Winemaker Notes
2017 really was a sensational vintage! Good intermittent rainfall with cool to mild temperatures, and not a day over 40 degrees during the summer months marked 2017 out as a classic cool climate vintage. All varieties came in later than average, ripening at an unhurried pace in these ideal growing conditions, producing wines of incredible structure, detail and length.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A complex and satisfying pinot that merges an array of fruits, from strawberries and raspberries to cherries and plums. Dressed in fragrant red perfume and attractive oak spice, the wine also shows some earthiness. An effortless palate that blossoms with airy, fleshy flavors of pinot fruit. You barely notice the web of fine silky tannins below the deck. Drink now.
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Wine Spectator
Bright, polished red fruit notes of wild strawberry and cherry are fresh and lively, with clove and sage accents and some firmness on the finish, where a dash of nutmeg lingers. Drink now.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine’s tight, raspberry-scented fruit meets tannins that share the same red glow, their meatiness almost exotic, like the flavor of kangaroo or other gamey meat. There’s earthen power to this wine, its oak scents needing some time to integrate. Cellar it to serve later with roast game.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
As the most important area of wine production in Victoria today, the Yarra Valley is most popular for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which account for over half of vineyard acreage. A gentle, rolling and rural region alongside the Margaret River, the Yarra Valley has a cool maritime climate with a lengthy growing season, perfect for these cool-climate varieties.
Two styles of Pinot Noir are possible here. The warmer Lower Yarra Valley with sandy, loam soils, produces plush and fruity Pinot Noir while the cooler, higher-elevation Upper Yarra Valley with soils of young red basalt, produces more angular and mineral-driven Pinot Noir.
Yarra Valley Chardonnay is among the best in Australia. To preserve the floral aromatics and fresh citrus flavors for which this area’s Chardonnay is so appreciated, time in barrel is restrained (though barrel fermentation is common). The best Yarra Valley Chardonnays display brilliant acidity, leesy characteristics, citrus, stone fruit and flavors of ginger and spice.
Shiraz and Cabernet find success in parts of this region as well.