continuing with the variety. It is a wonder that the Koch Vineyard’s eight rows of 1853-planted mataro vines have survived. Although some vineyards around South Australia continued to produce a good quality crop, the move to varietal labelling, new perspectives and economic change saw plantings diminish. The famed Quarry Vineyard at Auldana fell to urban development. The earliest vintages of St Henri, before it became a Penfolds brand, were cabernet–mataro blends. But other plantings survived because they belonged to fruit salad-type blocks and could be useful as blending material. A smattering of post-war plantings therefore still exists. Mataro proved as versatile in port production during the early 20th century as it was in the transition and development of the modern Australian wine industry. During the 1950s and 1960s, winemakers relied heavily on mataro. It was rarely used on its own, although there were a few experimental or one-off wines produced during the 1950s. A revival of sorts began in the late 1980s with the popularity of GSM blends. In theory the late-ripening mataro gave the wines an underlying torque. Marketers adopted the synonym Mourvèdre on labels because it sounded more sophisticated, but unwittingly they relegated mataro to the bottom drawer. Despite this, most producers in the Barossa Valley nowadays describe the variety as mataro, reflecting their own journey of discovery and sense of history. It has resulted in a renewed interest in the variety and more plantings. Mataro is ideally suited to the Barossa because it can withstand heat extremely well. Its loose-knit clusters and thick skins make it resilient to extreme weather. In France it was purportedly called estrangle-chien (dog strangler), because the astringent skins could choke a dog, an anecdote that may be apocryphal. Even so, mataro is a highly versatile variety. It brings complexity and structure to blends, but can also produce striking wines of wonderful colour, density, buoyancy and stature. Our mataro tasting included 34 wines that were largely single varietals, with only a small number of blends. Interestingly, the single varietals were far more successful, seemingly, as these were attracting the best fruit. Overall, Barossa mataro varies because of the different approaches to vinification and maturation, but the tannins never seem to be overly bitter or sinewy. Some winemakers are aiming to make
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