Home > Wines We Love > 2022 Fighting Gully Road Tempranillo

From one of Australia’s great viticultural pioneers of alternative varieties comes an incredibly composed tempranillo with serious winemaking detail – and, in the eyes of some judges, Australia’s best example of the variety.

Producer
Fighting Gully Road
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$45
Vintage

2022
Variety/Varieties

Tempranilo
Alc./Vol.

14%

Juicy blueberry and redcurrant fruit, wrapped up in leather and earthy spice. There’s a smoky, savoury thread – think dried fig and warm spice – with fine, grippy tannins and real character. A well-balanced red with plenty going on.

Mark Walpole doesn’t do things by halves. He spent two decades at Brown Brothers, working his way up to Chief Viticulturist, and it was during that time – in 1995 – that he first purchased the Beechworth escarpment land that would become Fighting Gully Road, planting it out gradually over the following years. He also co-founded the notable Greenstone Vineyard in Heathcote before eventually leaving Brown Brothers in 2007 to focus on his own projects. Fighting Gully Road, now a 12-hectare site at 550 metres, is built on quiet experimentation rather than fashion: cabernet and pinot noir gave way over the years to sangiovese, tempranillo, chardonnay, verdicchio and grenache, each shift a considered response to what the land was telling him. That patient, methodical approach recently earned Fighting Gully Road the Innovative Vineyard of the Year award – “The Groundbreaker” – at our Fifth Annual Vineyard of the Year Awards, recognition of a career spent quietly pushing Australian viticulture forward.

Tempranillo is one of Spain’s noblest grapes, the backbone of Rioja and Ribera del Duero, prized for its structure, its savoury depth and its knack for translating site with real clarity. At Fighting Gully Road, it’s grown on a north-facing slope of Ordovician mudstone that runs warm by Beechworth’s standards, tempered by constant wind and low humidity that keep the vines in check – restricting berry size, concentrating flavour and colour, and building real natural tannin. It’s a site that leaves its mark, and this tempranillo carries that structure through into a serious, savoury wine.

That structure is then handled with real winemaking intent. A judiciously approach through oak maturation has complemented the wine with a gorgeous savoury complexity – the sarsaparilla, bitter cola, cacao and meaty notes that mark this as a genuinely serious drop, rather than simple varietal fruit. It’s the hand of a winemaker unwilling to let the variety coast on charm alone, pushing instead for real depth and detail. The result is a wine that pairs a leading vigneron’s decades of site knowledge with a genuinely considered approach in the winery – and it shows in every glass.

Tasting note

A brooding and nuanced Tempranillo with a deep pulse of blueberry and redcurrant fruit wrapped in leather, earth and violet perfume. Savoury, with sarsaparilla, bitter cola, cacao and meaty characters leading the way – dark, insistent and almost difficult to read at first, but magnetic in its demand for a second look. With air, it finds new shape: dried fig, clove, dark soda spice and a gravelly, earthy line sit beneath the savoury weight, while a smoked-kransky edge adds a comforting depth. The palate has a ferrous undertow that gives the fruit real seriousness, florals lifting the darker tones and keeping it from turning heavy. Fruit, acid and savoury depth sit in good proportion – dark and umami-driven, with enough freshness to stay light on its feet. Chinotto, cured meat and old-wood spice carry through a clipped, savoury finish. There’s structure, there’s grip, and there’s genuine detail – a composed, earthy expression that feels both distinctly Australian and unmistakably tempranillo.

When to drink

Perfect for sipping with friends by an open fire on a cold night, spinning tall tales late into the evening – if you have to have food with it, think something like slow-cooked beef cheeks in a Pedro Ximenez glaze, keeping everyone at the table a little longer. Or it’s one of those crisp nights when you’ve got a lamb shoulder in the oven and this sleek, smoky red being nursed in your glass. You’re in no rush, so steal another sip while sunlight fades to the evening’s first stars. Feels good.

