The Power and the Passion: Wynns John Riddoch 1982-2019
BY ANGUS HUGHSON |
There are few more iconic Australian wine images than the ochre red soils of Coonawarra. Over thousands of years, rich iron deposits have been weathered away leaving only rust in their wake. These tongues of red soil fan out from Australia’s interior, but there are hardly any places where they reach the cooler, southern coastline. As the harvest approaches, those dark, friable soils starkly contrast against the green leaves and handfuls of intense ruby Cabernet Sauvignon fruit. This is Terra Rossa country.
Classic Coonwarra Terra Rossa over limestone soils.
Who Was John Riddoch?
At the end of the 19th century, it was a hardy Scotsman, John Riddoch, who first believed in this far-flung corner of South Australia, not only for wine but as an agricultural center for the country. Riddoch had the Midas touch and a rare eye, seemingly everything he touched turned to gold. Riddoch started out as a gold miner but rose to be a politician and one of South Australia’s largest landholders, with over 100,000 acres of land, much of which was devoted to sheep and wool. The cool and sometimes bitter local climate probably suited him well, a reminder of his roots.
During his early years on the goldfields, Riddoch had also been a wine merchant and the interest never left him. With grand plans to make the southeast a food bowl, he had his property surveyed and was the first to discover the valuable Coonawarra Terra Rossa soils. He was one of the earliest to bring science and knowledge into the establishment of Australian vineyards.
But it is not only the thin line of fertile, iron-laced soils rich in calcium and silica that makes Coonawarra what it is, but also what lies beneath - a layer of limestone from an ancient seabed that averages 50cm deep, but in some places sits close to the surface. Soils are free draining near the top, so the vines do not have ‘wet feet’. Unusually for a prime wine region, Coonawarra is also almost flat as a pancake, slowly rising toward its eastern border with most of the main vineyards only 60m above sea level, making the free draining soil profile absolutely essential to maintain quality. There is a water resource deep down that is accessible by older vines which helps the local wines keep their sleek shape, even in hot years.
The roots for Wynns Coonawarra Estate’s Cabernet Sauvignon John Riddoch were planted over a century ago in the 1890s. Today the wine is a modern Australian classic as illustrated by this full vertical tasting stretching back to the 1982 vintage. Fine, detailed and well structured, these long-lived Cabernet Sauvignons show more than just a passing resemblance to the best wines from the Left Bank and have their own, distinctive Coonawarra style.
