Smallfry Wines Delivers Big Time Delight
My friend Roy lives in Australia, mostly in Melbourne, and visits Turkey regularly. Has been doing so for so long, in fact, that he owns several apartments here. We actually met when, two apartments ago for me, we were neighbors! I’ve teased him throughout our friendship about how I refuse to believe Australia has good wine* and wouldn’t believe it until he brought me some. And yet, every year he’s come without wine. He says that he wouldn’t dare to choose wine for me since he’s happy enough with whatever plonk is around.
Until this year, inspiration struck! I found a wine shop near him (not difficult given where his place in Melbourne is) that does online orders and asked him if he’d bring wine I had pre-selected. Silly me for not thinking of that before! The blessed man brought me six bottles. Three of which I’d ordered myself, and another three he chose when he realized I’d ordered so few. When he arrived, he told me that he wanted to drink one of “his” bottles together because he’d never had an orange wine.
That’s how I discovered Smallfry Wines.
Smallfry Wines
Based out of Barossa, Smallfry is a team effort between foodie partners Suzi Hilder and Wayne Ahrens. The both started out as viticulturists, bitten, as they say, by the winemaking bug. They wanted to try using their fruit to make their own wine. With two vineyards, one in Eden Valley and the other on the valley floor in Vine Vale, they had a great start.
After rooting around on their website, one sentence stood out to me as encompassing their philosophy: “Natural ferments, nil to minimal adjustment, old oak a soft hand in the cellar allows the vineyard to speak.”
Once they get their great fruit into the winery, the secret ingredient to their magic is something that’s not so secret, or hard to attain: wild yeasts. According to Ahrens, what makes wild yeast fermentations so special is that they take a day or so to really kick into gear. During that time, the skins macerate with the juices and extract a more fruity flavor profile. He says:
The biggest kick I get out of using wild ferments is the Dionysis thing. Wine was a gift from the gods because before microscopes no one had any idea of what was turning their grapes into wine. Fermentation was a spontaneous event to be celebrated by giving thanks to the gods, it turned a perishable item i.e. grapes into a storable, pleasant (we hope) health giving product.
Crushing grapes into a fermenter then later getting in with my bare feet and feeling around for the little warm patches and mixing them into the rest of the must until within a day or two a lovely, healthy, sweet smelling ferment results is a thing of great excitement for me. Which is really what it’s all about. If I can’t offer you something I’m excited about we might as well all pack up, go home and leave it to Jacobs Creek.
Smallfry Wines Tangerine Dream, 2022
All the grapes for this blend came from their Vale Valley vineyard in Barossa Valley. The blend information I found was for the previous vintage, but to give one an idea: Semillon 46%, Pedro Ximenes 41%, Riesling 10.5%, Roussane 2%, and Muscat 0.5%.
Wow.
In keeping with the low intervention approach, the wine showed a cloudy, pale copper-orange in the glass. I understand some people are turned off by hazy wines. Me, I don’t mind them. There really is a flavor difference and, in my experience, it’s been for the better when the wine is hazy. Citrus and spice and everything nice was what this gave me. Tangerine, lemongrass, citrus shrub, and white pepper. Dry and textured with peach fuzz tannins, 12% abv, and juicy acidity.
I prepared an Indonesian feast for Roy and me to pair with the wine and it all did very well together! We feasted on roasted chili coconut chicken, crispy soy and ginger roast potatoes, and salad. And Roy was very impressed with his first orange wine.
*Before anyone puts a hit out on me; I know in theory that it does. But when I left the US the only thing I could afford was Yellow Tail and I think we can all agree on how great that is. Australian imports to Turkey are not much better. Actually I think we have Yellow Tail.