2019 Place of Changing Winds Marsanne Heathcote

A textural, flavour-intense but light-footed wine, this is loaded with orchard fruits, smoky minerals and waxy notes.

Producer
Place of Changing Winds
Region

Heathcote
RRP

$38
Vintage

2019
Variety/Varieties

Marsanne
Alc./Vol.

13%

Place of Changing Winds’ Rhône-inspired Heathcote venture is anchored in syrah, but – even though it’s just the first release – marsanne is certainly not taking a backseat. A textural, flavour-intense but light-footed wine, this is loaded with orchard fruits, smoky minerals and waxy notes.

Tasting note

Golden in colour, the nose opens with ripe orchard fruits, rich golden apples, poached pears, roasted nuts, waxiness, honey and smoky mineral notes. This has a saline slip to the texture, with a generosity of flavour and texture that reads as neither big nor broad, just loaded with mouth-filling flavour and a silky gliding quality to the way it drinks, acidity a gentle but present guide.

Themes of this wine

Marsanne

A grape most commonly associated with the Northern Rhône, though it features in the south, marsanne has also carved a small be significant niche in Australian wine folklore. With vines planted in 1927, Victoria’s Tahbilk lays claim to some of the oldest, if not the oldest, marsanne vines in the world. And the wines have proved to age incredibly well, as they can in the Rhône. Flavours can range through pear, apple and citrus, with nutty and toasty development over time, as well as a varietally distinctive honeysuckle character.

Heathcote

Heathcote is rugged country, a tinder-dry landscape of rusty iron-rich soils littered with sculpturally stacked granitic boulders. It’s mythical territory, ancient land, and home to some of the world’s oldest viticultural soils. But as a wine region, it is a relatively young one, which saw an explosion of growth in the 90s. Shiraz led the charge, and it became Victoria’s answer to the Barossa or McLaren Vale, producing wines of significant power. But Heathcote is very different to both those places, and it is not that easily defined. Today, shiraz finds myriad expressions, and many other varieties are taking a firm grip, especially those suited to dry and warm climes.

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This is bursting with spice and wild fruits, with an underlying signature of regional minerality.

Producer
Place of Changing Winds
Region

Heathcote
RRP

$44
Vintage

2019
Variety/Varieties

Shiraz (Syrah)
Alc./Vol.

13%

While the home site in Macedon is a ground-breaking ultra-close-planted vineyard, Place of Changing Winds’ Rob Walters has been making Heathcote syrah for over a decade, emphasising the fragrant, spicy side of the grape, as well as Heathcote’s under-explored potential for elegance. From an organic vineyard in the Mount Camel Range, this is bursting with spice and wild fruits, with an underlying signature of regional minerality.

Tasting note

Made with 100 per cent whole bunches, this has ample spice and savoury complexity, but it’s not stalky as such, rather it lends the intense fruit and regional notes of cracked earth an engaging counterpoint, with meaty, smoky detail, a rusty ferrous note and black tea against red and black berries, dark plum and smashed cherries. This sits midweight, bright and vibrant but complex and layered, with it neither fruity or overtly savoury, oak is not an apparent factor, with pithy grapey tannins directing the wine savoury and long.

Themes of this wine

Syrah/shiraz

Shiraz dominates the Australian wine industry, accounting for nearly a third of this country’s vines. The grape’s traditional home is in France’s Northern Rhône, with wines that combine elegance and power, while Australia is perhaps best known for the muscular styles from warmer areas. Today, drinkers of Australian shiraz are spoilt for choice with expressions ranging from the elegant and spicy to the monumental.

Heathcote

Whole bunch

Before grapes are fermented, they are often de-stemmed, but they can also be left as whole bunches. Some winemakers will include a small or large portion in their ferments, with the rest destemmed, or less commonly they will leave all bunches intact. The impact of fermenting with whole bunches will create slightly different flavour profiles than if destemmed, with the grape stalks adding spice notes, and sometimes a green stemmy character, while also bringing in more tannin, and tannin with a different feel and texture to grape skin/seed or oak tannin. And while these added characters are quite savoury, the grapes in a ferment like this often remain whole for longer, meaning they start fermenting inside the berries first, which can bring a very bright fruit profile to the flavour mix. Any grape variety can be fermented with whole bunches, even white ones, but the technique is most associated with pinot noir, shiraz, gamay and grenache.

2019 Place of Changing Winds Marsanne Heathcote

Place of Changing Winds’ Rhône-inspired Heathcote venture is anchored in syrah, but – even though it’s just the first release – marsanne is certainly not taking a backseat. A textural, flavour-intense but light-footed wine, this is loaded with orchard fruits, smoky minerals and waxy notes.

Tasting note

Themes of this wine

Marsanne

Heathcote

Tasting note

Themes of this wine

Syrah/shiraz

Heathcote

Whole bunch

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