Entries by Wendy Fowler

Bindi Block 5 Pinot Noir elevated to the top echelon in the Langton’s Classification.

Bindi Quartz Chardonnay joins the Bindi Original Vineyard Pinot Noir in the Langton’s Classification.

As we work hard to manage another challengingly cool season and hope for the forecast sunshine and warmth to arrive we reflect on some fabulous recent news. In 1990 Langton’s categorised Australia’s most recognised and sought after wines. In December 2023 the eighth Classification was issued, listing 100 wines in total, with the top category listing 21 wines. Whilst it is never the aim to attain such listings and critical review, that the vineyard work that began at Bindi in 1988 and the wine production commencing in 1991 has become meaningful is very rewarding. Our focus very much remains on nurturing and bettering our original sites and learning about and exploring the more recently planted sites while working towards several new plantings. The past and the future all playing their roles in the present.

Vintage 2023

The shocks and the horrors were well worth the bother.

The fourth year of the cool and the damp has an undeniably admirable stamp. How could this be? Something precious has risen above its origins and holds an increasingly exciting and somewhat head scratching promise.

It’s a tough one to figure for the filigree found us rather than us finding it, strive as we did. The spring and early summer were diabolically damned with damp as those months overflowed the dams and underwhelmed our expectations. Bastard months, one after the other. Vignerons were stuck in the La Niña rut. Bogged even, rutted to near ruin by rain.

Gunung Willam Balluk, Woi Wurrung, Kulin Nation

When you start to look around, to read the old words, to see the paintings from 1770 onwards and then view the photos beginning in the 1860s you begin to see and understand the landscape and the people who owned and managed it. An important painting, looking from Gisborne to Mount Macedon, by Robert Hoddle in 1838, before new settlers had the numbers or means to clear the land, shows open fields managed by First Nations custodians, the Gunung Willam Balluk.

The newly invaded Australia rode on the sheep’s back on pastures created by First Nations people (country repeatedly referred to as park like by early European settlers). We then mined and washed gold from First Nations’ land and creeks.