After the virus come grape expectations

The storm has lifted, the borders are opening and summer ­approaches with the promise of freedoms the virus and the winter denied us.

Teagan Tattersall, centre, celebrates her hen’s night with, from left, Jaye Klein, Cheyenne Checker, Holly Pender and Ashleigh Rollings on the Gold Coast on Friday. Picture: Russell Shakespeare

The storm has lifted, the borders are opening and summer ­approaches with the promise of freedoms the virus and the winter denied us.

Rarely has a drink with old friends seemed so enticing, that Christmas beer with family unseen this year will be one to remember. It is time to blow the dust from that red you’ve been saving for a special occasion.

You are nearly there Australia and you’ve never been more deserving of a drink. Fortunately brewers and wine makers are turning out some of the best wine and beer the country has seen.

Today’s The Weekend Australian Magazine is the essential guide to drinking for the summer and the beyond.

James Halliday is sounding the trumpet for Australians to do their patriotic duty and drink more local wine, whether it’s Tasmanian riesling or Margaret River cabernet sauvignon, as closed export markets and the pandemic keep seriously good wine stuck, like the rest of us, within our borders.

THE LIST: JAMES HALLIDAY’S TOP 100 WINES OF 2020

THE LIST: PETER LALOR’S TOP 20 BEERS OF 2020

Mr Halliday, whose highly anticipated Top 100 wines feature in the magazine, believes drinkers might never have it so good as superb wine once destined for overseas looks for a home. It could be the perfect way to celebrate the opening of our borders and an arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In China, which takes up almost half of Australia’s $3bn a year in wine exports, banquet ­tables are being cleared of our wine as a chill descends over the trade relationship between Beijing and Canberra.

Another key export market, Britain, is in a hell of a mess over COVID-19, and it’s much the same across Europe. Although wine sales to New Zealand have grown in the last year, there aren’t enough thirsty Kiwis to make up the difference.

“It has created the situation where you are having a considerable amount of seriously good wine on the market here and the market here is less ready to pay the price the Chinese are, and now winemakers are going to have no option,” Mr Halliday said from his Yarra Valley home.

Celebrating her friend Tegan Tattersall’s hen’s party at Burleigh Hill on the Gold Coast, on Friday, Holly Pender, chose a traditional champagne, saying she was ­ecstatic they could finally come together.

“We’re so relieved that we can finally celebrate love and happiness all together and actually be with our friends,’’ Ms Pender said.

A standout of Mr Halliday’s Top 100 this year has been the dominance of smaller, family-owned wineries that produce fewer than 20,000 dozens of bottles. The industry has been ­benefiting from the up-until-now booming trade into China, with that money redirected into improving wineries to produce even higher quality wine.

In Tasmania a vanguard of young winemakers are fashioning a reputation for themselves as quality producers, adding to the reservoir of sublime wine Australian drinkers can reach for in the coming years.

“Tasmania is a place where there has been a bubble of young, or certainly not industry veterans … who are pretty well equipped and burning with desire,” Mr Halliday said.

“Len Evans used to hammer the table the whole time and say you can’t get complacent, you have to continue to aspire to make better wine all the time as otherwise you stand still and find you are going backwards.

“Pinot noir and chardonnay are the big two in Tasmania; riesling is also extremely good.”

In terms of value for money in his Top 100 this year, Margaret River in Western Australia was once again a superstar, Mr Halliday said.

“In a sense it is nothing new. Margaret River is really well known for its marvellous top-end and fully priced chardonnay and cabernet. But what it does also produce is sauvignon blanc, semillon and semillon sauvignon blanc. They do it far better than anywhere else in Australia. They really have this category nailed down. They are great food wines.”

Mr Halliday added that Australians were not paying enough attention to rose wine. “If you are going to an ethnic restaurant, it doesn’t really matter if it is Chinese or Lebanese, and you brought one wine that will basically match any dish served up then a rose is the answer,” he said.

Still stuck in the Yarra Valley, Mr Halliday will later this month conduct a virtual wine tasting for his Top 100 using wine-tech platform Junovate, and advises celebrating the end of COVID-19 and a vaccine with an Australian pinot noir or a riesling out of Canberra or Tasmania.

Some seriously good beers have been produced this year too. It’s like they’re all vying for our attention; the fight to be different has thrown everybody into overdrive.

The word unprecedented has been kicked around a lot in the past 12 months but some of the behaviours displayed during the pandemic were as old as time.

In the 11th century Arnold of Soissons recommended peasants stop drinking the local water and consume only his beer as a way of surviving the plague. Those that took his advice survived because the water for beer is boiled and free of the contaminants killing those who drank from the tap.

Arnold is the patron saint of hops and Belgian brewers and clearly has a lot of modern followers as local craft breweries reported record sales during lockdowns.

What was lost through the closure of pubs was more than gained in the demand from ­people who wanted to drink at home and wanted to drink local product.

Additional reporting: Emily Ritchie