Ed Carr and House of Arras, exciting sparkling wines from Tasmania

Website: https://houseofarras.com.au/

The sparkling wine conversation has been dominated by Champagne for so long, but now this is changing. Other regions and styles are now being taken seriously.

Perhaps the leading figure in Australian sparkling wine is Ed Carr, who was in charge of Constellation’s (more recently Accolade’s) sparkling wine program, including Arras in Tasmania. Recently, Accolade sold Arras in 2023, and Ed stayed with them.

Ed Carr

Ed has been impressed by the longevity of the Tasmanian sparkling wines, and in London was showing a wine from 2004 disgorged in 2020 with 15 years on lees, and it was still bright and fresh. This was aged under a crown cap with a normal liner.

‘Caps is something we are still working on,’ says Ed. ‘We always have trials with caps, and we haven’t found one that performs better than the one that we are using. The one we are using has a relatively high oxygen transfer liner. We found that the lower oxygen transfer ones seem to shut the wine down: it doesn’t move.’

What is the current trajectory of Australian sparkling? ‘I think the top end is going really well. But the commercial end has always been made to a price. They are good, honest, fruity styles but they don’t push any boundaries.’

‘There are two areas that make really good sparkling. Tasmania is number one. It is nearly 4000 hectares under vine now and 47% goes to sparkling. I think all the producers in Tasmania have settled in on their house style now and are pursuing this, which is good. The other area that excites me but in a very different style is Orange. It is a very different style because of the climate. Most of those vineyards are at 800-1000 m.’

Do they have a compressed growing season? ‘They have frost risk and they have had a bit of hail risk recently,’ says Ed. ‘It is just that entirely different structure that you get from that high-altitude climate.’ The summers are dry here, but they are also quite dry in Tasmania.

‘Because of the rain shadow effect of the highlands on the western coast, Tasmania is quite dry. The Hobart rainfall is less than Adelaide.’

If you want to make high-quality traditional method sparkling, what are the viticultural keys? Is it getting flavour at low potential alcohol? ‘At Arras we pick a little bit riper than most. We pick at about 11.5%. We really want to avoid any herbaceous characters, and any of that fennel character. In Australia if you pick too early you get a greenness.’

‘Tasmania is very cool, but the sunlight is very strong because the air is so clear: there is no pollution. We have to protect the fruit a bit from the sun. We want to get dappled light onto the fruit. If the grapes don’t get any light they stay this herbaceous horrible green characters. By getting dappled light in we can avoid sunburn. It depends on the row orientation: if they are north-south, then we will leaf pluck on the east side because the morning sun is less intense.’

‘Arras was sold as a brand by Accolade in 2023. It was bought by a family-owned group called Handpicked Wines. They are a very premium, wine-focused group. They have bought all the tirage stock and all the finished goods. It is a whole new world.’

‘When I was with Accolade I was making other brands, and we made some of those in the hot regions, mainly the Riverlands. A few of the growers there were using Kaolin, but it wasn’t that popular. They tried to push more water into the vine and push growth.’

‘Andrew Pirie is still a strong supporter of the Scott-Henry system, but otherwise everything is VSP. There are some Lyre, but they are very expensive to manage.’

What would your ideal analysis be? ‘I work in Baume, so about 11.5 Baume, with acids sub 12 g/l so 10 is good. pH 3.1-3.2. And we achieve this most of the time.’

They don’t add acid, but have a couple of times with pressings. ‘On free run we have never added acid and we are doing 100% malolactic fermentation.’

Do they have a malic acid? This year was one of the highest. We normally get between 3.5 and 4.5 g/l. They inoculate for malolactic. We can’t afford to wait. We inoculate and hopefully get the strain we want going, and get them through quickly. We inoculate right on the end of primary fermentation, and we have to hold them warmer because we are going into winter. We have a lot of heating in the winery so we like to get them through quickly. If we are lucky we get 1 g/l per week and get them through in a month. But there is usually a lag phase of two weeks before they start.

When it comes to pressing, are you picking everything in small crates or macrobins? ‘Everything is in half ton bins, and we get around 400 kg in a bin.’

They use normal bag presses. They hand pick into the crates, and start picking as early as possible in the morning, and the grapes are pressed overnight. ‘We run the first 50 litres a ton off, then 450-500 will be the heart juice, and when the winemakers think the tannins are starting to ramp up they will cut. We fine all our juices: we want to set them up for primary fermentation properly, and we don’t like to do too much adjusting afterwards,’ says Ed. They use a bit of carbon and some gelatine.

They make it complicated with the juice clarification. ‘We want to ferment on solids, so maybe 150 NTU. We settle the juice, rack it, fine it, and filter it back onto the solids.’ They go through a cross flow and squeaky clean juice goes back onto the solids.

