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The Bernard
Hickin interview: Jacob's
Creek, with asides on closures, residual sugar and alcohol
Bernard Hickin (above) is group winemaker, and
along with Phil Laffer, he’s in charge of one of the world’s
leading wine brands, Jacobs Creek. He started working for Orlando
Wines in February 1976, the year that Jacobs Creek was first launched.
‘We were using Malbec then to soften it and make it an early release
style’, he recalls. ‘We just hit on this winning style which has
never changed’. He’d caught the wine bug a few years previously,
through a friend who worked at another winery, Tolley’s, near
Adelaide. Hickin visited the winery. ‘I’ll never forget the smell
of the red wines fermenting’, he reminisces, ‘and then I went into
a shed where Riesling was fermenting, and I smelt the citrus smell’.
Presumably, these memorable smells planted the seed that was to grow
into a great big winemaking tree. [Sorry, that metaphor sounds a bit
silly. Will try harder.]
I met up with him in London to talk about Jacobs Creek,
and try some of the wines. The UK is the largest market for Jacobs
Creek, one of the best known and longest-established of the Australian
wine brands. ‘The range is well loved by UK wine drinkers’, says
Hickin.
Now, though, Hickin and his team are focusing on what
is called, rather uglily, ‘premiumization’. In short, getting
people to spend more on their wine. A new range has been introduced,
called ‘Three Vines’, and which has a fresh contemporary approach
that Hickin describes as ‘mediterranean and food friendly’. More
fruit expression, less oak and moderate alcohol are the values here.
‘These are wines of the future’, says Hickin.
‘People love wine with food, they have busy lifestyles, and they
drink in moderation. People have started to think about alcohol
levels, but this wasn’t on the radar a few years ago’. The Three
Vines red is 13% alcohol, which puts it in the lower category when
compared with other Australian wines.
How have alcohol levels been reduced? ‘The biggest
gains we have had have been in the vineyard, focusing on optimal time
to harvest’, explains Hickin. ‘It has been a trend in Australia to
let fruit hang, going for full flavour concentration, but the grapes
can go beyond ripe flavours and just accumulate more sugars.’ He
reports that in 2007 there was a strong focus on harvesting red
varieties as soon as flavours were ripe, and the result was that they
got the reds in 0.7 degrees potential alcohol lower in this vintage.
The key is small incremental management decisions in
the vineyard. Canopies are prevented from becoming too dense, because
a little sunlight on the bunches is needed to help the grapes achieve
phenolic (or flavour) ripeness. Dappled light on the fruit is ideal.
They are careful not to overcrop: with a balanced vine, you are more
likely to get the grapes ripening at the same time. Also important is
keeping the vine reasonably healthy and not letting the leaves die.
There are other options for bringing alcohol back:
Jacobs Creek are collaborating with the Australian Wine Research
Institute to look at developing yeast strains that ferment less
efficiently, and don’t produce as much alcohol for the same amount
of sugar. These are not genetically modified yeasts, though, because
the market won’t accept this (and Australians aren’t allowed to
use them in wine). ‘If we can get yeast to produce 0.5% less
alcohol, that will be significant’, says Hickin.
They also do a bit of reverse osmosis (a sophisticated
technique for removing alcohol from wine), although this is not
common. ‘From a purist winemaking view this is a reactive process,
not a proactive process. I think it’s best to go back to the
vineyard’, says Hickin, ‘because you end up with a more balanced
product’.
Hickin also talked about the use of grape juice
concentrate to sweeten up commercial wines a little during blending.
While this is commonplace in the world of branded wines, Jacobs Creek
stand out for actually making dry wines without any sweetness. ‘If
you have credible fruit expression there’s almost a perceived fruit
sweetness’, explains Hickin. ‘People can think the wine is sweet.
Sometimes we do add a bit of sweetness with Riesling, but only 1–2
grams per litre’. He adds that, ‘varietal fruit expression has
credibility rather than wines tricked up with residual sugar’.