Themes of this wine

Tempranillo

Tempranillo is unarguably Spain’s most recognisable variety, forming the bedrock of that country’s most famous red wines, as well as being one of one of the five key grapes from Portugal’s emblematic fortified – Port. In Australia, it has made a meaningful mark, but with limited genetic vine material, the potential for the grape is exponentially bigger, and with new clones now online that potential is starting to be fulfilled. The flavours of tempranillo naturally vary depending on ripeness, both red and darker fruits are common, with plum, blackberry and cherry common descriptors. Those fruit flavours are typically accompanied by savoury notes, often leather, tobacco, woodsy herbs and spice notes, with cola as another notable descriptor. While the acidity is naturally low, cooler examples will have good freshness and the wines will typically have ample structure from savoury tannins

Beechworth

Beechworth is one of Victoria’s great high-country wine regions, its vineyards scattered across granite and mudstone slopes at elevations that rank among the highest in mainland Australia. Gold-rush history runs deep here, but today it’s better known for elevation-driven cool-climate wines, with chardonnay and shiraz carrying its early reputation before a wave of alternative varieties – sangiovese, tempranillo, nebbiolo and more – began to reveal the region’s real diversity. Beechworth’s defining feature is its site variability: granite here, mudstone and shale there, north-facing warmth in one pocket and cooler, wind-swept exposure in the next, meaning the region resists easy definition and rewards winemakers willing to dig into the detail of a particular slope. It’s a small, quietly serious region – driven less by scale than by a handful of dedicated, site-obsessed producers pushing Victorian wine into increasingly interesting territory.

Explore Further

Deep Dive

Australia’s Best Tempranillo

Tempranillo is unarguably Spain’s most recognisable variety, forming the bedrock of its most famous red wines. It’s also a variety that has seen recently seen explosive global growth, with more hectares of tempranillo vines planted since 2000 than any other variety, and by a big margin. In Australia, it has made a meaningful mark – and with plantings increasing and a host of new producers working with the variety, there’s a palpable sense that it’s poised to become our next mainstream red wine variety. But what does, or should, Australian tempranillo taste like? And is it as well suited to Australia’s climatic conditions as we’d like to think? Two years after our last Deep Dive on the topic, we thought it was an apt time to come to grips with how this Spanish icon is faring in Australian soil …

Vineyard profile

Fighting Gully Road Vineyard, Beechworth

Perched at 550 meters elevation in Beechworth, Fighting Gully Road spans 12 hectares, tended to by visionary vigneron Mark Walpole. This windy, low-humidity site has evolved from 1997 through to 2019 and is now planted to sangiovese, tempranillo, chardonnay, verdicchio, and grenache. Walpole’s low-input approach blends pragmatism with sustainability: cane pruning for longevity, drip irrigation as needed, and a permanent sward of clovers and grasses to boost biodiversity. Wines grown in this vineyard include Fighting Gully Road’s Sangiovese, Chardonnay, Tempranillo, Syrah, Grenache, Verdicchio, Gros Manseng, and Rosé bottlings, while a portion of the tempranillo is sold to winemaker Adrian Rodda for his Aquila Audaux Tempranillo. The x-factor here lies in the vineyard’s north-east slope, with a microclimate of cooler days and warmer nights alongside a unique geology offering Walpole a brilliant canvas on which to paint his own take on Beechworth.

Awards

Fifth Annual Vineyard of the Year Awards Winners

The Vineyard of the Year Awards in 2019 in order to place vineyards and griowers across the nation at the heart of the Australian wine story – and at the heart of the Australian wine community. We wanted to reconnect the whole idea of wine to the place it comes from and the manner in which the grapes are grown. Five years on, and the mission of the Vineyard of the Year Awards remains the same. Read on to discover the New Vineyard of the Year; Old Vineyard of the Year; Innovative Vineyard of the Year, dubbed ‘The Groundbreaker’; and Vineyard of the Year.

Home > Wines We Love > 2018 Fighting Gully Road Petit Manseng

An expressive nose of dried mango and orchard fruits leads to a palate rich with sugar and intensity buoyed and lightened by vigorous acidity and a gentle grip.

