Jancis Robinson on the freshness of Barossa Valley wines

“Terroir and microterroir are not owned by Europe,” Tuscan wine consultant Alberto Antonini declared last month at the London launch of his new wines from Australia’s Barossa Valley. “Geology doesn’t know where the New World and Old World divide.”

It certainly does not, as was underlined by the style of the Alkina range. If served blind, I would never have guessed they came from Barossa Valley, whose wines tend to be impenetrably concentrated and are much more likely to impress than refresh. Yet I found myself writing notes like “pale ruby”, “dances on the palate”, “so fresh” and “slightly floral”. The Alkina wines reminded me of the transparent, appetising reds aged in concrete that Antonini has been conjuring from the soils of the Andean foothills and the Caucasus.

Antonini would be the last to claim he is trying to impose his personal style on a given geography. His philosophy is the same as that of his frequent collaborator Pedro Parra, known as Doctor Terroir for his eagerness to dig soil pits to chart his clients’ vineyards’ varied geologies. Their aim is to maximise the inherent expression of any particular block of vines. These days, most wine producers want their vineyards to express themselves, but no one does more detailed work to ensure this actually happens than Antonini with Parra and his new disciple, Paul Krug of the famous champagne family.

They work all over the world. I recently came across a southern Burgundy producer whose vineyard had, to his extreme delight, just been mapped by Parra and Krug. When I spent time with Parra in his native southern Chile in 2017, he mentioned clients all over Italy, California, Oregon, Argentina, Spain and Burgundy. “There are lots of discoveries in Meursault,” he revealed. “There are three different sorts of limestone there and how it breaks up makes a big difference to the sort of wines you can make.” He loves nothing more than digging so deep under the vines that he can’t see ground level above him.

Parra and Antonini have increased their international client lists since then. For this new Australian project, Parra was brought on rather late, two years after the land had been acquired by the owner, Argentine oil and gas magnate Alejandro Bulgheroni, who seems willing to pour huge amounts of money into Parra’s holes in the ground and believes strongly in both organic viticulture and an extremely long-term approach. His first flagship wine estate was Garzón in south-east Uruguay but he has since expanded into his native Argentina, as well as Patagonia, Tuscany and now Australia.

It was not only Antonini, a longstanding adviser to Bulgheroni, who knew just how interesting and varied the soils of Australia can be. Simon Farr, one of the UK’s more thoughtful wine merchants, was of the same opinion. He had come across Bulgheroni when he acquired the Argentine wine brand Argento from Farr’s old company Bibendum. Farr remembers touring possible sites in Australia in what he felt was dangerously luxurious style if they wanted to secure a good price. In the end it was a Barossa local, Amelia Nolan, who now runs Alkina and had been responsible for selling Bulgheroni’s wines in Asia, who led them to the farm that Bulgheroni acquired in 2015.

The farm included lots of unplanted land and Parra was drafted in to examine its potential. According to Antonini, “We got very excited by the diverse soils on the farm, including schist, limestone, granite and basalt.” All of which are highly valued by winemakers, with very different potential effects on the resulting wines if they are allowed their fullest expression and not smothered by layers of winemaking.

Antonini lists his enemies in this respect: overripe grapes; over-extraction in the winery; overuse of oak; viticulturists who believe in using synthetic chemicals; winemakers “who want to be part of the flavour”; and the market. “The market can be an enemy because you don’t want to ‘make wine for the market’ — which market? You have to find a market for what you do.”

He can afford to say this because his work is bankrolled by a billionaire who is in no hurry to see a return from his wine investments. I asked leading Australian wine writer Max Allen what he thought of the new Alkina wines and his chief impression was of “very ambitious pricing”.

Which is true. Alkina’s UK importer Raeburn Fine Wines suggests retail prices of between £39 and £230 per bottle for the launch vintages of 2018 and 2019, made from vines planted on the property decades ago rather than the new plantings inspired by Parra’s work.

Barossa valley is characterised by an extremely rich array of soil types and underlying rock

The wines are lower in alcohol than the Barossa norm, 13.5 to 14.2 per cent. Antonini claims that you can still extract great flavour from the grapes even if you pick them three weeks earlier than your neighbours, provided the vines are grown organically. “Organic viticulture is more productive because the vine is more fertile, leading to better quality wine and a much longer life for the vine. It can cut costs too.” In Argentina, for example, he is now picking in the second week of March, when he used to pick three to four weeks later, and this is not just because of climate change. “It all depends on the soil type.”

He does admit, however, that their farm is by no means unique in Barossa. The valley is characterised by a rich array of soil types and underlying rock. Many other producers could make the sort of wines he is aiming at if they wanted to.

Indeed, the style of Barossa wine may evolve into something closer to Alkina’s, with some producers already showing signs of this. According to Antonini, the recent improvement in diet, especially in the US, has had a big effect on people’s palates. “They no longer need big, bold, concentrated wines that they sought when their diet was chock-full of sweetness and glutamate.”

Antonini is worth listening to because he is reflective and knows so many different regions, producers and markets. For him, the future is bright but challenging. “What we’re drinking now is no more than 20 per cent of what nature could offer us. There is still so much to do. It’s great that wine is now part of our civilisation. It’s no longer just something that was a routine part of a meal as it was when I was young; my parents drank the same wine at all meals. My children want to explore, they want to know the world through wine.”

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first