Peter Lehmann of the Barossa

dry, dusty, and world class Shiraz

In honour of Germany bagging the World Cup this week, we take a look at the wines of a German-Australian icon and the terroir he helped make world famous.

For a lot of people Aussie wine means pretty much one thing: rich, spicy, vanilla laden Shiraz dominated reds available from all the big brands that appear on supermarket shelves everywhere. But beyond that are many interesting varietals, including Shiraz of course, from an almost bewildering plethora of wine growing valleys concentrated mainly in the south of the continent.

Investigating my dad's dwindling cellar several years ago for bottles that had slipped through the cracks we came across a couple Cab Sauvs and Chards from the late 80's from Margaret River in Western Australia. (Presumably the Chardonnay was well past its best before date)

This led us onto a conversation on the heritage of Australian wine. He said that even into the 1980's there was a persistent skepticism over the quality of the wine, first rate Penfold's Grange aside. Nowadays mass marketed plonk brought to life in barrel with floating oak chips (that's what gives it the intense vanilla flavour) can be more reminiscent of a coke can left open in the sun.

But on business trips down under beginning in the 70's my dad mentioned he was introduced to an emerging and dynamic viticulture as well in Australia. Cooler micro-climates could produce steely Rieslings or Cabernet Sauvignons with grip (two of my eternal favourites), while the warmer areas put together traditional southern Rhone blends of Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre. And if you need a cardinal rule, he said bringing the chat to a close, look for Peter Lehmann of the Barossa.

The first attempts at vine growing in the humid, sub tropical climes around the original penal colony at Botany Bay were hit and miss. It was in the 1840's that outlying vales around Adelaide and Melbourne were discovered to offer a promising destination to import European vines.

Young immigrant Englishmen were the first to establish reputations in the region, including a Tom Hardy (no, not that one) and Christopher Penfold. Not long afterwards the South Australia Company was formed to encourage agricultural immigration to this remote spot on the globe. Plucked from Silesia on the Prussian-Polish border, three ships of about 500 families of Lutheran dissenters set sail for the antipodes and this new group set up shop some 30 miles inland from Adelaide in the Barossa Valley.

A Lutheran church at sunset in the Barossa

Similar to Napa in California, the Barossa is amongst the hottest, most sunbaked wine growing regions in Australia. The Silesians, without any grape growing heritage of their own near enough the Baltic, nevertheless experimented with plantings of German Riesling; finding them successful in the sweet Rhenish tradition on the windier upper slopes of the valley.

It is on the lower slopes and the valley floor that Shiraz, as the northern Rhone Syrah grape has been termed, found a new home. For generations Shiraz of the Barossa lay effectively dormant. All Australia seemed good for was sun drenched alcoholic reds that were haphazardly blended into port like offerings.

An epic turning point occurred in 1950. Penfold's Max Schubert, born in the Barossa, a descendant of those Silesian pioneers, travelled to Bordeaux and came home with the idea of creating the southern hemisphere's only first growth. Choosing tantalizingly small plots of Shiraz around Christopher Penfold's original Grange cottage, he did the impossible, and created a wine to stand up to the best of left bank clarets.

Even after four years aging in bottles, the first offerings of 'Grange' were widely panned in the 50's. Little did anyone except for Schubert know, it was too young! Following decades would make Grange a cult wine, a recipient of over 50 gold medals at tastings and numerous perfect scores from wine publications. Indeed it is said those early 50's vintages are still improving in bottle.

The first vintage of Grange. Originally it included the appellation 'Hermitage' to refer to the Syrah of northern Rhone

Born in 1930, Peter Lehmann was a fifth generation Barossan, his father being the local Lutheran pastor. He began his career at the well known local Yalumba winery. Around 1980 he decided to strike out on his own and focus on catching a bit of the Grange magic in Barossa Shiraz. His company's logo of a card hand featuring the queen of clubs was based on the calculated gamble he felt he was taking.

35 years on and Peter Lehmann, nicknamed by his peers as the 'baron of Barossa' for his persistent championing of his home turf, is a by-word for the best of accessible Australian Shiraz. While his 'Stonewall' bottling (£37) is the firm's most prestigious. The 'Portrait' Shiraz (£10, $20 CAN) is a great example of the Barossa at a decent price.

My personal favourite, and one I lap up when I find it typically on sale in the States around $10 is his 'Clancy's Red'. A healthy Australian blend of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and a glug of Merlot, I think it's perfect as an everyday gift giving sort of wine. It's $18 at the LCBO, or £9 at Waitrose.

