We’re fundraising to support our Chilean wineries affected by recent flooding and wildfires to replant and re-build.

During the three months leading up to Christmas Indigo will donate £1 for each bottle sold, from a selection of our favourite Chilean wines (full list below), to the go-fund-me campaigns mounted by Leo Erazo (Rogue Vine) and Jose-Luis and Daniela Gómez Bastías (Viña González Bastías) – who have both been severely affected by the recent fires and flooding in Itata and Maule.

Rogue Vine was founded by friends Leo Erazo and Justin Decker, to restore and bring recognition to the old bush vines on steep granitic hills that form part of the viticultural heritage of southern Chile. When wildfires swept through Itata in February, 90% of the vineyards which they farm were burned, many of the vines they lost were over 100 years old.

Assessing the damage in the days after the fires Leo observed: “Definitely there are some vineyards that won’t recover – the trunks have burnt literally to charcoal. I had a parcel of Moscatel planted in the 1870s that was next to the eucalyptus, and that will not recover. My guess is that from the 90% of production that we have lost, half of the vines will recover and half will need to be replanted”.

Jose-Luis and Daniela of González Bastías sustainably farm 4ha of very old vine Pais, Torontel, Moscatel and Semillon on the banks of the River Maule. On 21st August 150mm of rain fell in 24 hours, double the previous record of 84mm in 1963, swelling the river to record levels, engulfing their vineyards and destroying their winery and house. This short video shows their vineyards after the rain.

Daniela, ever a beacon of positivity, tells us that now the waters have receded they are beginning recovery work in the vineyards and rebuilding their home.

We’re hearing about the effects of climate change on the environment, wildlife and people increasingly frequently. In the last six months two incidents have hit particularly close to home as they impacted two wineries that we work with in Chile. In July Daniela and José Luis from Gonzalez Bastias travelled to London, the team and our customers were taken by their energy and commitment to their heritage vines.

Fast-forward three months and floods in Maule destroyed their family home and winery, and inundated their vineyards. It isn’t the first climate disaster in central Chile this year. Leo Erazo of Rogue Vine faced wild fires that spread rapidly across the Itata region in February. As a team our hearts went out to Daniela, Jose-Luis and Leo, we felt we had to do something to help them to rebuild their lives and replant their vineyards.

Ben Henshaw, owner Indigo Wine

If you would like to support or learn more about this campaign, please contact your sales rep. or jo@indigowine.com

Wines in the fundraiser:

Dominio del Cuarzo Itata Cinsault
Dominio del Cuarzo Itata Pais Ñipas
Gonzalez Bastias Pais Matorral
Gonzalez Bastias Tierra Madre
Liberame Pet Nat Blanco
Liberame Pet Nat Rosado
RETA Quebrada Chalinga Pinot Noir
RETA Romelio
RETA Quebrada Seca Chardonnay
Rogue Vine Grand Itata Blanco
Rogue Vine Grand Itata Tinto
Tinta Tinto Syrah
Calco Chardonnay
Calco Pinot Noir
Vignerons Fine Wines Tinto de la Reina Malbec
Vignerons Fine Wines Tinto del Itata Cinsault
Viñedos de Alcohuaz Rhu
Viñedos de Alcohuaz Tococo
Viñedos de Alcohuaz Grus

Sugrue South Downs partners with Indigo for UK distribution

It’s been a year of new beginnings for Dermot and Ana Sugrue at award-winning boutique English producer Sugrue South Downs: from their first vineyard purchase, Bee Tree Vineyard near Lewes in East Sussex; foundations are in for a dedicated winery and tasting room at Bee Tree; to Dermot moving on from his winemaking responsibilities at Wiston to concentrate on taking Sugrue South Downs to the next level.

There’s a new beginning on the sales side as well – we’re delighted to be taking on UK distribution of the wines from September. Winemaker Dermot Sugrue established Sugrue South Downs in 2006 when he planted a 1ha vineyard at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex. Dermot and his wife Ana now manage 11ha in East and West Sussex, producing a range of terroir-driven and single-vineyard wines, incorporating a broad range of large, old barrels and released at maturity after extended lee-aging in the cellar.

Investment by hospitality entrepreneur Robin Hutson, Chairman and Chief Executive of Home Grown Hotels and the Lime Wood Group, has enabled Dermot and Ana to focus on their own wines. They’ve taken on long-term leases on the Mount Harry and Coldharbour Vineyards, ensuring continuity of a high-quality grape supply from distinctive terroirs which Dermot has been working with for a number of years. Work is in progress to convert a barn at Bee Tree Vineyard to a winery, where the 2023 vintage will be made.

“I’ve been making wine in the UK for 20 years now, collaborating widely with great success. However Ana and I are now completely focussed on Sugrue South Downs, the boutique project I established back in 2006. It’s crucial we work with a distributor who understands our ethos and artisan roots, and that’s why Indigo are the perfect fit.”

Dermot Sugrue

Dermot and Ana’s quality-minded approach was recognised at the WineGB awards recently, where Sugrue South Downs was named Best Boutique Producer; Cuvée Boz Coldharbour Single Vineyard 2015 was named best Blanc de Blancs; and Cuvée Dr Brendan O’Regan MV was awarded Best NV/MV Classic Cuvée.

The full range of current releases – The Trouble with Dreams 2018, ZODO MV, Cuvée Boz Coldharbour Single Vineyard 2015, Cuvée Dr Brendan O’Regan MV, Rosé Ex Machina 2016 – will be available to taste with Dermot and the Indigo team at the Wines of Great Britain Trade and Press Tasting on Tuesday 5 September at Battersea Arts Centre. Register here for the tasting.

Read more about the project and wines.

Some of us are looking at the stars: a conversation with Felipe Ramirez

Filipe Ramirez has the four stars of the Southern Cross constellation on the labels of his Dominio del Cuarzo project from the Itata Valley in Chile. When we spoke to him last week he explained: “I’m always looking south, the four stars used to guide people in the mountains and on the sea, I like that connection of being guided by nature. It’s simple showing my commitment to the south”.

Filipe is thoughtful and well travelled. He was born in Patagonia and studied agronomy in Chile, but has worked and gaining experience in the Rhone, Burgundy and Oregon, before setting up Dominio del Cuarzo in Itata in the south of Chile. With this project he’s bringing a focus and a respect to the vines and terroirs of Itata, which historically hasn’t been seen there. The result is pretty but defined wines, with a beautiful silky tannin structure, that have raised the bar on what’s expected from Pais and Cinsault.

His project is focussed on this unique southern terroir, which relates to his memories of places and the flavours he grew up with. He feels comfortable in cool climates, and with the greens and blues of the trees and lakes of his native Patagonia, his father also studied agronomy working in forestry, and there were also lots of chefs in his family. For him wine brings these two worlds together.

“Making wine is my passion, it connects me with places and people. With my guts too, my feelings, and with science of course”.

While studying for his Masters in France, Felipe met with Louis Michel Liger-Belair, who invited him to work a harvest at a project in Oregon. Felipe immediately felt at home there, the landscape and climate had similarities to Patagonia. Terroir specialist Pedro Parra is also involved in the Rose and Arrow project, where he has employed a combination of electro-magnetic technology and soil pits to identify micro plots which they believe are the Grand Cru terroirs for Pinot Noir within the Willamette Valley.

Rediscovering Itata

While he was working with this inspiring group of people, an idea was developing for his Itata project. Felipe describes Itata as “The most European area you’ll find in Chile”. Families tend to own small vineyards, just a few hectares of head-pruned bush vines. “It’s like some European wine regions 70 years ago, there isn’t a spotlight on the area. Large companies pay low prices (around 8 pence per kilo) for grapes so farmers don’t have money to invest”. Felipe sees the potential and is taking a different approach, he works with the growers, he pays a fair price for grapes and for any work that he asks them to do in the vineyards, and it’s opened their eyes.

