Wine prices are getting out of hand
This year I’m going to start with a raised eyebrow about pricing. Many people, including our own customers, comment that the price of Giaconda Estate Vineyard Chardonnay is well undervalued. This wine has a proven track record and is considered one of the few grand cru alternatives that is available from the new world (at this price and quality). However, we have resisted the push towards higher pricing and there will be only a small increase this year, which considers inflation and rising costs. I think wine prices are generally getting out of hand, and I speak about chardonnay in particular, having seen one Australian example for $600! There is now a spate of chardonnays above $200 heading towards $350. These prices simply encourage other producers to be cavalier with their pricing, regardless of the quality.
I do a lot of blind tasting with friends and family and we see a very mixed bag out there. There are lots of people, especially some new younger vignerons who are making good and interesting wines at fair prices. On the other hand, some egos seem apparent with people making too many wines at too high prices and quality that is, in my opinion, questionable. I hope my longstanding policy of not bowing to fashion and only making the wines that I like to drink, continues to be appreciated. I do worry that our wines are no longer accessible to some of our longstanding customers. If any of you are in this situation, please feel free to discuss with me.
Continuing with Chardonnay, we have had a great run of vintages since 2010 with the recent succession of three La Niña seasons probably the best of all. Pointing to this, Antonio Galloni (of www.vinous.com) has given our 2022 vintage the best white wine in the world but admittedly only 35,000 were tasted! I consider 2023 to be an exceptional release from a cooler vintage and you’ll find a link to the tasting notes below. The input from my son, Nathan and Vineyard Manager, Casey, has been invaluable in lifting the overall quality of our wines. This frees me up to concentrate on creative ideas to further improve both our viticulture and winemaking.
I'm also very encouraged by the 2023 Estate Vineyard Roussanne, which is an exceptional follow on from its maiden 2022 vintage. This variety is planted on our warm north-facing amphitheatre block and is steadily improving as we learn how to manage the new site and experiment a little with the fermentation and barrel regimes. We are gradually finding the best vineyard management practices and crop level for this vineyard, to bring power and concentration while maintaining refinement.
Our secondary vineyard site in Beechworth is dedicated to Nebbiolo and this is going from strength to strength. The majority of this vineyard is now 15 years old and I consider the new release from 2022 to be our best to date. A well-known wine critic (considered an expert on Nebbiolo) has reinforced this opinion and you will find more information on this in the tasting notes linked below. As with all the red wines, this is now fermented entirely in terracotta amphorae and benefits from a component of extended maceration.
While the La Niña vintages have been beneficial for most of our varieties, there will be no Estate Vineyard Shiraz offered this year. The 2023 season was much too cool for this variety. In addition, we experienced record low yields across all varieties. This mostly effects Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and our offering in terms of quantities will be greatly reduced during the release this year. Please expect all the wines to sell out very quickly on April 15th.
The Future:
All this has led me to review what we do and play to our strengths. This vineyard, and in fact much of this area, really excels for white wine. We have planted more chardonnay here at the Estate Vineyard with the express purpose to produce our second label Nantua Chardonnay entirely from estate grown fruit. There will be one final release of this wine next year from fruit bought in from neighbouring vineyards and blended with a small component of Giaconda fruit. After this, Nantua Chardonnay will be sourced solely from the estate.
There is also a small plot of Pinot Noir in the cooler and more humid part of our vineyard which has been inter-row planted this season which doubles the vineyard planting density. The intention is that this should foster more competition amongst those vines and lead to greater quality. Look out for some interesting pinot noir wines from us in future years.
In other news we are considering to finish making shiraz here at the Estate and graft those vines over to more Roussanne and Chardonnay. This is not a fait accompli, however we will keep you updated on this project in future newsletters, once those decisions have been made.
Read the current release tasting notes.
Salut,
Rick Kinzbrunner
Cork or screwcap wine? Even age cannot settle this debate
30 March 2017Australian Financial Review
Life and Leisure Mar 30 2017
by Max Allen
There are two glasses of 2006 Giaconda chardonnay in front of me (lucky me...). One is very youthful, a pale straw colour, lean and powdery, with a hint of reductive, sulphidey struck-match scent, and a refreshing, lemony acidity. The other is a touch more golden, a little more developed and rounder in flavour, with slightly richer, toasty, spice and button mushroom aromas.
What's going on? Are these wines from different parts of the Giaconda vineyard? Made in different ways? Matured in different barrels?
Nope. They're both exactly the same wine, bottled at the same time, cellared in the same place (underground at Giaconda, in a tunnel dug into the stone of the hill). And yet these wines undeniably taste different. So what sets them apart?
The first comes from a bottle that was sealed with a screwcap, the second from a bottle under cork.
It's been almost two decades since the Australian wine industry started using screwcaps en masse. Today, almost all wines out there in bottle shop land are sealed this way. And yet there is still ongoing debate about the suitability of a screwcap for fine wines destined for long-term cellaring: yes, we know the seal works perfectly well at keeping the liquid in the bottle and keeping it fresh, but we just don't have enough experience comparing the same wine under cork and cap over many years to be sure we like how the wines age the new way.
Which is why, when Rick Kinzbrunner and his winemaker son Nathan, of legendary Beechworth, Victoria producer Giaconda, held a recent tasting comparing their chardonnay, pinot and shirazes from 2004 to 2010 bottled under both seals, I was keen to attend.
So many factors
The results? Inconclusive, I'm afraid. For a start, there are so many variables at play, it's almost impossible to be definitive. In the case of the 2005 chardonnay, for example, the screwcap unequivocally outshone the cork – but Rick told me all the corks he bought that year were far from perfect.
In some cases the peculiar nature of the vintage overrode any differences between the seals: both the 2008 Warner vineyard shirazes, for example, showed the softer tannins and globby fruit of the reds from that warm vintage more than they showed anything else.
And while I tended to prefer the cork-sealed chardonnays, particularly the 2006 mentioned above and the outstanding 2008 and 2010 wines, I tended to prefer the screwcapped reds (the 2006 Warner shiraz sealed this way was utterly entrancing, an intense and spicy shiraz at a lovely stage of its maturity). That said, the magnificent 2010 Estate shiraz, under cork, was my pick of the reds: the best shiraz Giaconda had produced up to that point.
This aspect – personal preference – is possibly the most important factor of all. Rick Kinzbrunner tended to prefer the screwcaps for his chardonnays. He liked the way the seal retains the youthful, reductive aspects of the wines; whereas I'd liked the way the corks led to the slightly rounder, more developed flavours I would traditionally associate with bottle-aged chardonnay. And he's not so much of a fan of screwcaps for reds. He doesn't like the way they mature. Indeed, he's decided to bottle his shiraz only under cork.
After the tasting comparison of Giaconda's chardonnay, pinot and shiraz, the Kinzbrunners also opened a magnum of their 2008 nebbiolo – under cork, of course. And it turned out to be my favourite wine of the day: deep wells of entrancing perfume for the nostrils to explore and beautiful poise on the palate, with skeins of brick-dusty tannin falling like a lattice across the tongue.
If you're a fan of this great Italian grape and the wines it produces, and you like the character of those wines after a few years in the cellar, you really need to put Giaconda high up on your nebbiolo shopping list.