How to be a wine judge – inside Wine Innovation Central at Urrbrae’s Waite campus

Think you’re a real wine fan? Know your tannins from your tasting notes? Aspiring wine judges can take this course to see if they’re good enough.

Fostering desirable flavours, managing climate threats and reducing alcohol content are among the many ways researchers are seeking to make South Australian wines even better.

While Adelaide University has gone quiet on plans for a new winery and cellar door on its Waite campus, there’s still plenty of action on site, where four research organisations support the wine industry.

Between them, the co-located partners possess more than 60 per cent of the nation’s research, development, extension and education capabilities over the grape and wine value chain.

The Australian Wine Research Institute is the pick of the bunch, with 140 staff and about $30m worth of equipment at the shiny sky-blue building known as Wine Innovation Central. The institute is an independent company founded by the wine and grape industry in 1955 to tackle problems with spoilage of exports, funded through an industry levy.

Managing director Dr Mark Krstic is the latest in a succession of leaders that includes Peter Hoj, who ran it from 1997 to 2004 and became the university’s vice-chancellor in February.

“We’re basically the industry’s own research and education institute that is there to support the sector and be that really responsible organisation in times of crisis around things like smoke taint … even that hailstorm the other day,” Dr Krstic said.

“We’ve got the high-end analytical equipment that can really pick apart and understand these problems, and also do the work around flavour and aroma discovery.

“The pepper compound in shiraz, the stone fruit character in chardonnay, the lovely berry fruit aromas in pinot – there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.”

Scenes from The Australian Wine Research Institute on the Waite Campus at Urrbrae, Dr Agnieszka Mierczynska-Vasilev prepares a sample for analysis. Picture: Jacqui Way Photography

AWRI also has a helpline and offers wide-ranging fee-for-service testing, covering anything and everything from flavours and aromas to heavy metals and pesticides. Genetic testing has advanced to such an extent that growers can have their vine genome sequenced and trace its family history back through Europe.

Climate change presents major problems for growers, so researchers across the Waite campus including the university are experimenting with drought-tolerant, heat-resistant and waterwise varieties.

At the SA Research and Development Institute, there’s a project on “remedial surgery” for grapevine trunk disease and another on fungicide resistance, as fungal infections are increasingly prevalent after unseasonal downpours.

Scenes from The Australian Wine Research Institute on the Waite Campus at Urrbrae: The Wine Innovation Central building. Picture: Eric Wilkes Photography

SARDI is also working on managing and modelling vintage “compression”, another climate-related problem when all grapes ripen at once, putting pressure on infrastructure.

Also on campus, the CSIRO is breeding new grape wine varieties for “durable” resistance to mildew and downy mildew, and new rootstock for resistance to soil diseases.

And there are projects exploring digital technology for “precision viticulture”, gathering data on yield, crop condition and quality to better manage vineyards. CSIRO is also focused on manipulating berry ripening as vineyards adapt to climate change.

Research Scientist, Josh Hixson and PhD Candidate, Yevgeniya Grebneva in Urrbrae, where they’re using shade cloth to reduce exposure to sunlight and modify the ageing potential of rieslings. Picture: Matt Loxton

Scenes from The Australian Wine Research Institute on the Waite Campus at Urrbrae, Geoff Cowey goes fishing for precious samples. Picture: Jacqui Way Photography

AWRI PhD candidate Yevgeniya Grebneva, who is enrolled through Hochschule Geisenheim University in Germany, has been experimenting with shade over riesling grapes.

“We investigated the effect of changing light exposure on riesling’s ageing potential,” she said. “Understanding the why, when and how … will help rieslings to age gracefully into spectacular wines.”

Third-generation winemaker and managing director of Taylors Wines in the Clare Valley, Mitchell Taylor, is proudly certified through Sustainable Winegrowing Australia with AWRI. He’s also a big fan of all of the research and testing available on the Waite campus.

“The AWRI probably would be there for about 90 to 95 per cent of our needs,” he said. “But certainly if there are certain projects outside their scope, they collaborate with other research institutions and they’ll direct us towards them.”

Inside the sensory laboratory at The Australian Wine Research Institute on the Waite Campus at Urrbrae, let Damian Espinase Nandorfy pour you a drop of red. Picture: Jacqui Way Photography

SNIFF, SIP: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

Many of us love a day trip to the Barossa or McLaren Vale to taste a few wines at a few different wineries.

But how would you go tasting 320 wines in four days under the intense pressure of having to analyse and compare them fairly, rather than just enjoying them?

That’s what aspiring wine judges and critics did last week in an intensive course at Adelaide University’s Waite campus at Urrbrae.

A group of 16 students completed the latest Advanced Wine Assessment Course at the Australian Wine Research Institute, tasting alongside leading wine show judges, journalists and winemakers.

The Institute’s industry development and support group manager Con Simos said the course enabled tasters to take “something quite subjective and very personal, and turn into something more objective”. “It‘s a very highly specialised course, a very demanding course,” he said.

“Tasting 320 wines over four days, that’s a lot of work and that’s a lot of brain power.

“As glamorous and as exciting as that sounds, I can tell you having to concentrate all day to taste wines, and to be disciplined and to have rigour … takes a lot of concentration, because your concentration span and your input into looking at these wines has to be as strong at the last one of the day as it is to the first.”

The course offers an associate judging placement at a capital city wine show to a student who shows consistency in tasting scores and an excellent ability to communicate about wines. That selection is yet to be made for the most recent course, but earlier this year Andrew Kenny, senior winemaker at Pikes Wines and Pike & Joyce in the Adelaide Hills, was the dux of his course. He was made an associate judge at Royal Adelaide Wine Show.

“I learnt a lot about my own palate and where I can improve ... as well as vocabulary on wine styles I’m not usually surrounded by,” he said.

TASTING AND JUDGING TIPS

■ Concentration – Look at the wine in front of you and focus. Bring in your experience, your knowledge, your brain power, your memory and come up with a rational approach to make a rational decision and rate that wine in a way that that you are confident and comfortable with.

■ Taste widely – Don’t just drink Barossa shiraz, even if it is the best in the world. Learn about all of the Australian styles as well as styles from other parts of the world such as Europe and the Americas.

■ Communication skills – Park your ego at the door. If you swear that this is a gold medal wine and everybody else says ‘no’, listen and calmly discuss the wine’s attributes and learn from your mistakes.