Zema Estate Cluny Cab Merlot: trad and true

There’s nothing flashy or funky about Zema Estate’s wines, but there doesn’t need to be.

When discussing fickle businesses with short attention spans, the fashion industry invariably gets a good run.

After all, the clue is in the name.

But the rag trade has serious competition from the wine business when it comes to the promiscuity of its affections.

Like fashion, most of the trendsetting is done at the pointy end.

Top-line restaurants and cutting-edge wine bars are the bou­tiques of booze, seeking out the next hip trend to which they can apply some margin.

Wine writers differ from their fashion writing peers in body shape and dress sense but share damaged livers and an awareness that the “next big thing” is an easier story to write than the old campaigner quietly going about their business.

Meanwhile, in the real world, people buy their socks and jocks at Target and the wine in boxed bladders.

Much of the work being done to promote Australian wine internationally by the industry body charged with doing so is focused on the hip and happening winemaking movement producing a diverse range of wines that somehow squeezes under the broad umbrella branded “the new Australia”.

It’s easy to see why.

This new breed of “artisan” winemakers, with their lo-fi life­styles and wispy wines, provides valuable contrast to the unfortunate stereotypes that had been applied to Australian wine in vital export markets.

The first wave of international success for Australian wine back in the 1980s was built on technical proficiency and bang for buck, but clean and commercial eventually became boring and technical in the eyes of influencers.

The second wave came in the late 90s and was worse. Seduced by the power of an American critic who liked his wines turbocharged, the Australian propensity to take good things and turn them into huge caricatures — think the Big Pineapple, Big Prawn, Big Banana — was applied to shiraz and before too long an entire winemaking nation was dismissed as purveyors of alcoholic jam.

So it’s not surprising to see industry body Wine Australia attempt to reinvent itself in foreign markets, and there’s no doubt this wild and woolly band of winemakers has good stories to tell and exciting wines to pour.

But what about the dags of the wine business, those who are about as hip as a knee, the ones who quietly keep producing really good wines in much the same way as they always have?

It would be a shame to lose sight of those who are like slabs of granite when it comes to floating on the fickle winds of fashion: people such as the Zemas of Coonawarra in South Australia.

At the top of the back labels of each bottle of wine they produce, just under the name Zema Estate, are printed the words “Traditional Coonawarra”. To a new generation of sommeliers and wine drinkers, that could just as easily read “May contain traces of shoulder pads and big hair”.

When the Zemas produced their first wines back in 1982, Coonawarra was home to some of the most desirable vineyard dirt in the country, and the variety that performed best in that prized red dirt was in-demand cabernet sauvignon.

A lot has changed in the 35 years since. New regions have risen to prominence and the nation’s thirst for cabernet has waned.

But the family’s dedication to their vineyards hasn’t wavered in that time, and their understanding of the wines they make from those vineyards has quietly evolved rather than been radically reworked.

There’s nothing flashy or funky about them.

But there doesn’t need to be.

A lot of the excitement of wine is in exploring something new, but wine also can be about the comfort of safe havens.

A wine such as the 2013 Zema Estate Cluny Cabernet Merlot is one of those safe havens.

A Bordeaux-style blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot with small splashes of malbec and cabernet franc for seasoning, this is a beautifully supple and balanced wine built on brambly mulberry and red currant fruit characters underpinned by violets and cedar. Fine tannins, judicious oak and the outrageously old-fashioned idea that a $25 wine can be indulged with 14 months in oak and 30 more in bottle before being released make this a wine that transcends fashion.