Put it next to one of those Yellow Tail's and there is no comparison. Not bad for some German Poles coming upon a sun baked patch of ground half the world away... it's no 16 goals in the World Cup though...

Summer Wines: Asti

If you're ever in the mood to remind yourself, comparatively at least, that you're not an alcoholic, you can do worse than dusting off some Hemingway. In what is otherwise, frankly, a terribly sad novel, I recall with a smile coming across the opening salvos of Lt. Henry's tale in A Farewell to Arms. The first drink shared within the pages by the Tenente and his buddy in the officer's quarters behind the front lines in the Friulian Marches of WWI is a bottle of Asti. It is a nice moment of levity, encapsulated in what may well be the most easygoing wine in existence.

Asti is just great. It's deliciously aromatic, more-ishly sweet, low in alcohol (around 7%), and less bubbly than champagne or Cava. You can, quite legitimately, drink it all afternoon without succumbing to slurred discussions of politics or the many missteps of your favourite sports team. If I associate drier sparkling wines with celebratory toasts, Asti, I think, has a strong claim for the backyard, hanging out as the barbecue gets fired up. Buttoned opened in all the ways champagne is not, Asti can easily eschew fine glassware, and has a tradition of being glugged in pewter mugs that keeps the bubbles effervescent.

Asti comes from that eponymous region near Turin in the Piedmont (that also produces the red wine Barbera; of such incredibly varying quality that I rarely recommend it off the shelf, can be great though) from the Muscat white grape that crops up making both sweet and dry wines most places around the world.  The Martini & Rossi outfit, of vermouth fame (so famous that ordering a 'martini' in Italy gets you a glass of white vermouth rather than a gin based cocktail, much to my ongoing frustration) produces Asti in widely available industrial quantities. It's always produced non-vintage (that is, it doesn't bother to denote a year it comes from) so is ready to go off the shelf and a couple hours chilling anytime (it is best well and truly chilled, unlike say champagne that expresses itself better not ice cold).

The hill-top town of Asti, near Turin

The ubiquity of the Martini Asti brand is definitely a good jumping off point for checking out the wine. It's typically reasonably priced; about $14 in Canada or £6-8 in UK supermarkets. Though if you do have a wine shop that tends to know it's Italian stuff, I would say it's worth the trouble investigating a more artisinal offering at a slightly higher price point.

 Asti Spumante (as it used to formally be known; the sparkling adjective was apparently dropped for marketing reasons... or something) also has a sibling wine in Moscato d'Asti, which is of a different style, albeit delicious in its own right. It is extremely low in alcohol for a wine, around 5%, with only the slightest hint of bubbles to it, and is even sweeter. It's sometimes hard to find, but makes for a unique and interesting present as a desert wine.

My first stint in Italy was spent in winter in the central region of Abruzzo, and thus I didn't come across the quintessentially summer spumante of the north until my university days. My flat having a front porch rather than a backyard, I would wile away the spring term days between exams, reading or editing written work, with my trusty pewter tankard of fizzing Asti to quench the thirst. In summer days in Rome, it's pure drinkability when cold, led me to seek it out ahead of prosecco for picnics in the park. (Romanello, a moonshine equivalent made in the Alban hills, was taken for outings on the Via Appia)

The extraordinarily masculine setting of a requisitioned subaltern's room in the foothills of the Slovenian Alps, and the fact that Hemingway's avatar is drinking it at all, ought to dispel any notion that Asti, sweetness and all, is inherently a feminine wine. Much like a G&T, if the sun's out, there's no real valid argument against having a bottle of Asti on the go.

It's replication may be attempted elsewhere in the world, but the wonderful specifity of a bottle of Asti is one of the reasons it's denoted with DOCG status. That is, the most exacting standards of classifying a regional wine in Italy. Although DOCG status has been expanding in recent years to include, for instance, village level prosecco superiore, traditionally it has been reserved for Italy's most serious red wines.

The very fact, then, that light, fizzy Asti has been placed in the same category as Barolo or Amarone has rankled the occasional wine pundit; Hugh Johnson has called its DOCG status "questionable". What I cherish about it is its easygoing quality. In a world where so much wine takes itself seriously, and rightly so, Asti is the perfect wine to drink up without fuss and consultation. Bring it along to an afternoon backyard get-together, and tell anyone who sniffs at it to cop on and enjoy a summer's day.