Description
WINNER: Best New Winery of the Year – 2022 Halliday Wine Companion and Best New Vineyard of the Year – Young Gun of Wine 2021
“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 a blend of Heathcote (66%) and Harcourt (34%) Syrah. Although this is the “entry-point” red, it gets the same attention to detail as the other cuvées, and even here, it has serious intensity, good tannins and ageworthiness. About 70% whole bunches were used, and the wine matured in a range of casks (primarily large Stockinger) for the first year before resting in tank for the rest of its maturation. It was bottled in late December 2023. It’s a spicy, cool Syrah/Shiraz that will drink well young but can be aged with confidence.
92 points, Mike Bennie, The Wine Front “It feels friendly and easy drinking in its way, despite also holding a sense of inkiness and depth. Dark cherry, ripe plum, choc-liquorice with swathes of eucalyptus, dried green herb, pepperberry, lifted myrtle-like pungency – all attractive, all just so. A smooth ride, a pleasure zone red of evenness and general syrah-isms. Cool as.”
Young Guns of Wine, younggunsofwine.com “‘Vibrant and lifted fresh red berries and purple flowers,’ wrote [Ben] Mullen, giving this a top-six result. ‘Medium bodied on the palate, it had flow of tannin from fruit and oak with the fruits flowing to great drive and tension of acidity. Had some real savoury elements to the wine also, fresh crushed leaves and autumnal vibes to it showing from the whole bunch. Good weight, texture and length. Such a well balanced rendition of style of syrah. Lovely.’”
RRP $44 Our Price $38.99
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