Farming in Itata is mostly organic, Felipe explained, not for ecological reasons but because the families don’t have money to buy chemicals, sulphur is the only thing that’s widely used. His first step was to take all herbicides out of the system, which means working the soil to control weeds. The local growers know how to do this with horses, and they want to do it but just haven’t been earning enough money to make it worthwhile.

“It’s not just me there are increasing numbers of young winemakers coming to the valley, establishing projects there”.

“I like to compare vines with people, we have the same lifespan, of around 100 years. We get the best from the vines when they’re over 50 years. I like that”! The vines in Itata are mostly well balanced, he gets the farmers to work the soil keeping the weeds down, to avoid competition and stress to the dry farmed vines. Also with recent fires he doesn’t want dried grass which could spread wildfires though the vineyards. In 2023 the vineyards which burned were mostly people who had cover crops.

We asked what insight he has brought to Itata from his experience in France and the US.
“I don’t like recipes. Pedro Parra helped me learn how to connect to places, and this gives you a lot of information. I treat every year differently”.

The old dry-farmed vines have plenty of character, so he takes a Burgundian approach, with a maceration of around 20 days and taking care not to over-extract. He believes the place is more important than vinification techniques. Felipe has made wine for 25 years now, and has learned to work with his gut feeling.

“You learn every year, that’s the magic, there’s something you can change. For this you need to be connected and understand where you are, and taste a lot. You can make small changes every year. It’s all about detail, great wines are made by detail. One detail doesn’t change much, but ten little details makes a step change, that’s the idea”.

Terroir focussed wines

Felipe wants to raise the profile of Itata and his goal is to match grape varieties with the best soil type. He has made wines from two main terroirs in Itata. His current wines – a País and a Cinsault – are labelled Vino de Pueblo, and he describes them as equivalent to a Village wine in Burgundy.

The País comes from a single vineyard in Ñipas. Downstream on the banks of the Itata river the soil was washed from the Andes, and has broken down on the journey to form black silty, sandy basalt. You can find very old, own-rooted País on these soils, the plot Felipe works with is 180 years old. País and Cinsault both produce big bunches of large grapes, so, according to Felipe, need soils without clay, otherwise they’ll be too vigorous. This makes Itata good terroir for these potentially high yielding varieties.

Felipe was inspired by Pierre Overnoy’s reds, and is looking for elegant soft tannins, but with some grip. País shows well on basalt and granite, basalt gives a soft fine grained texture in the mouth. The wine has sour cherry and a smoky note on the nose, there’s a meatiness on the palette, with very pretty, silky but defined tannins.

His Cinsault comes from two vineyards in Guarilihue with 60-70 year old vines. Cinsault was introduced to Itata in the 1950s, the government wanted to help the growers to improve their yields, but it was mostly planted on poor sandy granitic soils. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, because Cinsault is prolific on richer soils and best suited for making rose or light wines, locally they refer to it as cargadora – load bearer – for these high yields. But when planted on low fertility granite, quartz, mica, and iron soils it produces better quality grapes. Felipe describes Cinsault from this area as: “austere when you first open the bottle, but the fruit comes afterwards, this is due to the iron oxide in the soil”. The Cinsault has an earthy, warm chocolate note at first and more structure as you would expect, with time the fruit comes out, the tannins become more velvety and there’s a mouth-watering juicy acidity.

In the future he plans launch some cru level wines. He’s sectorising the vineyards, using electroconductivity to map the soils, as he learned in Oregon. Pinpointing soils with more quartz (for Cinsault), silt (for Pais), identifying areas for micro-vinifications.

Felipe is pleased with the 2021 vintage describing it as a beautiful year. They had 10-15mm of rain about a month before harvest and temperatures of 20-25 degrees, which allowed the vines to ripen slowly and gave them a long picking window and time to make good picking decisions.

Staying connected

Felipe currently splits his time between Oregon and Itata. He spends about six weeks in Itata for harvest, as well as visiting a couple more times during the year. His father, who has retired from agronomy, keeps a day-to-day eye on the vineyards, and Felipe speaks to him most days. He has strong connections with other winemakers he has met on his travels. He’s particularly close to a group which includes Pedro Parra, Dani and Fer from Comando G, and Jean-Marc Roulot. They meet every year to talk about the challenges they all face and how viticulture can adapt to meet these challenges.

We couldn’t be more excited to be representing these delicious, elegant wines, which are so firmly rooted in their history and terroir, but with a modern outlook. Felipe has his feet firmly on the earth and the practicalities, but his eyes are looking to the stars.

Don’t be afraid of the sun: Mediterranean Spain comes out of the shadows

In a Wine Advocate article last year Luis Gutierrez observed: We all drink fresh wines and love Burgundy, people talk a lot about Galicia, Atlantic, cool-climate wines and about up-and-coming regions like the Canary Islands. But the warmer regions can also produce great wines, and I think the time for Mediterranean wines has come, as there is a small group of pioneers that have pushed the limits, broken barriers and prejudices, understood their grape varieties and terroirs, and produced wines that express where they come from with pride. Pride to be Mediterranean.

We’re also fans of Mediterranean Spain and are proud to have a selection of these pioneers on our list. We paid them a visit last month, to find out how they make balanced, elegant wines in this sun-drenched corner of Europe.

Making Monastrell great.

The first winery we visited, an hour and a half inland from the popular beaches of the Costa Blanca, was Casa Castillo. In a region that has little ambition to make fine wines José María Vincente is a notable exception. Since taking his family vineyards back from tenant farmers 30 years ago José María has been constantly learning and improving, and putting his faith in grapes like Monastrell and Garnacha which express this Mediterranean place best.

When we arrived they were preparing to host an event called Futuro Viñador, a collective of winemakers who are committed to sharing knowledge and practicing viticulture that is deeply rooted in the places and people. We started tasting their 2021 vintages under an open marquee with a panoramic view of his vineyards. Export manager Jose-Luis Hernandez explained that 2021 was the perfect Mediterranean vintage, with a little rainfall just before harvest. Their mainstay – Monastrell – is late ripening – so it’s in these warm vintages, when it achieves good ripeness that the wines have extra depth and complexity, with nuance and detail to balance the power.

“We need to be precise in the vineyard and in the winery to make fresh wines in Jumilla”.
José María Vincente, Casa Castillo.

A restless pursuit of precision.

Our next stop was Bodegas Ponce, an hour and a half north in Manchuela. The area was made a separate DO from La Mancha in 2000, it’s flat with vineyards on bright terracotta earth, and wheat fields stretching to the horizon. This is ‘la España profonde’ still a traditional rural area.

One of the first things Juan-Antonio said when we arrived at his bodega was: “Precision is important”. He explained that this starts in the vineyard, he doesn’t buy grapes, him and his small team mange 70 hectares – 50 of which he owns, 20 are rented. He’s recently re-planted the plot in front of the winery, rather than at right angles the vines are planted at 60 degrees making a diamond pattern. This means he can cultivate in both directions, not just along rows, which reduces soil compaction and allows soil microbes to thrive, a foundation of the biodynamic viticulture he practices. Planting is low density, with three metres between vines, but he encourages a high crop load on each plant, which slows maturation leading to lower overall sugar accumulation. This is a key distinction for making fresh wines in such a warm area, Ponce harvests 25 days later than other local vineyards and still achieves lower alcohol in his wines.

As we embarked on a tour and tasting in his bodega it became apparent all the areas where he applied his quest for precision. It starts with picking decisions, he crushes the berries in his hands and tastes to understand when they are ready. Grapes are brought to a cool room in the winery to chill down for 24 hours before fermentation. This is important because he doesn’t use temperature control, allowing ferments to go naturally, so by starting cool they will start in a slower more controlled way. He uses a vertical press which extracts low amounts of solids, as he’s looking for clean juice. He tastes the juice straight after pressing which he says already starts to tell him the character of the grapes that year, which is what he’s trying to get into the bottle, not the imprint of the winemaker.

