South Australia may boast some of the best wines in the southern hemisphere, but there are a handful of winemakers who are bringing the best know-how from Champagne, France, to create elevated local wines.
Xavier Bizot is a Champenois and member of the esteemed family that owns Bollinger.
Xavier Bizot
Terre à Terre and Daosa,
Piccadilly Valley, Adelaide Hills
Xavier Bizot has an uncommon pedigree. He is a Champenois, a member of the esteemed family that owns Bollinger, and is also married to Lucy Croser, belonging to Adelaide Hills royalty – Brian and Ann Croser – at Tapanappa Wines.
He grew up amongst the vineyards in the historically significant village of Aÿ, where Bollinger is located, and famed for its elegant pinot noirs. Some of his best memories as a child were of Australians, who were friends of the family, visiting the Maison where they would serve beautiful lunches and open old bottles of wine.
Xavier never forged a career in the Champagne trade but instead became a lawyer in Paris. He met Lucy in 2003 then moved to Adelaide a few years later, giving up his day job, and returning to “school” where he studied viticulture at the University of Adelaide. With Lucy he established a new wine brand, Terre à Terre, drawing on fruit from the Piccadilly Valley and Summertown. Later, they launched Daosa, showcasing classically blended sparkling wines built on pinot noir and chardonnay fruit with a fine bead and age-earned complexity.
Under both brands Xavier achieved his dream of bringing a French mindset and Champagne approach to his South Australian wines.
“We bring a creativity to the winery to express fruit and complexity, the result is amazing. The Piccadilly Valley is cool, has different altitudes and aspects. We are working with different blocks and blending options. (With the winemaking), tirage can occur over six to eight months and we keep reserves in magnums. It’s a winemaker’s heaven.”
Xavier’s Bollinger legacy is clear in his approach. The idea of using old oak, as a way of storing reserves, is one of them, but so too is using magnums, for which Bollinger is famous. Reserves play an important role in the making of Champagne non-vintage wines, as they do in Daosa’s Natural Réserve, a term he has given to his third release sparkling wine. The other two in the range include a vintage blanc de blancs and a vintage pinot noir rosé.
However, he is clear on one point of difference between Champagne and his sparklings, emphasising that in Champagne, the blending begins “on the bench” whereas he starts in the vineyard because he likes to be one step ahead. And it has paid off. Daosa sparklings are very good, rich and delicious with good finesse and freshness. They carry the local footprint of the Adelaide Hills within the framework of the best methods from Champagne.
In closing, Xavier comments on Bollinger’s Special Cuvée (non-vintage) and how drinking it 10 years later, post disgorgement, can be rather magical.
“It shows that to make good wine in the long-term, it starts in the vineyard. It’s more than acidity. The vineyard blend is important.”
Peta Baverstock launched her first cuvee in 2018.
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Peta Baverstock
Cuvée-Co Wines, Limestone Coast
It was a Year 12 chemistry assignment to study fermentation that had Limestone Coast winemaker, Peta Baverstock, intrigued from the beginning of her young adult life.
“I remember we were given a teaspoon of yeast one day in class, back in the mid-1990s, and we had to take it home and understand how to make pure ethanol,” she says about the experiment. From here, a love for chemistry and maths may have been the writing on the wall for Peta, but it was time spent with her best friend, Anna, that had her hooked on a pathway into wine.
“It was Anna’s Italian family that really got me started on the sensory side of wine,” she recalls. “They would educate me on the aromatics and understanding the varieties. But with Anna and her family, I could see how food and wine was a wonderful lifestyle.”
Graduating from the University of Adelaide in 2000, Peta followed her heart into sparkling winemaking because it was a great lesson in attention to detail. She cut her teeth with sparkling winemakers in California, and then at the Yarra Valley’s Domaine Chandon before working under Ed Carr (famed winemaker of Arras) when he was at BRL Hardy.
Then in 2005, Peta earned a scholarship to be mentored by Bollinger, at their domaine, before becoming a finalist in the prestigious Vin de Champagne Awards where she competed against top wine professionals for the coveted title of champagne professional of the year.
“Champagne was a benchmark for me,” she says about the early years. “The architecture of the vineyards, its intricacies and the clonal material were all so fascinating, even the marketing and packaging.”
