Description
98 POINTS and included in Top Rated Pinot Noirs for 2024 – Halliday Wine Companion
WINNER: Best New Winery of the Year – 2022 Halliday Wine Companion
“Place of Changing Winds – the place and the vineyard – may well be the most exciting ‘new’ development in Australian wine. It will jump straight on to elite lists of Australian wine producers. You could describe this endeavour in one word: uncompromised.” Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
Place of Changing Winds is the vineyard project of Bibendum’s founder and owner Robert Walters. It is a single site in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria where Walters and his team began planting in 2012. The POCW site is very close to Bindi and lies on the same geological belt with a proven track record for quality Pinot and Chardonnay. The vineyard is in a little hamlet called Bullengarook, between Mount Bullengarook and Mount Macedon, about one-hour north-west of Melbourne.
To understand how to establish and manage this kind of vineyard took a lot of research and has been the result of some 25 years of engagement with the best European growers. By the time the project was established, Rob, with his viticulturist and friend Tim Brown had visited Europe together five times, in order to meet with many of the most inspirational growers Rob knows, and finalising the planning of the vineyard.
Place of Changing Winds is a super-high density, organic certified, no-compromise vineyard, focused exclusively on producing the highest quality wines with the maximum expression of their quartz and sandstone riddled soils. It is a very rocky, gravelly soil and historically this soil type was called “Bullengarook gravel”. The elevation is a high 500+ metres and the average rainfall is typically between 700 and 900 mm. It’s a genuinely cool site with very cold nights and massive diurnal range (variation between max day and night temperatures) which Pinot and Chardonnay love.
The vineyard lies in an area that was called Warekilla by the original inhabitants, the Wurundjeri people. In their language, Warekilla meant “Place of Changing Winds” – a characteristic of the site that still holds true today.
About this wine: Here the fruit was mostly destemmed, with less than 10% whole bunch, however, there was some hand destemming (with scissors) of the fruit from our highest density vines (33,000 vines/ha) which kept these berries completely intact on their pedicel. The aging was for nineteen months in low-impact Stockinger wood, 25% of which was new. The name may be a little misleading as all our vines are “high density”, but the blend for this wine is based on our very highest density vines; those planted at 20,000/ha to 33,000/ha.
This is a more serious and structured wine, built for aging. At the same time, you will still find the finesse that we strive for, as well as great freshness and energy. It’s a wine that will certainly live for decades but should make for pleasurable drinking at any stage of its life.
98 points and included in Top Rated Pinot Noirs for 2024 in James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion “Great clarity and depth of colour, and an extra layer of richness, with essence of dark berries, then red berries minutes later, the mouthfeel supple and smooth. The fruit was 90% destemmed, and post ferment was matured for 18 months in Stockinger oak (25% new). Drink to 2043.”
96 points, Huon Hooke, The Real Review “Deep red with a tinge of purple, the bouquet powerful and very complex, concentration and power here, as well as detail. Forest-floor, humus, dark-fruits and fivespices, earth and dried herbs. There is tremendous concentration and power, a deep core of sweet fruit, the tannins ample and mouth-coating but also beautifully balanced, the length prodigious. An outstanding pinot noir in a bigger style.”
96+ points, Mike Bennie, The Wine Front “High toned perfume, lots of white pepper, preserved cherry, red plum, roast vegetables, anise. So attractive. The palate has a come hither fleshiness and richness, dark spice, new leather, brightness to fruit but its the dark stuff and yet finds a crispness with incredible inward concentration. Gravelly grip with a glide. It has this open weave and flavour, depth too but has this really distinct feel of ‘there is more to come’ – such a good personality in that regard.”
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