There’s a perceptible energy to the wines, which they share with their creator, Ponce is excited to taste and discuss the wines with us, scooting around the cellar and taking samples from the large oak casks.

There is huge attention to detail at all levels, for Clos Lojen, one of his entry level cuvees he sources and vinifies from different plots, each bringing a different element to the final blend. The 2022, still in vats, was sappy and floral on the nose with great acidity, chalky tannins and a juicy fruit finish.

Ponce is really pleased with La Casilla, from 4 parcels around the village of Inesta. It’s currently in two large barrels: the first had a lovely almost Beaujolais quality to the fruit with firm chalky tannins; the second comes from a vineyard he’s just started working with, which has a smattering of Moravia Agria, continuing the Beaujolais theme this would be Morgon with bigger tannin. PF comes from a 100 year old vineyard planted on it’s own roots – Pie Franco means own feet, or roots, in Spanish. These are some of very few ungrafted vines in Machuela, the 2022 in barrel is quite savoury and musky on the nose, with juicy black cherry on the palette, fine tannins and a really long finish.

And let’s not forget the whites, we tasted the 2022 in bottle, this wine (previously labelled as Reto) is now called Ponce Blanco. It has a beautiful mix of fennel, flowers and quince on the nose; a slight salty grip and an energetic fresh, citric, mineral finish. Also excitingly we tasted a new top white from barrel, from a single vineyard, which will be called Albillo Seleccion. 20% of the wine is matured in new 1000l French oak. It’s looking impressive already, with a rich spicy nose, huge concentration and a very long finish.

Bobal in the vineyards

The following day we visited more of Ponce’s vineyards. First the 3.3ha plot which goes into Ponce, a blend of Bobal with 15% Moravia Agria, that he is proud enough of to give his family name. This co-ferment is aged in a single foudre to give consistency to all the bottles, he had previously aged it in barrels but saw small differences, he wants the wine to 100% reflect the vineyard. Luis Gutiérrez is also impressed commenting: “this has to be one of the finest wines in central Spain”, and awarded the 2020 vintage 98 points on The Wine Advocate. Ponce and his team are currently green pruning, which they do while the shoots are soft as it’s less work. Ponce says that if you do this well you don’t need to leaf-pluck later in the year, the key is getting the timing right and having a skilled team of workers who understand what they’re doing.

Bobal needs heat, Ponce explains, the inflorescences can dry out if it’s cold during flowering leading to less grape bunches. His secret is to encourage large bunches with large grapes – the low skin to juice ratio gives fresh wines. Conversely small grapes would yield concentrated overly tannic wines. Mediterranean grapes are well adapted to the warm climate, they tend to have large leaves which protect the grapes from the baking summer sunshine. But if you plant vines too closely they won’t have the vigour to produce enough leaves to shade the grapes adequately, which would lead to overripe alcoholic wines.

We left feeling much better informed about the Bobal grape, which despite being the second most planted red in Spain, after Tempranillo, is mostly hidden in bulk blends. In the right hands, with focus Ponce is showing it is capable of much greater things.

Envinate, the fearless foursome

It was time to jump into our cars again to meet Envinate, a collective for four young winemakers who met at college and now make a a range of incredibly sought after wines in three areas of Spain. We met at their new winery in Villamalea where they vinify Albahra, perhaps their lesser know cuvee, which could be because the vineyards in Almansa aren’t quite as dramatic and photogenic as those in Tenerife and Ribiera Sacra! That could be about to change, they put equal attention to detail into Albahra, a blend of Garnacha Tintorera from Alpera and Moravia Agria which grows near the winery. Moravia Agria has low colour, and really fresh acidity, Roberto explains: it has a lot of tension and needs aeration to soften, therefore they age it in neutral oak. It has a sweet smell, a bit like like Dolcetto, dusty tannin, and a slight slight herbaceousness. They vinify the Garnacha Tintorera in concrete to keep it fresher. They source Garnacha from several vineyards, which they vinify separately, adjusting the percentage of stems depending on the site.

And then came lunch, and what a lunch it was. Who could have guessed the otherwise sleepy village outside Albacete was home to a boutique hotel and gastronomic restaurant Cañitas Maite. We were very luck to taste the entire Envinate range from 2021 paired with exquisite small plates. Highlights? Delicate wild strawberry and garrigue of La Santa paired with oxtail disguised as a donut! Spice and earthiness of Migan with local mushrooms and smoked potato puree. All the courses and pairings had been carefully thought through, proof – if any is needed – that modern Spanish wines can sit at the top table of any gastronomic restaurant.

After lunch we just had time to visit the vineyard in Alpera, planted with a field blend, around 50% Garnacha Tintorerra, but including some white grapes. The team have worked this vineyard for several years and taken half the crop, but now they’ve bought it and plan to make some changes. It had been pruned to give high yields, they’re taking it back to two shoots to give the vines a better balance. They’re currently blending the wine into Albahra, but may make a single vineyard cuvee from here in future. Watch this space for updates!

Back to his roots

Our next destination was La Font de la Figuera, inland between Valencia and Murcia, and home of Javi Revert’s small garage winery. Javi has strong roots here in his home region, he studied viticulture in Valencia, and his family have farmed here for several generations. I’ve heard Javi talk about walking with his grandfather in the hills behind their family farm, discovering the vines his great-grandfather had planted, which are the foundations of his project. The picture is much clearer now I’ve walked through them myself, feeling the drop in temperature as you walk up the slopes, the plots are between 750-850 masl, and smelling the fragrant aromas from the herbs and plants that grow freely between the vineyards.

Javi works with the higher north facing plots on his family’s land, the soils are sandy on a fractured limestone base which the roots can penetrate. Micalet was the first vineyard he saw when he came to the area, it was established in 1940 with eight different grapes, including Tortosí, Trepadell, Merseguera and Verdil. He’s just started to age the eponymous white he makes from this plot in concrete eggs, to better express the chalky soils. Last year he took a massal selection of cuttings from this old vineyard to propagate the vineyard next door. He planted American rootstocks two years ago, to give them time to bed in, and earlier this year – with the help of the vineyard team from Casa Castillo – hand-grafted the young Micalet scions onto the roots. He had the cuttings screened for viruses so the diversity is not just preserved but strengthened. Finally we scaled the steep slope to his highest vineyard, which he planted in 2018, and will become a new red wine called Foradà made from Garnacha and Arcos. He’s done electro-conductivity tests to assess the soils, which are very diverse, and he bases his harvest decisions on the soil type rather than the grape variety.

We tasted the new releases from 2021 and 22, which will be in the UK later this summer. Micalet has been aged in concrete eggs for the first time. Simeta 2021 (100% Arcos) was floral with a warm earth spice and a fine chalky structure. New wine Foradà from the highest vineyard had mouthwatering acidity and a lovely balance of ripe strawberry, aniseed and liquorice. It’s impressive to see his clear vision for reviving these old vineyard sites and local grape varieties to produce distinct and delicious wines.

Rafael Cambra inspired by tradition

Our final visit of the trip was to Rafael Cambra, who started his project in 2001. Rafa explained that Valencia is an ancient area for winemaking, the Moors built terraces, and the landscape still retains the Mediterranean culture of mixing vines, cereal, almond and olive trees. He plants bush vines at a high density for the region (4,000 vines per hectare), as he says that the local varieties like Forcalla, Arcos and Bonicaire benefit from competition. These native grapes weren’t favoured in more recent times, they have less colour, lower alcohol and ripen later, but Rafa prefers later ripening varietals which he says show their place better.

