Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier: the making of a classic

Tim Kirk persuaded his dad to try something a little different at Clonakilla in the early ’90s - and it spawned a legendary wine which gets better every year.

Unusual view: looking straight down into the fermenter as the shiraz and viognier grapes are tipped in. Picture: David Reist

Tim Kirk was 24 when he visited ­Côte-Rôtie in France and tasted a wine that changed his life. In this corner of the northern Rhône ­valley, winemakers have a curious tradition of co-fermenting their shiraz with a little of the aromatic white grape viognier. Tasting that wine was a coup de foudre for young Kirk.

“I was totally smitten,” he says. He returned to Australia the following year, in 1992, with the kernel of an idea in his head. By chance, his father – Dr John Kirk, founder of Clonakilla in the Canberra District – had planted some viognier (then a little known variety in Australia) a few years previously, ­intending to make a straight white out of it.

Young Tim ­tentatively asked his old man if they might instead co-­ferment it with some shiraz, to try to recreate the vinous magic he’d tasted in Côte-Rôtie. “And to his eternal credit Dad said, “Alright, let’s give it a go.”

Well, talk about that bit of fatherly indulgence paying off. In the pages of this Drinks Issue you’ll read Nick Ryan rhapsodising about the “achingly beautiful” masterwork that is Clonakilla’s Shiraz Viognier.

This elegant, medium-bodied and beguilingly perfumed red is Clonakilla’s flagship drop, on which Tim Kirk – chief winemaker since 2003 – has built his reputation.

This image was shot by Clonakilla’s general manager David Reist, looking down into a one-tonne fermenter as viognier and shiraz grapes are poured in. (Curiously, it looks a little like an eclipse, don’t you think?) They’ll co-­ferment in there for three weeks, the native yeasts on the grape skins feasting on the sugary juice, before being pressed into French oak barrels.

In a good year, about two dozen individual batches – taken from different parts of Clonakilla’s 16ha of vineyards, each one expressing distinct characteristics – will be made. They’re kept separate in barrels, blind-tasted regularly to see how they’re developing, until about a year later, when it’s crunch-time in the winery: deciding which ones will be used in the final blend of the Shiraz Viognier.

Incidentally, you’ll probably notice a few stems among the grapes pictured. Up to a quarter of the shiraz is put in as whole bunches; the stems add a little character of their own in the ferment, Kirk explains. “Like a lot of our best winemaking ideas, we stole that from the French,” he laughs.