Producer
Fighting Gully Road
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$32
Vintage

2018
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

12%

Mark Walpole has championed many so-called alternative varieties over the years, with his petit manseng an homage to the sweet wines of Jurançon in France’s south-west. An expressive nose of dried mango and orchard fruits leads to a palate rich with sugar and intensity buoyed and lightened by vigorous acidity and a gentle grip.

Tasting note

Lifted notes of dried mango, poached pear, custard apple and golden raisin notes with a flinty minerality that knits into the impression of old oak and a whiff of smoky sulphide. There’s a decent load of sugar here, but it sits in perfect balance with acidity and gentle grip rising up to greet it, Williams pear notes carrying through the finish. This would be ideal with hard umami-rich cheeses, like gruyere or a cloth-bound cheddar.

Themes of this wine

Petit Manseng

Grown in Gascony, Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh and Jurançon in France’s south-west, petit manseng is largely used to make late harvest sweet wines, though there are dry versions made, too, usually with gros manseng. Petit manseng has small berries, is low yielding and retains high acidity even when harvested late, making it ideal for concentrated and balanced sweet wines. Petit manseng has been in Australia for decades, but in 2020 it was revealed by DNA analysis that much, though not all, of the petit manseng in the country was gros manseng.

Residual sugar/sweetness

A fruit-sweet wine is one where the richness of the fruit gives an impression of sweetness, but it doesn’t actually taste sweet with sugars. Sweet is just that – a wine that has sugar in it and tastes sweet to degrees. A wine can be very sweet or very slightly so, with acidity making the sweetness less apparent. Some wines taste sweet at the start, but finish dry once swallowed. It’s all about how fresh that acid is in relation to the sugar. Wines that are sweet, like some German rieslings or dessert wines, have just had the fermentation stopped at a certain point, so some of the sugar is not converted to alcohol, hence residual sugar.

Beechworth

There’s something stately about the Beechworth wine region, with a sense of history, a sense of establishment that belies its relatively new viticultural status and frugal output. Perhaps it’s the town, with the pomp of its sandy hued stone buildings, the whole Gold Rush spectacle of it. Perhaps it’s the imprint of iconic makers, like Giaconda, Sorrenberg and Castagna. Perhaps it’s a combination. But whatever it is, don’t take this to mean Beechworth is set in its ways. It is a region of extraordinary untapped potential, with the ranks of newer makers swelling and testing the limits.

Home > Wines We Love > 2019 Giaconda ‘Amphora’ Roussanne

A ‘naturally’ styled skin-contact white from a Beechworth master better known for classic styles.

Producer
Giaconda
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$85
Vintage

2019
Variety/Varieties

Roussanne
Alc./Vol.

13.5%

A ‘naturally’ styled skin-contact white from a Beechworth master better known for classic styles.

Tasting note

This is savoury but quite full and fruit forward, with cooked apple, candied citrus peel, persimmon and a hint of ginger on the nose and palate. There’s ample richness in the mouth, with full viscous texture, but it all plays in a savoury space, with gentle acidity paired with skinsy tannin adding to the direction. This is pitched in a ‘natural’ wine vein, but it’s got a pretty classic feel for a skinsy white, fairly clean and bright, but with all the texture, grip and flavour complexity you’d expect from the category, just minus most of the funk.

Themes of this wine

Roussanne

A white variety grown primarily in France’s Rhône Valley, roussanne partners with marsanne in the north for Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage and Saint-Joseph, while it slips into Southern Rhône blends in lower concentrations, with grenache blanc taking more of a lead.

Beechworth

There’s something stately about the Beechworth wine region, with a sense of history, a sense of establishment that belies its relatively new viticultural status and frugal output. Perhaps it’s the town, with the pomp of its sandy hued stone buildings, the whole Gold Rush spectacle of it. Perhaps it’s the imprint of iconic makers, like Giaconda, Sorrenberg and Castagna. Perhaps it’s a combination. But whatever it is, don’t take this to mean Beechworth is set in its ways. It is a region of extraordinary untapped potential, with the ranks of newer makers swelling and testing the limits.

