Wine writer RICHARD CALVER got his nose into an Italian grape inspiring local winery Pankhurst’s ‘best wine’. 

IT was my daughter’s birthday dinner and we celebrated at Brunello in Civic. 

This is a wine bar and restaurant that has an extensive wine-preservation system. In my understanding, it uses argon gas to seal bottles of high-quality wine to stop oxidation. In this way the flavour and characteristics of the wine remain intact, and it can be sold by the glass over an extended period. 

While this was impressive and a talking point, we decided to be loyal to our locale and chose a white wine from the list of recommended Canberra and district wines compiled for the restaurant by John Ings, of Canberra Wine and Spirit Merchants. 

We chose a 2019 Pankhurst Arneis because this was a wine varietal never tried by my daughter and well-priced at $40. The Pankhurst website shows it at $30 a bottle from the winery.

Arneis is a white varietal from Piedmont in the north-west of Italy. According to one website, arneis was historically blended with the nebbiolo grape in the Barolo region because arneis had a softening effect on the tannic and austere nebbiolo varietal. 

But now it’s generally marketed as a stand-alone, albeit for grape growers it’s a difficult beast; its nemesis is powdery mildew and it is low yielding with a tendency for the wines to be susceptible to oxidation. 

I’d previously tried the pizzini arneis, from the Victorian King Valley, and had thought it a good value for money buy at under $25 with a good mouth-filling finish.

Back to the local: in conversation with John Ings, he indicated that he’d chosen the arneis for the Brunello list because it was, in his view, Pankhurst’s best wine. He commended the views from the winery with “a beautiful site that looks out to the Murrumbidgee at Wallaroo”. I need to get out more. 

Our tasting at Brunello revealed a wine that opened out with food and which finished with a hint of pear. It was balanced with little to no acidity. On the nose it wasn’t as floral as the pizzini but was subtle rather than a pointer to its subsequent depth on the palate.

So, to find out more, I called the winery. I first got Christine Pankhurst:

“Hi, I’m thinking of writing about your wine. Have you got time for a chat?”

“No,” she said, “I’m driving. It’s about time, we’ve only been in business 36 years. Allan will call you later.” He did. We chatted. The winery has been in operation since 1986 with the first vintage in 1989, a pinot noir. 

Allan confirmed that the fruit was estate grown and that he’d planted arneis “back in winter, 2015; well, in fact we grafted over the sauvignon blanc.” 

I ask about the motivation to plant arneis: “We were just over sauvignon blanc. In the end we decided to change, at first looking at fiano. But we established that it’s a bit too cool here for fiano. The arneis caught our eye especially as it has real depth and a long flavour spectrum. We even travelled to Piedmont where it was near extinct in 1966. It has a lot of problems, including powdery mildew and the word ‘arneis’ translates to ‘little rascal’ so lots of growers stay away from the problems. Here it’s been a big hit and we enjoy it ourselves. 

“We had our first vintage in 2017 and on any weekend it’s our best seller at the cellar door. You should visit.” 

I definitely need to get out more.