Over the last two decades, give or take, grape varieties that once had drinkers stumbling with pronunciations are now recognisable even to those with a casual interest in wine. Grapes like fiano, tempranillo, vermentino, grüner veltliner, gamay and nero d’avola are permanently embedded in our vinous lexicon. So, are these so-called alternative varieties – largely selected for climate-apt properties – now mainstream? Or is our wine landscape simply more diverse?
The Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show (AAVWS), which grew out of the Sangiovese Challenge founded by Stefano de Pieri, Dr. Ron Bonfiglioli and the Chalmers family in Mildura in 1999, has enshrined the alternative varieties term, while also becoming one of the country’s most important and influential – as well as more atypical – wine shows.
Kim Chalmers on how the term 'alternative' can be helpful
“It was about providing an alternative, about pushing back against the global commoditisation of wine and trend-based production,” says Kim Chalmers who has held various roles with the AAVWS. Kim has also worked across all aspects of the Chalmers family business, which has driven both the dissemination of varieties and clones new to these shores through their nursery, as well as pioneering suitable viticultural and winemaking practices.
“We don't want to be Italian or Spanish,” she continues, citing ongoing committee discussions about whether the show’s title should evolve. “We're not Spanish. We're not Italian. We're Australian. And we wanted to provide growers, makers, and consumers with new flavours, new ideas, new tools in the kit. Alternative is going to stay forever with the show because of that context.
“But, putting my Chalmers hat on, be that the nursery or vineyard, or particularly the winery, it's time to get over it. It's just Australian wine. These varieties are not just for the indoctrinated, wine enthusiast crazy people. It's people who just go to their local. They’re in the ’burbs. They're on wine lists everywhere. It's part of the landscape.”
It wasn’t long ago that our local wine choices were somewhat limited, dominated by a mainly French hegemony of grapes. The usual suspects. Those that make the historically celebrated wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhône, and then have found homes here and made their own – sometimes referential, sometimes wholly new – expressions.
A short history of how Australia's mainstream wine varieties came to be
When James Busby collected the first vine cuttings to bring to Australia in the early 19th century, he cast widely, with over 600 distinct varieties or cultivars. In a distant mirror, his motivation was in line with our modern one: “…to prove their different qualities, and propagate, for general distribution, those which may appear most suitable to the climate.”
Many cuttings perished on the ship, with 350 or so surviving, while a tranche of Iberian grapes was wholly lost on a subsequent voyage. That left a fundamentally French selection. “If Busby had some nero d’Avola in his bag, you'd see that all through the Riverland and Griffith and so on, and we'd have a far better alternative to shiraz in those hot areas,” says Fighting Gully Road’s owner and revered viticulturist Mark Walpole.
Busby was not the only, nor the first, to bring vines to these shores. Varieties and clones were imported from the Cape Colony, Europe and England, and while some flourished, others were rejected or foundered in the conditions. “It was very much influenced by wine styles, too,” continues Mark. “When we went through the whole fortified period, most of the table wine disappeared.”
Fortified wines were the overwhelmingly dominant force in the early 20th century, and grapes and regions that could reach higher sugar levels were favoured. This ensured shiraz’s position to emerge as a table wine mega-power at the end of the century, while grenache, once our most planted grape, had to wait a little longer for redefinition. That latter half of the 20th century saw major trends centred around the key grapes we know so well, with little on the fringes.
Mark Walpole helped introduce more Italian varieties to Australia
Mark Walpole had taken an interest in grapes outside the box while working at Brown Brothers in the 1990s.
He also diversely planted out his family vineyard in Whorouly, Alpine Valleys, including a nursery block of 60-odd varieties, followed by founding the groundbreaking Greenstone Vineyard, Heathcote – with a sangiovese focus – with David Gleave MW and Alberto Antonini in 2003.
It was at Brown Brothers that Mark forged an enduring relationship with the Chalmers family, who propagated those cuttings in their Murray-Darling nursery, and would soon become the locus of the ‘alternative varieties’ movement with their own exclusive vine imports.
Most of those varieties are Italian, but the show – and the term – is much broader, naturally incorporating other European grapes. Although it’s also not just about newcomers. “A lot at the AAVWS is around new-to-market varieties, but there’s marsanne, there's chenin blanc, there's malbec,” Kim says, explaining why the term was preferred over ‘emerging’.“They’re established. But they're just not taking up a lot of shelf space. They're maybe not as well understood stylistically.”
