We have had another big 12 months. We have been madly planting, growing and making. Don Valley and Gladysdale are two wonderful new sites and we have a bunch of new varieties coming to our soils this year including Trousseau, Aligote, Nebbiolo as well as new plantings of Chenin and Cab.
Our farming continues to evolve as we better understand how to provide the plant with enough room to grow at one with the surrounding environment rather than manipulate the environment and diminish what is unique.
It is through our farming that we are coming to better love and appreciate what it is to be Yarra Valley and Australian. We are getting some amazing glimpses of our story and history. It really feels like we are just lifting the lid.
The 2016 season
2016 was warm and dry. As it lurched towards us, we didn’t fully appreciate just how condensed berry ripeness was across all sites and varieties. Put simply, our usual work days with lunch and dinner interruptions was mainly abandoned as we only just managed to cope with the rampant flow of grapes.
However, as the wines reveal, we are working with some incredibly resilient sites that are being managed to sway with but not yield to the season. These wines with all their freshness and clarity show how both our farming and perhaps even more reassuringly our sites are able to cope in all manner of season.
The wines
Since we bottled the single vineyard wines in February, we haven’t paid them much attention until a few weeks ago. They generally look awkward and clumsy post bottling and time is the only solution.
So, come early July, we took a deep breath and finally lined up the family and took our first post bottling snapshot. The wines display slightly more fruit weight on the back of the warmer season but freshness and the DNA of each site is revealed with acrid clarity. Delicious, mouthwatering and ever so slightly more generous as young wines.
Hoddles Creek Chardonnay
Retains a pure line of fine lacey acidity with kafir lime and some great back palate weight. The 250m elevation helps in such a warm year.
Woori Yallock Chardonnay
Both Chardonnay and Pinot from Woori display the wonderful mid to back palate chalky savouriness which makes handling the warmth of ’16 in the wine so easy. Definitely pure and alive.
Coldstream Pinot Noir
As our first picked vineyard from the valley floor, this wine is the most open and approachable. Spicy perfume, gravelly fine tannins and red fruits.
Yarra Junction Pinot Noir
Our coolest site and consequently the last pinot block picked, this wine is both fresh and darker in fruits with a depth of structure. This carries a little more fruit weight than 2015.
Woori Yallock Pinot Noir
Carries the same structural form as the Chardonnay as you would expect. Clarity with slightly more mid palate red fruit weight as per the seasonal influence.
Wesburn Pinot Noir
Mid palate core of chalk and pretty dancing fruit all around. Astonishing clarity of site.
Read the full tasting notes for each of the new release wines here