Wilson Vineyard | NEWS AND TRIVIA FILE

Is Australian winemaking losing its way? Our winemaking is becoming technically more sophisticated, which means that our winemakers are being trained to use only the left half of their brain.

So who or what was Leucothea? Quite literally she was the "White Goddess" vital to the very origins of wine itself. When we take a look at a bank of shining stainless steel wine tanks hooked up to every conceivable nic-nac in the modern winery, we forget that wine had its origins in the religious rites of a very primitive humanity. Within the primitive psyche of our ancestors there was a craving for ecstasy, and this was met through the intercession of a deity that the Greeks called Dionysus. The Romans adopted Dionysus and called him Bacchus.

Where humanity has got itself in a mess is that it thinks that because it can split atoms, that its psyche is no longer primitive and therefore has no need of mystic right brain stimulation. Evolution doesn't work that fast.

Our mind still works exactly the same as it did when we were cave dwellers. So, indulge first in a little ,mythology. Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, pursued by the jealousy of Hera, was raised, disguised as a girl by Ino. Hera was the wife of Zeus, and had a particularly nasty jealous and vindictive streak in relation to Zeus' other women and the children of those unions. Hera drove Ino mad, and drove her to jump into the sea. Dionysus rewarded Ino by changing her into the White Goddess - Leucothea.

Your second indulgence is the wine itself, which defies the established "rules" of winemaking. As far as we can determine, no-one else has produced a fortified dessert gewurztraminer.

Someone once said that gewurztraminer was the "chardonnay of the seventies". Late in that decade we went with the trend and planted a small plot. By the early eighties it was quite clear that the variety was not destined for great things in Australia.

The solution was to graft our gewurztraminer - but to what? We decided that pinot noir was the way to go. Like most things in winemaking there is a learning curve, and our next discovery was that the grafting success of pinot on gewurztraminer was not too flash.

Maybe that was fortuitous, because now it was clear that pinot noir was not the way to go either. Now we had a plot of vineyard that was about 70% gewurztraminer, and 30% pinot noir.

The 80s was definitely the decade of the chardonnay. We'd graft the gewurztraminer to chardonnay first, then come back later and re-graft the pinot noir.

The chardonnay on gewurztraminer was not a roaring success either, and so we ended up with a part of the vineyard randomly producing black, white, and pink (gewurztraminer) grapes.

It was an annual source of amusement to our pickers as we tried to keep the various colours separate. What to do with the gewurztraminer was something of a problem. In 1991 we hit upon the idea that as gewurztraminer was similar to muscat, that it was worth fortifying. We did, and were quite surprised with the results.

In the next season we cut the pinot noir and chardonnay back to ground level, and trained the shoots of the original gewurztraminer vines back up to the wire.

Tasting notes
Colour: deep gold
Nose: aromas of toffee and marmalade
Palate: the toffee and marmalade are joined by marzipan. Rich and smooth, and although quite a sweet wine, one that finishes dry.

When to have Leucothea? We found that it went well with freshly roasted chestnuts. As a dessert wine it teamed well with a ginger pudding.

Quantities of Leucothea are quite small, although there will be more released in future years. We have packaged it in 375ml bottles, using a distinctive clear glass in a tall and heavy style. As a finishing touch we have sealed the cap using crude bees' wax.