Amphora

An amphora is a big, classically shaped clay pot used for fermenting and maturing wine. They, unsurprisingly, go way back, and are still extensively used in Georgia (the world’s oldest winemaking country… truly), where they are called qvevri. They’re also used by lots of natural winemakers, as well as plenty that don’t put themselves in that camp. Why use them? Well, you get interesting ferment vectors, which swirl the lees around, and they are very neutral in terms of flavour imparted. They’re also a protective environment, being less oxidative than oak barrels, but don’t have some of the issues associated with the complete absence of oxygen in stainless steel tanks.

Skin contact

The skins hold the colouring matter and lots of tannin. Leave them in contact with the juice/wine and you’ll extract those elements. Most conventional white wine sees no skin contact, rosé a little bit to get a blush, and red wine plenty to get the colour and structure. Skin-contact whites… well, they have some skin contact. Yep. More colour, more tannin and a different flavour profile.

Home > Wines We Love > 2018 Giaconda ‘Estate Vineyard’ Chardonnay

One of the greats in top form – complex, smoky and nutty, this is chardonnay on a grand and impressive scale.

Producer
Giaconda
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$115
Vintage

2018
Variety/Varieties

Chardonnay
Alc./Vol.

13.5%

One of the greats in top form – complex, smoky and nutty, this is chardonnay on a grand and impressive scale.

Tasting note

Sublimely classic and complex nose of struck flint, matchstick, roasted hazelnuts, white peach and nectarine, with grapefruit, citrus curd and a lacing of white florals. It’s the kind of wine that makes Burgundy drinkers think of top Burgundy, with as much smoky gunflinty complexity as there is a wall of perfectly ripe but restrained fruit. So much going on here, but with poise in equal parts. There’s an underlining elegance and measure to it and nothing is forced or overdone, fine-boned acid and texture adding to the sheer commanding grandeur of the whole thing. Impressive stuff.

Themes of this wine

Chardonnay

With an explosion of interest over the last few decades, chardonnay is now the world’s most planted white grape. With its ability to grow in varied conditions and make everything from sparkling wine, to lean and mineral whites, to full-bodied textural expressions, it is perhaps no surprise to see Burgundy’s key white grape become so dominant.

Beechworth

There’s something stately about the Beechworth wine region, with a sense of history, a sense of establishment that belies its relatively new viticultural status and frugal output. Perhaps it’s the town, with the pomp of its sandy hued stone buildings, the whole Gold Rush spectacle of it. Perhaps it’s the imprint of iconic makers, like Giaconda, Sorrenberg and Castagna. Perhaps it’s a combination. But whatever it is, don’t take this to mean Beechworth is set in its ways. It is a region of extraordinary untapped potential, with the ranks of newer makers swelling and testing the limits.

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Weathercraft is the realisation of Raquel Jones’ long-held dream to make wine from her own fruit. A project where the growing takes precedence, and the making simply follows. Eventually landing in Beechworth on an established vineyard, she makes elegant takes on local stars – chardonnay, shiraz, cabernet – but has replanted to map a future that is occupied substantially by Spanish varieties, principally tempranillo and albariño.

Producer
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

%

Weathercraft is the realisation of Raquel Jones’ long-held dream to make wine from her own fruit. A project where the growing takes precedence, and the making simply follows. Eventually landing in Beechworth on an established vineyard, she makes elegant takes on local stars – chardonnay, shiraz, cabernet – but has replanted to map a future that is occupied substantially by Spanish varieties, principally tempranillo and albariño.

Jones didn’t follow a standard path to wine. No family vineyard. No winemaking studies followed by educational jaunts overseas. No multi-regional Blundstone-wearing vintage stints. None of that. Jones did, however, grow up helping her father grow fruit and vegetables for the family on their East Gippsland property, which fostered a life-long passion for growing things.

“We have a passionate belief in the term vigneron, and the maxim that you can only make great wine from great grapes, holds true. So, we wanted to control the growing aspect, by owning the vineyard, to maintain fruit integrity through to bottle.”

The parental encouragement, though, was very much to follow a professional career, not a horticultural one. That led to the law and a decade-long career in her own legal and finance business. And it was a successful career at that, but that passion for growing and a burgeoning interest in wine was always going to get in the way.

