By Sam Trimboli, Tony Steffania, Emma Norbiato, Jeremy Nascimben and Bill Calabria, Winemaking Team, Calabria Family Wines, Riverina, New South Wales

First published in the March/April 2017 issue of the Wine & Viticulture Journal

Calabria Family Wines (CFW) planted Durif vines in 1996 as we could see the growing demand for Australian red wines, mainly for export to the United States.

We wanted to produce a wine that would make a statement and place CFW on the map. Our brief: create a full-bodied dry red wine with big tannins, rich flavours and intense colour. Durif is a late-ripening grape and one of the last red varieties to be harvested. It ticked all the boxes for us, and the warm Mediterranean climate of the Riverina made ideal growing conditions for the Durif.

Our first vintage was produced in 2000 and in its first showing, the wine went on to be awarded a gold medal at the Royal Adelaide Wine Show. From that moment, we knew what we were doing could only get better.

It has been no mean feat changing perceptions when presenting a full-bodied Riverina red to the critics, however we quickly won them over. The 3 Bridges Durif medal tally is now up to 24 trophies and 270 medals.

Our style is unashamedly New World – American oak and sweet fruit. In the early days we did play around with French oak – but now our practices are set.

Our winemaking philosophy for Durif at Calabria is also rather simple: let the fruit do the talking. Harvested at between 14-15 Baume (picked on tannic and flavour ripeness), the fruit is picked in the cool of the night to allow a slow gradual start to fermentation, then destemmed and partially crushed to 12 tonne open-top wax-lined concrete vats, which are pumped over twice daily during fermentation. The fruit is kept on skins for as long as possible before being pressed, typically seven to 10 days, when critical cap management is utilised so as to not over-extract, which is easy for such a tannic variety. The parcels are then basket and bag pressed to tank, and finish primary fermentation until dry in stainless steel. Next we rack off gross lees to tank for natural malolactic fermentation. Once the wine is malo dry and sulfured it is fully barrel matured in 100% American oak hogsheads and barriques, approximately 33% new oak, with the balance in a mix of varying ages of barrel, up to eighth use.

The parcels are then left to mature in barrel for 12-14 months, graded, blended, stabilised, coarse pad filtered and bottled. Quite simple really!

One of the most important factors when it comes to making good quality Durif is to start in the vineyard with quality fruit.

Over-ripe fruit shows porty, jammy characters, leading to a wine that lacks aromatics, and no doubt falls over with time.

On the other hand, under-ripe fruit has green tannins, and due to Durif having such a large tannin structure, this is a characteristic that will moderately soften overtime – but if the fruit is not ripe it will always be present as hard, green and astringent.

There is a window of a couple of days to capture fruit at its optimum; if we get this wrong there is the possibility of missing out for that vintage.

The fruit that makes our 3 Bridges Durif is made up from a handful of growers. In most years about three separate blocks make the final cut. The vineyards differ in their soil profile, microclimate and elevation, from the heavy clay soils (eastern side) that are seen commonly throughout the Riverina to sandy loam over limestone (north-western side of town).

Our site is fairly flat, with an elevation of about 116m to 200m. The architecture of all these vineyards also varies, some are double trellised to spread out the vigour, some are single trellised. Generally speaking we are in a region where there is a lot of mechanisation so row spacings are wide (about 3.6m) to allow machinery through.

In truth, the vintages that seem to be regarded as some of the best have also been some of the driest seasons we have had here in the Riverina in almost two decades.

This isn’t surprising, however a lot of work in the vineyard is also very important to achieve perfect ripeness.

In 2005 one of our vineyards ripened faster than we had expected. The fruit was dehydrated, and once harvested, the tank tested at almost 18 Baume. There was only one option for this parcel of fruit – vintage fortified.

Back in the ’70s and early ’80s when vintage ports, as they were then called, were on the rise, using Durif fruit was an ideal option with its intense colour and weight, matched with beautiful aromatics and inky concentration, these wines would have the structure to age for a lifetime. It made sense to try our hand at this, and with the success of the 2005 inaugural release, we repeated the process again in 2013.

