An old quip in the wine trade asks, "What do you get when you combine grape juice, brown sugar, white spirits and a few extra-large dollops of oak flavoring?" The answer, which should be obvious to anyone who has trawled the bargain-bin section of Japanese wine shops in the last few years, is "Shiraz, mate."
Fortunately, there are a few Australian winemakers who have, quite literally, risen above the fray. A prime case in point is Mountadam, which is perched atop a ridge more than 400 meters above the Barossa Valley floor in South Australia.
The location is no coincidence. After Australian winemaking scion David Wynn sold his Wynns of Coonawarra in the late 1960s (now owned by Southcorp), his dream was to grow the great Burgundy white varietal Chardonnay, which was then an unknown grape in Australia.