By Sonya Logan

First published in the November/December 2013 issue of the Wine & Viticulture Journal

Fred Peacock was a viticulturist with Tasmania’s Department of Primary Industries when he and a colleague were issued a brief in the late 1970s to seek out grape varieties particularly suited to cool climates and which might be of interest to the state’s developing wine industry.

Their investigations ultimately led to contact with German viticulturist and chief of the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute Helmut Becker, who advised that his organisation had bred three white varieties that could fit the bill: Reichensteiner, Ehrenfelser and Schonburger.

The three varieties were subsequently imported into Australia through the CSIRO at Merbein in Victoria, and released to Tasmania’s DPI in 1982 where they were used for a trial planting near Hobart.

“It was pretty obvious that Schonburger had the best character and flavour of the three varieties and cropped well,” Peacock recalls. “The other two were also very good croppers and ripened early, but they had nothing like the flavour of Schonburger, which also had the advantage of being a reliable setter. All three were very disease resistant, especially for botrytis, which was not surprising seeing they were bred for cool areas in Europe.

“Schonburger has this thick, beautiful dark pink skin and doesn’t retain too much acidity at harvest.”

When Peacock purchased Bream Creek in 1990, overlooking the coast in south-east Tasmania, he did so with two goals in mind: to increase plantings of Pinot Noir on the property and to introduce Sauvignon Blanc and Schonburger – the latter is believed to be the first commercial planting of the German-bred variety in the Southern Hemisphere.

“I was so fascinated with the variety by that stage that when I made the decision to become a grape producer myself, all my industry contacts to whom I was consulting at the time said now was the ideal time to plant the varieties I wanted to,” Peacock said.

Schonburger makes up 0.4ha of the 7.5ha Bream Creek vineyard and yields about four tonnes of fruit each year.

“We harvest it just before Pinot and just after Chardonnay,” Peacock explained. “We’ve got it in the coldest spot in the vineyard to try and retain acidity as it tends to drop acid very quickly.

“It’s in the southern-most corner of the vineyard on a southeast facing site. The soil type is a fairly heavy clay loam, which I’m not sure is best suited to the variety; it probably ideally prefers lighter ground.”

Peacock cane prunes his Schonburger vines.

“They don’t tend to throw replacement canes very well,” he explains as reason for opting for this method. Leaf plucking is also carried out.

“We leaf pluck to get colour into the bunches and berries because that really seems to enhance the varietal flavour.

“Schonburger is a moderate cropper but fairly reliable across a range of season. Even in Germany it’s not regarded as a high cropper which is probably why it hasn’t taken Germany by storm. We crop Schonburger at about 9t/ha. I’ve seen it cropped to more than 14t/ha on sites where it’s grown in slightly warmer areas and on lighter soil types.”

Peacock said it was important to keep an eye on the balance between flavour and acid in Schonburger and suspects warmer areas would struggle to achieve that balance.

“There’s a risk with the variety that if don’t get the flavour and acid balance right the wine becomes flabby and less structured. It seems to need acidity to generate its varietal flavour.

“We generally pick around 12Be. In some years we’ve picked up around 13Be.”

Peacock said. “With Schonburger we cold soak after crushing to draw as much flavour from the skins as possible. This initially created some issues with heat and cold stability, so we had to do some mucking around with the winemaking to solve this problem. We’ve also trialled different soak times and have now settled on a much shorter time with little loss of flavour, so that has helped a lot too.

“During winemaking Schonburger starts off with a tiny bit of salmon colour in the juice, which soon drops out with sulfur additions leaving a very pale coloured white wine.

“Schonburger has aromatics similar to Gewurztraminer but possibly has a slightly softer palate; it also has more texture in the mouth than Gewurztraminer.”

Bream Creek makes two styles of Schonburger: a table-style and a desert-style. The latter is a late-picked style due to Schonburger’s resistance to botrytis.

“The dessert style is sensational,” Peacock noted. “The aromatics are more concentrated.” He said the table style paired well with delicate foods such as sushi, and complemented Asian style cuisine – especially Japanese and Korean.

“This variety has an amazing capacity to match a wide variety of foods,” he said, adding that Schonburger seemed to age well.

“One of my concerns at the outset was that it might not age – perhaps two to three years maximum. But judging by what our customers have told us, it will hold for quite a number of years if cellared properly, and seems to have similar cellaring attributes to Gewurztraminer.”

Peacock’s Schonburger vines are now 20 years old, and he has plans to add a bit more to increase production by about a tonne.

Schönburger (Schoenburger)

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

Background

Schönburger (SHERN-burger) is the result of a cross between Pinot Noir and Pirovano 1 (Chasselas Rose x Muscat of Hamburg) at the Geisenheim research centre in Germany—it was originally known as Geisenheim 15-114. It was released in 1979 and renamed after the town of Schönburg in the Mittelrhein. Globally there were 59 ha in 2010 (up 52% from 2000). Mainly grown in the Rheinhessen, the planted area in Germany is very small. It has been adopted more enthusiastically by the English wine industry where it has done well in their cool climate. It is also grown in British Columbia (Canada), Washington and Oregon (USA) and South Africa—but the areas are small.  There are at least six producers of Schönburger wine in Australia, mainly in NSW and Tasmania.

Viticulture

Budburst is early and maturity is early to mid-season. Growth habit is upright and vigour is moderate. Bunches are medium and well-filled with medium, pink-coloured berries. Yield is low to moderate (similar to Riesling) and regular. The lack of acceptance of Schönburger in Germany is said to be due to its low yield, being much less than Bacchus, Kerner or Reichensteiner. Cane pruning is most common. It is tolerant of powdery mildew, downy mildew and botrytis bunch rot. The strong skin of the berries is said to give good protection against Botrytis so the harvest can be late. It is winter-hardy but prefers sheltered sites.

Wine

Acidity is relatively low but this is not usually a problem in cool climates. Wines are finely aromatic, Gewürztraminer-like, spicy and soft. If the wine lacks acidity, the muscat-like flavour becomes more dominant. Wines are said to be best with some residual sweetness.