Making a gewurztraminer

Vintage has started already in the district’s wineries, with Ken Helm, picking grapes last weekend, February 8 and 9, for the early-ripening gewurztraminer.

You might remember this variety as one of your nightmares of the 1980s, but Helm says the problem back then was the grape was grown in warm areas, whereas it needs cool climates.

Warm regions produced oily wines so winemakers stopped fermentation early to leave residual sugar to cover the oiliness. But the result was overly sweet wines.

In the ’70s and ’80s Wyndham Estate TR2 was one of the biggest selling wines in Australia, he says. He’s making a classic Alsatian dry style, aiming to capture the aromatic and spicy characteristics of the grape.

Helm hasn’t made a gewurztraminer since 2001. The grape is named after the village in northern Italy where it came from, Tramine, and you should pronounce it, Helm advises, “gewurztraMEENer”, in case, like me, you were in the habit of shortening that vowel.