Extreme
“Extreme” - That's how I describe the 2021 Chardonnay: powerful, complex, multifaceted and penetratingly long. This in itself brings a dilemma- pricing. I have been told many times recently from all over the world to raise the price drastically, as the Chardonnay is looking like very good value compared to some other Australian wines, not to mention the current prices of good White Burgundy. However, this is not going to happen. The main release will be next year with only a small price rise to account for increases in our cost of production.
As many of you probably know, there were no wines produced at Giaconda from the 2020 vintage due to the bushfires. However we are offering some of the 2021 Estate Vineyard Chardonnay for en primeur pre-orders; the quantity is not large, so order quickly! If you miss out please remember there will be more next year once this wine is bottled and ready to be released.
In lieu of the 2020 vintage not being made, we are also releasing two vintages of Nantua Chardonnay. We have kept back the 2019 to release with the 2021 so as to make a bit more available. These are mini Giacondas so don't miss out! 2019 is ready to drink, whilst I suggest you put the 2021 away for a few years. And in all honesty, these are among the best ever vintages of Nantua.
There is also a Nantua Shiraz from 2019 vintage which is from a declassified part of the Warner Vineyard and represents excellent price/quality rapport. There is plenty to like here and the extended time in bottle has enabled this wine to put on weight: now quite rich with a touch of briar.
ROUSSANNE - this remains a work in progress - witness the 2019 Amphora version, an interesting dry white wine but not quite what I feel reflects the beauty of Roussanne. This time I have created another style, a blend of skin contact amphora and barrel fermented aged wine. This will be released under our Nantua label, not due to a lack of quality: in fact, it's incredibly aromatic and complex on the palate. Nevertheless, I feel I'm still developing an ultimate style for this wine... more news will follow on this next year.
NEBBIOLO - the 2018 continues an upward curve on quality. This release can hold its head high against many a good Barolo in a blind line-up. We are refining this wine year by year with some interesting tweaks in winemaking which are proving to be the catalyst for immense complexity and depth.
PINOT NOIR - an exceptional 2021 will be released next year. At this stage it seems to me to be possibly the best ever! Unfortunately, there will only be 1800 bottles. This wine represents both a new style and winemaking process for Giaconda with more depth and tannin present whilst delivering greater complexity and refinement on the palate. It mostly comes from a small parcel of vineyard planted 10 years ago in a much cooler corner where the Pinot Noir seems to thrive, especially the MV6 clone which is new to us.
There will be some interesting new developments announced in next year’s release, but in the meantime it's worthwhile noting:
*We are organic certified across both the vineyard and winery and use very strict traditional winemaking practices e.g. no modern pneumatic press, no filtration or pumping to the bottling line.
*Solar power supplies virtually all our electricity and most of the wines are aged deep underground in natural conditions with no cooling or humidification required.
*The 2022 vintage (still in progress) is an exceptionally cool year producing wonderful Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. A couple more weeks of fine weather should do the same for the Roussanne, Shiraz and Nebbiolo.
Finally, a word on my personal winemaking philosophy - it's simple! I make the type and style of wine I like to drink and enjoy. I am not interested in the thin, acidic "fashionable" Chardonnay that appeals to many influencers. Our grapes are picked properly ripe and the wine is fermented and aged in small barrels with full malolactic fermentation in the traditional manner of the great white burgundies of years past. The reds are treated in the same manner. I am not interested in light, fruity "gluggable" wines, often accompanied by exaggerated acidity. I aim for serious body (though never heavy) in the wines with good firm tannins.
View release details and tasting notes >
Sincerely,
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 >