Currently we are selling our 16th vintage of 3 Bridges Durif, while our 17th vintage is happily maturing in barrel to be released later in the year.

VITICULTURE

Viticulturally speaking, there is a good reason why the French haven’t persisted with the variety. Durif is thin skinned, tight bunched, prone to overcropping, prone to second cropping, relatively late, and prone to botrytis, so if mismanaged, it can be quite a handful out on the farm. It is also a fairly tannic variety due to the variety’s pre-disposition for tight, compact, closed bunches, hence high skin to juice ratios. Exposed bunches are somewhat also prone to sunburn, hence basal leaf retention is part of a well-managed viticultural practice.

The fruit tends to sunburn and raisin if the vines are stressed for moisture during hot spells, hence adequate irrigation reserves are also essential for quality fruit production. In warm areas, the variety is fairly prone to overcropping, and may also produce a substantial second crop in some years, hence sufficient vine vigour and canopy management is also key. For all its misgivings, Durif does have a fairly good crop recovery following spring frost damage, as it is an early budburst variety, as seen in the Riverina on 13 October 2013, when a black frost decimated up to 20% of the region’s vineyards as a whole, with some our blocks in the local area losing up to 80% vineyard foliage.

H7V13 (UC Davis) is the most commonly available and planted clone, with V3 and V5 French clones also existing in much smaller quantities in Australia.

WINE

Durif produces dark, inky coloured wines with a firm texture and mouthfeel. The nose has black pepper overtones, and typically offers flavours of blue fruit, black fruit, plums, and especially blackberries.

The wines are very tannic, with an ageing ability that can exceed 20 years in the bottle.

Durif

By Peter Dry Emeritus Fellow, The Australian Wine Research Institute

BACKGROUND

Durif (dew-RIFF) was discovered in the 1860s in Isère (eastern France) in the experimental vineyard of Francois Durif, botanist and breeder. It was first mentioned in 1868 by ampelographer Victor Pulliat under the name ‘Plant du Rif’ as a variety propagated by said Durif. It is likely that Durif was an open-pollinated selection of Peloursin. DNA analysis in California in 1999 confirmed Peloursin as the female parent with Shiraz as the male. Durif seems to have been grown together with Peloursin from the time of its first commercial use, i.e., since the 1870s onwards. Since the 1960s, when there were approximately 400 hectares, Durif has virtually disappeared from France and is no longer recommended. The global area in 2010 was 3557ha, 80 percent of which was in the US, mainly California. In 1999, DNA analysis revealed that the majority of vines c alled ‘Petite Sirah’ in California were actually Durif, and a small proportion were Peloursin. There are also small areas of Durif in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Israel. Synonyms are Dure, Duret, Gros Noir (Savoie, France), Petite Sirah (US), Serine des Maures and Sirane Fourchue; however, there is no officially recognised synonym in Europe. In the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau allows Petite Sirah to be used as a synonym f or historical reasons—but they do not allow alternative spellings, e.g. Petit/Syrah. Durif was imported in 1908 to Rutherglen, Australia by Francois de Castella. Peloursin may have been inadvertently introduced at the same time because some Durif vineyards have a significant proportion of Peloursin vines. All clones imported to Australia since the 1960s have proved to be Durif. There were 625ha planted in 2016 (up 25 percent from 2012) with 114 wine producers in more than 30 regions, mainly Rutherglen, Riverina and Barossa Valley.

VITICULTURE

Budburst is mid-season and maturity is mid to late season. Vigour is high with a spreading growth habit. Bunches are medium and compact with small berries. Yield is moderate. Spur pruning is used in Australia. Berries are susceptible to bunch rot, sunburn and shrivel. Durif is tolerant of mildews (not ‘resistant’ as claimed in some references).

WINE

Durif wines are well-coloured, full bodied and tannic with good ageing potential. Descriptors include dark fruits, black pepper and liquorice. It is mainly used for varietal wines in Australia and California—but is also useful as a blending component.