Passion pays off
15 April 2015
True winemaking and the great wines of the world come about from following your passion and simply doing that which you love and can do best, rather than trying to create something to please everyone.
From my view point, the policy of doing less and concentrating only on those things for which I am truly passionate about is beginning to pay off. This is contrary to many other winemakers who are caught up in the trend of doing more – more complexity, more varieties, more spin - which I feel actually equates to less.
The evolution and continuation of great Chardonnay here at Giaconda is a direct result of this philosophy. I believe the slow maturation in our underground granite cave, combined with more careful work in the vineyard and further honing of the winemaking techniques we employ, has given us an unprecedented run of great Chardonnays from 2010 right through to the extremely exciting 2015 vintage.
After 30 years of refinement it requires focus and detail to gain small improvements in the wines.
As a direct result of fermenting underground at lower temperature with a naturally high humidity, we often observe an elongation of the fermentations. There is something special about these longer fermentations: they build more complexity into the wines. It is not uncommon for wineries in Burgundy to have fermentations last up to a year, sometimes more. Under our unique conditions here at Giaconda the wines spend more time maturing before any sulphur additions are required, resulting in greater complexity.
You may have read or heard something about natural winemaking? At Giaconda the definition of natural winemaking is to run the juice by gravity to barrel and allow it to ferment spontaneously, using our indigenous yeasts, and always with full natural malolactic fermentation. Our regime and the environment created by our cave also enables us to reduce the sulphur additions to much lower levels than previously used. We do not filter the wine before bottling. In Europe this approach has consistently produced some of the worlds most acclaimed wines for hundreds of years.
In reference to Pinot Noir, we are starting to see great results from our new plantings with more of the 'old fashioned' MV6 clone showing it has as an essential role to play. I think we can make more consistent and great Pinot Noir going forward, compared with the past flashes of brilliance. From now on this will be entirely Estate grown fruit with no Yarra Valley contribution. This is not to denigrate Yarra Valley Pinot Noir, but I feel we need to concentrate on single vineyard wines for our Giaconda label.
In other news, we were very proud to be represented on the front cover of Decanter Magazine March 2015 as one of the worlds best Chardonnays (outside of Burgundy). You can read more about their tasting of our Estate Vineyard Chardonnay below.
Last year Jeremy Oliver awarded the 2012 Estate Vineyard Shiraz 'Wine of the year' in his book the Australian Wine Annual. In a tightly contested field with many wonderful wines it was gratifying to see years of planning and dedication to creating another truly inspiring Estate Vineyard wine come to fruition with such an acknowledgement. In addition, the 2012 Estate Vineyard Chardonnay was awarded fourth best wine, and his top Chardonnay of the year.
In common with many other regions, the 2014 vintage was very much reduced in quantity by frost. As a consequence of this our En Primeur offer will be limited to a release of two wines only: 2014 Estate Vineyard Chardonnay and 2014 Estate Vineyard Shiraz.
Coming in next year's newsletter... barrel tasting notes of the first Nebbiolo from our new Red Hill (Beechworth) vineyard. In addition, we will have information on our new terracotta amphorae wine trials.
Thanks for your continued support.
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Regards,
Rick Kinzbrunner
Jeremy Oliver's Wine of the Year - 2012 Estate Vineyard Shiraz!
01 November 2014Australian Wine Annual 2015 - Giaconda Estate Shiraz 2012 (98 points)
Since 1999 Rick Kinzbrunner has been fashioning cutting-edge cool climate Australian shiraz. Fifteen years ago there weren’t too many Victorians making this variety into a style we perhaps more associate with the northern Rhône Valley, but Kinzbrunner has always drawn inspiration from the wines he most enjoys drinking. So until 2008, the only Shiraz from Giaconda was the deliciously perfumed, floral, spicy and savoury Warner Vineyard Shiraz, which has been continually sourced from a sloping, north-facing section of the Warner Vineyard, 6.5 km from Beechworth and located at a marginally cooler, higher site than that of the Giaconda Vineyard itself. For many years I have rated this as a 5-Star wine.
It took a long time for Kinzbrunner to plant shiraz at Giaconda, since for the first decade and a half at his Beechworth site he was more concerned at matching different parcels of the property with chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon. But the consistent quality from the Warner site convinced him that a warmer, north-facing plot at the top of the property was just the place to plant two acres of shiraz, with Hermitage well and truly in his sights. In itself this was a radical but confident decision, because Kinzbrunner initially chose the predominantly south-facing property to reduce the impact of heat on its elevated but still warmish location.
Retarded by the extended drought of the first decade this century, the young shiraz vines struggled to develop and produce a crop, but in doing so dug their feet deep into the site’s granitic loam soils, which overlie decomposed gravel and clay. But when they came, the results were astonishing. The first wine from the new shiraz vines was the 2008 vintage, quickly affirming the site’s potential with what I described at the time as a ‘super Rhône’. It quickly revealed the layered, meaty and mineral attributes we now expect from the site. Kinzbrunner fine-tuned winemaking regimes for the next two vintages, exploring means by which to express the potential of the site’s terroir into anexpression of shiraz fit to rival the Rhône’s elite. Very closed and reductive in their youth, cloaked by layers of oak and tannin, the 2010 and 2011 releases delivered quality, but not enough to meet Kinzbrunner’s expectations, or even indeed the Warner Vineyard Shiraz in 2010. All that has changed with the 2012 vintage. Fermented in tank with a small proportion of viognier, it was matured in the mineshaft-like cellar under the Giaconda vineyard for 22 months inside French oak barrels, around a third of which were new. From its earliest days it looked special. Thankfully, it is safely into bottle for its real journey now to begin.
I like the fact that winemakers like Rick Kinzbrunner, Phillip Jones, Joe Grilli and Roman Bratasiuk are so honest and focused on their extraordinary ambitions. From the outset, Kinzbrunner started this project to make a wine worthy of the greatest sites of the northern Rhône, and he didn’t mind who he told about it. The clearest ambitions can carry with them the highest risk, but the risk can bring the reward.
In this case, the reward is a wine that does what Kinzbrunner has done before with chardonnay, and is also promising to do again with nebbiolo. It is taking the perceptions of what has been considered possible with Australian wine, spinning them about and exposing them for their shameful lack of imagination and inspiration. That’s what great winemakers do and why the Giaconda Estate Shiraz 2012 is such a worthy Wine of the Year.
Read more - 2012 Estate Vineyard Shiraz >