The Hunter Valley Is Quietly Replanting Itself. Not With Semillon.

Drive two hours north of Sydney and the Hunter looks exactly like it always has. Semillon. Shiraz. Some Chardonnay. A region that has been doing the same three things since the 1820s and doing them better than anyone.

Look at what's actually going into the ground though, and it's Italian. And Spanish. And Portuguese.

Albarino. Fiano. Vermentino. Barbera. Nero d'Avola. Not instead of Semillon, not yet and maybe not ever. But at the edges, on the newer blocks, in the rows that got pulled out and replanted, the Hunter is hedging.

Here's what it's hedging against, and why these particular grapes.

The short answer

The Hunter's problem was never heat. Plenty of Australia is hotter.

The problem is humidity, and rain that arrives exactly when the fruit is ripe. So the region is planting grapes that evolved somewhere equally damp, or somewhere hot enough that they shrug it off.

First, the honest bit

This is not a boom. Anyone telling you the Hunter is being torn up and replanted with Italian varieties is selling you something.

The region sits at roughly 2,600 hectares across about 150 wineries. Semillon is still just over 30% of everything planted. Shiraz is second, Chardonnay third, and Verdelho, which has been here for generations, accounts for around 14% on its own.

More vines have come out of the Hunter recently than have gone in. The biggest threat to the region isn't the climate or the fashion, it's that the land is two hours from Sydney and worth more with houses on it than vines. Keeping old vineyards in the ground is the actual fight.

So what's happening is a reshuffle at the margins, not a revolution. That's still worth paying attention to, because the margins are where regions work out what they'll be in thirty years.

Why the Hunter is a terrible place to grow grapes

Worth saying plainly, because it explains everything else.

The Hunter is subtropical. It's humid, it's warm, and it rains in summer, which is to say it rains in February, which is to say it rains while the fruit is hanging and ripe and vulnerable. Downy mildew, powdery mildew and botrytis all love those conditions.

Growers deal with it by picking early. Hunter Semillon comes off the vine at around 10 or 11% potential alcohol, barely ripe by any normal measure, and that constraint is exactly why it works. You get a wine that's lean and almost nothing at release and then turns into toast and honey and lanolin over fifteen years. One of the genuinely unique wines in the world, invented because the weather left no other option.

But that trick only works for Semillon. For everything else, the humidity is just a problem. So the question growers started asking was simple. Who else already lives somewhere like this?

What's going in, and why

Albarino is the front runner. It comes from Rias Baixas in Galicia, on Spain's Atlantic coast, which gets over 1,600 millimetres of rain a year and is one of the wettest wine regions in Europe. Thick skins, and growers there train the vines high on pergolas so air moves through the fruit. Andrew Margan, who has planted more of it than most in the Hunter, puts the parallel bluntly: "We actually have the same climate as Galicia, being classified warm maritime." It also ripens early, which means sugar in the tank before the weather turns.

Worth knowing: thick skin is an advantage, not armour. Albarino is still perfectly capable of getting mildew. It just starts the fight in better shape.

Fiano is the other white showing real promise. It's from Campania in southern Italy, and it has the two things that matter here: thick skins and loose bunches. Loose bunches mean air moves between the berries instead of trapping moisture, which is most of the battle against botrytis. It also holds acid in heat, so it doesn't go flabby.

Vermentino comes from Sardinia and the Ligurian coast and handles heat and drought without complaint. It makes a brisk, saline, citrus-driven white that suits the way people actually drink in a Sydney summer.

Barbera is the interesting red. Its party trick is holding very high natural acidity even when it gets properly ripe, which is exactly what you want somewhere warm. Margan planted it early and has stuck with it.

Nero d'Avola is Sicilian, built for heat and drought, and the examples coming out of the Hunter now are genuinely good rather than merely interesting.

Tempranillo, Graciano and Mourvedre are showing up too, often in blends rather than on their own. Mourvedre in particular ripens very late and loves heat.

Sangiovese and Pecorino are being trialled with mixed results. Pecorino, by most accounts, ripens too fast for the Hunter to get anything useful out of it.

The plot twist: nobody is certain what Albarino actually is

This is the best story in Australian wine and most people have never heard it.

In 1989 the CSIRO imported vine material from Spain, labelled Albarino, and distributed it to growers around the country. Over the next two decades it went into the ground everywhere. People made wine from it. It won things.

Then in 2008 a French ampelographer called Jean-Michel Boursiquot was walking Australian vineyards and stopped at some Albarino near the Barossa. He didn't think it was Albarino. He thought it was Savagnin, an obscure grape grown almost nowhere except the Jura in eastern France.

The CSIRO ran the DNA in 2009. Boursiquot was right. Roughly 150 hectares of Australian "Albarino" was Savagnin, and all of it had to be relabelled.

The growers, to their enormous credit, mostly shrugged. One put it perfectly at the time: "I really don't care if it's Albarino or Savagnin. Whatever it is, it's performing really well, consumers love it, so we're going to stick with it."

