Australia Decanted. Lake Tahoe, July 2018

One + One + One = Five

In 1992 Bindi was just four years in and for money and love I worked for a wine retailer/importer. Newsletter writing and offering themed dozens was part of my go and selecting the Australian Shiraz dozen was a highlight. The mixed dozen in 1992 included many single site wines such as Jasper Hill, Craiglee, Dalwhinnie, Wendouree, Armagh, Aberfeldy, Mount Edelstone, Brokenwood Graveyard, Tyrell’s Vat 9 and Plantagenet. A delicious roll call both then and certainly now.

For some soap box reason, having never visited an export market nor exported yet (Bindi being just two vintages in), I wrote that these were the wines and stories that Australia should be championing to the world. Under the heading ‘A message for exporters’ this audacious 24 year old bemoaned the international image of Australian wine being focused on wines like Lindermans Bin 65 rather than place and people wines such as Wendouree Shiraz. And for the next 20 years I felt it was mostly much the same.

Bindi began exporting in 1996 and we have always perceived an international audience as important to how we view the wine world and how we are viewed. Simply selling out domestically can be a sell out internationally. While it is more lucrative and cost effective for a small producer to focus singularly on domestic sales there is much to be gained in reputation and perspective by exporting. Importantly, the more storied Australian producers exporting then the better for building global understanding and excitement for our wine quality and diversity.

It’s super easy to say things have changed. Plenty have. Plenty needed to. Yet it’s important to be baby and bath water aware, to know that some didn’t need to change. For the last few decades there have been several Australian wineries, USA importers and USA establishments determinedly challenging, traveling and talking, pouring and persisting. All the time believing in their vines and wines, their passions and stories. But simply there have not been enough doing it well enough.

For the last five years hope has been stirring and 2018 sees enlightened thinking for a brightening of these days and those to follow. Wine Australia’s Mark Davidson and Aaron Ridgeway are Australian wine visionaries. They, and several key colleagues, have determinedly shifted the international conversation and direction of Australian wine and this vision was taken to new (but uncapped) levels at Australia Decanted at Lake Tahoe this week.

Making sense of my idiotic maths:

1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 5

At Squaw Creek, Lake Tahoe, the whole exceeded the sum of the parts in a staggering and unexpected way. Let me explain the parts and conclude with the whole.

One, the starting 1, was Team Wine Australia, an international and diverse band of at least 15 (including video and photography, techs and talkers). Led by the aforementioned wine champions, TWA were a joyous, meticulous, cohesive, passionate and professional group who set the standard. There were (and are) many directions this significant undertaking could have gone. TWA’s insight, understanding, resources and delivery over four days of long and intense wine and cultural immersion was uplifting, appreciated and admired. And always well humoured.

Two, the foundation 2, was a band of 13 Wine Makers (of) Australia. Representing five states and a territory this group bonded and bounded quite beautifully. From an initial caution, a reading of the play, it took about one tasting hour on day one to form a warm cohesion and understanding. Instinctively, we embraced a joyful drive to share and inspire, to lead and be led, which grew session by session and day (and often night). This broad WMA group, in geography, styles, production and outlook combined to educate, inspire and befriend those that were the reason for trekking to Tahoe.

Three, the east to west and south to north 3, the Delegates USA, the reason for being. The USA is a huge market and ten years ago the mountain of exporting one billion dollars of wine was scaled. Today it’s about half of that. The change has been mostly at the cheap end, the market segment that none of those attending Lake Tahoe have interest in. Today the USA is more open than ever to the unique places, peoples and wines of story emanating from Australia. Now China has climbed the one billion dollars mountain and the conversation there is often of containers of wine rather than special cases. Early days.

The 100 D-USA were professionally and geographically a very diverse group. The commonality was exceptional wine love and a career standing testifying this: here was a group of deep thinkers and high achievers. This group of retailers, sommeliers and journalists, right from the opening evening, had a bright  and energetic eagerness to embrace and then to enhance Australia Decanted.

