Winemaker Notes
Established in 1982 by Richard and Jill McIntyre, Moorooduc Estate is a small, family run wine business that has developed an enviable reputation for complex and food friendly wines.
Moorooduc Estate's philosophy in everything they do is to make the most of top quality ingredients. Intensive, hands-on care in the vineyard, with minimal use of chemicals, produces the best possible fruit for our wines. Wild yeast ferments and minimal intervention winemaking, with a nod to traditional Burgundian techniques, allow the wines to express their site specificity, or terroir. Similarly, they aim to source ingredients for the food they serve that are seasonal, local and organic.
All the wines are made on-site in the rammed earth winery. From a very modest 20 tonne winery set up in 1987, they now have a more sophisticated facility with a small but high-quality Bucher press and an excellent Vaslin – Bucher destemmer. Since 2006 they have had the facility to chill fruit in a refrigerated shipping container which has been particularly beneficial with the warmer climate and earlier vintages we have been experiencing over recent years. In the winery, the emphasis is on gentle winemaking methods with some quality control where they believe this is important.
Extending into the sea from just south of the city of Melbourne to form Port Philip Bay in the southern state of Victoria, the Mornington Peninsula grape growing region naturally has a cool, maritime climate. A wide range of soils and topographic variations support a large diversity of wine styles within the small headland.
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.”