South Australia’s proud history of fortified wine dates back to the 1800s. Locally made versions of port, sherry and vermouth were the thing for dinner parties in the 19th century, before they were cast aside in favour of table wines in the mid-1900s.
Now, nearly a century on, fortified sips are having a resurgence. A motley crew of producers is bringing new life and imaginative techniques to these decidedly old-school drinks. One of the first big changes was the terminology: just like Australian sparkling wine isn’t called champagne, local sherry-style wine is called apera, while port-style wine is tawny.
Here are the new names in fortified wine you need to know.
“Historically, when Australians think of fortified wines, they think of them being very old and very sweet,” says Lino Ramble’s Andrew Coppard. “The kind your great-uncle used to give you a sip of when you were a kid during Christmas dinner. The reality is … they couldn’t be any more different from that traditional sweet style.”
Coppard and business partner Angela Townsend make three stylistically different fortified wines, including a white vermouth called Slinky.
“Inspiration for the vermouth [came] from living in France 20 years ago and spending weekends in tapas bars in Barcelona,” he tells Broadsheet. “With vermouth, you also play around with botanicals. The spirit and the botanicals are a bit like hot water and a tea bag: how long you steep them for and which botanicals you use depend entirely on the style you want to make and how creative you want to be.”
Lino Ramble also makes a traditional Portuguese white port-style wine called Sly Fox and a “ye oldie dirty rotten liqueur muscat” called Mr Wolf.
Butcher-turned-beverage-producer Richard Gunner launched his vermouth brand Naturi earlier this year.
“My first experience of ‘proper’ vermouth was at Rootstock [natural wine festival] in Sydney nine years ago,” Gunner says. “The Maidenii stuff there knocked my socks off. After getting involved with the Motlop boys at Something Wild and Green Ant Gin, I took the plunge and started to have a go at making my own.”
The result is a trio of vermouths made using native ingredients sourced from Indigenous-owned businesses. From a spritz with native citrus, a dirty dry vermouth with beach succulents and lemon myrtle and a rosso vermouth with coast daisy bush and wattleseed.
Husband-and-wife duo Dudley Brown and Irina Santiago-Brown make traditional fortified wines from zinfandel and viognier.
“Both varieties retain acidity as they mature, providing freshness while wonderful tannin profiles contribute great complexity. Each is made in a vintage style (two years in barrel) and a solera style (progressively adding new wine to barrels each vintage, while some of the old wine is drawn off for bottling),” says Brown.
Vigneron Anita Goode pushes boundaries at her Mount Benson property on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. And while the coast itself might be littered with prehistoric fossils, her approach is anything but old-school. Goode is one of the nation’s most exciting new wave winemakers. Her MJP (Miscellaneous Juice Project) is a mystery blend of white grape varieties that changes every year. “It is essentially grape juice with fortifying spirit added,” Goode says.
Goode’s fortified wine – which was originally a cellar door exclusive – came about in 2015 when she found herself with excess juice. “Instead of putting it down the drain, we fortified it. We make one or two barrels a year … I particularly make a point of putting pinot gris pressings in because it has these really lovely Turkish delight and rose petal characters. Over the last few years, we’ve added a small amount of moscato giallo, which comes out of our experimental plantings.”
There’s a modern love story behind 919 Wines. Vigneron Eric Semmler grew up in Ararat and worked as a horticulturist while his wife Jenny worked as a pharmacist before studying winemaking in Wagga. The pair met in Wagga and moved to South Australia when Eric got a job making fortified wine at BRL Hardy. Eric is now one of Australia’s most respected fortified winemakers and an Australian authority on apera and topaque styles.
“Our pale dry apera is a divisive wine and not universally loved as it is super dry, very aromatic,” Jenny says. “It wasn’t commercially successful, so we started selling off the bulk liquid to other wineries and running down the stock. In 2011 we added the pale dry apera to our entry in the Adelaide Review Hot 100, just to fill out the carton.”
But to the couple’s surprise, their weird drop took out the top spot in the competition.
Young winemaker Sam Watkins’s love of fortified wine was solidified during a two-year stint in Portugal’s Douro Valley.
“I got to see the 100-year-old para and a 150-year-old Portuguese tawny. The difference was remarkable,” Watkins says. “The para was all about intensity and viscosity, and really showing off the development and concentration, the Portuguese one was all about elegance, drinkability and was like a snapshot in time.”
These days, at his family’s winery in Chandlers Hill, he makes two fortified wines – an Australian-style tawny and a Portuguese style – using their homegrown grenache.
