A delicate drop from a new South Wales locality

Orange wine… no not the one you’re thinking of or seeing pop up on wine list and shelves around the country.

I’m talking about wine from Orange; the small region in the broader New South Wales area known as Central Ranges.

Given our parochial nature in Victoria, we can have a pretty limited bandwidth for exploring emerging regions in other states, particularly given we barely scratch the surface of the more established Hunter Valley and Canberra district regions of New South Wales.

It certainly doesn’t help that a whole wine trend is referred to as “Orange wine”, which has nothing to do with the region and could certainly lead people to make completely unfounded assumptions about the area.

The region has plenty of promise though with sufficient heat, sun and rainfall for viticulture as well as a range of soil types well suited to producing high quality grapes.

The Orange wine region has been seeing plenty of interest form wineries large and small who are scouring the country for cooler sites, either heading south or heading up (vertically). Orange has become a prime candidate in the latter case.

The region sits at or above 600 metres altitude, which is the defining element of whether a wine can be labelled as coming from Orange; below 600 metres it will be Central Ranges and above it may be labelled as Orange. For some context, Orange winemaker Phillip Shaw claims that only one per cent of Australian vineyards lie above 600 metres altitude so we are in genuine high altitude, cool-climate growing conditions as far as Australia is concerned.

The region has a range of soil types well suited to producing high quality grapes, particularly Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and even Tempranillo in some parts. The prized sedimentary soils of limestone and Calcareous can be found and suit Chardonnay and Pinot Noir particularly well, helping to retain sufficient amounts of acidity.

Likewise, the nearby volcano of Mount Canobolas has contributed soils of volcanic origin that seem to work wonders when planted to Shiraz and even Chardonnay, think of regions such as Beechworth, parts of the Pyrenees and Macedon that have a lot of these soil types. The effect in my experience is it can give these varieties a real sense of focus and tame their nature to feel a little broad and blousy in some vintages and regions.

While you may have no interest in the soils and stats on rainfall, temperatures etc. the tight restriction on where the boundary of the Orange region lies in terms of elevation can give you some confidence in what to expect from the wines generally. They will exhibit a fresh, bright set of aromatics, the palate will tend towards light or medium body with relatively crisp structure and more delicate fruit flavours.

Swinging Bridge have been in the region since the mid 1990s but it is really the last 10 years that they have been generating interest and some really high quality wines. They are balancing the classic varieties and styles of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, while also producing an interesting range of experimental wines. Their 2017 Estate Chardonnay ($22) has seen some high quality new oak which is evident in the wine as the subtle cream and butter notes from some smart winemaking. None of these elements is overdone though as the wine is quite delicate in nature showing subtle peach and stone fruit along with a fine line of citrus. A lovely example of textural modern Chardonnay.