Wine and art: does a better pairing than this even exist? Making wine is certainly an art; it requires time, patience, care and expertise and a hell of a lot of passion and instinct, especially when nature gives you lemons. Art, specifically painting, is very much the same, minus nature giving you lemons. Unless you deliberately decide to paint them.

On a rather sunny afternoon late last month, a welcome change to the excruciating winter season peppered with viruses of all sorts, a tasting of current and museum releases from Barossa Peter Lehmann Wines, guided by its loquacious national business manager, Malcolm Stopp, took place in the marvelous basement of the heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, Melbourne, on the occasion of the Affordable Art Fair Melbourne, with which Peter Lehmann has proudly partnered.

Peter Lehmann is very much part of the furniture in the Barossa. Even if not the oldest, the estate goes back over six generations and, with that, the families of growers that Lehmann has loyally kept under its wing. When in 1978 Saltram’s owners, for whom Lehmann was working at the time, refused to keep buying fruit from their roughly 180 grower families amid an industry oversupply, Peter Lehmann pushed back.

Saltram’s agreed to crush and vinify the fruit – but not to own it – so it could then be sold off as bulk wine just to pay growers through the 1978 and 1979 vintages. When Saltram’s later asked him back as chief winemaker, Peter said: “I’m terribly sorry, but you lot can take a long walk off a short pier” (Stopp admitted that this was a softened version of what Peter actually said).

Peter, his wife Margaret, Andrew Wigan and winery operations manager Mick Anderson then relocated to the old, bankrupt Hoffmann’s winery site in Tanunda, taking around 140 growers with them, starting with almost nothing. Their first wine was called “Future Shiraz” – priced at $25 a dozen. The very first vintage under the Peter Lehmann name was 1980.

Back to the present, to our tasting of the Master Collection: the wines certainly shone bright amongst all the beautiful paintings surrounding us, showing that, like for a painting, time goes by, but the beauty endures. The lineup comprised the Wigan Riesling, named after Peter Lehmann’s former chief winemaker Andrew Wigan, considered a bit of a Riesling master. The Margaret Semillon, a tribute to Peter’s wife Margaret, a masterclass in ageing from “the oldest Semillon vines in the world” – sourced from around five growers, including the Fiebiger family (vines planted in 1945 in Vine Vale), Scholz family’s vineyard (1936), and Mader’s vines in Light Pass (1925). Following advice from Hunter winemaker Murray Tyrrell, fruit is picked early (at around 10–10.5 Baumé) to preserve acidity for long ageing, resulting in low alcohol (10–11% ABV). Production is small – approximately 1,000 dozen in a good vintage – and largely reserved for the museum cellar for tastings like this one.

The Eight Songs Shiraz was the first to break the tradition of ageing Barossa Shiraz in American oak. At the beginning of the 21st century, Lehmann “wanted to have a wine that was going to celebrate the new millennium… it was going to be French oak… from vines that had to be 100 years old or plus.” The first vintage was 1996; Penfolds followed the same fashion with the 1997.

The cuvée name is a story on its own. Back then, a collaboration happened between artist Rod Schubert and composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a friend of the Lehmanns, who wrote and performed a piece called Eight Songs of a Mad King (about King George III, believed to have suffered from porphyria). Schubert painted eight accompanying artworks, and the wine was originally sold as an eight-bottle boxed set – one label per painting. This backfired somewhat in Asian markets, where eight is considered a lucky number and people refused to break the set. Dougie Lehmann apparently solved this by drinking all eight bottles in one sitting over a Melbourne Cup weekend.

And finally, the Mentor, Lehmann’s flagship Bordeaux-style blend – historically a blend of circa 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Malbec, 4% Merlot and 4% Shiraz. French oak only. The wine was originally just called “Cellar Collection” before being renamed Mentor in tribute to Peter Lehmann’s role mentoring a generation of young Barossa winemakers. Its first vintage was 1991.