Rafa trained in Bordeaux and worked in Rioja prior to starting his own project, initially he used a lot of barriques in the winery as is customary of both places. Now he prefers to use larger neutral oak, concrete and amphorae, which were used traditionally in the area and bring more freshness to the wines. Our tour came to a close with a fantastic lunch of paella – what else when in Valencia. And we made a discovery that Soplo – the fresh, perfumed quintessential Mediterranean red blend – has a sister wine Soplo Blanco. We’ve got a couple of pallets on reserve because we’re sure this zesty white with a lovely mix of green apple, citrus and green herbs will become an instant hit on your list.

While we were enjoying lunch there were rolls of thunder and a huge downpour bringing very welcome rain to what has been an extremely dry spring in the south of Spain. All the winemakers we met will be thankful about that, here’s to 2023 being another celebrated Mediterranean vintage.

What’s in stock?

The 2021 vintage of Casa Castillo Monastrell is already available, Las Gravas and Pie Franco 2021 will be released in the autumn, we have previous vintages in stock. Read more about Casa Castillo on our blog.

The first 2022 releases from Ponce have just arrived, we have limited stock of 2021 of Buena Pinta, La Casilla, PF and Ponce.

We have limited stock of Envinate 2021 wines, speak to your sales rep for details.

New releases of Javi Revert‘s wines will be in the UK later this summer. In the meantime snap up the last of Micalet 2021 and Simeta 2020.

Rafael Cambra – good stock of Soplo Tinto and El Bonne Homme, watch out for Soplo Blanco and other new cuvees arriving later in the summer.

Luke Lambert: on new vintages and his Nebbiolo vineyard.

You can tell a lot about a winemaker from their cellar. Luke Lambert’s is a modest brick building housing the large oak foudre he uses to age his wines, a large dining table and a very high end Italian meat slicer. Luke is softly spoken and thoughtful, he travelled around Europe after finishing school, developing a taste for lighter-style wines that were unique to the places they came from, and Italian charcuterie. He was particularly taken by the wines from Barolo, more on his love of Nebbiolo later.

“The Yarra is a pretty good place to grow grapes”, he began, “it’s as warm as Tuscany so there’s low disease pressure, but ripening can happen quickly, so you can get heat shrivel”.

The last few vintages (2021-23) have been relatively cool, influenced by a La Niña weather pattern. Luke says he judges a year by how many days go above 38-40 degrees centigrade and there haven’t been any during the last three vintages.

Luke sources Chardonnay, Syrah and Nebbiolo from a vineyard called Denton, it’s a steep north facing sunny cone on a granite outcrop. The owner has undertaken some improvements to the site over the last five years : he stopped using herbicdes, cultivating under the vines instead; he’s started to add organic compost; and plans to plant more cover crops; and he employed additional staff to manage this extra work.

Luke says the vines are happy and healthy, less stressed, and he can see the farming changes coming through in a darker fruit profile which he can taste in the 2021/22 vintages which he describes as “more serious wines”.

What’s the next step for the project?

Luke has planted a vineyard over the hill in the Yea Valley, between Yarra and Beechworth. We drove up a long track to the top of the site – an east/north-east facing amphitheatre at around 400 metres above sea level, sheltered from the wind and hotter late evening sun. The site had been home to sheep since the 1950s, Luke and his wife Rosalind cleared the trees and brush themselves. He ripped the ground to 1m deep to loosen the compacted ferric-limestone soil, and planted a range of seven different Nebbiolo clones to see which suits the site best. Nebbiolo as a variety is prone to mutations, Luke thinks this might be due to the thin skin which allows strong UV light to reach the seeds.

The vineyard isn’t irrigated, and after three dry years, even having planted on drought resistant rootstocks the vines have been slow to establish. He said he might harvest some fruit next year, the bunshes will be small as the site’s unirrigated, so it will produce a more muscular wine. “If you’re serious in Burgundy or Barolo you wouldn’t touch the fruit for eight years”. He thinks it’ll be 20 years before the wines are where he wants them to be, definitely a project for the next generation.

In the meantime we’ve just received a shipment of the 2022 Syrah and 2021 Nebbiolo. The Syrah, which is 80% whole-bunch, has dark blueberry fruit and a touch of tar, it has a fine but firm tannin structure balanced by fresh acidity. 2021 was a good yielding year for Nebbiolo so we’ve secured a larger than usual allocation of this unicorn! He lets his Neb spend a little less time on skins than would be traditional in Italy, to get the fruit intensity and fine tannin he’s looking for. The wine has a lighter framework than you might expect from Piedmont, similar to the more Alpine style of Valtellina/Gattinara. Luke’s ’22 has the trademark roses, fine structured tannins and dark fruit.

Frenchtown Farms: working in harmony with nature.

We caught up with Cara and Aaron Monkrish of Frenchtown Farms, via Zoom from the remarkable vineyard that goes into their Pearl Thief white blend. They told us the unusual history of the project, and about their intuitive approach to viticulture and winemaking.

Cara: “The main thing that you need to know about us is that we’re farmers before anything else. That’s the most important part of what we do”.

Aaron joins her. “This is it, this is our team [i.e. him and Cara]. Plus a handful of people who come through and help us throughout the year. Our main focus is the vines”. He flips the camera so we can see the vineyard while they talk.

A unique site

There’s an unusual story behind the foundation of their vineyard, Aaron explained: “It’s owned by a religious/ spiritual organisation, a cult. The planted 150 hectares of vines in the 70s, it was the largest single owned vineyard in California, now it’s down to 16ha, and we farm 12ha”.

All of the vines are own rooted, whether they got phylloxera, or if the wines sold and they made money wasn’t important. They weren’t building a business, it was a spiritual exercise, they were just out here to dig holes!

We asked where the vine material came from:
Aaron: “It was a selection massale taken from an old vineyard called Callaway in southern California. A German winemaker Carl Berner fell in love with a woman who was in the cult, he moved up from California with a suitcase full of vine cuttings, and started the planting here. Many of these vines were planted by our mentors Gideon and Saron at Clos Saron, Gideon was the head winemaker at the property for 30 years. They have 30 years of personal knowledge of working in these vineyards, what slopes are good, what vine problems we’ll encounter, so we have this encyclopaedia of lived knowledge. We showed up on their doorstep after tasting one of their wines and said ‘You have to teach us’“!

There are pros and cons to ungrafted vines, as Aaron explained:
“Normally you’d have an American rootstock to protect the vines against phylloxera, for drought tolerance, or to control yields. They were just taking Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling or Cabernet cuttings, and sticking them in the ground. One of the cool things about that is that if we have vine or trunk diseases, we’re able to take small shoots coming from the ground, that would normally be rootstock shoots that you couldn’t use, but here it’s the same variety as the body of the vine, and because they’re on older rootstocks they can fruit quickly.

“We’ve been rehabilitating this old vineyard over the past eight years. As you walk down the rows you see the thick original vine trunks, next to what looks like a baby vine, which is actually growing from a 40-50 year old rootstock. Because the roots are deep we’ve got away with completely dry-farming the site since we took over in 2015. Plus the irrigation infrastructure’s been destroyed by our neighbourhood bears, so even if we wanted to irrigate it would be impossible”.

The harvest cycle

The vineyard where they grow the grapes for Pearl Thief covers most of a hillside, planted with Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. One of the key viticultural factors is that the rows curve around the slopes on terraces, with varying orientations, it looks like the Douro. This makes ripening along rows uneven. They start harvest early, normally the first week of August. The Sauvignon Blanc is the first thing to come in, they start picking from the lower east/south-east facing rows, and move up to the west facing rows.

Aaron: “Our harvest is bringing in tiny amounts of fruit each day for 45-50 days. With our limited labour, on a typical day we’ll harvest two-three rows – between 300-550kg of grapes – take them home, lightly stomp and then press them, eat dinner, go to sleep and repeat.

“So we’re slowly building the cuvee as we pick, as Cara said, walking up the hill and chasing the ripeness. In a way it’s good that we have so many varietals, they harvest at different times, so we’re just going from varietal to varietal over 5-6 weeks and hand selecting the perfect grapes”.

