The Fine Wine Experience Giant Steps Dinner Review © Linden Wilkie

The Fine Wine Experience (HK) Ltd Room 402, 4/F, SBI Centre, 54-58 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong S.A.R.

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In Review… The Fine Wine Experience Giant Steps Dinner

with Steve Flamsteed

Zhe Jiang Heen, Hong Kong, 11th June 2014 © Linden Wilkie

Do you think you can tell Meursault from Puligny? How about Volnay from Gevrey?

How about…. Australian chardonnay and pinot noir from Burgundy?

Sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t. I don’t actually think it matters. It misses

the point. The point is to find wines you like, wines that resonate with you, and to

keep your mind wide open and your glass full!

I think it’s great that Hong Kong – which has long had a small base of highly

knowledgeable enthusiasts for this – has embraced more broadly the Burgundy

zeitgeist. Indeed Hong Kong, and China, are now the engine room of this trend. I

especially like that what comes with that is an appreciation of wines with more

elegant fragrance, texture and weight. I love this type of wine.

I found it in Chablis and Meursault, I found it in Volnay and Chambolle, and in 2012

I found it in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia at a wine estate called Giant

Steps.

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Here a space age winery – coffee roastery – pizzeria – cheese room – cellar door, sits

(like an alien spaceship landing) at the end of the traditional verandah strip of a

sleepy Australian town. I tasted the range and was super impressed. Here was

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with a ripe, but cool expression, emphasizing freshness,

delicacy, nuance, elegance, and individual vineyards. In Melbourne they know it and

get it, but in a wine world cluttered with so many wine regions, we tend to lump our

impressions together and simplify. Australia, we tend to think, makes big, bold high-

octane Shiraz and Cabernet, and big bold (blowsy) Chardonnay. Cliché. Tick. Certain

little sweet spots (parts of Western Australia and Victoria in particular) also make

these wonderfully elegant yet still sun-kissed ripe examples of Burgundy grape

varieties.

Mike Wu and I were meeting a customer for dinner at Bitronomique in Kennedy

Town, Hong Kong. We had a bottle of pretty smart white Burgundy. Premoxed! What

to do? We grabbed the rather short winelist, and I spotted a Giant Steps Chardonnay,

a 2008 Tarraford. We were both blown away – this was serious, flinty, nutty, mealy,

citrusy chardonnay with lots of energy, a taut structure, and elegant style.

We started to buy the wine! We wanted to share it with others.





On Wednesday we opened up a number of Giant Steps wines with winemaker Steve

Flmasteed at Zhe Jiang Heen, a Shanghainese restaurant in Wanchai. We served

some of the wines blind alongside illustrious examples from Burgundy. We weren’t

looking to prove that any one wine was better than any other. We wanted to see,

objectively, what the differences were between them – how did these vineyards in

Victoria express chardonnay and pinot noir differently from vineyards in Burgundy?

Could we tell the difference, tasting blind? Sometimes we could, and sometimes we

couldn’t. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the point.

The point is this: if you like white Burgundy and if you like red Burgundy, then you

like chardonnay and you like pinot noir – at least in some range of expression. If you

like Chablis Les Clos and Montrachet, and if you like Musigny and Clos de Bèze, then

you like these grapes in quite different expressions of aroma and texture and taste. If

that is the case, how many chardonnays and pinots are you exploring from outside

Burgundy?

We thought Giant Steps was a good place to start our exploration in Hong Kong.

Giant Steps – named after the 1960 landmark jazz album from John Coltrane – came

to fruition from the combined interests an passions of two men. Phil Sexton has one of

those quick entrepreneurial minds, something of a visionary in marketing too, he had

successfully created some of the great Western Australian boutique breweries, as well

as the highly regarded Devil’s Lair winery. Moving to the Yarra Valley (a whole

continent away), he sought to make fine Victoria wine. While brewing is a process of

taking exceptional ingredients and then honing and refining an exact and replicable

process, winemaking is very different. The style is driven by the attributes of the site,

the variety and the micro-climate – what the French call terroir. Every season is

different, so every response in the winery must be too. Enter stage left – Steve

Flamsteed, an Australian who worked first as a chef (including under Pierre

Gagnaire in St-Etienne, France), he took a sequitous route from there to

cheesemaking and then wine via a stage picking grapes in France. A Roseworthy

wine science grad he honed his winemaking skills at such illustrious estates as

Leeuwin in Western Australia.

Phil Sexton planted his eponymous vineyard in the late ‘90s, and other vineyards,

including some with older vines, were added to a collection. The idea from the start

was to express the characteristics of these sites individually – not to blend them.

For wine enthusiasts like you and me, at first confronted by the enormous diversity of

wines styles, and wine regions, we so often begin with the broadest brushstroke





generalizations: the Médoc makes firm, structured cabernet/merlot wines, while Napa

makes big, bold, super-fruited Cabernets. Burgundy makes delicate, fragrant floral-

scented pinots and crisp, tautly-concentrated chardonnays. New Zealand makes

zingy, pungent sauvignon blancs and Australia makes big, soft, super-fruity shiraz.

But as you will know, as soon as you take an interest in a region, as soon as you start

to drill down into individual domaines and sites, the sheer complexity of it opens up.

Is Château Pavie the same sort of wine as Vieux Chateau Certan? Is a Clos des

Lambrays like a Fourrier Griotte-Chambertin? Is a Coche like a Lafon? Same village.

