Changing tastes, warming climate push winemakers to extinct volcano

For two decades Ross and Derice McDonald made organic wines in the Hunter Valley before they say consumer tastes and the climate turned against them.

So they packed their bags and moved to Orange in the Central West in 2020 for their own slice of an extinct volcano.

"Everything that we want in Orange can be grown in Orange," said Ross McDonald, owner of Macquariedale Organic Wines.

"There's no need to be looking too far afield to supplement what we're doing because of climate change. We can ripen shiraz and cabernet now quite successfully in Orange."

The Hunter Valley in NSW is the state's most well-known and most visited wine region, famous for their shiraz and semillon wines.

But climate change and consumer trends towards lighter style wines are leading to the Hunter buying and growing grapes in cooler climate regions like Orange.

"[Lighter] wine styles are very difficult to make in hotter areas, and the hot areas have been identified in Australia as pretty much Hunter Valley, Coonawarra, Barossa Valley, Margaret River," Mr McDonald said.

"So everybody in those areas are looking at alternative grapes that are more heat tolerant, or they're purchasing grapes from cooler areas to make those styles of wines."

Orange is classed as cool climate because its vineyards sit between 600 and 1,390 metres above sea level.

Some of the fruit grown there now ends up in wines made in the Hunter.

The trend of purchasing grapes from cooler climates has accelerated over the past decade, according to industry bodies and Mr McDonald.

Under Wine Australia's labelling rules, at least 85 per cent of the grapes in a wine must come from a region for that region to be named on the label.

Outsourcing grapes

But there are no rules about where a wine can be sold.

For example, a Hunter Valley cellar door can sell wine made mostly from Orange grapes, as long as it is not labelled as Hunter Valley.

While there are no exact numbers showing how many grapes are farmed out, and where they are from, it is understood from a number of Central West growers that Orange makes up a large proportion of the Hunter's outsourced purchased grapes.

"My estimation is that approximately 50 per cent of the grapes processed in the Hunter are not actually grown there now," Mr McDonald said.

"Orange would play a big part in that. But there's grapes being brought in from hilltops, towards Young … even the other side of the snowy."

Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association chief executive Jennie Curran said access to fruit from other regions could provide wineries with greater resilience if local harvest volumes were reduced.

"Local wine production does not always meet demand and as a result, some wineries source fruit from other regions to complement their Hunter Valley production and maintain supply consistency," she said.

"Like all regions, we are experiencing greater weather variability, including more intense rainfall events, extended heat periods and changing seasonal conditions, requiring growers to continue to invest in vineyard management and risk mitigation."

But the idea of using Orange's grapes in other areas is not new.

When the first vineyards were grown in Orange, a lot of fruit was sold to the surrounding area, as the Central West was yet to be established as a wine region.

"Predominantly [it went] to wineries in places like the Hunter Valley," secretary for the Orange Region Vignerons Association and Stockman's Ridge Wines owner, Lisa De Diana said.

"Nowadays … most of the vignerons in Orange choose to keep their own fruit for their own wine."

Extinct volcano

Gaanha Bula-Mount Canobolas is an ancient dormant volcano south west of Orange, and is the highest peak between the Blue Mountains and the Indian Ocean.

Its nutrient-rich soils, as well as the cool climate and high rainfall, makes the environment well-suited for growing fruit.

In the 1860s, Orange began growing apples, cherries and stone fruit, which it is still known for today.

But it was not until the 1980s that attention was turned to the wine industry, with a number of wineries establishing themselves in the red soil of the mountain.

"It had everything we were looking for; it's got the right sort of climate, the right sort of soils, good conditions for growing good quality fruit," Ms De Diana said.

"It gives us really ancient volcanic soils, which are extremely fertile, and that's one of the key growing things for a vineyard is the type of soil and in volcanic soils, vines do exceptionally well."

Demand for lighter wines

According to the NSW Wine Industry Association, wine consumption overall has been decreasing.

Executive officer Matthew Jessop said this was being driven by lifestyle, export markets, cost-of-living pressures and changing tastes.

"There has been a move away from bigger style reds," he said.

For example, there is more demand for pinot noirs, instead of shiraz, and there has become more of an emphasis on whites, such as chardonnay.

This is backed by the Endeavour Group's insights report, which states younger drinkers are looking for lighter styles of wine.

Wine Australia's recent National Vintage Report showed that Orange was producing almost five times the amount of pinot noir than the Hunter Valley was.

Orange crushed almost five times as much pinot noir as the Hunter Valley this year, according to Wine Australia: 343 tonnes, worth about $730,000, compared with 69 tonnes worth about $71,000.