What’s behind the labels? A pragmatic approach to pest management.

Aaron: “We don’t worry too much about physiological ripeness or BRIX. The real decision making factor in when we choose to harvest has to do with watching the animals in the vineyard”. This is mirrored on the wine labels, the stag for Suba Rosa, the bees and thistle for Cecilia Rose, and the rabbit on Pearl Thief, these are all animals that inhabit the vineyards, sometimes eating the grapes. “In particular locations we’re watching for when the rabbits come out, they get up on their hind legs, reach up and pull the clusters towards them. This has the effect of stripping all the berries off the stem, it looks like the cartoon fish that the cat’s eaten, there’s white grapes all over the floor and a very guilty looking rabbit”!

“It turns out that everything loves sugar water. The rabbits determine when things are ripe, and rather than be mad at them or find ways to fight them, insects, or weeds that we don’t like, we try to find ways to have a sense of humour about it. We try to focus on growing and the joy of farming, rather than thinking of all these things as pests or annoyances”.

“It’s challenging at times not to be emotional about it: there’s a herd of water buffalo that live in the next pasture, there’s an Italian guy who milks them and makes beautiful mozzarella and it’s a joy all year long, but sometimes they get into our vineyard, poop in the rows and knock over fenceposts. We live in a wild place”!

The practical business of winemaking

Their second-hand Wilmes press can take two days worth of harvest to fill, so depending on the picking schedule Pearl Thief gets wholebunch direct pressed, or stomped and soaked on skins and stems overnight, in anticipation of having a full load to press the next day.

Aaron: We’re not particularly interested in making orange wines, there’s never maceration in the presence of ethanol in our cuvees. Water soluble phenolics [from a short overnight soak] are different structurally and flavour-wise to an orange wine.

“Pearl Thief is made like many white wines: aged in neutral French oak, on gross lees, topped regularly. But there are oxidative notes, which has a lot to do with how we handle the grapes as they come into the cellar, with foot-stomping, but also because of how we press. We expose all of the wines, both red and white, to a lot of oxygen during the pressing, which helps protect them in the long run and brings out Jura-esque oxidative flavours.

“The choice of Sauvignon and Semillon, and sometimes some Rousanne, for Pearl Thief is based on what’s planted here. Our interest is more in terroir than in varietal, if we had 10 different varietals, if I could also add Chenin, Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Macabeo… I would love to over time, because I think as you obscure the varietal influence, what comes up underneath is the actual hillside”.

A eureka moment about their soils

We asked about the geology of the hillside Pearl Thief is planted on.
Aaron: If you’d asked us that question a year and a half ago we would have said ‘we’re on decomposed granite’ along with everyone else in this area. One of our recent interns was a geology major, Sam took a look and said: Where’s all this granite you guys are talking about! It turns out geology students come from all over the world to study the Smartville Complex, a famous little pocket with all sorts of studies written about it.

“In this 40km stretch of North Yuba there was volcanic activity millions of years ago that melted the granite, a mixture of basalt and schist came up from underneath, and lots of quartz was formed. The granite cooled too quickly to reform underground, it exploded up onto the ground and because it was in contact with air it becomes something called rhyolite which almost feels like limestone, but it’s a much lighter colour and very soft, it’s easy to break with your hands almost like slate. Same with the schist and the particular type of basalt that we have, it’s very hard but brittle. I think that’s the reason we’re able to dry farm here, even though we’re basically on a big pile of rocks with a thin veneer of grass on top, the vine roots are able to find their way through these layers. But there aren’t many vineyards here so the two haven’t connected until now”.

The technical answer to your question would be igneous, intrusive, metamorphic rock.

“This answers some important questions for us. We’ve worked with purchased fruit in the past, from vineyards which are just an hour away, and they’re drastically different. Structurally the tannins, the acidity levels, everything. You could look at yields, or irrigation or exposure, vine age, but there’s something you can’t explain until you start to understand the soils we’re on.

“If you’re walking around in the vineyard you’ll notice you’re constantly stubbing your toes on big chunks of quartz. I know it’s a little woo woo but I do think there’s an energy in the vines that directly translates from being on these mountains full of vibrating quartz”.

Our enology background is learning on the job

Cara explained that Gideon, their mentor, had a very technical winemaking background and that over the course of the 30 years he experimented with many different winemaking practices for fruit from the farm. “He started super technical and pared it down to the most simple, but we’re going backwards. Starting with this really paired down, as simple as it gets method, we’ve added de-stemming, all the different quirks we do”.

Aaron: “Since we started we’ve done stages at other wineries to get other perspectives and to learn. It’s been challenging at times to learn from scratch, but it’s also been a freeing way to explore our terroir. We’ve had a lot of freedom to experiment, and change small things with each cuvee”.

Would they describe their methods as natural winemaking?
Aaron: “It’s incredibly simple winemaking. The three important decisions for us are: When you pick, when you press, and when you bottle. Those are timing decisions that determine a wine’s character, personality and nature. A lot or the rest of the decisions are just meaningless fluff, that’s what Gideon would say. Sometimes in young wines you’ll taste the hand of the winemaker, but over time, what really comes out is those three decisions. We are experimenting year by year, aiming for more finesse and elegance”.

There’s downsides to not being based in a winemaking culture or community like Napa or Sonoma, but there’s also some benefits to being out here in the wilderness with nobody looking over our shoulder.

Aaron: “We think about winemaking as a year long process. We think about building a cuvee as we’re pruning. How we’ll select shoots, how long they are, how many nodes we leave, whether we give one side or the other a year off, that’s all building the cuvee. We ask the vines questions, and try to read the energy levels and health of the sap flow. Similarly with shoot thinning, tying or tucking, hedging or any other action throughout the year when we’re paying attention to the vines, we’re building the nature and character of the wines”.

By the time harvest comes around it isn’t so much us making the wine as us celebrating the end of a long process. We don’t have the energy to put our ego or our stamp on anything at that point. We’re relieved we’ve brought the fruit in that we’ve worked hard on all year, and there’s no need or desire to manipulate it.

Learning from Burgundy and Jura

Pierre Overnoy’s grandson Batiste came to Frenchtown for a six week stage. He’s only 16 but grew up in Pierre’s vineyards and cellar, they were discussing de-stemming, with reference to Cara and Aaron’s red wine Cotillion, made from Grenache and Syrah, and the only wine they de-stem. Batiste showed Cara and Aaron a video of Pierre Overnoy de-stemming Poulsard, using a apparatus they had built themselves. It’s a board with a small holes drilled into it, that sits at a 30 degree angle, you push the grapes up and they tumble back down, it takes the berries off the stem without breaking the skin. They get around 450kg of grapes with about a bottle worth of juice.

Aaron: “We’re interested in paying around with intracellular fermentation. We started to learn about what Tomoko Kuriyama is doing in Chanterêves in Burgundy, where they do whole cluster or whole berry for a period of time, then they slowly start punching down. This is how Cotillion was made, the bin of unbroken berries sits for 2-5 days, after which instead of pumping over we’ll get in and do a small amount of stomping in the morning and the evening. Progressively over the course of 10 days we’ll stomp 5-10% of the fruit until everything is smashed. Intracellular fermentation starts, and just as it’s about to take on some of the carbonic characters that we aren’t in love with we crush all the fruit, and it goes into the ‘normal’ oxidative fermentation.

For Cotillion we’re not interested in carbonic maceration, which creates the same flavours no matter where you do it in the world, and obscures terroir really badly. Drinking carbonic can be fun but this isn’t the vineyard to be doing that.

“Cotillion is a place where we experiment with the process, we’ve always wanted to make something bit more elegant and smooth from these rustic vineyards, and pull out the elegance of our terroir each year. We haven’t totally figured it out, but we think the whole berry helps with that. This is our attempt to make less tannic, less structured, less grumpy wines”.