Sometimes the way in life and wine is an inequality of position. Visiting a winery it’s clear who’s in charge and responsible for driving the interaction. The same producer visiting a shop or restaurant to show wine has the position reversed. The wine promoter, industry professional and wine producer become used to this dance of circumstance. I’m not a particular fan of it.

Importantly and inspiringly, Australia Decanted set, maintained and nurtured equality. The aura and emotion gave freedom and all involved were enhanced and empowered to enhance. It is for this outcome, thoughtfully and instinctively driven by these three groups, that saw #Australiadecanted excel well beyond the sum of its parts.  On day four, when the learning and bonding had been done, and the stories shared, it was love for wine, love for place and love for people that defined this special celebration.

Kudos;

Mark Davidson | Aaron Ridgway

Sarah Crowe | John Duval | Steve Flamsteed | Macgregor Forbes | Jeffrey Grosset | Michael Hill Smith | Sue Hodder | Tim Kirk | Steve Pannell | Louisa Rose | Bruce Tyrrell | Virginia Wilcock | Mike Bennie

Harvest Time

EQ and IQ

The wine at the end of the tunnel appears brightly as these two months of increasingly narrow focus, of declining physical, mental and emotional energy, give way to a sense of lightness, contemplation, softening. Slumbering even.

The harvest and all that surrounds it is a compelling and demanding time. All is heightened. It’s a time where vulnerabilities are laid bare. The weather and it’s vagaries test and threaten. The logistics of the vineyard demand. The Groundhog Day(s) and weeks in the winery create a blur of and in time. What day is it, what week is it, what vintage is it? Where’s the bloody fitting for that tank?

It’s a time for serious analysis, and I’m not talking pH and sugars. Every thing done, by any and everyone, has an impact on capturing a year’s work and how the market duly unfolds in a year’s time. These critical weeks of pitching in, working for the common good, striving for an outcome of excellence and beauty is marked by the generosity and energy of many contributors. As it is and as it must, these are viewed and reviewed, observed and analysed and appreciated and stored away for the quiet times of deeper autumn and wintertime.

Every year there at least 20 family and friends that help during these unremitting and challenging months. Every year there are a few new faces that slot in and add to the culture of this land, these activities and the resultant wines. Every year there are familiar faces that add extra layers to the collecting of vintage stories.

After a day of pressing, in a quiet moment, I was thanked for the opportunity to be included, to volunteer help. Further more, I was offered that it’d been a privilege to be involved. My immediate response was appreciation for the words and sentiments and that those feelings of gratitude for this place and these opportunities mirrored my own; that it is indeed a privilege, and certainly not a right, to be here doing what we do. Here there is the land and the specific sites, the ability to take the grapes and manage them into wine and we owe it back to the place and processes for the opportunities and advantages we derive.

We own not it and it owes not us.

There’s been a lot of energy around this celestial vintage. Whilst keeping the practical tasks of vines and wines in sight there’s been a lot of insight into people and place, into the culture of wine and its ability to enrich, to create and build depth into relationships.

I’d go so far as to say EQ has over shone IQ. Which seems about right, for IQ is the servant to EQ.

What a happy place to share and to be.

Soil Life. 21 January 2018.

Loire Valley 1998.  Claude Bourguignon 2018.

We spend a lot of time looking across and above our vineyards. We admire the easily evident beauty of ordered vines embellishing the landscape. It’s very infrequent, and certainly not Instagram worthy, to focus below the surface and below the microscope.

In 1998 I spent my usual few weeks roaming the vineyards and cellars of Burgundy before spending one week following the Loire from Nevers to the coast. Much of my trip was visiting producers for importer Paul de Burgh-Day (which is now Robert Walters’ Bibendum Wine Co) where the focus was (and remains) on the finest vignerons with a bent for promoting soil life and low input vinification. Burgundy was its usual inspiring self for wines and conversations of terroir and typicity however it was in the Loire that I felt the dynamic stirring for a lowering of the vision. It was in the Loire that I felt a gathering momentum for seeing and feeling the earth. It shook me up and put us on a patient and determined path to improvement.

