Wine of the Week – Fiano Spreads its Wings

Hancock & Hancock Home Vineyard – photo courtesy of the winery.

I like Fiano. It is a fabulous white grape from Campania in southern Italy. Campania is a great region, centred on Naples it produces some of Italy’s most exciting wines, using a palate of high quality indigenous grapes including Fiano. The best examples are widely considered to be those from vineyards on the volcanic slopes around the town of Avellino. Fiano di Avellino is a DOCg and is a prestigious, fine and mineral dry white, while other examples from Campania, grown on non-volcanic soils, tend to be softer and easier to drink.

Fiano is an ancient variety that is believed to have been used to make the famous Apianum wine in Roman times. Back then the grape was known as Vitis Apiana beacuse it apparently attracted bees (apis). Of all Campania’s whites I find the best Fiano to be the most refined and most balanced in terms of fruit and acidity.

Fiano is also found in other parts of Campania, including the Sorrento peninsula, and Puglia – the heel of Italy. I was vaguely aware that a few people grew the grape else where. Jenny Dobson makes one at Bush Hawk Vineyards in New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay, but it seems that Australia has really taken this, slightly exotic grape to its heart and around 70 producers have now started making examples of Fiano – which is hardly surprising as Italian food and Mediterranean style is big down under, so Fiano would be a perfect accompaniment.

Well, recently I tasted – actually retasted – one that excited me so much that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Chris Hancock.

Map of South Eastern Australia, McLaren Vale is to the south of Adelaide – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

2016 Hancock & Hancock Home Vineyard Fiano
Hancock & Hancock
McLaren Vale
South Australia

For the second week running I am telling you bout an Australian take on a Mediterranean classic. It is a bit more widely made than last week’s Montepulciano, but it is still pretty rare. Which is a pity, because it seems to suit the climate superbly, as well as the cuisine.

Many times while in Australia last year I enjoyed some simply cooked prawns, Moreton Bay Bugs or clams with garlic and oil and lemon together with a glass of white wine made from a suitably Mediterranean grape variety – my favourite place for such delights was Claypots Evening Star in South Melbourne Market and my favourite grape was Fiano, although there was one Assyrtiko as well, more of which another day.

Chris and his brother John Hancock have owned their Home Vineyard in McLaren Vale for over 10 years now. They farm some 80 year old Grenache and Shiraz, together with Cabernet and Touriga, as well as having a 2 hectare plot of Fiano that was head grafted, in situ, onto Chardonnay in 2012. Chris Hancock, who is an honourary Master of Wine, worked with Robert Oatley for many years and Chris is still involved with the Robert Oatley company which distributes his Hancock & Hancock wines.

A part of this was fermented in neutral, old, oak barrels to give roundness and volume rather than flavour, but most was fermented in stainless steel at low temperatures.

To look at the wine has a crystalline purity about it, then on the nose it has nectarine and white peach together with some lemon zest, dry honey and herbs. On the palate there slots of fruit giving a juiciness which is then balanced by freshness and a little taut minerality in the background. The texture is succulent, ever so slightly creamy even which together with the lemon, stone fruit and touch of herbs makes it delicious and very drinkable.

It is light and crisp enough to be refreshing, yet juicy enough and succulent enough to feel interesting and more complex. In a kind of way it shows the ripeness of the place it is from and some the beguiling minerality of the grape, which gives it an inbuilt tension. Lovely with fish,chicken, Mediterranean food, or just to drink on its own – 91/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £14 per bottle from:
The Oxford Wine Company, Farnham Wine Cellar, Flagship Wines, The Wine Reserve, Drinkfinder, Amazon.co.uk, Eynsham Cellars, Luvians Bottleshop, Ann et Vin, Warren Wines & Amp Fine Wines.

Wine of the Week 27 – amazing value dry Riesling

I love Riesling. It is one of the best white grapes in the world and it produces such a wonderful variety of wines that it pains me that more consumers do not love it as I do. It still seems to evoke laughable images of the 1970s and Liebfraumilch for many people, but what those people have to remember is that all the things they find funny about the 1970s now, were not funny then. Their younger selves – or their parents – actually liked wearing safari jackets and flares, eating chicken kiev and drinking Blue Nun – get over it I say.

It also might interest you to know though that Blue Nun never had any Riesling in it and most Liebfraumilch and cheap German wine was – and is – made from Müller-Thurgau grapes and not Riesling at all.

Riesling can be stylish, classy, refined and elegant and what’s more a great many are dry. If you want dry wines made from Riesling, then drink Riesling from Alsace, Austria, Washington State or Chile. All these places are produce some superb dry Riesling, but my Wine of the Week this week is cracking dry Riesling from the Clare Valley in South Australia. If the delights of Riesling have so far eluded you, but you enjoy Grüner Veltliner or Albariño, do give this wine a try, you might well enjoy it.

Clare Valley Vines at Taylors Wine. Photo courtesy of Taylors Wines.

Map of South Eastern Australia – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

2013 Aldi The Exquisite Collection Riesling
Clare Valley
South Australia
Riesling was once the work horse white grape of Australia and it is still widely grown. However, two areas of South Australia have really made a speciality of it and now produce superb premium Riesling in their own unique style, although many other grape varieties are planted there too. These wine regions are the Eden Valley and the Clare Valley.
Clare is probably the most famous and produces the iconic style of Australian Riesling, dry, medium-bodied and with lots of fruit balancing the grape’s natural acidity. They normally appear richer than their European counterparts and often have an oily character to them.
If you read the small print on the label you will see that this wine is made by Taylors Wines, who are a large, but very good quality family run producer that exports under the Wakefield label to avoid confusion with the Port house. 

Strangely the Clare Valley is not that cool, it actually has a Mediterranean climate, but the nights are cool and together with the height of the vineyards – around 350-400 metres above sea level – this ensures the wines retain their freshness, acidity and balance. It is an area of gently rolling hills in fact and not strictly speaking a valley at all, but it is very beautiful.

The nose is enticing and glorious with the freshness of lime and lime zest, some grapefruit and tangerine too and there is something mineral and stony about it as well. It smells fresh, vibrant and pristine, but has a little oily, waxy richness too.
The palate has lots of zing and fat, ripe fruit too. It has lovely, mouthwatering acidity making it clean, and crisp, as well as a juicy quality to the fruit; apples, pears and white peach, together with lemon and lime zest on the finish and some steely minerality.
Really good stuff that is just perfect as an aperitif or with light meals, fish dishes, shellfish and it is really good with most Asian cuisine – anything you dip into sweet chilli sauce in fact  – 88/100 points, this scores high for value and tastes much more expensive than it is.

I don’t like the label of this wine or The Exquisite Collection name Aldi have given the range, it’s a pretty terrible name, but who cares if the wine is this good?

 Available in the UK at £6.99 per bottle from Aldi.

I will certainly make sure that I have some of this on hand over Christmas, it is utterly delicious and a bargain at that.