The Essence of Granite Belt Wine
by John Arlidge

It is time to revise the reputation of Queensland's premier wine district; to isolate the unique flavours of Granite Belt wines that define them. The Granite Belt's mountainous terrain has been tortured by time. Grapevines love this country and its extremes.

The district's icy winters and dry, warm summers - alien to other parts of Queensland and anathema to most of the state's vegetation - are kin to grapevines.
Roots fairly leap through the decomposed granite that passes for soil. Their woody canes are resilient to harsh sun, blasting winds and frigid mornings. Even hail, which plagues the district in spring and summer, only temporarily depresses these hardy plants.

The fruit that the vines produce when properly established and maintained, make superb wines and there is a growing band of people who believe that the Granite Belt will, in time, become known as one of Australia's most important wine regions.

To an extent, the wine quality required to catalyse this change is already being produced at a number of Granite Belt wineries - perhaps as many as half of them. The district's reputation, however, has yet to be revised by the wine consuming public.

That reputation which exists is a hangover from the days, 30 years ago, when Biltmore Cellars advertised "rough as guts" wines, made a virtue of adversity and encouraged an embryonic tourist trade from the passage of vehicles between Brisbane and Sydney via the New England Highway.
Some people - not connoisseurs, it should be said - found sport in delivering a bottle whose label proclaimed it the worst wine in the world, to set among the trendy Jacobs Creeks and Hardy's Eden Valley Moselles adorning party tables in the seventies. It was cheap too.

What the labels did not tell you was that, in the main, the fruit used to produce the wine were unsaleable table grapes. It was a clever way to trade cast-offs which could not be sold at market.

From that questionable base, a fine industry emerged, personified by the Puglisi family of Ballandean. They began, in like mind, turning otherwise unproductive fruit into wine, selling it in bulk to the guzzle and gag crowd. In time, the wine trade promised to become more than a sideline and the Puglisi's and others planted wine grapes to test the water. They upgraded wine-making equipment too.

Nevertheless, until the late 1980s the quality of the wine remained variable, due mainly to lack of experience, inappropriate viticultural (grape growing) techniques and a lack of investment capital.

When Ballandean Estate appointed its first professional winemaker, a graduate from South Australia's Roseworthy College, Rodney Hooper, he allegedly observed that Angelo Puglisi ran his winery like a transport depot, shifting wine between barrels, vats and tanks with the finesse of a panel beater. Since then, at Ballandean Estate and elsewhere, much has changed.

The quality of Angelo's wines is now generally excellent and he has lost count of the number of medals they have won, particularly his renowned Sylvaner dessert wine, said by one respected commentator to be the best of its type in the world.

The three drivers of change have been an increasing desire by consumers for better quality wines, modern winery equipment and practices, and new viticultural techniques. Having said that, the biggest selling wines on the Granite Belt remain sweeter white wines and Lambrusco style reds - nothing wrong with that, simply that people in the industry see more potential for elegance, power and complexity in the so-called "fine" or "premium" wines.

In the last five years, to produce premium wines has been the aspiration of most of the Granite Belt's producers, as the area sets about securing its own appellation, in the mould of Coonawarra, Hunter Valley, Barossa etc. In Australia, appellations are known as Geographical Indicators (GIs). The Granite Belt applied for its GI two years ago. It is expected to be granted by the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation early in 2001 and it will define the geography and the geology of Granite Belt wines.

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