“Mate, you need to recognise that young people don’t want the big bold chardonnays or the big Barossa shiraz varieties these days. Lighter wines are selling.”  Wine writer RICHARD CALVER was given a word to the wise. 

It was another cold, late afternoon in Canberra where the lure of the open fire and free wine tasting at the Hyatt was palpable.

This time it was Nick O’Leary Wines on taste. The winemaker was not able to be present, but his distributor in Canberra, represented by Mark Davis, was an able substitute to describe the wines on offer and provide a pour to the 20 or so people who attended the tasting.

This was another “Canberra is a village” moment as I’d met Mark previously at a presentation of a Hunter Valley winery’s array and mate Tom, who accompanied me, had known Mark for years. 

The village reference reminds me of the village idiot who walked into the local library and said to the librarian: “Excuse me, I’m looking for a book by Shakespeare.”
The librarian says: “Yes, of course, which one?”
The idiot says: “William”.

Anyway, on the night there were three whites and three reds on taste. Two rieslings started the tasting. This winery is renowned for the quality of the rieslings produced. 

The first on the night was the 2024 riesling that Mark told us was a Canberra regional blend from nine different sources. It had a lovely nose, flowers and citrus.

On first taste it had a real acid hit that ameliorated with the few minutes it had in the glass. It was a quaffer. 

The second was the 2023 Heywood Riesling from estate-grown grapes that also had a predominance of citrus, but more intense in both aroma and taste than the first riesling on offer. This wine finished more cleanly than the first and was one to put away to watch the complexity associated with ageing add even more character to the wine. 

The third wine on offer was the 2023 Tumbarumba chardonnay. This was definitely in the new style of chardonnay making and a young man in his twenties with whom we got chatting said it was, in his opinion, the best wine on offer that night.

I mentioned this to Mark, saying that I preferred more butter and more oak rather than the peachy, stone fruit characteristics of the offered wine. He said: “Mate, you need to recognise that young people don’t want the big bold chardonnays or the big Barossa shiraz varieties these days. Lighter wines are selling.” 

I’m sure he’s correct but I would still prefer to drink something like a Flying Fish Wildberry Reserve Chardonnay 2021, which I had recently purchased in an end-of-year sale at a discounted price. The oak and butter (from malolactic fermentation) make this chardonnay more to my taste than the new style that obviously appeals to a different, more youthful market.

The first of the reds was the 2023 Heywood Tempranillo. This wine is made from the Spanish varietal that is the main grape variety used to make Rioja, the food friendly wine I drank in abundance with tapas when I visited Spain over a decade ago.

The wine was bright at the front and finished with a hint of blackberry. It needed the food that we craved at this point in the evening, as Tom and I both agreed it was a food-friendly wine.

The two shiraz varieties on offer were the 2023 shiraz and the 2022 Heywood shiraz. Let’s say that we thought the 2023 needed more age but the 2022 was excellent, my pick of the wines for the night. It had a lovely savoury finish with a hint of pepper, medium weight and a glorious berry nose. This wine showed the quality of the wine making that delivers on the Canberra region’s great shiraz fruit. 

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. “ –John Ruskin