YAY for Viognier (and Yay-lumba)

A generation ago on the 15th and 16th of August 2002, Australia’s first Viognier—say VEE-YON-YAY—symposium took place at the Hill-Smith family’s Yalumba winery in Angaston. It’s fair to say that the cultivar hasn’t quite gripped the imagination—or stimulated palates—as much as many of the enthusiastic wine trade, wine makers, marketers and writers attending had hoped, but there are still many delicious examples grown around the country today nonetheless. And now both Generations Y (Millennials) and Z are old enough to partake of a glass or two—if they dare.

The selection of Viognier offerings out there is not as as vast as those of Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, or Pinot Gris/Grigio—even Fiano these days—but the producers fashioning wine from this capricious cultivar take the growing and vinifying of it most seriously, even at modest price-points (see the 23’ Yalumba Y below).

And the wines Viognier creates are certainly less predictable—read boring—than so much blanc (especially), gris (there’s a lot of seriously grey grigio out there) and even—I’m a heretic to utter it—way too much lime-acid-cordial-simple rizza.

Wine Australia’s 'Australian Wine' website states: ‘Australian Viognier is a wine like no other – from its heady perfume to its exotic fruit and floral flavours. A variety on the rise, the best Viognier wines walk a thrilling line between elegance and power.’ While I’d contest the observation that Viognier is a ‘variety on the rise’, I can’t fault the enthusiasm of the rest of this statement.

That said, I do have a few issues with this generally bland information portal—federal government and industry-funded—which adds little to the appreciation of the diverse, exciting wines grown across this vast, fascinating land. Not at first landing anyhow, although there are some detailed wine guide pdfs for download which provide meaningful insights. And there are some excellent winemaker / winegrower profiles to be found on the website also.

But it’s the lack of engagement when first accessing the site which irks me. Australia is making exciting wines in beautiful places, although you wouldn’t immediately know it. We need to be on the front foot about this. And one wonders how much thought really gone into some of the content.

On a 'How to pair wine & Thai food' page, for example, where I would have placed Viognier as a potential candidate incidentally, the listing spells Gewürztraminer incorrectly (with two Ts), suggests 'Provence-style' Rosé with Thai Beef Salad, and Sparkling/Champagne with Spring Rolls & Moneybags!

Wine Australia is obviously aware that we cannot legally use Champagne on an Australian wine label, so are they suggesting we drink the real thing? And why would we promote Provence which is another wine region of France? ‘We have a wine for that’ is the latest Wine Australia marketing tagline, so too do the French clearly.

Seriously, when you look at what our closest winegrowing neighbours geographically in New Zealand provide, and also with the compelling online presence Wines of Austria, our nearest wine neighbours alphabetically have created, the Wine Australia welcome to Australian wine offering is—to paraphrase the organisation's 2019 $50 million package tagline—far from inspiring. But back to to Viognier—Australian Viognier’s—deliciousness.

Apricots, Cream and Delight

According to the internationally authoritative and much lauded ampelographical volume, Wine Grapes (Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding, and José Vouillamoz; Penguin and Harper Collins (ecco), 2012), ‘…Viognier in Australia…develops flavours of apricot, peaches, white flowers, occasionally ginger, and luscious texture in these wines.’

How’s that for an emphatic shout out to Viognier’s distinctive charms in our neck of vine woods? The Yalumba Viognier Symposium (referred to above in my intro) gets a nod too, and also Yalumba winemaker and Head of Sustainability,  Louisa Rose, who’s passionately advocated Viognier’s cause in Australia throughout her vinicultural life.

While I’m not a fan of the generic ‘white flowers’ descriptor used above, which is deployed for many wine styles by innumerable wine communicators and influencers—even those with some acuity—Viognier can definitely be up there in the floral, terpenoid compound department. Frequently I’ve noted jasmine, chamomile, rose—Turkish Delight—among the concentrated ‘apricottiness’ found in the most intense examples (such as the Charlish and Co. below).

There’s a piece about these contributing aroma compounds, identified as geraniol, linalool and nerol, on the Wine Australia website. The piece, which is a summary of lead researcher Leigh Francis’s paper for the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), also makes mention of the esters responsible for the creation of ‘peach-like’ aromas too, as well as the more general ‘stone-fruit’ like characters brought about by these monoterpenes frolicking in cahoots with lactones.

There’s a link to download the complete paper should you wish to delve deeper into the detail.

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In the paper, ‘Sensory-directed characterisation of distinctive aromas of Sauternes and Viognier wines through semi-preparative liquid chromatography and gas chromatography approaches’, from A journal of Chromatography we find the observation, ’In Viognier wine, monoterpenes linalool, α-terpineol and geraniol as well as benzaldehyde were found to be associated with the ‘apricot’ character.’

Benzaldehyde is an interesting one. To me it’s the cracked stone character, rather than a flesh.