Like most Australian brands, the Jacobs Creek wines are
sealed with screwcaps. What’s the key to avoiding the problems of
screwcap reduction that have been much talked about in the press?
[These are problems with smelly sulphur-containing compounds which can
change their chemistry when tin-lined screwcaps, which allow very
little oxygen ingress to the sealed bottle, are used – the result
can be an off odour, which at low level smells of matchstick or struck
flint, and which at higher levels can smell of burnt rubber or even
rotten drains.] ‘We
use low-sulfide-producing strains of yeast, and check the nitrogen
levels in the must’, Hickin explains. ‘We monitor FAN [free
available nitrogen] and never stress the yeasts. We also don’t want
too high a cell count of yeasts, which can strip the fruit – if you
have twice as many soldiers in an army, they all start smelling.’ To
do this Hickin avoids adding diammonium phosphate (known simply as
DAP; a nitrogen source) until the yeasts are hungry. ‘We wait until
the nitrogen source has almost run out, we don’t add too much, and
the timing of additions is important’. This practice minimizes the
need for copper additions at the end of fermentation. Copper is
commonly used as a fining agent to remove unwanted mercaptans, but its
increasing use since the advent of screwcaps has come under fire,
first of all because of the health implications of putting a heavy
metal in wine, and secondly because it can strip out some of the
‘good’ sulfur-containing compounds.
Less
of the techno talk. What about the wines? The Jacob’s Creek consists
of four different ranges. There’s good old Jacob’s Creek, the
newer Three Vines Range, then the Reserve range, and finally the
Heritage Range (serious high-end wines that previously used to be
labelled with the Orlando name). Here are my notes.
Jacob’s
Creek Steingarten Riesling 2003 Barossa
This high-end Riesling has a cult following in Australia. Very dry
mineralic style that’s quite precise, with powerful lime and lemon
flavours. There’s some richness to the fruit with a rounded, almost
honey-like character and some nice acidity keeping things tight. Lots
of promise for the future. 92/100
Jacob’s
Creek Reserve Chardonnay 2005 South Australia
From regions such as Padthaway, Adelaide Hills and Langhorne
Creek, with 12–15% new oak and 70% malolactic. Quite a warm, nutty,
toasty nose with tropical fruit notes. The palate is quite creamy,
mealy and rounded with a soft buttery character. Rich and full of
flavour. 88/100
Jacob’s
Creek Three Vines Rosé 2006
Jacob’s Creek found they had too much red wine, and so started
using premium red vineyards to make rosé. They suddenly got wines
with incredible fruit characteristics. This is a red pink colour and
has bright sweet cherry and boiled sweet flavours, with some raspberry
notes. Quite dry. 86/100
Jacob’s
Creek Three Vines Red 2006
A blend of Shiraz, Cabernet and Tempranillo. In Australia
Tempranillo is very soft, and gives a more savoury mouthfeel too: the
proportion in this wine is around 20%. Vibrant dark fruit nose is
sweet and berryish. The palate is juicy and berryish with a supple
fruity character and some spice on the finish. 86/100
Jacob’s
Creek Reserve Shiraz 2005 South Australia
Sweet black fruits nose with a bit of cassis as well as some spicy
meaty notes. It’s plummy on the palate with rich fruit and a minty,
spicy note from the American oak. Juicy and full with an authentic
Australian character. 89/100
Jacob’s
Creek Johann Shiraz Cabernet 2001 South Australia
The ‘icon’ wine in the heritage range, this blends Shiraz
(mainly from Barossa) aged in American oak with Cabernet (from
Coonawarra) aged in French oak. It’s deep, dark, spicy and cedary,
with a slightly earthy edge to the dark plum and blackcurrant fruit
nose. The palate is dense and full with minty, menthol, spicy notes
and concentrated dark blackberry and plum fruit. A traditional
Australian style of wine that will age very nicely. 93/100
see
also: blog entries on Australian
wine
A
more recent article on the Jacob's Creek range (from January 2012)
Wines tasted 10/07
Find
these wines with wine-searcher.com
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