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I have always thought of Heathcote Shiraz as an emerging classic regional wine style. However at a recent Gourmet Traveller WINE Magazine tasting, I found the overall quality on offer quite erratic making it very difficult to identify a regional footprint.
Jasper Hill has been Heathcote’s leading secondary market performer for well over a decade. Both Emily’s Paddock and Georgia’s Paddock have proven cellaring potential; the best vintages are both powerful and exquisite. But one great wine producer does not define a wine region.
In recent times another Heathcote producer Wild Duck Creek has grabbed headlines on the secondary wine market for its Duck Muck Shiraz – a highly pointed cult wine – of the Parkerised kind – which regularly notches up astonishing auction values. This remarkable wine is so densely packed with fruit and tannins, it is almost as solid as paneforte. It is a wine that Dave “Duck” Anderson would describe as an “ambulance induced wine”, a “firecracker in a glass” or a wine that would “wound you”.
Duck Muck is hardly a shrinking violet. It’s more like an explosive that promises to rip off the lining of your mouth. No doubt on a freezing cold night it would warm your cockles but at $1000 a bottle during it’s hey day (the 1997 now achieves around $500 at auction today) it would be cheaper buying a heater!
Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz – Heathcote, Victoria
Wild Duck Creek’s single vineyard Spring Flat Shiraz, on the other hand, is a more serious wine and has been slowly building up interest from collectors for some years. Across vintages the wine is strongly flavoured and pleasingly balanced with chocolaty graphite aromas, plenty of fruit richness, volume of fruit, dense ripe tannins and well balanced new oak.
Father and son winemaking team Dave and Liam Anderson take a fairly laissez faire approach to winemaking. The vineyard is dry-land farmed. The severe drought conditions over recent years will no doubt have played a part in the overall concentration and character of fruit. The berries are typically small and thick skinned resulting in pitch dark wines with plenty of weight and substance.
Winemaking is “nothing fancy” but the wines are now matured in fairly heavy toasted American (50%) and French (50%) oak. Interestingly the oak does not dominate at all; an illustration of the overall power and balance of flavours in the wine. I particularly liked the 2004, 1998 and 1997 vintages. Overall production is around 2400 cases.
Spring Flat Shiraz trades fairly regularly at auction. Most vintages achieve around $35 to $50 a bottle. Importantly this wine usually reaches auction within months of release illustrating a buoyant demand and growing market presence.
1992 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Medium deep colour. Earthy/minty slightly roasted aromas with some wet bitumen notes. Sweet earthy/mint dark chocolate flavours and fine slinky dry tannins. Finishes minerally and long. Acidity pokes out a touch. Ready to drink. 83/100 points
1993 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Medium colour. Red cherry/ roasted coffee aromas with hints of eucalypt/wet saddle. The palate is generous and rich with red cherry roasted coffee/ bitter dark chocolate mint flavours and leafy fine tannins. Excellent flavour length. The brett police will think this flawed but it’s decent to drink. Don’t keep for much longer. 88/100 points
1994 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Intense mint/ dark chocolate aromas with a touch of cedar. Well concentrated quite powerful wine with sweet dark chocolate/ mint flavours, dense almost rusty tannins and underlying malt oak. Finishes quite tangy and minerally. 84/100 points
1995 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Medium colour. Intense complex wetstone/graphite/ dark chocolate/ brambly aromas. A rich concentrated palate with deep set dark choco-berry/ graphite flavours and leafy/ gravelly firm tannins. Lovely core of fruit sweetness. 86/100 points
1996 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Medium colour. Well balanced wine with dark cherry/ cedar/ mint chocolate aromas. The palate is well concentrated with lovely sweet fruit and dark cherry/ cedar flavours, chocolaty dense dry tannins and underlying savoury oak. Finishes bitter/sweet but good fruit volume and overall finesse. 90/100 points