In 1998 the name Claude Bourguignon kept arising and as I moved from grower to grower I came to understand that his knowledge, passion and evaluations were integral to driving many in this group. Growers like Dagueneau, Chidane, Mellot, Angeli, Bossard and Joly (well, more philosopher than grower!) walked and talked me through vineyards where much of the conversation was about soil life and structure and how this was critically important to vine health and wine quality.

Twenty years later when Robert organised for Claude to visit a few Australian vineyards for the first time we were excited to take the opportunity. Excavating several holes alongside our vines aged from four years to thirty years and having a critical eye cast over our decades of work was exciting and educational. Claude is an engaging and well humoured man with a searing intelligence and vast knowledge of soil microbiology specifically relevant to vines. He has travelled the world for decades and has worked with the greatest vineyards and vignerons. Claude’s mind is focused and energised by the relationship the vine has with soil structure and soil life and the way the vine is farmed. His knowledge of wine and capacity to taste wine and reflect upon where and how it was grown is quite remarkable.

It will take several weeks to contemplate and digest his observations and our conversations from this weeks visit. It’s very pleasing to reflect on how things were here 15 years ago and to assess how they are today with the improvements that have been made. To contemplate the bare sheep grazing paddock prior to 1988 is head shakingly distant.

Thirty years on, to excavate Quartz, to follow the roots and soils down and to understand the complexities involved was inspiring. To talk worms, fungi, microbes, minerals, deep roots and fine roots, composts and cover crops, ploughing and grasses was defining. To taste this Chardonnay 100 meters away in barrel, and then nine years old in bottle, with Claude Bourguignon was a precious and significant occasion.

Tuesday, 5th September 2017

As we exit the cold and dark dormancy of winter the promise of spring and the growing season to vintage 2018 begins. This will be our 30th year of vines at Bindi and it’s with excitement and the usual caution that we make our seasonal plans. There are no new projects set for this season and we are inspired to work carefully and in timely ways as each stage of the season approaches.

We are releasing the last of the 2016 wines and it’s been very pleasing to see the wines evolve so well in barrel and now settling in bottle. They are harmonious and textured wines that have the intensity to age very well. Most of the 2017 Pinot Noirs have finished the malolactic and we have been keeping a close eye on their progress and racking where appropriate. There are a few 2017 Chardonnay barrels still to ferment the last of their sugars (as the weather warms again) but most are dry and resting brightly on their yeast lees.

The first high density vineyard will produce its second crop this coming season and the second high density block will establish to the wire and be set for its initial crop the following year. With the Original Vineyard now hitting 30 years old it’s exciting to have some new beginnings to give contrast and aspiration to elevate what we are producing.

My Natural Whine

A few weekends ago I participated in a wonderful wine event in Daylesford conceived and organised by Jenny Latta. As is the way, my attendance was for work, which happens to be my pleasure, and the aptly titled event ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ was indeed a pleasure to be included in.

Having vinously grown up with the classics, having been generously graced with great wine by equally great people, my lessons and subsequent aspirations (and hopefully outcomes) are pretty conservative. Not in a 1980s acid and oak academic Australian style, but rather with an embrace of vine farming and the wine grower’s way. I like my wine’s ambition to embody an attempt for it to taste of where it comes from. I mean this in a landscape sense, not a human sense. It’s about where from, not who from.

Show me land, not hand, in a wine.

My sensibilities have been honed such that my nose is turned up at aspects of wines that are not in place. The term ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ makes so much sense to my wine mind. I have come to mind the dominating caramel sweetness of new American oak (most confrontingly in young wines). I’m jarred by the hardness of theory chasing acid additions. Balancing where you find your balance takes some weighing up but the simple measure for mine is for a finding of deliciousness in wine. Finding charm, finding grace.

