By Cyril Ciavarella, Ciavarella Oxley Estate, King Valley, Victoria

First published in the November/December 2016 issue of the Wine & Viticulture Journal

Ciavarella Oxley Estate is unique in the fact that it is Australia’s sole producer of Aucerot, a rare and mysterious variety about which there is very little reliable documentation. Most winemakers have never heard of it.

Our vines came from Baileys Bundarra vineyard at Glenrowan, in Victoria, where the Bailey family had produced some fine wines from these grapes, including a dry white and a renowned late harvest called ‘Auslese Aucerot’, which remains in the memories of older wine-lovers.

The story handed down through several generations about Aucerot reveals very little concrete evidence of its origins, but one of the Baileys is said to have returned from France after the First World War with some cuttings from somewhere in the north of France, proclaiming them to be Aucerot, and planted them.

Sometime after that, probably in the 1930s, a well-known ampelographer, François Robert de Castella, who was employed by the Victorian Department of Agriculture as its viticultural expert, is said to have identified it as Aucerot. One day soon, a researcher will hopefully do a DNA test on the vines and we will all know for sure what we should call it; until then, it is Auc erot to us.

I recall the late Alan Bailey telling me that he met with French ampelographer Paul Truel in the 1970s who identified the variety as Aucerot. Historian Valmai Hankel did some research of her own into the variety in 2005 (Winestate, Nov-Dec 2005), though her results were less definite and somewhat puzzling as she stated in her article that Truel “admitted never having seen the variety anywhere”.

In the late 1980s, Baileys was sold to Davis Consolidated and the Aucerot vines were removed to make way for something more fashionable – Chardonnay. Luckily, my son Michael, who was studying viticulture at the time while working at Baileys, informed me of the impending demise of the vines and we gained permission to take some grafting material which subsequently joined the Ciavarella vineyard at Oxley in 1988. I was aware that the variety was rare in Australia so was keen not to have it disappear, as I recognised the excellent quality of the wines that Alan had made from this variety.

Alan Bailey made two distinctly different wines from Aucerot. One was a dry table wine simply called Aucerot. As Alan handed me a bottle of this in the 1970s, I distinctly remember his words: “Cyril, the old timers used to call this French Riesling!” I’m sorry I never pursued this further with Alan, who sadly passed away a few years later.

The better known ‘sticky’ was produced under the label Auslese Aucerot and was presented in those days in a 750ml flint bottle; my wife Jan and I enjoyed the occasional bottle of it in those days. Quite a few of our cellar door visitors have fond memories of this wine, and about five years ago one fellow came in search of our Aucerot, declaring he was an old fan of the Baileys version, and still had the odd bottle of the Auslese in his cellar. I hope the corks stood the test of time.

So, we embarked on our journey with Aucerot, eager to see how it performed in the quite different soils of our Oxley vineyard. The results have been very rewarding, with some fantastic late harvest dessert wines produced over the years, sometimes as a straight varietal and sometimes blended with Semillon or Viognier. We have almost sold out of our 2005 Late Harvest Semillon Aucerot, which had a devoted following. This will be succeeded by our 2009 Autumn Gold, a s traight Aucerot with distinctive flavours; great as an aperitif, with a fruit and cheese platter after dinner. The 2010 Noble Aucerot is something else again, with intense botrytis characters adding to its distinctive flavours. Overall, we are extremely happy that we have saved this enigmatic variety from extinction and it lives to delight for another day.

AUCEROT

By Peter Dry, Emeritus Fellow, The Australian Wine Research Institute

BACKGROUND

Aucerot is a mystery variety about which there seems to be little documentation.

There was a grape known as Aucerot in the Hunter Valley many years ago, but this turned out to be Montils. In their book Wine Grapes, wine writer Jancis Robinson and her co-authors suggested Aucerot was an Australian synonym for the French Auxerrois Blanc, but the characteristics of the vine we’re growing are different.

Much discussion has taken place over the years as to the origins of this variety. Perhaps a keen young viticulturist with a bent for genetics will one day test its DNA and identify it categorically as a very rare variety in its own right, or something else entirely. So far, we have not come across any other named variety that could be our Aucerot. There have been numerous comments, opinions, guesses and suppositions over many years, but we will continue to know it as Aucerot unless it is definitively proven to be something else.

After all, a rose by any other name…

VITICULTURE

Our Oxley vineyard has sandy loam soil, and the Aucerot is grafted to Schwarzmann and Paulsen rootstocks.

Budburst occurs in late September to early October, depending on the season. Vine vigour is moderate with minimal or no drip irrigation, again, depending on the season. In heatwave conditions we maintain soil moisture to avoid leaf burning and to sustain functioning leaves. Exposed bunches on the eastern side will sunburn if fully exposed. Minimal leaf plucking is done on the opposite side at pea-sized berries to assist air movement within the canopy.

In earlier years cropping was light to moderate, but recently there has been a significant increase in productivity. To this end, we have modified pruning to a mixture of single and two-bud spurs on bilateral cordons on a single wire trellis. We carry out shoot thinning once the danger of frosts has passed, and bunch thinning at veraison. The canopy is vertical shoot positioned.

Bunch size and weight are similar to a typical Chardonnay bunch, though the spherical berries are somewhat larger.

Harvest occurs anywhere between the end of April and the end of May (our seasons have been somewhat unpredictable lately). Powdery mildew has never been a problem, but in wet seasons there have been some issues with bunch rot.

Luckily, we have had a number of seasons that have produced excellent noble rot infections.

Aucerot seems to have an appetite for magnesium, showing typical foliar deficiency symptoms. To this end, we broadcast 60g of magnesium sulfate per vine annually. Other varieties in the same block and on the same rootstock, namely Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Viognier, Semillon and Durif, do not exhibit the same requirement.

WINE

We make our Aucerot into either a fortified white (once known as white port), or a late harvest style, sometimes blended with Semillon or Viognier. Ripeness varies from 16 to 18+ Baumé. Berries are heavily raisined and in some years nicely infected with botrytis, as was the case in 2010.

For the late harvest wine, chilled grapes are crushed, sulfur dioxide and enzyme added, and kept in anaerobic conditions to macerate for up to 48 hours. It is basket pressed over an extended period to achieve maximum extraction. Juice is then cold-settled, racked, pH adjusted to approximately 3.0, yeast 2226 added, followed by a coolish fermentation until the desired Baumé is reached. Then sulfur dioxide is added to the desired level and the wine is sterile filtered. Cold stability and protein stability are checked, then the wine is bottled into 500ml bottles via a 0.8μ membrane filter.

The 2005 Late Harvest Semillon Aucerot, of which just a few bottles remain, continues to display exquisite freshness. Another outstanding wine is our 2010 Noble Aucerot, of which a mere 302 bottles were produced, which carries intense rich flavours, not a hint of any cloying characters and finishes with bright, uplifting acidity.