And then the twist inside the twist. Vineyards in Spain and Portugal turn out to contain a mix of Albarino, Savagnin and Caino Blanco growing side by side, which may be exactly why nobody could tell the difference in the glass for twenty years.

Genuine Albarino has since been brought into Australia properly, and sources still disagree about how much of what's in the ground today is which. Which is a long way of saying: if you buy an Australian Albarino, there's a decent chance you're drinking something else, and an even better chance you won't mind.

Who's actually doing it

Margan, in the Broke Fordwich sub-region, is the one that matters most. Andrew Margan planted Albarino and Barbera into the Hunter when nobody else was interested, and now has roughly 14 acres of Albarino with more going in, plus about 9 acres of Barbera. The Breaking Ground range exists specifically to explore this stuff, and he's also built field blends out of it: Shiraz Mourvedre, and a Tempranillo Graciano Shiraz.

Tyrrell's, the most traditional house in the valley, makes a Special Release Fiano. They also make a Gamay off vines Len Evans planted in the 1970s, which tells you this region has been quietly experimenting for longer than the trend suggests.

Scarborough runs an Offshoot range built around exactly this territory, including a Vermentino and a Tempranillo.

Carillion bottles both a Fiano and a Vermentino under its Lovable Rogue label. Briar Ridge, Hungerford Hill, Allandale, Saddlers Creek, Greenway and Stomp! have all added Fiano.

What to drink while you wait

Here's the catch for anyone reading this in Sydney. These wines are made in small volumes and most of them go straight out the cellar door to people who drove up for the weekend. They're hard to find on a shelf.

The useful move in the meantime is to drink the originals, so you know what the Hunter is aiming at.

• Start with the benchmark. Martin Codax Albarino is from Rias Baixas itself. This is the wine every Australian Albarino is measured against, and the reason growers looked at Galicia in the first place.
• For the Sardinian white. Jerzu Vermentino from Sardinia, saline and brisk, is the style the Hunter is chasing.
• For the Sicilian red. Sensi Collezione Nero d'Avola or Terre Forti Nero d'Avola. Dark, warm-climate fruit without the weight.
• For the acid trick. Maretti Barbera shows you why growers in warm places love this grape. Ripe fruit, acid still humming underneath.
• And don't skip the incumbent. Audrey Wilkinson Semillon or Brokenwood Semillon. Whatever gets planted next, this is still the thing the Hunter does better than anywhere on earth.

The bottom line

The Hunter isn't abandoning Semillon. Semillon is a third of the region and the best argument it has.

What's happening is smaller and smarter than that. Growers are looking at a subtropical climate with rain at harvest, and planting grapes from places that already solved that problem. Galicia solved it with thick skins. Campania solved it with loose bunches. Sicily solved it by not caring about heat.

In twenty years the Hunter will still be a Semillon and Shiraz region. It will just have a more interesting back half to the list.

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If you want to understand this properly, open the Martin Codax and a Hunter Semillon on the same night. One is the region's past and the thing it does best. The other is the climate the Hunter thinks it has. Drink them together and the whole argument makes sense in about a minute.

Not sure where to start? Email us at order@whiskywinesake.com.au and tell us what you usually drink. We'll point you somewhere useful.

FAQs

What new grape varieties are being planted in the Hunter Valley?

Mostly Mediterranean and Iberian varieties. Albarino leads, with Fiano and Vermentino among the whites, and Barbera, Nero d'Avola, Tempranillo, Graciano and Mourvedre among the reds. Sangiovese and Pecorino are also being trialled, with less consistent results.

Why is the Hunter Valley planting Italian and Spanish grapes?

Because of humidity, not heat. The Hunter is subtropical and gets rain at harvest, which brings serious mildew and botrytis pressure. Grapes from Galicia, Campania, Sardinia and Sicily evolved with thick skins, loose bunches or heat tolerance, so they handle those conditions better.

Is the Hunter Valley replacing Semillon?

No. Semillon is still just over 30% of plantings and remains the region's signature. The new varieties are going in at the margins, on replanted or newer blocks.

Which Hunter Valley producers make alternative varieties?

Margan is the pioneer, with Albarino, Barbera and field blends under its Breaking Ground label. Tyrrell's makes a Special Release Fiano, Scarborough has its Offshoot range including Vermentino, and Carillion bottles Fiano and Vermentino as Lovable Rogue. Briar Ridge and Hungerford Hill also make Fiano.

Is Australian Albarino really Albarino?

Not always. In 2009 the CSIRO confirmed that vine material imported in 1989 as Albarino was actually Savagnin, affecting around 150 hectares nationally. Genuine Albarino has since been imported, but sources still disagree on how much of each is in the ground. The wines are similar enough that most drinkers never noticed.

Why is Hunter Semillon so low in alcohol?

Because it's picked early to beat the summer rain, usually around 10 to 11% alcohol. That constraint created the style. Young Hunter Semillon is lean and quiet, then develops toast, honey and lanolin over ten to fifteen years in bottle.