The above detracting winemaking techniques are outcomes created with consciousness. They come from decisions made with absolute known results. And the wines speak less of their vineyard origins for this. And they show less grace and charm because of it, and, to my mind and palate, they are, ultimately, less delicious than they could have been.

Similar to the above instances, where the mind and hand have interfered to the detriment of sense of place and deliciousness, I find wines that are dominated by a singular character equally disappointing. When a wine shouts of oxidation, brettanomyces, mousiness or volatiles I find it impossible to find deliciousness, let alone enjoy a search for sense of place. I find this frustrating when winemaking techniques obliterate the wine’s farming origin and speak of a heavy hand and imposing mind. The wine itself may possibly be additive free but the deciding mind has its hands all over the wine.

For some wines what detracts from and destroys others is indeed stylistically positive. Like flor and Fino, maderisation and Madeira. One wine’s fault can be another wine’s signature. But there are limits. There are tipping points. To find where the limits are takes stepping beyond the brink and then reflection as to how far is too far. We are in these moments and it’s intriguing to watch from close range.

Fine vineyards are very valuable. They take up land, they take up time, they take many years to mature. Each season they demand enormous care and funding to produce their valuable crop. The closer your link to the life of a vineyard, the closer your connection to its annual crop, the greater the demand you do your best to honour the fruit. There’s a responsibility not to let the winemaking get too far out of hand.

Conversely, the looser the connection to the vineyard and the works of the season the more freedom exists. There is more room for experimentation, for risk taking, as there is less depth of relationship at stake. Quite rightly, this is where much of the boundary testing is happening and it’s exciting and intriguing to witness.

The Lo Fi wine event that Jen conceived and successfully presented was an important occasion. It was inclusive, sincere, fun and stimulating. And hopefully it’ll be repeated.

Weather; Maker and Breaker. 

From start to finish, from September to April, the season gives a long ride. Sometimes exhilarating, continually challenging, occasionally debilitating and always, always, satisfying. For whatever the outcome of quality and yield the season must ultimately be viewed positively and the journey itself as a fulfilment. There are gifts to be given and there are gifts to be taken.

There’s a certain fatefulness that must be held and accepted over these months. The striving work is done upon the accumulated lessons of seasons past and in this there is an inherent energy tinged with some yearnings, some anxiety and, over-ridingly, much hopefulness. The calmness, the swirl of wisdom from having seen many outcomes does soften this anxiety and heightens the level of acceptance. To a point.

Seasons early, seasons late?

In 2016 we see the earliest ever calendar pick in early March, yet still 110 to 115 days from fruit set. Abnormal by the calendar, but normal by the period to maturity. In 2017 we are tracking for a harvest early to mid April, about 110 to 115 days from fruit set. Normal is as normal does. And Easter? Well, that was mid March in 2016 and it is mid April in 2017. This telling by the moon is telling.

We have experienced the most stunning run of Autumnal weather with four weeks of thrillingly sunny warm days punctuated by refreshingly cool nights. In the conjuring of comparisons of vintages prior it’s a little heart racing to recall 1991 and 2000. Chickens, hatch, counting….don’t! This present tropical, brooding thunderstorm system pushes us out onto the tightrope of ripening as the season threatens to fracture. We approach the games of risk and return; balancing the risks of disease and dilution, awaiting the return of the sunny splendour.

We begin the deep breaths in weather watching and willing the grapes across that tightrope.

Bindi news

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The season is now well underway and has required quite a deal of patience.  The Spring is nearly over yet we have hardly had a warm day and the vines are running a course of lateness that will perhaps see harvest in mid April.  No bad thing.

In 2016 Easter was very early and the harvest was also very early.  Next year Easter is a month later and it seems the vines are corresponding.  Makes sense.  Nature governs the seasons, we respond as required, hopefully appropriately!

