Here’s a wonderful piece by Nick Ryan recently published in The Australian about getting out there and trying new blends for a more exciting and refreshed Australian wine experience.

Wine: Escape from our bland old blends

Words by Nick Ryan

“Sometimes wine is a lot like a dance party organised by nuns.

You get strictly controlled segregation where intermingling is forbidden, or you get very limited, closely checked blending only after it has been decided both elements being brought together come from the right families from the right part of town.

And just like the participants in those parties, too many wine drinkers are depriving themselves of the thrills that can come from mixing things up a bit.

Most wine drinkers are still driven by the established ideas about individual grape varieties and their virtues.

Our first thoughts about what wine we want to drink begin with the 50-50 question we need to ask ourselves about colour; then, once we’ve opted for red or white, we invariably shape our decisions around variety.

In most cases a punter walking into a bottle shop uses variety as the first input into the matrix they build in the brain to help make a purchasing choice.

Most liquor stores are laid out in response to this, organised into varietal blocs so the customer can then start applying all the secondary filters such as region, vintage, producer and, in the peculiar case of a graphic designer mate of mine, label typeface that go into choosing one bottle over myriad others.

Many of our restaurant wine lists are just this same methodology presented in print.

It’s easy to see why.

In this country we’re a little too wedded to the idea that single variety wines are somehow a more pure, more cerebral, more serious manifestation of the vintner’s craft.

It’s an argument that can be mounted when you present great red burgundies, made solely from pinot noir, as evidence, but it falls down in the face of the complex blended wines of Bordeaux or the bottled consequences of the ampelographic orgies they conduct in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, where up to 18 varieties are permissible in the blended reds bearing the appellation’s name.

When we do opt for blended Australian wines, it’s most often those following well-worn templates, such as semillon with sauvignon blanc, cabernet with merlot, shiraz with its sidekicks grenache and mourvedre. And while these unions make sense because we know these varieties play nicely together, it’s a different kind of excitement at play when convention gives way to the shock of the new or unexpected.”

For those looking to break their bland wine cycle, our Topper’s Mountain Bricolage Blanc 2015 is one of our signature blends that’ll keep you wanting more. The 2015 contains four classic French varieties: Chardonnay which brings body and structure to the blend, Sauvignon Blanc and Gewurztraminer are responsible for the complex aromatics and flavours while the last contribution –  Petit Manseng adds a brisk acidity providing freshness and an extra kick in the finish.

We’re glad to see some more Australia wine makers beginning to offer some great blends!

topper's mountain wines bricolage Blanc 2015 white blend - Australian wine makers