Tall Poppy Syndrome
Following on from last year's newsletter,
I am very pleased to say that the International distribution of our Estate Vineyard Chardonnay, by Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix, has been a great success. This has put the wine before a much wider international audience with some great reviews by overseas journalists – however I have some more to say about that below.
Although this chardonnay is now reaching a broader audience, we have not forgotten you, our loyal and faithful mail order clients. Even with the increased demand for export we will continue to make the majority of our production available for domestic customers.
Even better news is that the price from our winery is not going up, even with many people commenting that this is still well under-priced. I feel the prices of some wines are getting out of hand and there are many more expensive Chardonnays on the Australian market. On tasting some of these, we believe Giaconda Chardonnay offers comparatively better value and complexity!
My thoughts on the paucity of SOME Australian wine journalism and Tall Poppy Syndrome:
Recently I was informed... "In a blind tasting with Antonio Galloni and the international Vinous team, the wine of the night among serious global competition was Giaconda Chardonnay 2017, which everyone had marked as white Burgundy from an iconic producer."
A few years ago in Adelaide, industry professionals gathered to taste 43 chardonnay wines from renowned Australian and French producers. All were tasted blind and ranked and Giaconda Chardonnay 2017 was ranked first.
Yet local journalists' scores were as low as 95 pts!
Jane Anson, author of 'Inside Bordeaux' gave 100 points to Giaconda Chardonnay 2021 (along with 4 other international and 2 local journalists) and said "This is as good as Chardonnay gets and then some."
Local scores were as low as 97 points here in Australia.
James Sucklings tasted the 2019 Giaconda Nebbiolo and rated this wine alongside other producers such as Gaja; “Yum. This is real nebbiolo, with cherry, black-truffle, earth and walnut aromas and flavours. It’s full-bodied with a solid center-palate and chewy tannins. Powerful finish. Real deal here.” Score: 97 Points.
Again, local scores go as low as 90 points!
Enough said here, however it's disappointing to be the subject of the tall poppy syndrome and to be considered fair game for not playing mates to some very inflated industry egos. I'll let my wines do the talking instead.
However, there is still some excellent wine journalism to be found here in Australia and the wine consumer always has the final say. Giaconda wines sold out in the blink of an eye last release and this gives me confidence to keep focus on what we are currently doing in the vineyard and winery. Giaconda is now a world wine, to be judged by a much wider audience whom appears to greatly appreciate our style of wine.
A summary of the 2024 vintage:
This year saw an early season even though it was not at all hot. An early spring, with moderate weather and vines in excellent condition has made for very good quality fruit. It's early days yet, but the Chardonnay is powerful, refined and complex: the reds have excellent colour, body and tannin.
All of our reds have been fermented in terracotta amphorae this year. I really like these vessels as they do not give a lot of heavy extraction and require no artificial cooling - lovely natural ferments being the result.
Some comments regarding the 2022 wine releases:
Our new plantings of Roussanne are proving to love their new site on the Estate Vineyard. If you are interested in Rhône whites, then don't miss the 2022 Estate Vineyard Roussanne about to be released. This new wine follows on (and probably surpasses) our original 'Aeolia' Roussanne, which was produced up until the 2009 vintage. This new wine is an exceptional pairing with Asian food and will only grow in stature with more bottle age.
I should add that the current release represents another very good batch of wines, which demonstrates how complex each varietal can be when grown here in the foothills of the Victorian Alps. You can read more detail in the release tasting notes linked below.
View wine offer and read the 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 >