The results of the Wine & Viticulture Journal’s recent tasting of Australian Grenache are among the highlights of the just-released Spring issue of the magazine.

The tasting comprised 40 wines from not only the two regions most renowned for the variety in Australia – McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley – but also Heathcote, Great Western, Rutherglen, Langhorne Creek, Clare Valley, Geographe, Swan Valley and Canowindra.

The panellists included Grenache enthusiasts in winemakers Stephen Pannell, of McLaren Vale’s S.C. Pannell, Mark Bulman, of the Barossa Valley’s Turkey Flat, and Rob Mack, from Aphelion Wine Co. They were joined by wine marketer, importer and consultant David Ridge.

Delivering something of a masterclass on making varietal Grenache in the discussion that followed the tasting, the panellists agreed varietal Grenache had the potential to be a style that Australia could hang its hat on.

“All great wine tastes of somewhere, of where and how it was grown and, for me, more than any other variety in Australia, Grenache best expresses that narrative,” writes Stephen Pannell in an article prefacing the results of the tasting.

“I feel confident stating that Grenache’s time has come and, in the last decade, through my efforts and those of others to understand the potential of the variety as a medium-bodied wine, believe we can claim varietal Grenache as uniquely our own, uniquely Australian,” he adds.

Also featured in the Spring issue of the Wine & Viticulture Journal is a focus on wine maturation. Regular writer Mark O’Callaghan speaks to winemakers about their experiences with oak vat fermentors and storage tanks, new generation concrete tanks and large format oak foudres. The issue also presents the outcomes of Spanish research into the effect of oxygen on wine colour during ageing in barrels with different oxygen transmission rates and following bottling over various lengths of time.

In viticulture, researchers from the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre reveal that they have attempted to find more accurate measures of botrytis contamination based on chemical measures of bunch composition. Continuing the focus on grape diseases, another research team from the NWGIC explains how, in response to concerns over fungicides, they’ve identified a strain of bacteria that may be useful in suppressing grapevine trunk diseases.

And in Business & Marketing, Justin Cohen, senior marketing scientist from the University of South Australia Business School, writes how the non-brand elements of a brand – that is, those elements that signal a brand name to a consumer like a logo or colour scheme – can be used to enhance brand awareness.

Subscribers to the Wine & Viticulture Journal can view the Summer 2020 issue online here

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