Peta says it was a “crystal ball” moment to focus purely on one category of winemaking. Today, she is a sparkling wine specialist under her own (and candidly colourful) label, Cuvée-Co Wines. Located on the Limestone Coast, she focuses on traditional-method vintage sparklings, sparkling shiraz and prosecco, drawing on fruit from the surrounds – namely Mount Gambier, Padthaway and Wrattonbully. She likens the climate and subsoil of the Limestone Coast to the Champagne region, because it brings freshness and minerality to the fruit, especially chardonnay.
Peta’s exclusively sparkling range is unique in South Australia, no other producer focuses only on this type of wine. But this is her heart and soul.
She uses the traditional Champagne grape varieties and bottle fermentation with extended time on lees to develop texture, complexity and deliciousness.
In 2018 Peta launched her first cuvée – The Kenneth – from the 2015 harvest, made from whole bunch pressed, free run juice, that was delicious, focused and pristine to drink. There are now six sparklings in the range, three are made using the traditional bottle fermentation method.
Today, she continues to invest in fruit sourcing as well as putting away some of her best sparklings into magnum. She also consults to other wineries in the area.
“There’s a lot of opportunity here with the extremely diverse range of soils and a beautiful natural environment,” Peta says. “We can offer something different.”
Kate Laurie and her husband, Hamish. The pair is known to produce some of the country’s best sparklings.
Kate Laurie
Deviation Road Winery, Adelaide Hills
Kate Laurie, along with her husband Hamish, produces some of Australia’s best sparkling wines. From her vantage point at Deviation Road Winery in the deep throws of the Adelaide Hills’ Scott’s Creek, she has built a reputation on mastering cool climate Piccadilly Valley fruit within the architecture of traditional method sparkling winemaking.
Kate honed her skills in Champagne, as a young woman, after flying the family nest in the Margaret River where she worked alongside her winemaking family. In those days, it was relatively unheard of for a young Aussie lady, seeking work experience, to venture so far but the lure of travel was too great. She made friends quickly, picked up the language, and enrolled in an Advanced Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology at the Lycee Viticole d’Avize.
“It’s fair to say I was an exotic flower,” she says about her novelty appeal to the French. “I used to complete other student’s English homework in exchange for bottles of champagne,” she laughs, also reflecting on how they would be amused at her taking notes using phonetic French. “It was the only way I could understand what was going on in the classroom.”
Kate’s most important formative years were made in Champagne and had a profound impact on the path she would ultimately take back home. She returned in 1998 to her parent’s estate, before relocating to the Adelaide Hills in 2001, joining Hamish at Deviation Road. The cooler and south-facing climes of the Hills, provided the necessary architecture, finesse and acidity that she needed to commence her own sparkling wine — but also, flavour.
Kate’s traditional method sparkling wines are grown and assembled in a Champenois way to emulate the light and elegant style whilst respecting the uniqueness of local terroir. Today, they are established among the very best in Australia with a string of accolades.
“My experience overseas informed my early understanding of Adelaide Hills’ cooler climate, but we have more fruit character than Champagne,” she says about trying to “tame down” the power of the fruit to keep it on the more elegant side.
Grapes are hand-harvested, as they do in Champagne, to respect the integrity of the fruit and avoid oxidation. Primary fermentation is undertaken in tank and oxygen avoided to preserve purity and freshness. Whilst secondary fermentation follows Champagne’s traditional method in the bottle.
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There are now seven sparklings in the range, with the flagship — Beltana Blanc de Blancs — ranking as one of our nation’s best among wine critics. With six years on lees, it delivers on all of the toasty, nutty and sweet pastry character that Kate says she’s a “sucker” for.
“I love Charles Heidsieck’s toasty style,” she says about one of her favourite Champagne producers. “I keep my wine as long as possible on lees, but I also want to capture the best of the season. So, I monitor how it transforms over time.”
Staying close to Champagne, by returning almost annually to the region, allows Kate to check in on anything new going on. She reconnects with old friends and shared memories, always over a bottle of champagne. On reflection, Kate says she was deeply loved and nurtured by the Champenois and credits them with the time and information she needed to become one of Australia’s best sparkling winemakers.
Alexandra Wardlaw finds that the stresses of drought in the Clare Valley share similar concerns in Champagne.
Alexandra Wardlaw
Kirri Hill Winery, Clare
When Alexandra Wardlaw left her home in France for a short-term job in the Clare Valley, she never realised she wouldn’t be returning. Alexandra was born and raised in Champagne, France, surrounded by the region’s iconic vineyards as well as family friends who were winegrowers and makers. To anyone else on the outside, it seems like a dream, but Alexandra had other ideas.