Just going back to the growers for a second, before indulging you with the reviews of my picks from the tasting: for standard Shiraz fruit, Lehmann pays its growers around $2,500–3,000 per tonne; fruit for the flagship Stonewell Shiraz earns growers around $10,000 per tonne; fruit for the top-tier Masters range, instead, fetches around $15,000 per tonne. Stopp credited current ownership under Casella with maintaining these grower bonuses: “We can still afford to look after our growers and pay them the bonuses for the very best quality fruit that we have,” he said.

It seems to me that growers, more than anything, are the key ingredient in any recipe for success.

2019 Wigan Riesling
94 points | $50

Fruit sourced only from Mark Petney’s home block, a high-altitude vineyard on shaly-schist soils. To the keen eye, an enticing, brilliant sunny colour. This is a Riesling with all the bells and whistles – aromatically powerful and captivating, proudly showing off waves of candied orange, tangerine, yuzu, preserved green olives, pulpy citrus fruits and a smokiness reminiscent of gunpowder. The warmth of the vintage translates into a more incisive, weighty mid-palate, as well as greater concentration and radiance, with all the yellow stonefruit and citrus, honeycomb, smoked pineapple and almond elements playing a joyful symphony together.

2014 Wigan Riesling
95 points | $50

Fruit for this vintage has been sourced from Ben Zander’s Wroxton vineyard in Eden Valley, at 500m above sea level on shallow grey sands over flint rock. A brilliant golden colour, it smells like a tempting, decadent breakfast from my childhood in Tuscany, redolent of honey on toast, apricot conserve, Meyer lemons, summer hay and greengage. On the palate, it shows a tasty smokiness with a voluptuous acidity, framed by an impression of brewed mandarin tea. While the tactile presence and the concentration of flavours are second to none, it’s still utterly refreshing and persistent, with plenty of drive and energy.

2019 Margaret Semillon
95 points | $50

Delicate and vibrant, still very much in its prime, it’s the subtlety of the crunchiest Granny Smith apple, lemon pith, freshly cut grass and blossom, with the fruit’s freshness crystallised into something almost sherbet-like. On the palate it takes on a new dimension of smoked lemon peel and toasted bread crust, with an incredible lightness yet focus, a piercing acidity that also elevates the flavour delivery and the palate length, with a slightly waxy finish. A sublime Semillon with time ahead.

2003 Margaret Semillon
97 points | $50

It’s the smokiness, the honey toast, or the stewed quince, maybe the blossom honey with the candied orange, or perhaps the saffron. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stop leaning into this little glass of history. I won’t stop. Huge flavour intensity, concentration, complexity, mid-palate punch and fleshiness, and while, sure, there are plenty of attractive tertiary characteristics floating around, there is also plenty of zingy freshness and elevation of flavours and youthful spirit. Such energy and length for a 23-year-old Semillon. Still another decade to live, at least.

2022 Eight Songs Shiraz
95 points | $50

Fruit for this vintage comes from the Grope family, Peter Scholz and Ruediger Petrov in Light Pass; Simon Hahn in Nuriootpa; Obbiettivo in Rosedale. Perfumed and concentrated, with its glossy bilberries, wild blackcurrants, black cherries coated in dark chocolate, before going into the more savoury and herbal territory with black olive tapenade, menthol, fresh figs and blue cheese notes. The palate shows a touch more of that oak presence (14 months in 40% new French oak hogsheads), with cloves and a cracked black pepper quality; tannins are mouth coating and framed by a salivating acidity, ending with a delicious cherry dipped in chocolate, a signal that things have yet to settle.

2022 Mentor Cabernet Sauvignon
95 points | $50

The growers for this vintage were Ralph and Angela Schrapel and Wayne Falknberg in Ebenezer; Ahrens in Vine Vale; Paul Hahn, Jim Boehm and Mark Mader in Light Pass. A blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Malbec and 3% Shiraz. Now, tell me again why you shouldn’t drink more Cabernet? This is a textbook one, packed with all the right qualities for a young, nervy Cab Sauv. It starts all black: blackberries, blackcurrants, black olives. Then it’s dried violets, bay leaves, oregano, cedar, freshly rolled tobacco leaves. Beautiful, elevated acidity, with great dry extract, enough glossy quality to the fruit, and great length and intensity of flavour.