Clarendon Hill Reds

Wine
production got its start 167 years ago in McLaren Vale, 22
miles south of Adelaide in South Australia. Its ups, of its
many ups and downs, can be credited to men named Reynell,
Hardy, Kelly, Manning, and Penfold. Now we can add a rather
un-Australian name to the illustrious list, Roman Bratasiuk,
the owner/winemaker of Clarendon Hills.

The Vale is warm
and sunny enough to ensure rich and complex flavors in most
vintages, and has enough marine influence to inject elegance
and balance. It contains the poor soil and old vineyards
necessary for the production of arresting wines. The right
conditions, of course, need the right person to harness
them.

Roman Bratasiuk
came to Boston recently, bearing tasting samples of his
wines. He is of Ukrainian descent. His family did not drink
wine. Burly and ruggedly handsome, he resembles Viktor
Yushchenko, the new president of Ukraine (before the dioxin
assault). With a background in biochemistry and a cleareyed
vinous vision, Bratasiuk has, in just 15 years, taken a
place in the world’s pantheon of great red-wine
makers.

The vines are
mostly old, many having reached four score and beyond. The
vineyards are on rocky hillsides or poor sandy soil, often
at about 3OO meters of altitude. The vines grow on their own
roots – no Phylloxera here. They are not irrigated. Yields
are very low. All of the wines are red, each made from a
single varietal grown in a single vineyard. They express
their individual terroirs, but they perforce express
Bratasiuk as well. The small, thick-skinned, concentrated,
hand-picked berries are put through a long maceration before
fermentation with wild (indigenous) yeasts. The wines are
neither fined nor filtered. They spend 18 months in French
oak barrels, generally one-and two-year-old for Grenache,
predominately new French oak for Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon
and Merlot. The wines take about six years, on average, to
mature, then last for many more years. The contracted
vineyards yield 8OO to1OOO cases of each wine, giving
Clarendon Hills a total annual production of between 1O,OOO
and 15,OOO cases, of which 98 percent is exported. Half goes
to the US. Commonwealth Wine & Spirits, Inc., of
Mansfield, Massachusetts, is the new American national
importer.

Of the 16 wines
produced, five are Grenache (an often disrespected and
troublesome variety), one is Merlot, three Cabernet
Sauvignon, and seven Syrah. Bratasiuk is planting his own
35-acre Syrah vineyard in addition. Given the low yields and
the hands-on intensity of producing small quantities of
concentrated wines, the rising value of the Australian
dollar against the American, and a new national importer,
one would expect the wines to be costly. Grenache retails
for $6O to $96; Merlot for $55, Cabernet Sauvignon $59 to
$63, and Syrah $63 to $323. Those are net bottle
prices.