A bottle of wine brought to the family table had switched the lights on for Jones some years earlier. “Growing up at home, the focus was mostly on food, and the wines were homemade and pretty rough in retrospect. One Christmas, my brother-in-law brought over a Mount Mary ‘Quintet’ to share, and I was given a taste. I thought it was magic in a glass and it opened my eyes to how good wine could be,” she says. That appreciation was further developed by extensive travels through Europe, with a strong focus on wine regions, including Burgundy, the Rhône Valley, and in Spain, where her heritage lies.

Jones sold her business to allow the space and resources to study nutritional bioscience and chemistry, and later viticulture and oenology, all with the aim of one day owning a vineyard and being a vigneron. She and her husband, Hugh, could have bought grapes to start a label, but it was non-negotiable that they’d make wine from the ground up.

When the opportunity to buy an established vineyard in their favourite region of Beechworth came up, the pair jumped at the chance. It was an ideally situated and immaculately maintained property, set up in 1998 for premium wine production. The pair launched the Weathercraft label in 2016 and made their first wines in 2017.

Without the practical experience of making much wine herself, and still part way through her oenology studies at CSU, she enlisted the help of Mark O’Callaghan to advise in the winery, and the legendary Mark Walpole to help fine-tune the vineyard. That bridging advice helped the pair refine the vineyard practices and make the first wines, but today, the evolution of both the farming and winemaking is very much an in-house affair.

“We have a passionate belief in the term vigneron,” Jones says, “and the maxim that you can only make great wine from great grapes, holds true. So, we wanted to control the growing aspect, by owning the vineyard, to maintain fruit integrity through to bottle.”

“My dream is to one day make a tempranillo that rivals Spain’s best. When we bought our site, I undertook considerable research on soil composition, climate, including diurnal variation and various other factors. From a meso-climate perspective, I chose a mix of three clones from the Ribera del Duero region that perfectly suited our site. Most clones in Australia come from Portugal if not Valdepeñas, Rioja or the Toro region of Spain. To have Ribera clones is very special. For me, they produce a more elegant style of Tempranillo with gorgeous colour and unique fruit expression.”

Farming in a natural way, Jones encourages microbial soil life as a way of combatting pests and weeds. “All life begins and ends with the soil; it is a living, breathing system with an incredible ability to replenish and sustain life. The way in which we manage the soil, and its microbial populations determines not only the health and vitality of the vines we grow, but the quality of the wine we produce and the well-being of the environment in which we live.”

Jones began looking at natural ways to combat insects and disease, rather than using chemical controls. “We avoid using pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilisers and other such inorganic methods. My bi-annual compost tea delivers 1,000 litres of active microbial goodness over the whole farm, not just the vineyard. Our flock of Pekin ducks is slowly growing to an army of 100 to flood the soil with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Cover crops are planted in the mid-rows to fix nitrogen, soil is aerated to offset compaction, and we balance out the use of soluble and slow-release nutrients. Each approach works towards soil rehabilitation by increasing microbial activity, naturally unlocking and recycling nutrients.”

Jones makes pinot gris, chardonnay, shiraz, and a pale and dry shiraz-based rosé under the Weathercraft label. And while she is passionate about the elegant and refined expressions of these grapes, using traditional manual techniques and only French oak, she has an abiding desire to pursue growing and making Spanish varieties at the highest level, with albariño and tempranillo now part of the portfolio.

“My dream is to one day make a tempranillo that rivals Spain’s best,” says Jones. “When we bought our site, I undertook considerable research on soil composition, climate, including diurnal variation and various other factors. From a meso-climate perspective, I chose a mix of three clones from the Ribera del Duero region that perfectly suited our site. Most clones in Australia come from Portugal if not Valdepeñas, Rioja or the Toro region of Spain. To have Ribera clones is very special. For me, they produce a more elegant style of Tempranillo with gorgeous colour and unique fruit expression.”

