 years. The Worimi held the northeastern shores, and the Awabakal were located around the southeastern shores. 

The Hunter River was first spotted by European settlers in 1797 by accident. Lieutenant John Shortland was on a search for escaped convicts when he spotted the river. The Hunter Valley went on to become a valuable source of timber and coal for steamships. A land route to the area wasn’t discovered until 1820. By 1823, there were already about 20 acres of vineyards planted along the Hunter River in what is now the Dalwood /Gresford area between the towns of Maitland and Singleton.  

James Busby, the 'godfather' of viticulture in both Australia and New Zealand, changed the game in the 1830s. He returned to New South Wales after an extensive tour studying European wine regions with around 500 (pre-phylloxera) vine cuttings. Busby’s brother-in-law William Kelman took up one of the first official land grants at Kirkton on the Hunter River using a replica set of these cuttings. By 1840 the Hunter Valley’s vineyard area had boomed to 500 acres (200 hectares) and its reputation as a wine-growing region had been established. 

The Pokolbin area, the region Hope Estate is in, had established itself as a quality zone by 1930. Sadly, war and economic turmoil slowed down further expansion. Things wouldn’t pick up again until the second half of the 20th century, but there are now over 150 wineries in the Hunter Valley.

Hope Estate Basalt Rock Shiraz

Hope Estate. Image borrowed from the Hope Estate website.

It would appear that Hope Estate has expanded quite a bit since we visited. In addition to wine, they have spirits, beer, and a 20,000-seat amphitheater that hosts major concerts. Maybe I didn’t see it or just didn’t notice because of my tipsy state, but there wasn’t anything so grand in my memories. 

Hope Estate was established in 1994 by Michae Hope, a former pharmacist who gave up his career to make wine. He and his wife Karen purchased their first vineyard at Broke in the Hunter consisting of 30 acres of vines on a 250-acre property. They then purchased a winery in 1996 and the first vintage of Hope Estate was released in 1997. Additional vineyards have been added since, including in Victoria and Western Australia, and a new winery followed in 2006. All of the wines are made from estate-grown grapes  in their Hunter Valley headquarters

I ordered a bottle of the Hope Estate Basalt  Rock Shiraz 2018 from Wine.com ($16.99) and I opened it the same it arrived. I was honestly a little worried about the wine because it arrived on a very hot day and it tasted a little off when we first opened it. (Wines can get “cooked” if they spend time in extreme heat.) Luckily, it improved quite a bit once we cooled the bottle down a little bit and allowed the wine to breathe. It’s a good reminder that serving temperature can make a big difference – the ideal range for big red wines is generally considered to be around 63°-68°. 

Once the wine had a chance to open up, it showed notes of blackberry, plum, bay leaf,  and charcoal on the nose. On the palate, the fruit was juicy with just a touch of jamminess. Savory touches of bay leaf, cedar, olives, and black pepper joined in on the mid-palate, softened by a touch of vanilla, and there was a hint of stony charcoal hint on the finish. It was reminiscent of Rhône Syrah in style, but with riper fruit notes. It was medium + in body with balanced acidity.

Geeky Details

Taken from the tech sheet. 

Alcohol: 14%     

Blacked: 100% Shiraz 

Winemaking:  Estate Grown – 100% Family Owned - The Basalt Block is located in the Hunter Valley among the hills of the Broken Back Mountain Range. The range was formed by volcanic activity leaving the red soil rich with basalt. This mineral-rich soil produces the finest quality, low-yielding grapes which Hope Estate winemakers use to make this single vineyard wine. Matured in new and old French hogsheads for 13 months. 

The Pairing: Aussie Meat Pies

While in Oz, we developed a taste for the meat pies that are so ubiquitous there. They’re inexpensive, portable, and delicious – what’s not to love?! Food trucks, street carts, and food stalls everywhere sell these hand-held pies filled with beef in gravy. You might find different flavor variations and additions to the filling; for example, in addition to the classic, I often liked mushroom and curry flavors as well. The pies are often served topped with mushy peas, or you might drizzle on ketchup or hot sauce. 

Greg and our friends Marc and Dan eating meat pies in the CBD.

I thought I’d recreate the memory to pair with this wine. I’d originally intended to go all in and make individual hand-held pies, but it was crazy hot out on this particular day and it got to me, so I decided to cut myself a break and make a single large pie in the end. Hand-held pies will have to wait for another occasion.  

