Tasting wines

Tarrra Warra Winery, in the Yarra Valley

The Yarra Valley, Victoria, September 24, 2014—

WE TOOK A DRIVE under overcast skies up the broad Yarra Valley today, intent on lunch and an introduction to Victoria's best wines. The valley is reminiscent of Sonoma county, I'd say, though much more varied as to agriculture. Much of the land is too low and wet, in season, for grapevines, and is left to grazing and I suppose hay production. The architecture ranges from the simple utilitarian, not greatly in evidence, to the modern and ambitious — just as in California, the wealthier the house, the more ambitious the architectureWe started with lunch, at Yering Station, whose fine old 19th-century barn sat lonely, I thought, in an immaculate and pleasant landscape looking at a magnificent glassed-in restaurant whose white-tablecloth tables were generously and formally distributed in a large room whose ceiling must have been twenty feet high, above windows looking out over the valley.

Of the wines on offer the Marsanne=Viognier-Roussane jumped out at me and we ordered a bottle: smooth, a bit complex, subtly made. I ordered a duck egg salad, accompanied by polenta toasts and shavings of Parmesan cheese; and since there were four of us at table (not counting one-year-old Lola, who did a good job with the bread) we ordered side dishes: Brussels sprouts with pork cracklings, French-fried potatos, a barley-and-cauliflower terrine. I liked my egg and the sprouts and the "chips," but didn't try the terrine, whose cauliflower would have suited the wine even less, I thought, than did the Brussels sprouts and the egg — though in the event the wine had enough going for it to overcome the dubious pairing.

After lunch we walked through a pleasant grove of geometrically planted topiary elms, something I've never seen before, to the tasting room, where we went through eighteen or twenty wines: the Marsanne blend, Chardonnays, Pinot noirs, and Syrahs of various ages, drawn from various adjacent vineyard lots. I was struck with the quality of these wines, assembled with great care from plantings thoughtfully respectful of terroir and exposure. The wines were very good indeed and not extraordinarily expensive, I suppose, though well beyond my daily budget.

• Yering Station, 38 Melba Highway, Yarra Glen; +61.3.9730.0100

Next we drove to TarraWarra Estate, whose imposing art gallery you see in the photograph above. Alas we had by now no time for art: we proceeded directly to the tasting, going through a similar range of Marsanne blends, Chardonnays, Pinot noirs, and Shiraz. If Yering Station's wines made me think of the best of the Napa valley, the wines here took me to the best of Dry Creek: fully authentic, deep, complex, full-bodied but not overwhelming.

The Chardonnays and Pinot noirs were as close to Burgundy as the Australian terroir would permit, I thought, and the Marsannes and Shiraz approached the best of the Rhone. There wasn't a wine I wouldn't buy by the case if I had the money, and by California standards (not to mention Burgundy!) they weren't prohibitively expensive. Alas, there seems to be no American importer. The very engaging young man pouring the wines suggested there wasn't enough wine to capture an importer, and that the image of Australian wine we form in the States, based on Yellowtail and such, had hurt the Australian reputation, much as Gallo had slowed the acceptance of California wines fifty years ago.

•TarraWarra Estate, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Victoria; +61.3.5957.3510