Back in August the Western Australian wine industry was rocked by the collapse of one of it’s biggest players, Evans & Tate, and when I arrived in Perth in October, it was still making the newspapers. As one of the arms of Evans & Tate, Oakridge has been being run by the receivers since then, but when I visited there was a more positive vibe in the air, just having been bought out, reportedly by McWilliams wines.

 

I met Adrian Rodda, one of the two winemakers at Oakridge, and like many of the Yarra winemakers I met in my short time visiting the region, his focus was on making sure that the hard work was done in the vines, and then staying as hands off as possible in the winery to let the quality of fruit speak for itself. This compared to the more interventional techniques of many of the winemakers I met in South Australia, where the craft seemed to involve more ‘assemblage’ of different wines at the blending stage. 

 

We had a chance to taste our way through the range together, which was fascinating to hear about how each wine had behaved in the winery, what he thought of them and so on. My favourite was the Oakridge Chardonnay 2006, and it seems I’m not alone – it has recently winning gold at the Royal Melbourne show. The nose is fairly full, with a rich nutty character rather than any over-the-top butter aromas that Australian Chardonnays seem to be infamous for. The palate is big, with ripe fruit, and fantastically integrated oak and beautifully long finish, a seriously indulgent wine that still has refreshing acidity keeping it fresh.

 

The Oakridge Limited Release Viognier 2007 was fantastic, although as the name suggests, it’s not made in vast quantities – mainly because the vines are so young – this is the first crop from these vines and there is already plenty of aromatic apricot reminding me of fruit soap, but this is a wine that retains a delicate nature – a fragrant rather than pungent style of Viognier. The palate is slightly creamy, but the acidity balances this up well and gives the aromatic finish a nice fresh dry end.

 

The future seems bright for Oakridge, with new owners and lots of silverware for their recent releases I’m sure they will keep on turning out the goods.