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: Don’t be misled by the name. No.2 is a blend of Place of Changing Winds’ two single-vineyard Syrahs, crafted to be approachable in its youth and ideal for pouring by the glass. While it remains the estate’s most accessible release, it receives the same meticulous care in both vineyard and winery as all wines from this grower.
The 2024 vintage combines 30% Harcourt Syrah, grown on pure sandy granitic soils, with 70% Heathcote Syrah from the Cambrian soils of the Mount Camel Range. In the winery, fifteen separate ferments were handled using a range of whole-bunch approaches—from fully destemmed to 100% whole cluster, with many variations in between. The wine was aged primarily in small and medium-format oak during its first year, followed by larger vessels in the second year, with 25% matured exclusively in concrete to preserve freshness and purity.
The cooler 2024 growing season has produced a wine of finesse and freshness: a slinky, sappy, and floral, medium-bodied wine more reminiscent in weight to a Pinot Noir than the fuller styles typically associated with Heathcote Shiraz. It closes with macerated red-berry flavours and fine, powdery tannins.
Review for 2023 … 94 points, Mike Bennie, The Wine Front “If you judged by colour you’d be at ten out of ten – ruby and purple with shimmering edges. Hello. The wine feels similar, red crunch, purple depth, mulberry and pomegranate with tart cherry and sweet spices with some distinct slate-like mineral quality in there too. Fine, very fine actually, grippy, granitic tannins ripple through the wine, tightening on a sluice of joyous fruit character with some brown spices speckled through. From the lighter year, this works very well, elegant, fine boned, a pinosity almost, though distinctly syrah of course too. Super star.”
RRP $45 Our Special Price $36.99 when you buy 6 or more of this wine
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