What next?

They bought their own property last year, when we spoke they had recently spent a couple of days putting in posts and trellising for a new vineyard block. According to Aaron this site is also abundant in quartz: “The whole hillside is just schist and quartz. It’s some of the most interesting terroir I’ve seen anywhere in the region. We’re going to plant Sauvignon, Semillon, Rousanne, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and they’ll all go together into what will one day be the new Pearl Thief”. Inspired by visits to Jura they’re also planting Savagnin, a tiny plot of Mondeuse, and 1ha of Syrah which they’re planning to use for a sparkling project.

Cara and Aaron have accomplished a lot on their relatively short winemaking journey, but there’s more to come. Read more about the project and wines here. Or contact us if you’d like to try the wines.

The long game: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 1.

Leo Erazo is a winemaker with a global perspective: after university he travelled for 10 years, studying biodynamic methods in California; soil types in South Africa; and geology in New Zealand before returning to South America. Rogue Vine was his first project in Itata, which he started with Justin Decker, while he was still working at Altos los Hormigas in Mendoza. I spoke to him over Zoom about the uniqueness of Itata, and why he’s committed to organic farming and making wine sustainably.

Four unique factors in Itata: dry farming, ungrafted vines, cool climate, old vines.

Leo explained that they were getting to know Itata at the start: “Which always takes time, you dig a soil pit but you won’t always find the holy grail straight away! It’s part of a learning process, and mapping.

“We’ve been lucky to work in Itata, it has a combination of factors, which can create very special wines. Dry farming, unlike anywhere else in Chile, there’s no irrigation used. This is something the old world and the new world always have a battle about. The second and most important thing, we don’t use rootstocks. All the vines are on their own roots. We all know that rootstocks influence the performance of the vine a lot. Here you get the true expression of the variety because it’s on it’s own roots. The place where we’re working is a fresh cold climate. We have a lot of influence from the Pacific. We don’t need to adjust the acidity, the natural acidity is good enough. The alcohol is moderate, we’re around 11% for the whites and 12.5% for the reds. The wines are very balanced”.

“We have so many old vines, I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world where you have such a high concentration of old vines all together, you probably have about 5,000ha. It’s unique”.

The old vine conundrum.

I asked Leo if there is a limit a vines lifespan.
“This challenges all that we’ve learned at university as viticulturalists. Looking at the differences between how we’ve managed vineyards in the last 30-40 years, where you have to replant because the yields become too low. Here the yields are still OK. It varies, in the lower altitude vineyards with higher soil fertility you have higher yields, and the higher vineyards with lower fertility you have lower yields.

“But we don’t have mechanisation here, the vineyards have been planted and worked in the same way, by hand, since the beginning, since 1551 when vines arrived here. The only change was when herbicides became popular, and some people started using them, to avoid doing it all by hand. So it’s either by hand or by foot, no tractors, no engines, nothing. I don’t know if that makes a difference. I’m working in a vineyard which we bought four years ago, that was planted in 1798. I’m the 6th generation, it’s been in the same family so we have records, normally you don’t know. You suspect they’re over 100 years old, but you don’t have it documented. It still produces a good amount of grapes and makes good quality wine”.

Rebalancing the system

I asked Leo what yields they are getting: There’s a short and a long answer!
“The short answer is that a balanced vineyard can produce 1-1.5kg (per plant). When we initially start to work organically the yields went down to 300-400g. But I’m adamant I want to farm organically/regeneratively”.

“You have the environmental component, we don’t want to keep screwing it up. But also the quality is completely different, the wines are much better”.

“All the vineyards that we’ve bought for the project, were using fertilizer, the fertility was artificially kept up by adding chemicals. When we took those things out, and when we took the herbicides out, the (eco)system is weak. We see a drop in yields for the first three-four years, but then it starts to increase, by the seventh year the yield is going up again to the normal yields. That’s the long answer”!

“When you take the vineyard from this intensive care system, try to recreate the ecosystem, and bring back the fertility of the system itself, it takes seven years”.

“During the process you get less grapes. But once you’re there the quality of the grapes is so much better, in balance, it makes sense. And seven years out of 100, the vines have a long way to go.

“Something nobody talks about is the flavour, like with vegetables, when you mass produce vegetable hydroponically without the trace minerals in soil. The tomato is the best example, intensively farmed tomatoes don’t even smell, unlike a tomato from your garden, you touch the plant and you smell tomato. It’s the same with wine, they might have colour, alcohol, acidity, but they’re tasteless”.

Leo is in this for the long term. In the next part of our conversation he explains about they steps he taking to make his winery more sustainable and reduce his carbon footprint. Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 2.

Water is life: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 2.

Since moving back to Itata Leo Erazo (Rogue Vine) has built a sustainable winery, and started planting some new vineyards close to the coast. I spoke to him about these, and the steps he’s taken to lower the carbon footprint of his wines.

“Together with the ‘granitic project’ which is in Guarilhue I found a place close to the coast, where there is a lot of slate. I’m very excited, you have the Pacific influence, the rock, it’s completely different to the other areas I’ve worked in Itat, there’s nobody to emulate. We’re not starting from zero, we’re trying varieties that work well on schist soils in Europe: Albariño, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Semillon, Chardonnay, and a little bit of Pinot Noir to see how that works.

He started planting in 2017. So they have started to harvest grapes, but last year yellow jacket wasps ate almost everything. “We harvested 20kg out of the 1000 we expected. They originate from Europe so there aren’t natural predators in Chile”. Leo isn’t sure why they were such a problem this year, perhaps with the dry conditions there was less of another food source.

Building sustainably from the start

Leo explained that he’s worked at big wineries, and sometimes you can see that sales and marketing are the driving force for some viticultural and winemaking decisions. “But for smaller artisanal wineries like Rogue we are doing this because we love it. If you just want to earn money there are 100 more profitable businesses than making wine. It’s a work of love and of compromise”.

“We knew from the beginning that we wanted to work organically and sustainably, and this means all the way through. The first thing was to learn and understand how to be efficient in our use of energy. How we can generate our own energy and become self-sufficient, a lot of energy globally is made from polluting sources, charcoal or burning fossil fuels”.

“We built the winery to use the minimum electricity possible, and what we need to function comes from solar energy, we still have a network connection but we seldom use it, maybe after a run of cloudy days in winter, but we’re mostly 100% solar”.

Nobody talks about water use

“The second thing was the use of water, we have reduced use from circa six litres of water per litre of wine, to 1.5 litre. Water is a scarce resource, but nobody talks about it, we don’t get rain for six or seven months of the year”.

“When people visit they ask how many sulphites I use but nobody cares how much water we use”!

“Wineries are always washing down, particularly those who use less sulphur! We collect water from the winery roof and the roof of our house. We have 57,000l storage tanks and a large pond, I don’t know the capacity, but it’s pretty big! We also created a system of wetlands to filter waste water from the winery. They have to clean the winery waste water to get rid of grape skin particles and lees, which are very reductive. We have made a system to oxygenate the water and keep it alive, the water filters through plants and sand. And we use this to water a new vegetable garden. We’ve made a small grassland, we work with a horse, it’s good to have grass for the horse during the dry times”.

“Now we have more water we’re making life around the water – water is life, it’s a straight line”.

“You see it in the wildlife as well, the insects and birds have increased exponentially. Species we’ve never seen here are coming because the ecosystem is here”.

Simple solutions come from observation

Climates and ecosystems vary greatly around the world so the steps Leo has been making might not apply directly in other countries, but I asked him if he had any advice for wineries looking to put sustainable practices into place.