Those varieties rub shoulders with some less-familiar names, and some now well-known, while others, such as prosecco and pinot grigio, have grown out of their alternative status and no longer warrant a class at the show. “We've got fiano classes in mainstream shows, and tempranillo and different things; we're understanding subregionality in things like nero,” says Kim. “Fiano is planted widely, but it has unique expressions in different places. We've gone beyond just being a curio.”
Kim notes that the movement was as much about wine as it was one driven by our developing attitudes to food and lifestyle. “Of course, Stefano de Pieri was involved at the start,” she says. “And for him, it was a culinary thing. He said, ‘Oh, drives me mad. I put a beautiful, delicate asparagus sformato on the table [at his iconic Mildura restaurant, Stefano’s], and they're drinking Barossa shiraz! Today, most people are drinking more diversely, eating more diversely and travelling more.”
Patrick Walsh on why it took so long for the industry and consumers to embrace different grape varieties
Patrick Walsh – founder and owner of Cellarhand – is a key importer and domestic distributer who has represented Chalmers for over two decades. “It took an awfully long time for so-called alternative varieties to resonate with people,” he says. “We had many dark moments after a trade event or a lunch or dinner or tasting, and the buzz was excellent, but the sales were average.”
That was a very slow burn, with some lines deleted or scaled back, while others have subsequently become enduring staples. “It's only the last two or three years where we're on schedule to roll all vintages at the right time,” Patrick adds. “It went from being, ‘oh yeah, that's really interesting’ to ‘that's really interesting, and I'd like to pour it by the glass.’”
That was not always a reflection of the public’s – at least the wine-obsessed sector’s – appetite for exploring outside the familiar flumes of the local wine market. “When we had Greenstone,” says Mark, “David Gleave said Australia was one of the most mature markets he knew of. I think it was helped during the GFC, because imports were so cheap, and we could drink all sorts of stuff.”
For Patrick, whose business thrived on German and Austrian imports, the gulf between the European and the local was a head-scratching hurdle. “Historically, if it's exotic, if it's weird, if it's unusual and it's from Europe, that's okay,” he says. “But when you have the same set of parameters and put an Australian bent on it, it's like, oh, well, that's too difficult. I think there's still more work to be done, but it's definitely better than before.”
Andre Bondar on Australia's burgeoning white wine grape varieties
Andre Bondar, of McLaren Vale’s Bondar Wines, believes that many ‘alternative’ red varieties are properly established in the region, providing exciting foils to the dominant hero reds, but it is with the whites that we are seeing a real paradigm shift. “Chardonnay is by far the largest planted white grape in the region,” he says. “But it’s a tiny base, a relic of the past, and we are aware of its limitations in our region and rightly don’t promote it as our ‘white variety’.
Ashley Ratcliff on why winemakers should be cautious when embracing less-common varieties
Ashley Ratcliff has been somewhat of a linchpin in the Riverland, focusing on both alternative, climate-apt Italian and Iberian grapes and old vines of classic varieties. For him, it has been a process of rethinking everything from the ground up, fine-tuning viticulture for growing premium fruit to make characterful wine in a region not previously known for either. But he believes caution is advised, especially in the current economic climate.
“There are a lot of grape growers putting a lot of these varieties in on spec,” says Ashley. “They're forgetting that the people that championed these grapes spent a lot of time understanding the market and building relationships. You can put them into an oversupply position very, very quickly.
This worries me. How are you growing it? Just growing it? Machine pruning it? Then you really haven't changed anything. If you think the variety is the silver bullet, I think we've got a problem.”
For him, it is about focusing on the core reason for planting any variety: to match variety to site and climate, and to learn how to manage the vines, all to make better wine. “Forget about variety, think about how you can build your business around better vineyards,” he says. “Premium fruit. That should be the strategy.”
It's time to rid ourselves of the term 'alternative'
It’s a view that encompasses protecting irreplaceable old vines and seeking the most suitable homes for any variety, whether new to the country or long incumbent, and it’s one that is at the heart of the mission for any good vigneron. “It's about us and our place and how we do business, how we grow it, how we make it, and the story we're trying to get out of our place that no one else can do,” says Kim.
“I think that's now getting to the point where ‘alternative’ is probably just not useful anymore for the maturity of the wines. The quality of wine being produced from varieties other than the major five international varieties is epic. Look at Sorrenberg’s gamay, look at Mark Walpole's sangiovese. These are modern Australian icon wines.”
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