The first tempranillo came from the 2019 vintage, which Jones made in a Joven style. “This young style is rarely experienced outside of Spain,” she says, “with examples of tempranillo in Australia often being big, bold, heavily tannic wines. I wanted to show people the diversity of the variety. My tempranillo has been a sell out, so this will continue, and my first reserve tempranillo was made in 2021.”

The current Tempranillo ‘J’ is a wine that Jones calls an “interesting alternative” to pinot noir. “The wine style is so different to what people are accustomed to with tempranillo so it can be a hand-sell at first, but once people are onto it, it flies. The idea of a tempranillo made like a pinot noir is one that evolved from a climate change perspective and a desire to champion Iberian varieties on Australian soil. It’s a win-win and tempranillo really is a climate change champion!”

Jones is also introducing garnacha and monastrell to the portfolio in the 2023 vintage. “This year will also be the year I make my GSM – a Beechworth first. I’m really excited for this wine.” Jones also makes a blend of albariño and chardonnay in amphora (‘Amphora Blanco’), a straight albariño, a whole bunch pinot gris raised in amphora (Amphora Àmbar) and a reserve shiraz from a select parcel of vines.

“My chardonnay and syrah will remain as staples and representative of the Beechworth region. My rosé made from shiraz – will evolve into a more Provençal style. I really want to stand out for my Iberian varieties here in Australia. After all, it’s my heritage and a legacy I can leave for my daughter.”

While her winemaking is always evolving, it is to the vineyard that Jones points to describe the biggest impact on her approach. “Particularly in the winery, I have experienced positive changes with the quality of fruit,” she says. “I don’t have to feed ferments because our nitrogen levels are really good, so yeasts are more reliable, fruit flavours are brighter, and the overall stability of the finished product foretells of impressive longevity. Over time, we have seen – and tasted – the difference that biologically healthy soil makes to the fruit we grow on our vineyard. It does take time, but the rewards are massive and we are excited for things to come.”

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Sentio is the Beechworth based solo project of Chris Catlow, a Chardonnay-centric endeavour sourcing from prime regions across Victoria. The wines are classic, racy and textural, with regional differences to the fore. A Beechworth pinot noir and eclectic red and white blends – with variety giving way to style and place – also get a...

Producer
Region

Alpine Valleys Beechworth Macedon Ranges Tumbarumba Yarra Valley
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

%

Sentio is the Beechworth based solo project of Chris Catlow, a Chardonnay-centric endeavour sourcing from prime regions across Victoria. The wines are classic, racy and textural, with regional differences to the fore. A Beechworth pinot noir and eclectic red and white blends – with variety giving way to style and place – also get a run under the Sentio banner

Catlow is a Beechworth native who has worked in wine since his teens. And for a region that is dripping in elite wineries, it is no surprise that Catlow was put on a good path from early on. One of those first roles was with Barry Morey at Sorrenberg, who saw enough natural talent and application in Catlow to encourage him to study winemaking. Work both here and overseas eventually led to the first wine under his Sentio label in 2013 – a shiraz. That was while he was still living and working on the Mornington Peninsula, but a move back home followed not long after and the range expanded considerably, with a particular focus on classic and vibrant expressions of chardonnay from various regions. “I make chardonnay from Beechworth, Macedon, Tumbarumba, Yarra Valley and the Alpine Valleys,” says Catlow

Catlow doubled up at university, studying both viticulture and wine science at La Trobe. Which, according to him, “took me far too long!” While those studies stretched out over a number of years, Catlow worked on the Mornington Peninsula at Paringa Estate, with Sandro Mosele at Kooyong and Port Phillip Estate and also at Portsea Estate. It was towards the end of his time on the peninsula that Catlow crafted that first Sentio wine. His time with Mosele was particularly influential, not just for developing an enduring fascination with single-site wines, but also for introducing him to Burgundy – Mosele is one of the most avid Burgundy fans you’re likely to find.

That entree into Burgundy opened a new door for Catlow, and it wasn’t long before he headed over for vintage. He has now worked five vintages there, all with Benjamin Leroux, as well as spending plenty of time in his cellar over the last eight years, which has been hugely influential. “His approach to wine is something I have a huge level of respect for. I’ve never seen someone make wine with so much intuition before him. It’s something I try to incorporate into my own wines,” says Catlow.