1997 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Very deep colour. Intense inky/ dark cherry/ chocolate aromas with some liquorice characters and malty oak notes. Deep set concentrated wine with inky/ dark cherry/ black berry/ chocolate a touch minty flavours and fine loose-knit slinky tannins. Finishes long and cedary. 91/100 points
1998 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Very impressive wine with intense fresh plummy/inky/ white pepper/ graphite aromas with faint minty notes. The palate is rich and concentrated with deep-set dark chocolate/ black berry flavours, ripe chocolaty tannins and underlying savoury oak. Finishes long and sweet. Lovely volume of fruit. 93/100 points
1999 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep Colour. Intense graphite/ liquorice/ blackcurrant/ mint aromas. Sweet blackcurrant/mint/ brambly flavours, fine looseknit/ lacy tannins, some savoury notes, finishing brambly and dry. 86/100 points
2000 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Camomile/ red cherry/ black berry aromas with some hints of mint. Sweet red cherry/ almost apricot flavours with prominent hard tack tannins but plenty of juicy fruit. Good flavour length. 88/100 points
2001 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Rich dark cherry/ roasted meat aromas with some menthol/graphite notes. You can almost smell the tannin. The palate is dense but looseknit with roasted meaty/ red cherry flavours and firm chocolaty tannins. Finishes firm and tight. 86/100 points
2002 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Fresh liquorice/ aniseed/ dark choclate/ cherry aromas. Well balanced wine with plenty of sweet dark cherry/ chocolate/ mint flavours, underlying new oak and fine slinky firm tannins. Finishes long and sweet with some roasted notes. 90/100 points
2003 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Intense dark chocolate/ inky aromas with some liquorice/aniseed notes. The palate is very concentrated – almost essence-like – with dark cherry/ chocolate flavours, pronounced tannins and marked acidity. Still in evolution. 89/100 points
2004 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Still very elemental but very appealing sweet fruited wine with lifted violet/ camomile/ dark cherry/ mocha aromas and flavours. The palate is densely packed and beautifully concentrated with fine supple plentiful tannins and savoury oak. Finishes long and sweet. 94/100 points
2005 Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz
Deep colour. Very adolescent wine with intense liquorice/dark cherry/ chocolate aromas and new malt oak nuances. A rich concentrated – touch alcoholic – wine with plenty of volume of fruit, deep-set dark choco-berry flavours and ripe dense tannins. Oak and fruit tannins kick up at the finish. Needs plenty of time but all the elements are there. 88/100 points
Wild Duck Creek Estate, located in the voluptuous countryside around Heathcote, was established in 1980. At the age of 18 David Anderson (pictured) bought his first block of land in Heathcote after receiving his first pay packet and getting a bank loan. Wild Duck Creek Estate comprises nine acres of vineyard located on mudstones and shales interspersed with quartz, ‘classic broken up gold country’. Fruit is also sourced from another seven vineyards in the area planted on varying soils including Heathcote's red loams. Vineyard management is definitely low input.
The Duck Muck Shiraz (about 200 cases are produced) is made only in exceptional vintages. The vines are vertically shoot positioned and are grown on a protected easterly aspect to take advantage of the morning sun. Vintage can take place over a six to eight-week period, every vine triaged for optimum ripeness and flavour development. The fruit comes in with naturally high acids and a staggeringly high 17+ degrees Baume. The wines are vinified in a jumble of different-sized open fermenters and regularly hand plunged. At dryness the wines are drained and pressed in a home-made hydraulic press and then transferred into 100% new French and American oak. Interestingly and almost impossibly, some of Anderson’s wines are made without any sulphur addition whatsoever.
David Anderson is the quintessential Australian bush engineer whose career as a fencing contractor and vineyard developer has given him an intimate insight into the best sites in the area. He has, after all, planted over a million rootlings. He is entirely self-taught and has an infectious enthusiasm. Over 200 volunteers come during the year to help him.
Andrew Caillard MW
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