I looked at quite a few recipes for meat pies before creating my own. I noticed many recipes used a combination of short-crust for the bottom shell, and flaky puff pastry for the top and I decided to go this route, but other versions choose to just use one or the other. I made the short-crust but used store-bought puff pastry. (Making puff pastry is a headache I do not need, thank you very much!) Feel free to go with what appeals to you. 

I also made mushy peas to go with the pies. I often forget how easy it is to make this and how satisfying the results are. Heat a bag of thawed frozen peas in a pot, add a bit of flavoring, then mash them up using an immersion blender or food processor – that’s it! A little sriracha was the final topper to the ensemble.  

The wine paired nicely with the meat pies. To be honest, it worked best with the pie alone, without the hot sauce or the peas, but the combo is just too good to pass up. 

*****

The World Wine Travel (#WorldWineTravel) blogging group is exploring the wines of New South Wales this month. Be sure to check out their posts:

• A Scruffy Shiraz with Urban Smoked Short Ribs by FoodWineClick!
• Chili de Moira + Beelgara Winery Estate Shiraz 2017 by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Yellow Tail Wine is from NSW, Who Knew?? by A Day in the Life on the Farm

Sometimes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel in order to get a delightful pairing. 

I recently opened this bottle of Oakridge Henk Vineyard Chardonnay 2019 and tasted it in order to create a pairing, but quickly discovered that there was a good one already sitting in my fridge. I’d made an orzo salad for a dinner party a couple of days before and it occurred to me to have a bite while I was tasting the wine and quite liked the match – I particularly enjoyed the way the wine picked up the flavors of the Parmesan cheese. 

I decided to run with the match, but made some additions in order to both tie the wine and the food more closely together and to switch things up to and reinvigorate the leftovers. Roasted shrimp with bacon pieces made for an excellent leftover makeover that came together quickly and turned this side into a main dish. To grab every last bit of bacony flavor, I also quickly tossed a couple of large handfuls of greens in the rendered bacon fat and incorporated them into the salad as well.

Oakridge Henk Vineyard Chardonnay 2019

Established in 1978, Oakridge is located in Australia's Yarra Valley. I wish I could’ve found more on the history of the winery, but they farm sustainably making use of cover crops, compost teas,  and they have an insectarium, all of which help to minimize the use of synthetic inputs and improve the health and biodiversity of the vineyards. They have 10 hectares (about 25 acres) of vineyards and also source grapes from carefully selected sites.

The Henk Vineyard Chardonnay comes from a north-facing site comprised of the red volcanic soils in the town of Woori Yallock. The wine was made in a traditional style. Grapes were whole-bunch pressed directly into 500-liter French oak puncheons where it was naturally fermented and then spent 10 months maturing on the lees for texture. Find more information on the 2020 vintage of this wine here.

I found this to be a lively and classic Chardonnay at a reasonable price. (I purchased this bottle at K&L in SF for $25. ) Notes of lemon cream, baked apples, and stone greeted me on the nose. Similar notes returned on the palate, although the apples were leaner, crisper, and less baked,  with notes of green pears and light herbs joining in. The lees added creamy texture and body to the crisp fruit notes elevated by lots of acidity. 

As I mentioned up at the top, the wine loved the Parmesan cheese, and the combination of seafood and bacon each spoke to different aspects of the wine’s textures and flavors. I think it resonated particularly well with the bacon’s smoky notes. A white pepper note in the wine also came out when sipped alongside the food. Having a few extra lemon wedges on hand to squeeze on top of the food while eating is also not a bad idea. I added avocado to a third iteration of the salad using up the last bit of leftovers, and I also think this would’ve worked quite well with the wine. 

Yarra Valley

Map borrowed from WineFolly.com

The Yarra Valley is located about an hour northeast of Melbourne, making it a  convenient side trip if you’re ever visiting the city. It’s one of Australia’s oldest winemaking regions, with the first vineyards in the area having been planted in 1838. However, the wines go against the grain of the general image we might have of Australian wines. It’s generally cooler than most of Australia’s wine regions, so it’s better known for cool-climate-loving Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and increasingly Riesling. However, the region features a lot of variation in terms of altitude, site exposures, and soils, which makes it conducive to different grapes and styles, so you will also find Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon grown there as well, but they’re often made in leaner, elegant style.

Other Pairing Possibilities

After I initially tasted the wine, I enjoyed the last remnants in my glass with a turkey sandwich with a red chermoula spread and tomato soup and that was a solid match too. 

I also tend to love Chardonnays that are lightly oaked and/or have lees contact with roasted chicken, and I think this would certainly be a good candidate. Seafood topped with butter should also be delicious.