Brian Croser had long ago found his ideal Australian home for chardonnay, planting his Tiers Vineyard in 1979 in the Piccadilly Valley, Adelaide Hills, but his quest for a “distinguished site” for pinot noir took a little longer. While chardonnay and pinot noir often go hand in hand in respect to suitability to site, the Adelaide Hills has so far proven to generally favour chardonnay over pinot noir for still wine.
While he went to Wrattonbully for shiraz and the cabernet family on rich terra rossa soils, it was the Fleurieu Peninsula that caught Croser’s attention for a pinot noir vineyard to join his Tapanappa stable. The location of the Foggy Hill Vineyard at Parawa on the southern coastal ridge of the Fleurieu Peninsula was an untested one, but it was certainly not left to chance. Croser meticulously analysed rainfall, geology, soil and climatic factors, including average heat summation – a scale developed at UC Davis that he has found invaluable in matching variety to site since studying his masters in viticulture and oenology there in the early ’70s.
“Foggy Hill is a very damp, cool location… with more than a metre of annual rainfall,” Croser says. “It is a very maritime environment, with warm nights and cool days, being just 8 kilometres north off the southern coast of the Fleurieu and at more than 300 metres altitude. The soils are sandy loams formed over the Cambrian era (540 million years ago) Backstairs Passage Formation. I could only speculate this would be an excellent environment for pinot noir before planting in 2003.”
“I could only speculate this would be an excellent environment for pinot noir before planting in 2003.”
Even with the research, Croser was going out on a limb, and he says there is really nothing to compare the site to. It has also proven to be one that is heavily influenced by vintage variation. “Since the first crop in 2007, each vintage has elicited a slightly different wine, ranging from the dense ripe fruit wine of the hot 2018 year to the delicate and aromatic wine of the cool 2022 year,” he says.
The vineyard is planted more densely than the average Australian site, with a spacing of 1.5 by 1.5 metres (4,444 vines per hectare), and Croser notes that low yields are essential to achieving the right level of fruit concentration, with no more than 6 tonnes per hectare produced. Dijon clones 114, 115, 777, 828 and 667 make up the vineyard, with each clone harvested and vinified separately. With additional plantings made in 2006 and 2016, the three ages are also treated separately, though the young vine 667 and 828 are combined due to frugal quantities.
“We regularly taste each of the batches throughout the 8-month maturation in barrique,” says Croser. “What we have learned is that the most prolific clone, 114, produces the lightest bodied wine, very delicate and floral but is swamped by the other clones in a blend. 115 is the least productive clone with poor set a regular feature, and because of low crop is slightly denser than the others but with more subdued varietal character. 777 is the star with concentration, delicacy and the varietal peacock’s tail. My experience in Oregon tells me that 828 and 667 should be good performers, but it is too early to tell at Foggy Hill.”
“The unknowable was what the wine would taste like,. Of course, mind’s eye picture conjured up ‘La Tache’ or ‘Chambertin’, not a direct copy but of equivalent quality. Foggy Hill has delivered a slightly different nuance for each of the vintages. Unfortunately, none of them have been ‘La Tache’. Foggy Hill is Foggy Hill, unique pinot noir in its own style and quality.”
Aside from clone and vine age, a ridge running through the vineyard results in even lower yields, producing grapes of greater concentration and power. Those vines are picked, vinified and bottled separately to make Tapanappa’s ‘Definitus’ Pinot Noir. The remaining wines are assembled to make the Tapanappa ‘Foggy Hill’ Pinot Noir.
“In a new untried viticultural location, it really is important not to kneejerk but to carefully observe and adjust viticultural practice incrementally and conservatively, over decades not years,” says Croser. “Foggy Hill is managed in a minimalistic way, only responding to emergency conditions to protect the valuable crop. Because of the fog and high humidity, it is a low UV vineyard and since UV is important to colour and a particular flavour development, we leaf pluck to expose all bunches immediately after flowering.”
Croser notes that the canopy management – from leaf plucking in November to canopy trimming in late January to dropping fruit halfway through veraison to set the final crop load – is the critical tool for elevating fruit quality, with sugar levels, pH, malic and total acid levels, as well as YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen) all regularly tested from veraison.
Setting up the ideal bud numbers for the capacity of the site along with pruning the canopy to allow the right amount of light interception are key to producing premium fruit that justifies premium bottlings, says Croser. “The biggest sustainability challenge of a virgin vineyard site in a remote location is to economically justify the investment and the disturbance of the natural environment, to plant a vineyard that is economically sustainable. That’s not easy in a region, unrecognised in the marketplace, remote from labour and all the resources assembled in an established viticultural region. Despite that, it is a privilege being able to choose a completely new place to grow a specific variety, where there are no other vineyards, an experiment based on climatic, geological and soil parameters.”
NDVI satellite surveys are conducted to monitor and fine tune the irrigation program. Organic fertilisers are employed along with lime and dolomite to adjust the pH of the podsolised soils, and processed chicken manure is used to boost organic matter. Croser will tackle fungal issues with chemical intervention, if necessary, but he notes that this is very rare, with copper and sulphur the main weapons, along with organic insecticide. Regardless of the application, all treatments are responsive rather than prescriptive.
“I manage Foggy Hill with minimum inputs but employ whatever legal and environmentally kind tools are available to preserve economic sustainability in the face of disease or climate challenges” says Croser, also noting that the reflection of terroir in both the coldest (2011) and hottest vintages (2018) has held true. “That bodes well for its resilience in the face of climate change for a foreseeable future.”
And it is these vintage conditions that Croser is seeking to express, knit into the site expression, rather than it being an expression of winemaking. “The unknowable was what the wine would taste like,” he says. “Of course, mind’s eye picture conjured up ‘La Tache’ or ‘Chambertin’, not a direct copy but of equivalent quality. Foggy Hill has delivered a slightly different nuance for each of the vintages. Unfortunately, none of them have been ‘La Tache’. Foggy Hill is Foggy Hill, unique pinot noir in its own style and quality.”
That quality and character is something that Croser believes will see the area develop into “a recognised, multi-vineyard, pinot noir subregion,” just like the Piccadilly Valley did after he planted there in the late ’70s. In the meantime, he is no particular rush to welcome new neighbours. “Standing in the vineyard, looking across the landscape of the Fleurieu Peninsula, the Great Southern Ocean visible at its back, not another vineyard in site, I breath its splendid isolation,” he says.
“What more could I ask for?” Croser goes on to muse. “Foggy Hill is the only vineyard in the vicinity surrounded by grazing land and natural Fleurieu forest. We have retained all trees in the vineyard perimeter, minimally disturbed the soil and maintain an erosion proof sward on the steep slope. We use a lot of manual labour and try to minimise tractor hours. We don’t interfere with the native wildlife, which is abundant, and net the vineyard to protect it from birds. We manage the vineyard to leave the local pristine and diverse environment in the same condition as before the vineyard was there.”
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