“It comes from observation, the systems we have applied are not expensive or high tech. Of course it’s not going to be the same here as in Austria or Australia, but the principles are the same – if you have water and you want to keep it alive, you need to add oxygen through plants, then algae won’t grow and mosquitos won’t take over. It might seem difficult, but if we share information other people won’t make the same initial mistakes that I did. For example when I first collected water from the roof, I didn’t have a filter so I got dirt, dead lizards… in the water and it went off. Then I started to use a filter that cost £3, a cheap plastic thing, and I avoided that problem! Simple things, you just need to use your imagination.

“Another example, because we’re close to the Pacific, we channel the air currents that come at three to four in the afternoon on a hot day, it’s natural air conditioning, it cools everything down. We built the winery from recycled materials, corrugated zinc and old windows”.

“If one guy like me can do it, large wineries that earn millions of dollars per year, they can also do it”.

“Now more wineries are becoming organic, which is great, and it’s because the market is asking for it. So if the market, sommeliers, people in the wine trade also start to ask: where is your electricity coming from? The consumers can be the driving force to make the wineries change”.

I asked Leo about other steps he’s taking to be more sustainable.

Minimal packaging

“The first thing was the bottles, we work with lighter Burgundy bottles, supply has been a bit difficult over the last two years during the pandemic, we use the lightest we can. We don’t use a capsule, it means nothing, it’s just a dressing. And we’ve been working on the tape, for the boxes, to get one that is biodegradable. It’s small steps, but it makes sense”.

“You can’t be halfway with sustainability – be organic but use lots or water, use electricity from fossil fuels – it doesn’t work like that”.

On carbon footprint

A few years ago his Belgian importer was asking about the carbon footprint associated with shipping wine from Chile, when he could buy wine from ‘next door’ in France. “I was thinking about it. I work in Cahors, and I did a calculation, in Cahors farming organically, just for sulphur, we pass 14 times per season with a tractor to keep powdery mildew away. That doesn’t include other soil work and mechanical weed control. If you calculate how many kilometres the tractor passes to cover a hectare, we’re burning a lot of petrol, that’s a high CO2 output”.

“In Itata, everything is by hand, there are no tractor passes, so that’s zero output per hectare here. Which goes some way to compensate the distance travelled by boat of the wine coming to Europe”.

“Rogue just use a strimmer to cut their grass, they have a car, that’s their carbon inputs. The electricity is solar, then the transport of the wines to market”.

In praise of paperwork!

What’s the balance between doing the right thing, measuring that you’re doing the right thing, and making good wine?
“When I started doing the organic certification, for the first few years it seemed like so much paperwork. And I love spending my time on the farm rather than sitting at a desk. But by doing the paperwork it forced me to keep track of a lot of things I wasn’t keeping track of, and so helped me to improve things. So in the end, having this stack of paperwork I need to do – which is very painful it takes days – helps you to improve your system”.

“You think you’re doing the best you can, but it’s good to reflect and have controls”.

“Going through the process of certification was positive. Sharing information is important. I enjoy visiting other producers, sometimes you just talk, share a glass of wine, but you make connections which help your understanding. And what I enjoy most about wine is drinking it”!

That’s definitely a sentiment we can get on board with. Read about the new eminently drinkable Pét-nats Leo is making exclusively for Indigo. And learn more about the unique Itata region in: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 1

William Downie: The devil’s in the detail

Young Guns of Wine, a barometer for new talent on the Aussie wine scene once described Bill Downie as: This century’s original enfant terrible of wine. A cheerful iconoclast that scythed through convention. The Bill Downie who we spoke to last week didn’t seem like a hellraiser, he was self-deprecating and honest, and incredibly thoughtful about the viticultural and winemaking decisions he makes.

Born and raised in Gippsland, Bill has been making wine in southern Australia and Burgundy for 15 years. In 2006 he had the chance to put his ideas into practice fully when he bought a farm and planted a vineyard 20 minutes from where he grew up. Gippsland is 1.5 hours southeast of Melbourne, below the Yarra Valley, east of the Mornington Peninsula. His farm is on the foothills of the Strzelecki Range, below the Great Dividing Range. The land is north facing, and although most people think Australia is dry and hot, this is cool climate with high rainfall, you can see a ski resort in the distance. Initially he purchased fruit from the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and South Gippsland for his own label, but now his vineyard is established he has focussed on Gippsland, and stopped making single vineyard wines from Yarra and Mornington.

Bill explained that although Gippsland is the second largest GI in Australia by geographical area, it’s the smallest by production. This is reflected in that the first wine we tasted, Cathedral, the 2021 vintage is made from grapes he bought from Mornington and King Valley, there isn’t enough fruit coming from their vineyard, or available in the local area. It was named Cathedral because originally the grapes came from a vineyard in the Cathedral Ranges (north of the Yarra Valley), but due to recent poor harvests he had to look elsewhere. It’s an excellent introduction to his wines. It’s aromatic, with crunchy cherry fruit on the nose, and a slight leafiness. The acidity is fresh, it’s mineral with fine tannins and a lightly textured finish.

“I hate comparisons, but it’s my Beaujolais, it’s not trying to tell you an origin story, it’s just meant to be a really good drink”!

The case for high density vineyards

He currently has two hectares of vineyards on the farm, he’s planting more and aiming for five. He planted at 10,000 vines per hectare, which is uncommon in Australia.

Why did he decide to plant at this high density?

“It’s a combination of factors. Earlier in my career I was obsessed with wine, now I’m obsessed with agriculture”. He spent some time in Burgundy early in his career. “One of the things which appealed to me about the wines from there, compared with a lot of new world Pinot Noir, is there’s a difference in structure in the wines. There’s a different relationship between tannin and texture, and mid-palette weight.

“There’s often a mid-palette sweetness in new world Pinot, and I was interested to understand why that was, because it wasn’t a character I enjoyed”.

“Part of the reason I was drawn to Burgundy was the absence of that sweetness, there was a definition and a balance to the wines which appealed to me. After looking at some other high density vineyards in Australia, and the wines that came from them, I realised that if you have a vine which is only ripening six bunches, as opposed to 30, the relationship between the various parameters of grape maturation change completely. You get a different density of phenolics, a completely different structure in the wine”.

“The only way to achieve this and have a balanced vine, what isn’t stuck in a vegetative cycle, is to plant at high density. Once I realised, there was no other option, I had to find a way to do it”.

Getting the viticulture right

It’s not just been a case of planting vines, looking after them for 3-4 years, and making wine. So far he’s only bottled and sold wine as named cuvees from the home vineyard twice in 14 years, because Bill has felt the wines haven’t delivered what he’s looking for.

Bill explained: The process of finding a piece of land he thought looked interesting; establishing a vineyard according to the principles he believed in, it’s certified organic, he hasn’t used herbicides since start, he doesn’t use machinery; learning how to work the vineyard with a horse has taken a long time. “Now that we’ve got to the point we have an understanding we’re expanding the plantings, you will see a wine from here”.

What has made the difference, what are they doing right now?

“A combination of things, part of it was learning how to compromise. Having worked a decade or more I was never willing to compromise on my regenerative agriculture principles, which meant no cultivation, no synthetic chemicals or fertilisers. And it turns out, we’re in a high rainfall area, higher than in Burgundy, one of the wettest places in Australia where vineyards are planted. We initially thought vigour would be a real problem, and chose to plant on devigorated rootstock (101-14 a Riparia cross), which doesn’t have good drought tolerance. Which we thought was fine as it rains all the time, except when you don’t cultivate you have grass species that grow year round. If it stops raining for ten days, which can happen in January or February, the grasses suck all the moisture from the top 50cm of soil in a couple of days. The vine leaves go yellow, and we don’t harvest fruit with enough natural acidity to make a balanced wine.

“The compromise is that we have started to do some cultivation, we disk a bit to cut back the grass in the mid-row, and we do some under vine cultivation to remove plants which compete with the vines for moisture. It took time to explore other pathways which might have mitigated that moisture deficit at the end of the season, we spent ten years building organic matter in the soils, but this wasn’t enough. So now we’ve started some light tillage, which should solve the majority of the problems”.