They use up to 10% oak for the base wines. ‘Particularly for the vintage level we use a lot of new French oak. We want to get tannin and structure from oak, and we have gone down the track of using a smaller percentage of new oak rather than a larger percentage of old oak. We find this gives an entirely different result.’

They try to get into tirage within the calendar year. ‘This year we tiraged a bit late because we had trouble getting our malos through.’

They are starting to build a reserve program. ‘We started in 2016. We have been using 2800 litre foudres. We used the 2016 this year.’  They keep the base wine blend itself by vintage. ‘The blend we are doing is a Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and we just put the whole blend back into the reserve.’

‘We also looked at reserve wine in stainless steel but we decided against that. We really liked the character we were getting in the large format oak, but it takes six years minimum. They are all new foudres so we are fermenting in them a couple of times to get some of the oak out of them. They are François Frères.’

‘We are strong believers of cork ageing,’ says Ed. ‘We only do it post disgorgement at the moment. I find the evolution of the wine is entirely different. It is amazing how much difference crown caps make, as well. We have another range of trials looking at five different crown caps at the moment. We have to assess them over three or four years.’

When it comes to disgorgement, do you like dosage? ‘We don’t have a number in our head,’ says Ed. ‘The closest we have gone to zero dosage is about 2 g/l.’

For the liqueur, they can use oaked wine or unoaked wine. For the rosé they might use a red wine liqueur to fine-tune the colour: they use carbonic maceration to get colour but not tannin. ‘We are looking to get a balance between sugar, acid and tannin. It is amazing how much difference [the liqueur] can have, even though we are adding 10-12 ml per bottle. It does that final tuning. Probably in the younger wines we may add a brandy spirit: it sometimes works, it sometimes doesn’t. It adds a bit of this waxiness to the palate.’

Is time under cork after disgorgement important? ‘Yes, we hold all of these a minimum of six months before they leave the warehouse. I like them with longer age.’

THE WINES

House of Arras ‘A by Arras’ Pinot Noir Chardonnay Pinot Meunier NV Tasmania
2017 and 2018 fruit, with a dosage of 4 g/litre. Very lively and bright with lovely precision, showing fine toast and some spiciness. Has depth and finesse with richness but also balance. 91/100

House of Arras ‘A by Arras Rosé’ Pinot Noir Chardonnay Pinot Meunier NV Tasmania
From 2017 and 2018, with 5% red wine in the blend. Pale pink/orange in colour, this shows lovely focus with cherry, pear and citrus fruit. There’s brightness here as well as depth. Very stylish. 91/100

House of Arras Blanc de Blancs Chardonnay NV Tasmania
80% of this is 2017 and 2018 fruit, with some 2-5 year old reserve Blanc de Blancs in the blend. Dosage is 5 g/litre. Lovely weight here with pear and white peach with some toastiness. Has freshness but also depth. 90/100

House of Arras Brut Elite Cuvée 1601 Chardonnay Pinot Noir NV Tasmania
Fine toast, herbs and spice on the nose with some mandarin. Very fine and taut with complexity. Some toasty development but still very fresh. 93/100

House of Arras Brut Elite Rosé Cuvée 1801 Pinot Noir Chardonnay Pinot Meunier NV Tasmania
Hand picked grapes and free-run juice only, 4 years on lees. Lively, bright focused nose is very fresh and fine. Toasty, bright, herby, spicy palate with citrus and a nice acid line. Fine. 93/100

House of Arras Grand Vintage Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2015 Tasmania
65% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir, 7 years on lees, 3 g/l dosage. Fine focused and linear with lovely brightness to the sophisticated pear and citrus fruit. Fine palate is slightly saline with pure linear fruit and some toast. Real finesse here. 95/100

House of Arras Vintage Rosé Pinot Noir Chardonnay 2014 Tasmania
5% red wine, 7 years on lees, 3 g/l dosage. Taut cherry, lemon and mandarin fruit with some fine spices. Elegant but also has depth of flavour, showing great precision and finesse. 95/100

House of Arras Blanc de Blancs Vintage Chardonnay 2014 Tasmania
Best selection of Chardonnay matured in top oak, with a dosage of 3 g/litre. Very fine and expressive with lovely purity and some toastiness. There’s powerful citrus fruit here: taut with some waxy, saline detail and real brightness. Nice intensity. 95/100

House of Arras Blancd de Blancs Museum Release 2004 Tasmania
Disgorged in March 2020 after 15 years on lees. 405 bottles. 2 g/l dosage. Complex and taut with nice intensity of creamy, spicy citrus fruit. Powerful with some nuts, wax and cherry notes in the mix. This shows nice intensity and real complexity: very fine. 96/100