“The viticulture of this region is true cool climate farming – varieties native to northern Italy and the cooler areas of France, Austria and Germany should all work well in the Macedon Ranges,” says Mount Towrong’s viticulturist and winemaker Adam Paleg – who has been tending to the vines here since 2012 and making wines from them since 2019. “Wines from the Macedon Ranges are always vibrant, high in natural acidity and with firm tannins in the reds, due to high ultraviolet light intensity from the elevation of 450 metres to 800 metres above sea level.” Within this regional framework, Mount Towrong’s estate vineyard presents its own unique points of difference. “Our site is unique for many reasons,” Paleg says. “At 600 metres elevation, the vineyard has cold nights and warm afternoons in the growing season. The entire vineyard is terraced, minimising rainfall runoff, in turn minimising the need for irrigation. The soil is non-volcanic, nutrient-poor sandy clay loam with mudstone through all horizons of soil. The steep aspect of this site causes it to be above the frost line – eliminating one big stress.” Those conditions make the site eminently suitable for varieties from the relatively cool and sub-Alpine regions of Italy’s north – think Piedmont, the Veneto, and Trentino–Alto Adige. “This site is perfectly suited to Northern Italian varieties such as nebbiolo, glera, and pinot bianco,” Paleg says. “These varieties thrive in their homeland due to cold nights and warm afternoons in poor soil.”
While Paleg has always been able to see the potential for these varieties at Mount Towrong, achieving that potential hasn’t always been easy – especially in the case of the famously finicky nebbiolo, which was the first Italian variety to be planted on the site, in 1999. “This variety is marginal to the Macedon Ranges,” Paleg says. “Inconsistent crops and ripening have been an issue with it since the first vintage in 2005.” The breakthrough came in 2022 with the realisation that, for this variety and in this site, less is more: “I was thinking about our nebbiolo, with its inconsistent cropping and low basal bud fertility,” Paleg says. “I asked myself, ‘What if we only prune every three years, and otherwise just allow the vine to do what it wants?’ The following season we got an amazing crop of seven tonnes with a great flavour profile, when previously our best crop was three and a half tonnes from the one-hectare block. In the last three seasons we have received the same amount of fruit that the site produced in the eight seasons prior.” It’s not just a question of yields: “Importantly, the quality of the wine from this block of Nebbiolo has improved,” Paleg adds. “The move to minimal pruning in 2022 has drastically changed the average crop size and fruit quality. Bunch numbers have increased 400% – but bunch weight averages have decreased from 200 grams to 90 grams, with significantly smaller berries. The average yield has gone from two tonnes per hectare to six tonnes per hectare. And the wines produced from this block have become more elegant – with more colour, tannin and structure.”
It’s not just the nebbiolo that receives a thoughtful less-is-more approach at Mount Towrong. “What we have been doing for over ten years now is farming without irrigation, eliminating the use of herbicides and pesticides, and incorporating the use of organic compost to improve vine health,” Paleg says. That philosophy naturally translates across to Paleg’s approach to vinification once the fruit is in the winery. “Picking fruit a little early allows us to produce wines with a lower pH, which in turn greatly reduces the need for sulphur additions,” he adds. “Wines with great natural acidity and low sulphur levels are obvious in the glass.” Similarly, weaning the prosecco vines off irrigation has given their fruit a flavour boost that can be seen in the finished wine. “Dry growing the prosecco vines has also given us results in the glass,” Paleg says, “with more texture and complexity with a variety that often fails in this area.”
Those terraced vineyards have proven an asset for the vineyard’s turn away from irrigation, with the flat terraces able to retain rainwater that would otherwise fall down the steep slope of the vineyard. But that doesn’t mean that the old irrigation infrastructure remains unused: Paleg instead deploys the lines for ‘fertigation’ – applying dissolved fertiliser, typically kelp extract, to the vines’ root zone. “My philosophy around sustainability is simple,” Paleg says. “Put back as much as we can into the vineyard, as every year we take away a lot of sugar and nutrients in the form of many tonnes of grapes.” As such, he focuses on returning nutrients to the vineyard ecosystem. “We mulch winter prunings back into the mid-rows, and put organic compost and organic kelp extracts back into the vines,” he says. “All of these practices contribute to the improvement of soil biodiversity and soil moisture retention – in turn improving vine health.” Similarly, Paleg has adopted a holistic approach to pest management: “Management of the land has been achieved through planting of native trees to improve the populations of beneficial insects,” he says. “One example of this is Victorian Christmas-bush plantings to encourage native wasp populations.” These insectary plantings attract beneficial insects and boost biodiversity in the vineyard, bringing it into a natural balance.
No matter the style of vineyard management, it’s not always easy growing grapes in the chilly and marginal Macedon Ranges – mainland Australia’s coldest wine-growing region. “Our biggest challenge is lack of sunshine and heat in spring,” Paleg says. “We manage this by shoot-thinning, leaf-plucking and farming without irrigation to maximise sun exposure and airflow within the grapevine canopy.” With temperatures so low, a warming climate isn’t at the top of Paleg’s list of concerns – although he is keenly aware that extra warmth can also disrupt established weather patterns, necessitating changes to vineyard management. “From what I can see, climate change will assist us with the current varieties that we have planted, being such a cold region,” he says. “The only issue so far is an increase in summer storms and rainfall, meaning an increase in humidity. This requires us to be more precise with the timing of spray applications and canopy management.”
Despite these challenges, he finds much to love about the job. “What I love most about working here is its sheer beauty, and the amazing owners and staff – they are all wonderful people,” he says. “My favourite stories about working at Mount Towrong Vineyard are always around the amazing Vietnamese picking and pruning crews from St Albans that we work with throughout the year. They’ve worked with us for many years, and they are always laughing with me – or at me. They create a beautiful energy that makes my time here more memorable, and they are integral part of our story.”
GET FIRST ACCESS TO THE NEXT WINE ICONS – DELIVERED
Find out moreEach month, get 3 bottles of our freshest discoveries. We taste thousands to bring you the best.
Join us and support emerging winemakers, sustainable vineyards, and the development of young professionals.
Please sign in or create account as candidate to bookmark this job
Please sign in or create account to save this search
Please sign in or create account as candidate to create a resume