Searching for an ‘Australian-ness’

The next wine we tasted was Gippsland 2021, the wine is softer on the nose with pretty iris notes and savoury potpourri. On the palette it has a spicy edge, very fine persistent tannins, and a lovely weight to the fruit. Grapes mostly come from a Gippsland grower just on the south side of the Strzelecki Range, it sometimes includes a barrel or two of declassified fruit from his vineyard or one of the others he works. It has a slightly different character to the wines from his side of the Strzelecki, but still distinct from Mornington or Yarra.

Bill’s winemaking is consistent across the range. The only difference being that Cathedral is fermented in stainless steel and bottled early, whereas the other wines spend 9-10 months in mostly French oak, with some acacia barrels. He’s working on a project to use native Australian blackwood acacia timber for barrel production. He’s been milling timber and ageing staves for a around seven years, and is about to make some barrels. Acacia can have a perceptible flavour influence on wine, part of the reason he hasn’t made barrels until now is that he’s been seasoning the wood, he thinks it may need up to ten years.

“It’s an experiment. In the context of what we’re trying to do here, it doesn’t make sense to use French oak barrels if we’re trying to make a wine of place that speaks to the Australian landscape, which is not like anywhere else.”

“So we’ve been trying to figure out: is there some timber grown, are there trees in Australia that are suitable for barrel production; and what do they contribute to the character of the wine. Can we make a more Australian wine by using trees that grown in the forest at the back of the farm, than if we use French oak”?

They hand harvest everything into 10kg crates; bunches are hand sorted; everything is fully destemmed and transferred by gravity into into open wooden fermenters. Fermentation is hands off, there’s no temperature control, no pump overs or punch downs, no additions. The wine is pressed into tank after around four weeks of maceration, he doesn’t separate into fractions, and left to ferment to dry. The wine is then transferred to barrel, he makes a small SO2 addition post malo or pre bottling. Cathedral is filtered the others aren’t.

We asked his thoughts of the fashionable topic of stem inclusion.

“When I say we de-stem everything, I mean everything apart from the fruit from our own vineyard. Another reason we plant at 10,000 vines per hectare is that I feel it’s the only way to make 100% whole bunch wine which doesn’t taste of stems. The wines from here are 100% whole bunch, and they don’t taste stalky.

“I’m not opposed to stems, they have to come from the right vineyard, planted and managed in the right way, otherwise it’s a distraction from the truth of the place”.

Terroir reflection in the single vineyard wines

We moved on to his two single vineyard wines. The two vineyards are less than four kilometres apart, but they’re entirely different wines, despite having the same soil profile, geology, planting density and material. Camp Hill vineyard is about 12 kilometers northwest from his farm, it’s on a outcrop in the middle of the valley, the highest point between the Strzelecki and Great Dividing Range. It’s planted right on top of the hill.

“The vineyard gets the very first light that comes over the horizon in the morning, and the very last light as the sun sets in the evening. This wine is always about the sky, it’s light and bright, it’s floral, it’s never earthy or deep it’s about its connection to the sky. It’s a spacious wine, you have a sense of exposure of being right on top of the hill, certainly where compared to Bull Swamp“. (his other single vineyard wine).

“It’s all about florals, spice, the iron blood character is a feature of this area, the soils are very high in iron, and free draining”

Less is more

“Fruit grown in this area has the structure to give definition, but pump-overs and punch-downs are not a good way of extracting. In modern winemaking where you can de-stem and keep the berries intact, which wasn’t possible 30 years ago. Now, if I de-stem and don’t touch it, the skins are in contact with the juice 100% of the time, no cap forms, it’s a tank full of berries. The second I do a punch-down I bust up a bunch of berries and the skins float to the top, you have a cap above the liquid, and then you have to pump-over or punch-down to re-submerge the skins so they’re in contact with the liquid and extracting flavour and tannins. I’d have to do that three times per day, for the skins to be in contact with the wine 40% of the time, whereas if I don’t do anything at all they’re in contact with the liquid 100% of the time. It’s a more effective extraction, the compounds are water or alcohol soluble, they don’t require movement”.

“We’re trying to achieve skins in contact with liquid, the best way to do that is to carefully de-stem intact berries and leave them alone”!

Bull Swamp, is at a lower elevation and surrounded on three sides by hills, it’s a bit warmer (than Camp Hill), they harvest a couple of weeks earlier and see more maturity.

“Here you get a feeling of connection to the earth, the wine speaks about the soil, it’s denser, more earthy, more savoury, fruitier. People probably think that sounds like complete bullshit but I always feel like that”!

“The tannin structure reflects the richer soil with less sunlight exposure, but the vines are 40 years old, properly old, which changes the tannin structure”.

We’re excited to be working with Bill and have these thoughtful, expressive wines on our list. Get in touch if you’d like to taste the 2021s with us.

Tasting the 2021 vintage with Johan Meyer in London.

Johan Meyer was in London for a whirlwind of visits this week, we caught up with him to taste the newly arrived Mother Rock and Brutal! wines.

Johan feels that the vineyards in South Africa got back of track in 2021 following the string of drought years. For the 2021 vintage they had a wet winter, cool spring and warm summer. He currently buys grapes across the Swartland, and has worked organically with the farms he sources from since 2012, but has difficulty persuading the growers to certify, he’s not sure why they’re so resistant to it.

He bought his own land in the north of Swartland in 2018, where he has built a house and a winery, and planted vines. He’ll pick the first grapes from his farm next year. This area is quite different to the south where the majority of planting currently are. Soils are Table Mountain sandstone. The days are warm with temperatures rising to 30 degrees, and the nights cool, dropping to 11 degrees. The name, Picket-Bo-Berg, translates as lookout in Afrikaans, you can see the ocean 30 kilometres away, and the site benefits from cool sea breezes.

It’s virgin land, Johan has planted 14 hectares so far, including half a hectare of Sauvignon Blanc which he wasn’t planning to do, but the soil analysis recommended it. Additionally he has a mix of reds and whites including Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne and Palomino. He’s working to get the area recognised as a Ward within Swartland, it’s a cooler climate the the lower Swartland where grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wouldn’t make sense.

Force Celeste Semillon 2021
Johan picks the grapes in two stages: a green first harvest for acidity; and a second pick a week later for more concentration. Around 10% is fermented on skins to bring a little texture.
Very fresh green juice, hedgerows and elderflower with a touch of passionfruit. The acidity is soft like ripe lemons with a long concentrated finish.

Brutal! Chenin 2021
Brutal! is Catalan slang for ‘cool’, the idea for the label was born at Bar Brutal in Barcelona when three winemakers, including Joan Ramon Escocda were drinking one night. The wines are made by different producers, what they have in common is that they are distinct from their other wines, and there is no added sulphur. For Johan’s cuvee he foot -crushes the grapes, then closes the tank allowing a semi-carbonic fermentation to run for 14 days, before finishing the wine in concrete. The wine has a lifted yellow apply nose, mouth-watering acidity and a long juicy tropical fruit finish.

Liquid Skin 2021
Chenin for Liquid Skin comes from a southeast facing site in Paardeberg, which is cooler than the Brutal vineyard. Johan crushes the grapes, but keeps the stems, and ferments them in concrete tank. 30% of the wine spends eight months on skins, the rest just 12 weeks giving a gentle copper hue. The 2021 has a delicate texture, juicy acidity and a squeaky clean green apple and apricot finish.

Brutal! Red 2021
Cinsault grown in the Swartland has high pH and low acid, making it tricky material for a low sulphur wine. To counter this Johan he picks some Carignan early, he presses off the juice to make his Force Celeste Rosé, but keeps the pomace and ferments Cinsault juice on these skins. The result is a zesty red with plummy fruit, a savoury touch and a mineral finish.