Description
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.
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.
In addition to the vines they grow themselves, they also produce some Syrah and Marsanne from vines further north of their base, in the warmer and dryer climates of Heathcote, and, from 2021, Mount Alexander in Harcourt North. Both these sites are superb places to grow Rhone varietals, and in both cases they work very closely with the vineyard owner, who works to their organic specifications -they choose the harvest dates and all picking is done by hand.
The soils here are the famous ‘Cambrian soils’—red dirt made up of eroded basalt over limestone, shot through with greenstone and jasper. The wines were grown organically, without any chemical inputs, and with minimal irrigation.
About this wine: This wine is now released with an extra year’s aging. It comes from an east-facing plot of 20+-year-old vines rooted in the red Cambrian soils of the Mount Camel Range in Heathcote’s north. Although this sub-region can produce some of Heathcote’s most refined wines, it is still an area that lends itself to growing powerful Syrah, so it gets an additional year in cask. The 2021 spent its first year in a range of Stockinger cask and concrete tank before being blended to one 2,000-litre Stockinger cask for the remainder of its maturation. It was bottled at the end of November 2023 after 33 months’ aging. It is a gorgeous, dark-fruited expression of this famous region. At 13% alcohol, it is in no way heavy and, in fact, is quite the “refreshing” contrast to many wines released from the area. Only around 10% new oak used.
95 points, Jane Faulkner for Halliday’s Wine Companion “.. Wonderfully aromatic, from florals, dark fruit and warm spices to some charcuterie notes – think bresaola. The full-bodied palate unfurls all savoury, rich with some bitter dark chocolate and a texture of pomace. Complex and detailed, flavours build, and it finishes long. Impressive.”
94 points, Mike Bennie, The Wine Front “A wild card, a surprise package. A wine of energy, febrile tension, freshness and drawl. It’s all wild, brambly red berries, dusty, fine tannin, blood orange (pleasing) sweet-bitterness, fine, dark chocolate mellow qualities and faint game meat savouriness. It feels decidedly light and bright, sure, complex, layered, some intensity, but the vim and vigour here is undeniable. This will slake a thirst.”
93+ points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “There’s a deal of oak flavour here but it combines well with the bold nature of the fruit. Toast, cedarwood and cream characters wrap around black cherries, plums and peppercorns, the (assertive but integrated) tannin then threaded finely. The finish is impressively prolonged, and while it feels ripe and flavoursome it’s also juicy; refreshing even.”
RRP $68 Our Special Price $55.99 when you buy 6 or more of this wine
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.