On a brisk July morning in McLaren Vale, Brad Hickey demonstrates how he will press the latest harvest of his nero d’Avola, the Sicilian grape he farms here. The fermentation has finished and the wine has been sitting on its skins for a few months when he reaches into a beeswax-lined clay amphora and begins to squeeze whatever grapes remain intact. It’s not the most common method of producing red wine in South Australia. But Hickey’s nero is one of any number of experimental wines quickly becoming commercial successes.
Hickey, a former sommelier in New York City, moved to Australia in early 2007 and married local vigneron Nicole Thorpe. Together they launched Brash Higgins, farming 12 acres of shiraz and five acres of cabernet sauvignon. In 2009 they grafted nero onto a half-acre of shiraz vines that Thorpe had planted in the late 1990s. “My first three years here were all drought years and very difficult,” Hickey says. “A light bulb kind of went off and there were discussions between winemakers that maybe we weren’t looking at the right grape varieties. I love nero; I love the way it tasted in Sicily. It really made sense here as a transplant as our climates are nearly identical.”
Since then, he’s grafted another 2.5 acres to nero d’Avola, finding it to be a reliable alternative to his shiraz. “It’s basically bulletproof and has high natural acidity, which is vital for good drinking and perfectly suited for warm regions,” he says. “It’s the kind of wine I want to drink on warm summer nights.”
McLaren Vale is a 45-minute drive south of Adelaide, hugging the coast of Gulf St. Vincent and climbing eastward to the Mount Lofty Ranges. It’s a picturesque landscape of vineyards, often framed by the blue waters below, planted mostly to shiraz with a little grenache—grapes that once sustained a trade in fortified wines. The market shifted to dry table wines long ago, and today, in a warming climate, growers are experimenting with heat- and drought-resistant varieties from all over the Mediterranean.
“If climate change continues, these warmer varieties from southern Italy and parts of Spain are going to be suited to [our] environment, so let’s start playing with them now.”
—Chester Osborn
Nero d’Avola is just one of the grapes that have taken off. At Battle of Bosworth, Joch Bosworth has been experimenting with later-ripening vines like touriga nacional and graciano—varieties that are easier to sustain as unpredictable conditions like heat waves become more frequent.
“Unfortunately we seem to get one or two of these 43-degree (C) days every year or so now,” says Bosworth. “I don’t think there’s much more we can do other than prepare your vineyards and prepare your vintage and cross your fingers and hope you don’t get too many of them.” Even though the thin-skinned graciano—a low-yield blending grape from Rioja—can be a “bastard to pick,” Bosworth says the vine’s hardiness and resilience make any difficulties worth the effort. “They behave themselves well and [the grapes] hold their acid. They seem to suit the region.”


Justin McNamee of Samuel’s Gorge worked several harvests in Europe, where he picked up ideas for varieties that might work well back home in McLaren Vale. While sustaining his old-vine grenache and shiraz, he’s honed in on a few other varieties while testing the suitability of alternatives. “Just because they are different doesn’t make them exceptional,” he says, pouring a dark-perfumed and savory graciano into our glasses in the rustic cabin that serves as the winery’s tasting room. He’s been impressed by graciano’s ability to hold acid well into ripening, a challenge for some varieties in an arid climate. Poured side by side with his grenache, his graciano was up to par in finesse, both wines rugged with bright red fruit, the graciano a bit spicier and less floral.
Chester Osborn, fourth-generation owner and winemaker at d’Arenberg, works with 37 grape varieties, many sourced from his McLaren Vale vineyards. As we sit in a hard-hat zone of the soon-to-open d’Arenberg Cube, a five-story glass structure that will house art installations, a restaurant, bars and a tasting room overlooking the vineyards, he says there are still many varieties he’d like to test out. “If climate change continues, these warmer varieties from southern Italy and parts of Spain are going to be suited to [our] environment,” he says, “So let’s start playing with them now.” He already does so with wines such as Anthropocene Epoch Mencia and Conscious Biosphere Petit Sirah Aglianico. Other bottlings include sagrantino, which, he says, “works in pretty much every environment that you put it in,” and cinsault, another variety he’s decided to try out.
Peter Fraser, who produces grenache from Yangarra’s biodynamic vineyards at the region’s northeastern edge, near the Adelaide Hills, also notes an increasing demand for new flavors from his customers. “The consumer is moving away from ‘big is better,’” says Fraser. “[There’s a] huge thirst for eclectic wine.”
Fraser has been looking mostly to the southern Rhône for inspiration, planting small plots of carignan, cinsault, vaccarese and picpoul, to name just a few, as well as roussanne, which has become the basis for one of the winery’s most popular white wines, a rich and textured cuvée fermented spontaneously in concrete eggs. He’s planted a minute amount of graciano as well.
In Fraser’s view, Yangarra’s vineyards represent a microcosm of McLaren Vale: “a hodgepodge of Mediterranean grapes.” He hopes the alternative varieties will create a safety net for local growers, a sentiment shared by others in McLaren Vale.


For Gill Gordon-Smith, these alternative varieties are morethan a safety net: The former Qantas flight attendant has built a second career working with heat-tolerant Italian varieties at Fall From Grace. On a winter afternoon in her garage-turned-winery, Gordon-Smith siphons some montepulciano from a barrel labeled “Montey;” it’s a light, fresh red. Her 2017 nero is equally low in alcohol, coming in around 12.5 percent abv. Other barrels are filled with carignan and arneis, wines she makes for everyday drinking.
“Choosing varieties is like betting on horses: You can take an educated guess looking at track records. If we keep finding varieties that work here—to put in with shiraz and grenache as a bit of an arsenal—it will be good for us.”
—Gill Gordon-Smith, Fall From Grace
“I like ‘village’ wine,” she says. “Wines that you don’t need an occasion for. It’s dinner—let’s smash a bottle of this. I like really drinkable, smashable wines with texture.”
For now, her easiest sell might be nero d’Avola. “Nero has allowed ‘savory and textural’ to be added to the conversation; it’s not just ‘ripe fruit flavors,”’ Gordon-Smith says. “The consumers are loving this variety as it has similarities to the shiraz they are used to, but it can be made in a variety of styles and ripeness levels—everything from rosé to 14.5 percent ripe-and-fruit-forward styles. For me, it gives me the choice to pick early and make more elegant wines.”
Familiarity, climate and creative risks all bode well for the success of these relative newcomers to McLaren Vale—especially nero, Gordon-Smith finds. “People like what they can pronounce,” she says, but she also finds that wine buyers are willing to try something new. “When people get used to things,” she says, “it’s like the new black.”
A recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Allison Bart worked a harvest at Soter Vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, then worked in retail at Frankly Wines in NYC. Having spent six months in Melbourne in 2013, she developed an interest in Australian wines. Allison is currently the Culture & Events Manager at SevenFifty.
This story appears in the print issue of February 2018.
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