I’ve always thought that finding producers I like to be the most reliable way to buy

wines I like – more reliable than simply “I like Pauillac, I like Chambolle, and I like

Barolo”, I would hone in to say “I like Château Pichon Baron, I like Domaine

Ghislaine-Barthod and I like Bruno Giacosa – what else would satisfy me?”

To put it bluntly, if we like pinot from certain growers in Burgundy, and we are not at

least trying some, even one from Martinborough, Yarra Valley, Willamette, Central

Otago, Tasmania, or Graubunden, how do we know what we are depriving ourselves

of?

2011 Giant Steps Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay (sighted)

Pale gold; a low key fresh nose of fresh pineapple, mealy cereal notes, and flint; fresh,

zippy and vibrant on the palate, there is a fleshy middle of fresh pineapple and pear,

a touch of peach, with a touch of crème anglais, but the overall impression is coolness

and elegance, and this is emphasized by a taut line of lemon citrus acidity, with a





refreshing note of pithy bittersweetness that pulls the whole package tight. This

came alive particularly with the food.

2011 was a very cool vintage.

2010 Giant Steps Tarraford Vineyard Chardonnay (sighted)

Light gold; Satsuma fruit nose, fresh pineapple again; this is elegant still, but bigger,

and bolder than the ’11 Sexton, fine, mouth-filling and harmonious, with rounder,

more integrated acidity, lush but controlled, peachy middle and a fresh finish with

just a slight note of alcohol pricking the end.

2009 Domaine Pierre-Yves Colin Morey Corton-Charlemagne (blind)

Pale gold; bright fresh citrus and stone fruit, a hint of white flowers, fine vanilla-

edged nutty oak. Still youthful and shy. Rounded and concentrated on the palate with

citrus and a note of pinapple, fine oak. Modern, crisp, concentrated and young.

Superb quality.

I thought this was Giant Steps. 2006 Giant Steps Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay (blind)

Light gold; fine, low key nose, a touch of oak, mealy tone; fine on the palate, velvety

and creamy middle, stone fruit expression with some exuberance, an intense mineral

note (old vines?).

I thought this was Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey 2006 Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard Bâtard-Montrachet (blind)

This has a touch of colour; really floral and vibrant nose, nutty, showing some

maturity; concentrated, rounded with citrus – Satsuma, and also a very particular

note of herb-infused sausage that I associate with Chassagne. Drinking very well.

I correctly picked this – it was the most distinct wine in the flight 2008 Giant Steps Arthur’s Creek Chardonnay (blind)

Pale yellow; fine, flinty, somewhat reduced nose; fine, taut, citrus fresh palate.

Delicious, but needs some air.

I thought this was Giant Steps. Stylistically I would say Giant Steps and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey are closer than

Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey and Fontaine Gagnard, despite the two Burgundy producers

being in Chassagne-Montrachet – at least that’s my impression based on this tasting.

On another day in a another flight, perhaps a different impression might be given.





Perhaps not. If I could draw a point from the experience, it would be the one I already

made – taste widely.

2011 Giant Steps Sexton Vineyard Pinot Noir (sighted)

Fairly pale ruby red; lovely floral and fresh strawberry/raspeberry nose, while the oak

comes through as a mocha note; red fruit palate, elegant in weight, supple, quite

pretty and floral in style. Delicious now, seems destined for short to medium term

drinking.

2011 Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir (sighted)

Super pale and diffuse colour; lovely nose, fresh red fruit and also a distinctly savoury

underbrush nose; fresh red fruit, a touch of tamarillo, and a really morish savoury

tone. Elegant, light. Went so well with the tea-smoke duck dish.

2008 Domaine Armand Rousseau Clos de la Roche (blind)

Bright fresh colour, mid-depth; quite a cool nose, raspberry and a touch of bell pepper

and leaf; fine, aromatic pinot, cool and peppery expression with a little astringency in

the cool tannin. A bit closed right now. Good.

I thought this was a Giant Steps. 2006 Domaine Anne Gros Clos Vougeot ‘Le Grand Maupertui’ (blind)

The deepest colour here; oak dominates the nose a little, aromas are muted but ripe;

good intensity of flavor on the palate, quite grippy robust tannin both from the fruit

and the oak. A bit blunt, but well stuffed. Nowhere near ready.

I picked this to be the Anne Gros – the easiest one in the flight to identify due to the deepness of colour, density of tannin, and the oak element. 2008 Giant Steps Tarraford Vineyard Pinot Noir (blind)

Quite a mature colour, pale in depth; sweet and savoury nose, raspberry and mocha;

sweet raspberry fruit, confit tomato, mocha, and a morish savouriness. Drinking well.

I picked this as Giant Steps 2008 Giant Steps Gladysdale Vineyard Pinot Noir (blind)

Light, fine colour; this is all about perfume – a very beguiling pinot floral and musk-

edged perfume both on the nose, and the gentle, elegant palate. Delicious right now.

I really thought this was the Clos de la Roche





As you can deduce from my brief notes on the wines, these are generally light

coloured pinots emphasizing floral notes, and elegance, and often including savoury,

very food friendly elements.

I had a lot of fun with Steve, and the small group of Burgundy enthusiasts gathered

round our lazy susan. It was interesting to see these wines sit quite happily with the

Shanghainese menu, though we did avoid the heavily dark-sauced dishes, and those

with vinegar. Zhe Jiang Heen is worth a look.

It left me with the conclusion too, I like the Giant Steps wines, and look forward to

serving them to friends. It was a reminder too, that I need to keep on exploring – the

next fine wine experience might be from a slope untried.



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The Fine Wine Experience Giant Steps Dinner Review © Linden Wilkie