In the winery, Catlow’s approach to chardonnay is to work oxidatively, using a basket press and fermenting wild in French oak, solely from a cooper called Chassin, with new oak kept at a low percentage and malolactic religiously blocked. His Beechworth ‘Blanc’ is an intriguing blend of chardonnay, grüner veltliner, savagnin and arneis, while the Beechworth ‘Rouge’ combines sangiovese, syrah and pinot noir. Both are textural, food-friendly efforts, and reflections of place rather variety.

“My philosophy for Sentio is a work in progress. Making wines that represent where they’re from is the fundamental point. I always loved seeing wines that give a story of the vineyard and the region.”

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Tessa Brown’s career as a viticulturist and winemaker has taken her around the country and the world. But after an extended stint on the Mornington Peninsula, a greenfield site 11 kilometres outside of Beechworth saw her and her partner tip all in, launching Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown. Working with their fledgling vines and also sourcing...

Producer
Region

Beechworth
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

%

Tessa Brown’s career as a viticulturist and winemaker has taken her around the country and the world. But after an extended stint on the Mornington Peninsula, a greenfield site 11 kilometres outside of Beechworth saw her and her partner tip all in, launching Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown. Working with their fledgling vines and also sourcing from growers, Brown makes fine and savoury chardonnay, pinot noir and syrah, as well as decidedly Germanic rieslings. Schmölzer & Brown was a Young Gun finalist in 2016.

Growing up on a sugarcane farm in Queensland, Brown switched her university preferences at the last minute after a trip to Rutherglen set her on the wine path. Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga followed, studying viticulture, then a little later she studied postgraduate winemaking at the University of Adelaide. Brown has worked in New Zealand, Italy and Spain, as well as in Orange and for Shaw + Smith and Wolf Blass in South Australia.

After a sizeable tenure at Kooyong Estate with Sandro Mosele, Brown and her architect partner (life and wine) Jeremy Schmölzer purchased a 20-hectare property near Beechworth. It’s a high-altitude site, right at the top of the register for Beechworth, and one they were steered to by legendary viticulturist Mark Walpole as being of vast potential. That site had been cleared but not planted in 2012 when they bought it, with chardonnay, riesling, nebbiolo and shiraz going in the ground in 2014.

With a viable crop from their Thorley vineyard some years away, the Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown label was launched in 2014 with fruit from a pocket-sized vineyard across the road, the Brunnen vineyard, and also from select parcels from North East Victoria. That neighbouring vineyard, a little under an acre, is planted to chardonnay and pinot noir and is dry grown, but it was not being managed to yield a viable crop for making wine. A quick chat changed that, and Brown and Schmölzer have been co-farming it ever since.

Key among their grower sites is an 800-metre vineyard on the Whitlands Plateau, which is where they source their riesling from. That vineyard lays claim to the highest plantings of riesling in Victoria, which are closely spaced and unirrigated. The Schmölzer & Brown wines from that site all bear the name Obstgarten, meaning orchard in German, with the direction of the rieslings very much Germanic in feel, from dry, off-dry to slightly more luscious expressions.

Brown also makes a range of drink-now wines, describing the Prêt-à-Rosé as “a dry, savoury barrel-fermented pink thing made for necks”. Which sums it up neatly. There’s a Prêt-à-Blanc built around riesling and a Prêt-à-Rouge that employs shiraz and pinot noir as a foundation. A sylvaner, skinsy pinot gris and pinot noir from two sites, a pinot and a shiraz from Beechworth’s Indigo vineyard also feature, and the first chardonnay and pinot noir from the home Thorley site joined the Brunnen examples in 2018.

Brown and Schmölzer have many other things in their sights, too. Among them, short, medium and long-term goals in growing grapes and making wine, but the restoration of their land into a more natural state is also important, with a program of growing and planting native trees occupying much of Brown’s spare time. They have also planted a row of oak trees inoculated with truffle spores for a little income buffering. The mid-term will bring organic certification and over that and the longer term, Brown sees the farm transitioning to one that is completely sustainable and sustaining, self-sufficient and one that gives back to its environment far more than it takes away.