“I was originally interested in languages,” she says reflecting on her senior school years. “But then a visit to some of Champagne’s chalky caves got me hooked on the idea of studying wine.”
She initially studied the business of wine, but soon realised her passion was for production, and later took a winemaking apprenticeship. A stint in the Napa Valley working for Mumm was followed by a return to France and a role in Provence. But it was her passion for riesling, and an interest in warmer climates, that inspired a life-changing decision to take a three-month job at Kirri Hill Winery in the Clare Valley. Six years later she’s still there and now has a little boy who enjoys following her around the winery of which she is now in charge.
“I just fell in love with the place, the quality of the wines here is underrated,” she says with a French inflection in her voice, sitting on the verandah in a place she now calls home. As we talk, the sway of gum trees and the laugh of a kookaburra somewhere nearby is incongruous with the world she had left behind. But she sees a parallel between her old world and new.
“I have been able to apply the knowledge I developed by living and working in Champagne, adapting to the climate,” she says. “It’s about understanding acidity, sweetness and balance. There’s not a lot you can hide in a riesling base, so I try to capture as much knowledge as I can to apply it in the cellar.”
Alexandra points to the stresses of drought in Clare that share similar concerns in Champagne when it comes to climate change, though Champagne producers are not allowed to irrigate.
“We’re all learning how to manage fruit better and working out ways to be more resilient in the vineyard so we keep fruit as pristine and elegant as possible,” she says referring to warmer years where there’s more phenolics and power.
About the future, and the possibility of returning to her homeland, Alexandra is clear. “I never want to leave,” she says, referring to her passion for South Australia. “As a winemaker I just want to produce the best that I can in Australia, using this gorgeous diversity. One day, I would like to produce an Adelaide Hills sparkling wine using the Champagne method. I’m proud of where I’m from and what goes into the wines there. I may even make my own Champagne one day.”
For now, Alexandra will keep the fires burning for Champagne with her regular program of champagne masterclasses for locals with an appetite as strong as hers.
Jane Bromley established Honey Moon Vineyard in Echunga in 2004 with her partner — and fellow esteemed winemaker — Hylton McLean.
Jane Bromley
Honey Moon Vineyard,
Echunga, Adelaide Hills
Adelaide Hills winemaker, Jane Bromley, became one of the first identities for champagne in Australia when she took out the prestigious Vin de Champagne Award in 2002 after impressing a panel of wine critics.
She won an all-expenses two-week trip to Champagne that would later inspire her own pathway to making some of the finest sparkling wines in the Adelaide Hills, although sparkling wines were not the original intention. In 2004, Jane and her partner (fellow esteemed winemaker Hylton McLean), established Honey Moon Vineyard in Echunga, located in the Adelaide Hills.
“We didn’t set out to make sparkling wine initially, but we were impressed by how amazing pinot noir could be,” she says about their vineyards, which have a relatively high elevation and a temperature that is a little cooler than the Côte Rôtie and a little warmer than Burgundy.
“We always enjoyed Champagne, and were curious about its making, so we did some small batch pinot noir with a very gentle press to extract the softest juice.”
The potential for sparkling was there from the beginning. Jane then bought in some chardonnay from cooler, more premium sites, and used it to produce their first rosé sparkling wine, which went on to immediate acclaim.
“Champagne is the pinnacle of excellence, and it motivates us to do our best,” she says about the traditional approach she takes to making her range of sparkling wines which now includes a blanc de blancs and a vintage sparkling shiraz.
In the Champagne way, grapes are hand harvested and whole bunch pressed before primary fermentation in old French barriques, which she says brings a lot of freshness and tension whilst building complexity. Some chardonnay reserves (older wine), which get added to the final blend, are aged in magnum to maintain their good condition but also to add creaminess and a dash of seasoning. Disgorgement is done in small batches, to maximise time on lees.
It’s been a few years since Jane and Hylton were in Champagne, Covid had put a stop to their regular jaunts. But Jane says that it’s on the cards. For now, she enjoys guest lecturing at Adelaide University, educating students around the technical appreciation of Champagne and sparkling wines. “I wanted to give something back to the Champenois,” she says.
This article first appeared in the December 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.