The vines look quite healthy and the crop potential is good, but flowing in early December will determine how well the crop sets.  The new High Density vineyard (11,300 vines per hectare) is going very well and will provide its first crop in 2017. This is very exciting.  We are also establishing another vineyard in this way just alongside Block 5 and there are 8,500 vines going in in the next few weeks.

It has been a challenge to get the time and timing right to plough, mow, spray and prepare the new vineyard for planting.  Being too wet is a forgotten difficulty and we are constantly adjusting our activities as the weather turns and disrupts our endeavours.  Again, we are being patient![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

USA Trip 2016

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Warning: No photos, just words.  Quite a few.

There’s a lane way that looks a likely place for a mugger or rough sleeper to inhabit.  Seemingly a street to nowhere good.  It just so happens to house the hottest restaurant in Chicago right now.  Don’t bother looking for illuminated signage, there is none.  Walk though a working goods lift, dark and industrial.  Beyond the curtain veil in to a 28 seat room open to the kitchen.  Effectively, every table is a chef’s table.  Eight hours later I left with a mind bended by outrageously great food and hospitality.  Staff training in the way of Bindi beforehand, serving eight Bindi wines to guests over their degustation dinner, then three hours of tasting, vocabulary stretching conversation about impossibly fine and complex dishes and great wine pairings all was done.  I said wow a lot to your excellence Oriel Restaurant, Chicago.

Whilst the premise of these past two weeks was the Oregon International Pinot Noir Celebration the opportunity to be despatched nationwide by Ronnie Sanders and Aaron Meeker of Vine Street Imports was too good to pass up.

IPNC is an iconic, soulful, confident gathering of passionate producers, professionals and consumers.  Having been a guest winery in 2008 under the Conservation banner it was hardly entering the unknown but formally presenting 14 Australian pinots to 900 American sceptics was a first for the 30 year old IPNC.  It’s fair to say some minds and palates were turned, or at least the ship is edging in the right direction.  After years of Critter Wine and souped up Shiraz these fine, fragrant, persistent pinots proved to be somewhat of a revelation.  A special mention to Belle Pente winery and Domaine Gouge for including Bindi in the night one on farm dinner.  Sincere and serene.

From Oregon (Portland’s Le Pigeon Greg Basser?  Small and perfect) to Bern’s Steakhouse in Tampa Florida was a hell of a trip for a dinner but the legend of Bern’s was upheld.  All the way back to 1929!  A good way to do business and put another line through a name on the bucket list.

As is the Sanders way, opening and maintaining markets in exotic locations is a life calling and The Island House in Nassau Bahamas is both a great customer and more than enriching location.  Tranquil.  Soothing.  Reaching.  Further from the rain, cold and wind of Melbourne you could not be!

Twenty four hours in NYC and tasting Bindi wines with the brilliant Michael Engelman MS and 50 staff at the stunning Modern Restaurant was a remarkable entree into the pace and quality that their intensity and passion deliver.  It’s hard to imagine that this beautifully located restaurant is now closed for a very significant renovation that will surely see it strive for a move from two stars to three?  Talk about ambition!

I’ve got a lot of affection for Philadelphia and to walk it’s streets and neighbourhoods again and to see old industry contacts and meet new customers was wonderful.  It’s a conservative, old city but scratch the surface and there’s a lot of love in the wine community that Vine Street have connected with and built up.  As always, the lamest of lame background soundtrack in my mind switches from Rocky to Springsteen, no matter what I listen to.  Cringeworthy sentimentality.

The plains of Oklahoma and its own City and sibling Tulsa are warm hearted (well, ok, summer time hot bordering on sweltering) and the people look you in the eye when you pass on the street.  From five years ago the wine culture is racing along and eclectic bars and eating houses proliferate.  The team at Thirst Wine have a lot of love for Bindi and it was here I enjoyed quite a few of our wines from the mid 2000s that shone and looked every bit as young as the wines we hold in our own cellar.  That’s careful shipping and storage at its finest and the longevity of the wines was compelling and appreciated.

