After so many years…
After many years of hard grind, it all seems worthwhile after reading such comments as these below. Even more so as I have great respect for Andrew Caillard MW, who has a great international palate. He is an extraordinary achiever himself, having written the monumental and definitive history of Australian wine. I highly recommend you read it – The Australian Ark (www.australianark.com)
“There are few wines in the world that bring anticipation and longing. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti does it for some. Giaconda does it for me. The latest releases of 2024 Giaconda Chardonnay and 2024 Giaconda Roussanne represent the genius of vineyard site, the pinnacle of winemaker Rick Kinzbrunner’s intellectual powers, family custodianship and a perfect growing season. These two remarkable wines of differing dimension and expression are both transcendent wines of extraordinary and beguiling quality. A monumental success that will have lasting impact on the reputation of fine Australian wine. Wonderful!” Andrew Caillard MW
Read Andrew’s full tasting notes >
Now for some news here at Giaconda. We haven't made Warner Shiraz for some years now and the last Estate Vineyard Shiraz will be from the 2025 vintage. Our Estate Shiraz vines have been grafted over to Roussanne and Chardonnay and there are two reasons for this:
- I now only want to make the best of the best, do less, and do it better. For the style of wine I like to drink, there is no comparable Chardonnay or Roussanne in Australia and very few Nebbiolo (and we are on an upward curve with this variety as these vines mature).
- Giaconda shines brightest for whites on the granite soils. In my opinion much of the Beechworth area shines brightest for whites also. In the right location, Nebbiolo could be exceptional and we have intentionally planted those vines at Red Hill Rd on a small pocket of deep red clay and shale.
I always make the analogy of a tree. You can be in the very top twigs with little foliage around you (Chardonnay, Roussanne and Nebbiolo) or a bit further down, still in the top branches but with more foliage around you (Shiraz).
Over the years we have made some great Shiraz here at Giaconda that can stand up with the best but contrary to the other three varieties mentioned, I feel there are many other great Shiraz out there so why bother. Regarding Pinot Noir, let's say this is an ongoing plaything, with new clones, a new part of the vineyard and we have now introduced additional rows to double the vineyard planting density. We expect that some fruit will be picked off these new vines from next season onwards.
During the release this year, there will be no Nebbiolo or Shiraz. The La Niña season during 2023 was a poor season for Nebbiolo (too cold and wet) and it will not be bottled. As we only have two remaining vintages of Shiraz to release, the 2024 vintage will benefit from an extra year in bottle.
The 2025 vintage wines are showing great potential in the cellar. They are all right up there with our usual standards. At long last, we will have a Nantua Chardonnay to release again next year and it looks exceptional. This will be a real mini-Giaconda Chardonnay from the 2025 vintage.
I feel very confident that the standard of these wines is better than ever. The efforts of Nathan, Casey and Guy enable us to have more attention to detail and give us more time and resources to improve the vineyard. No effort or expense is now spared in the vineyard and winery.
Read the current release tasting notes >
Salut,
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 >