Interestingly, there’s no mention of zingiberene among the nominated terpenes out there in any paper I can readily access, so I’m assuming this isn’t on the Viognier GCMS assessment run sheets. But, as the authors of Wine Grapes indicate above, ginger is perceived as a characteristic—and desirable—contributing aromatic in Viognier and is not uncommon in more complex expressions of the variety (check out my review of the 2023 Soumah Equilibrio).

I’ve even encountered a gingery character in a some vintages of Clonakilla’s much lauded and adored Shiraz Viognier over the years. Even once or twice in the O’Riada Shiraz which had me puzzled as I understood it to be straight Shiraz (it’s quite pronounced in the ’22, but I made no note of it in the ’23). But apparently it is not always, and may get a little deselected Shiraz Viognier added to it also. So Viognier’s zingiberene can be that pervasive.

Tim Kirk with a Shiraz Viognier in hand, alongside his father, John, at Clonakilla’s 50th celebrations in October 2022. Pic: Tim White

Monoterpene deep diving

In Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells (Penguin Press/John Murray, 2020) Harold McGee writes that ‘…ginger emits a distinctive, fresh smelling terpenoid dubbed zingiberene, along with fresh-woody pinene and eucalyptol, as well as lemony neral (sic) and geranial (sic), floral linalool, and a woody note from terpinolene.’ Little sensory wonder that it may find good company among all the more fleshy apricottiness.

McGee notes g-deca- & g-dodeca-lactones and linalool among the apricots’s principal flavour molecules and in a table in the ‘rose-family’ stone fruit section, lists these ‘component smells’: floral, peach, creamy, geranium leaf, and cucumber. In many a Viognier tasting note—long before encountering McGee’s entry on apricots—I’ve noted cold green tea, jasmine, snow pea—and cucumber rind—in addition to the more primary impact aromas.

Almost all the descriptors in the paragraph above could be found into my collective reviews of Yalumba ’s entry-level Y Series Viognier over the vintages. This frequently delightful wine is made with minimal intervention, is primarily tank fermented, and 100% wild yeast apparently.

Pic: Tim White

Sometimes it’s hard to get your head—in the orthonasal and retronasal senses of smell—around the fact that all these miraculous compounds we perceive are just—JUST—from a liquid which is created solely from bunches of carefully tended grapes, crushed and fermented in tanks of steel—and/0r—casks of wood. How could you not be entranced by this magic of nature. And then not want to be consumed in it?

If you were a craft brewer looking to create—say—an ‘apricots and cream sour’, you’d need build this complexity with multiple hop types—almost certainly imported, not grown in Australia—adding other ancillary local fruit and cereal ingredients. This I mention as just weeks ago I overheard an excited younger person assessing the decals at my local hostelry, The Gilbert Street Hotel, and then asking the bartender as to whether one of the beers tapped, a Ministry of Beer Mango and Cream Sour tasted ‘delicious’?

Deliciousness is, of course, under the nose and in the mouth of the beholder. She was offered a taste of same and another fine ale—a Mountain Culture x BentSpoke Full Suspension IPA, which I was pondering and much enjoying from the fancy in front of me. But the Mangoes and Cream won over. The Full Suspension being too hoppy bitter to her taste that day (as I eavesdropped the chat).

All things nice

Why mention this? Well, in the same way that some wine producers now have a ‘Buttery Chardonnay’ label in their portfolio as an emphatic and familiar statement of character about the style of wine to be found in the bottle. Perhaps, we might eschew traditional—formal, procedural—varietal labelling to provide immediate and familiar indications as to a wines potential deliciousness.

‘Buttery Chardonnay’ is becoming most popular in some parts by all accounts. De Bortoli’s is going so well at that have also recently debuted a Pepper and Spice Shiraz to partner it. What gastronomic aromatic emotions and excitement might be stimulated by—say—a statement of Apricot, Ginger and Cream on a label? Upfront I mean: that is above or below, alongside, a varietal indication on the front label.

This could be more effective in evoking—prompting, recalling in a Proustian manner—familiar, adored, absorbed smell and taste memories. All this without resorting to the winespeakery often found on back labels.

However, I’ve encountered numerous wine purists—including winemakers—who laugh, are aghast—mock—such marketing effrontery as the ‘Buttery Chardonnay’ thing. To me, if it makes people curious enough to stick something new in their mouths and get pleasure from the experience, it can only be a good thing.

Pic: Tim White

And then—randomly—seriously randomly—just two weeks ago (June 2026) I found this sticker on one—just one—of the bottles of my ‘house white’ in the fridge at Hurley Cellars Parkville. That wine being the Yalumba Y 2023 cited above. So what’s going on here? And what are the descriptors in French? Maybe it was part of a cancelled export order, but heading to where? New Caledonia? Mauritius? Surely not France.

I’m making enquiries to the Hill-Smith family wine folk at Yalumba. But the Viognier universe is obviously speaking to me. En Français.

Written and published by Tim White, June/July 2026