The red revolution

Opposite sides of the planet, radically different wine-making cultures, but one, dedicated aim: to produce the finest new cabernet sauvignons. Anthony Rose raises his glass to two maverick success stories

The aristocratic Spanish socialite Marqués de Griñón and Australia's youthful Jeffrey Grosset are as alike as Don Quixote and Ned Kelly. But there's something they do have in common. Cabernet sauvignon. Both have planted the famous grape of Bordeaux in the virgin soil of two unlikely spots on the planet. At Dominio de Valdepusa in Spain, Carlos Falcó, the Marqués de Griñón, produces big, bold reds in a powerful, New-World style. Jeffrey Grosset, meanwhile, crafts one of Australia's most elegant, almost Italian-style cabernet sauvignon blends in Australia's Clare Valley, better known for its riesling and shiraz.

A grandee of Spain born in Seville to the titles Marqués de Griñón and Marqués de Castelmoncayo, Carlos Falcó is an unlikely iconoclast. More at home with a gun slung over his shoulder and a partridge in his game pocket, the Marqués has made it his aim in life to join the new aristocracy of wine. One evening in the Sixties, he was served a cabernet sauvignon at dinner with Maynard Amerine, the legendary wine professor from Davis University in California, who proclaimed that cabernet was the future for California's Napa Valley. Falcó sent him the climatic data for the Señorío de Valdepusa, the historic 700-hectare estate near Toledo south of Madrid, and Amerine concluded that cabernet sauvignon could be grown there. The authorities, however, refused Falcó permission to plant the Bordeaux grape.

War with Spanish bureaucracy began. The Marqués discovered that both Vega Sicilia in the Ribera del Duero and Marques de Riscal in Rioja had cabernet sauvignon planted since the 1860s. He decided to bring cuttings of cabernet sauvignon hidden in a truckload of Granny Smith apple trees from the Loire Valley and plant them. Observing the benefits of drip irrigation after a trip to Israel, he built his own system. Drip irrigation at the time was technically illegal. "I gave a lecture on drip irrigation and the next day 20 black cars turned up with inspectors and I was handed a 150,000 peseta [about £575] fine. Luckily, they were so obsessed with the irrigation that they didn't realise I had illegally planted cabernet sauvignon. The ensuing publicity was the best thing that could have happened."

Falcó wrote a thundering piece in the Spanish newspaper El País railing against Spain's undemocratic wine laws and warning that if Spain didn't untie its hands from behind its back, Australia and the New World, with the freedom to plant what they wanted and where, would take over. The article was sent to the Minister of Agriculture, whose last act in power, in January 1996, was to change the law to allow irrigation. Eventually Falcó got permission for cabernet albeit on an "experimental" basis, following it up with planting of syrah, petit verdot and graciano. With a battery of experts, among them Michel Rolland for the winemaking and the Australian viticulturalist Richard Smart, Falcó has fine-tuned the wines over the past decade into sleek, full-flavoured reds, with Emeritus, a blend of cabernet, syrah and petit verdot, his prize gem.

Living quietly with his partner Stephanie Toole, an accomplished winemaker in her own right, in Australia's Clare Valley, Jeffrey Grosset has exploited precisely the sort of freedom from bureaucracy that Falcó has always craved. Youthful and intense, Grosset was in London last month to show a range of vintages of his Bordeaux-style Gaia, the latest vintage of which, sealed with a screwcap for the Australian market, has him marked out as an unlikely screwcap messiah. Grosset is internationally acclaimed for his Polish Hill Riesling, one of Australia's great, ageworthy rieslings, an achievement that rather overshadows Gaia, his fine Bordeaux-style blend produced from the eponymous vineyard he planted in 1986.

For this lifelong lover of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet blends – especially the more elegant styles – the challenge lay in a south Australia valley that can reach a blistering 40°C in summer. He had to find a spot cool enough to retain sufficient acidity in the grape to achieve a natural balance in the wines. Having scoured all the high country in Clare Valley, Grosset found a slope facing the morning sun with soil of low fertility, good drainage and the required rock structure. It was quite a risk.

Gaia is one of the most astonishing vineyards you'll see. Planted at 570 metres, the highest point of the Clare Valley, the vineyard is an elongated, triangular wedge of emerald green that sits above the f rolling golden cornfields of the Clare Valley. Named after James Lovelock's books, Gaia is a metaphor for the importance of the diversity and complexity of species. "We often joke that the earth mother is keeping an eye on the vineyard because no one else is," says Grosset. "Surprisingly, there is very little bird damage, only the occasional inquisitive kangaroo having a taste."

Unlike Falcó, Grosset is his own muse, who enjoys the precision of making cabernet sauvignon and blends of it. He took a risk in planting where he did, but his approach to winemaking is calculated. "The most capable winemakers are confident and never lose sight of the fact that the fruit is the most important thing. It's to do with egos under control. They're not trying to say 'this is my wine' but maximising what they have and the focus is on the wine in the glass rather than making a statement."

Ultimately, Grosset's single aim is to make wine for people to drink and enjoy with food. "The most satisfying part of my job is when I hear that's happened. I never enter shows and I don't seek reassurance from my peers, so I think I've remained pretty focused on my aim."

The Marqués de Griñón was on his way to Madrid last month to publicise the award of DO (Denominación de Origen) for the Dominio de Valdepusa 41-hectare estate planted illegally 28 years ago. It's an irony of sorts that one of Spain's most outspoken figures has now been seen to join the wine establishment. But, as he points out, the DO system means nothing to the consumer. Recognition by wine consumers is precisely the reward experienced by Jeffrey Grosset, meanwhile, for having gone out on a limb to achieve his ambition of making characterful riesling and his own cabernet blend. In a peculiarly Australian way, Grosset has entered the aristocracy of wine. E