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Following a decade-long tenure at Oakridge, Adrian Rodda upped stakes and moved to Beechworth, in Victoria’s north-east, to take up joint stewardship of one of the region’s most significant, and significantly under-utilised vineyard resources, Smiths. It’s no surprise, given his time working with David Bicknell, that chardonnay happened to be front and centre, with Rodda...

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Region

Beechworth Yarra Valley
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Following a decade-long tenure at Oakridge, Adrian Rodda upped stakes and moved to Beechworth, in Victoria’s north-east, to take up joint stewardship of one of the region’s most significant, and significantly under-utilised vineyard resources, Smiths. It’s no surprise, given his time working with David Bicknell, that chardonnay happened to be front and centre, with Rodda also maintaining a foot in the Yarra sourcing fruit from one of its fabled sites, Willowlake. Fine pitch and effortless detail is the order of the day, with oak a distant suggestion, allowing the sites to shine. Those two founding chardonnays have since been joined by one from a lofty Whitlands site, Baxendale, complementing a Beechworth tempranillo and elegant blend of the five Bordeaux varieties. After first being a finalist in the YGOW Awards in 2012, Adrian was named the Young Gun of Wine in 2015.

After spending over a decade under the tutelage of Yarra Valley giant David Bicknell at Oakridge, Adrian Rodda took the opportunity to work with Beechworth’s oldest extant vineyard, Smiths, in 2010. This all came about through a friendship with Mark Walpole, one of this country’s most fabled viticulturists, who had planted his Fighting Gully Road Vineyard in the region in 1997. Recognising its immense potential, Walpole pounced on the lease of Smiths, threatened as it was by an impending sale and/or potential vine pull.

What was born was a mutual relationship between the two, which sees winemaking expertise traded for viticultural nous and access to distinguished fruit. And this is no remote winemaking for Rodda, with him just as actively involved in the farming, having moved to Beechworth with his family – his wife is a doctor, and now a country GP.

Aside from Beechworth, Rodda sources chardonnay from the Willowlake Vineyard, in the Yarra Valley. This was the vineyard that he helped Bicknell parcel out to find the best block for Oakridge’s ‘864’ flagship wine. He now gets to source from a particularly individual block that he always had his eye on, though Bicknell wasn’t so sure about. That instinct is somewhat a measure of Rodda, with the vineyard-first philosophy leading the way. Along with the ‘Smiths’, it has become a heavily awarded wine (if that matters to you), even topping the tables at a fairly recognisable critic’s exhaustive chardonnay quest in 2018.

Aside from the two single-site chardonnays mentioned, Rodda also now makes one from the cool of Whitlands at 600 m above sea level, as well as a Beechworth Tempranillo and his ‘Cuvée de Chez’, a blend of the five classic Bordeaux varieties in ever-changing proportions, depending on vintage. The wines are marked by transparency of making and purity of fruit, with oak flavours imperceptible in the whites, and just supporting in the reds.

2022 Fighting Gully Road Tempranillo Beechworth

Juicy blueberry and redcurrant fruit, wrapped up in leather and earthy spice. There’s a smoky, savoury thread – think dried fig and warm spice – with fine, grippy tannins and real character. A well-balanced red with plenty going on.

Tasting note

When to drink

Themes of this wine

Tempranillo

Beechworth

Explore Further

Deep Dive

Australia’s Best Tempranillo

Vineyard profile

Fighting Gully Road Vineyard, Beechworth

Awards

Fifth Annual Vineyard of the Year Awards Winners

Tasting note

Themes of this wine

Petit Manseng

Residual sugar/sweetness

Beechworth

A ‘naturally’ styled skin-contact white from a Beechworth master better known for classic styles.

Tasting note

Themes of this wine

Roussanne

Beechworth

Amphora

Skin contact

One of the greats in top form – complex, smoky and nutty, this is chardonnay on a grand and impressive scale.

Tasting note

Themes of this wine

Chardonnay

Beechworth

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