After both knocking off doctorates specialising in yeast metabolism and spending years working in vineyards and wineries for others, Col McBryde and Jennie Gardner started their own endeavour with a fairly substantial head start, Gardner’s parents being the owners of a decidedly rustic old vineyard in the Clare Valley, conveniently nestled up against Wendouree’s iconic site.
In the Springfarm subregion, just south of the Clare township, the Adelina vineyard is a place of history. “We were told in 2002 to pull the vineyard out and start again,” says McBryde. “We resisted. Wrapped by the Wendouree and Aberfeldy vineyards, the site is steeped in the heritage of Clare and Australian wine folklore. Our time here has seen us transition from making wines from an old site, to growing vines that produce wine expressive of its history.”
The oldest vines are shiraz – along with two rows of pedro ximénez vines – and were planted in the early 1900s, while a block of grenache was established in the ’40s. More shiraz was added in 2013 and ’20, with mataro planted in ’12 and ’13, and malbec in ’17. In 2015, McBryde also grafted a 1976 block of cabernet sauvignon vines to Rhône varieties – shiraz, grenache, mataro, ugni blanc, roussane and carignan – taking the site to 6 hectares under vine.
“I found myself in Clare, seven years after my first vintage, overly confident and lacking information,” says McBryde. “I quickly learnt that humility, honesty and dedication were required, to make wine… or more importantly, the growing of the vines and the resultant wine with ‘somewhereness’ – a lesson learnt from the Bradys [of Wendouree].”
Since 2012, McBryde has worked using organic practices, with certification coming in 2020 (NASAA). Prior to that, the viticulture was conventional, and though he notes that it was always “sympathetic”, the journey to reinvigorate the vineyard has been a long one, and is still very much a work in progress.
“Trailer loads of olive trees were removed, and countless hours of hand hoeing weeds began our regenerative plan,” says McBryde. “We swapped a car for an old David Brown tractor to slash and jig under vine. Tutelage over the years from many and self-education saw us focusing on sustainability and vine health. Our tending is one of a benevolent nature; all we want to achieve is life and health out of our soils and vines. With the old blocks it’s a custodianship. We have this wonderfully old site, which we get to look after – it’s an exceptional feeling. Our choices on our property are for the continuation of the legacy of the land. Careful, thoughtful and calculated. That’s not to say we get it right all the time, but we try to keep learning and growing.”
“20 years ago, the behaviour was focused on the production of wine. However, our paradigm shifted a few years after that to more of a focus on growing vines and the resultant wines became a much clearer expression of the site in a given season. Then the move to organic farming has led to a greater understanding of the innate quality of our site … and a huge improvement in soil and thus vine health has been very satisfying. Then having this expressed in wine quality is a joy. …Our winemaking practices have changed, albeit slightly, but the resultant wines are more finessed, brighter and focused, which we happily attribute to changes in the vineyard.”
Like any old vineyard, Adelina is backbreaking work, and the returns are modest, but McBryde believes it is a special place. “The red sandy clay, lime, slate and belts of sandstone…” he begins, trying to capture what makes the place tick, “crop levels our accountant has noted are ‘unprofitable’… each vine would be visited anywhere from eight to 12 times a growing season – pruning, tying down, shoot thinned, hoed, fruit thinned and then handpicked all play a role in why we think the fruit we grow is quality.”
For McBryde, establishing the grafted block for the field blend was a chance to experiment outside of the gnarled old-vine focus. It was also a bit of a good-natured middle finger to those that misuse the term. Frustrated by some makers who use “field blend” as a marketing device – when in fact many came from entirely different fields and are really just everyday blends – as well as to throw some chaos into his ordered, scientific mind, McBryde jumbled the cuttings up, grafting them randomly. And he picks and vinifies the grapes together – a true field blend, in other words.
“We pride ourselves on honesty and transparency,” says McBryde. “There are only two of us at Adelina. I am indebted to the work and support of our winemaker Michael Maloney who works alongside me in the vineyard and in the winery. It’s his diligence and effort that has made this work realised in recent years. The constant contact approach to the vineyard has taught us much. Our approach is holistic across the property; organic farming takes a central tenet to our procedure, outside of the sustainability and regenerative focus in the vineyard, we maintain half the property with native scrub.”
The site is essentially dry grown, with rainwater used to minimally support the establishment of young vines. And though the Murray River pipeline runs past their vineyard, McBryde notes that they don’t have access to it, but nor do they want access. “We are of the notion that further depleting that aqua resource is not part of our environmental mandate,” he says. “The most used pieces of equipment we have are two hand hoes; we compost as much as we can, and walking takes precedence over driving through the vineyard. These are small things that we do, that we think has impact, likely only on our lives, but it makes us feel good about what we’re doing.”
The issue of sustainability is a thorny one for McBryde, who believes the term is often used too glibly and can amount to greenwashing. However, the reluctance to use the term doesn’t affect his quest to achieve lofty goals. From the exhaustively manual weeding to making compost (as well as purchasing it to cover a shortfall for the 5–10 tonnes spread annually) to significantly reducing tractor usage and not taxing local water resources, sustainability underpins all actions. About 40 per cent of the property is also maintained as native scrub, so that endemic native flora and fauna can proliferate, and a solar array powers the winery. They are also currently in the process of becoming officially certified as carbon neutral.
McBryde is quite conscious of the fact that they have occupied their site for a sliver of its history, but it has left an indelible imprint. “Our tenure at Adelina has been brief… well, in comparison to our neighbours,” he says. “It’s special to us, because we’ve worked this land for 20 years, and we’ve made the wine from those vines for near the same time. It’s an old site neighboured by one of the most historically relevant vineyards in Australia, with links to that site. The soils are old and lean, the vines old and gnarled. I think wines from the Springfarm sub-region have a specificity to them and the longer we work on what we’re growing, the more I see that sub-regional character.
“20 years ago, the behaviour was focused on the production of wine. However, our paradigm shifted a few years after that to more of a focus on growing vines and the resultant wines became a much clearer expression of the site in a given season. Then the move to organic farming has led to a greater understanding of the innate quality of our site … and a huge improvement in soil and thus vine health has been very satisfying. Then having this expressed in wine quality is a joy. …Our winemaking practices have changed, albeit slightly, but the resultant wines are more finessed, brighter and focused, which we happily attribute to changes in the vineyard.”
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