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 wine importer’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. It is a very rocky, gravelly soil and historically this soil type was called “Bullengarook gravel”. 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). 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 is in a little hamlet called Bullengarook, between Mount Bullengarook and Mount Macedon, in the hills above Gisborne, about one-hour north-west of Melbourne. 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.
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 know, and finalsing the planning of the vineyard.
“The 2019 vintage marks the first significant release from the Place of Changing Winds vineyard. This was the first time that our vines gave us a robust and balanced canopy and the kind of fruit quality we have been striving for all these years. It was also the first time that we had enough productive vines to produce a little quantity. The yield was still extremely limited, with under 250 grams of fruit per productive vine—roughly half what is permitted in Grand Cru Burgundy and a fraction of what a typical grape vine will produce in Australia. Our average bunch size was also miniscule at around 50 grams. These tiny bunches and berries have produced wines of great intensity but equally, great finesse. ..It was a fine season with good rainfall to the end of December, followed by a dry and largely easy growing period with no disease pressure right up to harvest. The yields were very small, as indicated above, although this was more reflective of our vine density (between 12,000 and 33,000 vines/ha) and our farming practice than it was of the vintage. The small, ripe berries gave colour and structure easily and so we watched the macerations very carefully, making sure not to over extract. The results hopefully speak for themselves.” Rob Walters
This is our first, tiny Chardonnay release. It comes from a parcel of vines with a density of 12,000 vines/ha. In 2019 we harvested 4,400 Chardonnay vines to get only 900kg of fruit. The fruit was whole-bunch pressed, hard and fast, and sent to barrel with all solids. Fermentation was in new wood—a single 300-litre Stockinger barrel and one 228-litre Dominique Laurent barrel—and then the wine was transferred to an older, neutral, 500-litre cask with all lees for aging. Finally, the wine was transferred to tank for a number of months before bottling in June 2020.
We believe we have a very interesting place for Chardonnay. Even with these miniscule yields we got terrific acidity and excellent pH (3.2 at picking, finishing at 3.35). This wine has gone through 100% malolactic and yet still retains plenty of freshness. It’s intense, floral and tonic.
No fining or filtration. Minimal SO2. Bottled by gravity and by hand in June 2020. 887 bottles produced.
95 Points, Halliday’s 2022 Australian Wine Companion “.. Quite a deep yellow/straw hue yet it has clarity. I’m not overly fond of new Stockinger oak for chardonnay in particular, as it can often impart a bitter character, but the richness of fruit has tamed that and all else besides. Full bodied and flavoursome with hints of stone fruit, flint, ginger spice and a layer of creamy lees. Let’s be clear: this is not a fruit-driven wine – it’s savoury and textural. The flavours build, and while it feels substantial, there’s a freshness to the acidity cutting through.” Jane Faulkner
94 points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “It’s a deft skewer. It takes understatement and gives it some character. It’s a nectarine-based wine threaded with brine, bran, chalk and anise. It feels quite incredibly pure. There’s a subtle milkiness to the texture; so subtle in fact that if it was a joke you wouldn’t get it until you were half-way home. Nothing about this wine is fruit-forward but it’s not mean about it; it’s like looking at velvet drapes just as they begin to draw open. It’s just beginning. The show’s about to start.”
RRP $58 Our Price $52.99 – LAST BOTTLES AVAILABLE!
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