Reputations are hard won in a country of great culinary cities and Chicago’s bounty of grand and niche restaurants makes for a deserved claim to a place on the dais.  Showing wines to 17 restaurants in two days looked arduous but in reality was a revelation and full of energy.  So much goodwill, knowledge and smiles.  And a genuine engagement with the Bindi path.

The USA faces some tough issues right now with its unique electoral choices, the enormous presence of guns and their advocates as well as the more global shared issues of race and extremist violence.  The wine and food sector is usually filled with lovers not fighters, carers not haters so perhaps my impressions carry a bias to compassion rather than fear.  Over two weeks I’ve seen and heard a lot of concern, a lot of thoughtfulness.  Of a hope for fairness, opportunity, safety, to be acting and perceived as progressive and enlightened.  It’s been uplifting.

Tonight, before flying on Saturday, I tentatively begin the journey home by presenting a Bindi dinner for the Australian Consulate in LA.  Edging home with work to do.

And next time?  There’s an inspiring event in Dallas that’s captured my imagination called TexSom that is calling for 2017….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

15/16 season

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The season of 2015-16 is the season of early.  Early Flowering, early fruit set, early veraison and, of course, early harvest.  All early by the calendar, but the whole season seemed shunted forward.  October was the new November, December was the new January and so on and February saw much of the ripening through mild and quite autumnal days.

The end of March and early April has become, over the past 15 years, the normal time for harvesting at Bindi (which compares to the decade from 1991 to 2000 where we averaged mid April).  And the harvest is pretty much 110 to 115 days after the fruit set, which is normally at the end of November to early December.  In 2016 we again harvested between 100 and 115 days from harvest.  It’s just that starting the harvest on March 4th and ending March 10th is quite mind boggling and sets an early record well ahead of the previous set on March 17th in 2008!

And the quality, the style?  Well, at this early point the wines have great intensity, balance and length.  The winery was full of fine perfume as the Pinots fermented and the structures built with time on skins but overall the ferments were quite quick and exceptionally clean and easy.  At the very least it is a very good vintage.  I suspect as the wines fall bright and they evolve in barrel the vineyard definition and transparency will elevate and we may well be looking at another exceptional quality vintage to parallel the sublime 2015s.

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December 2015

The season that is ahead of it’s time shows no signs of abating.  We now have January weather, yet we are still to pass GO and still yet to collect our $200 (Christmas and associated presents).  A strange season yet sensical in some way seeing Easter is very early in 2016 (end March).  The harvest is anticipated to be in the mid to end March range compared to recent years harvesting very end March and early April.

The vines are in fine form (though some of the most bony, hard old soils are seeing some some vines with reduced shoot growth) with the majority of the vineyard having a beautiful, full canopy.  The flowering in November (again, very early) has seen an excellent crop level set and we will be doing some judicious green harvesting/crop thinning in late January.  The bunch size is quite small at this point but the bunch and berry numbers are high.  So far, the disease pressure is low and the rigorous early season shoot thinning and positioning sees the canopy quite open and airy.

The new high density Pinot Noir planting (1.1m by 0.8m for 11,300 vines per hectare) is developing well and is on track and is growing some strong shoots which will set it up for a 2017 harvest.  The (5,000) vines have been worked completely by hand (hoeing, spraying) to this point and next year will see the introduction of a narrow (68cm) tractor (Niko on small tracks) for undervine cultivation and spraying.  The vineyard is managed without herbicide so the amount of hand work is considerable.

The 2014 Bindi releases (small crop of intense and very age worthy wines) are long gone and we are looking forward to bottling the 2015s from March 2015 onwards.  The wines have a beautiful fruit weight and structure and their harmony is exceptionally attractive.  There is plenty of positive noise around about the fine 2015s in southern Victoria and the vintage looks to be a success along the lines of the outstanding 2010 season.

To our friends and family in wine and life, have a great holiday season and here’s to a prosperous and contented 2016.