2021 Seppelt ‘Drumborg’ Pinot Meunier Henty

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2021 Seppelt ‘Drumborg’ Pinot Meunier
From one of Victoria’s great vineyard sites – a brace of red fruits are spiced with white pepper and cypress notes, with a supple, bright and fresh palate, equal parts silky and vibrant.

  • Producer

    Seppelt

  • Region

    Henty

  • RRP

    $36

  • Vintage

    2021

  • Variety/Varieties

    Pinot meunier

  • Alc./Vol.

    13.5%

Seppelt’s Drumborg is one of Victoria’s great vineyard sites. Perhaps best known for riesling, pinot meunier thrives in the cool conditions of Henty, with this Clare Dry’s first release as the Seppelt senior winemaker. A brace of red fruits are spiced with white pepper and cypress notes, with a supple, bright and fresh palate, equal parts silky and vibrant.

Tasting note

Herbal notes, with an almost cypress pitch, are joined on the nose with smashed marasca cherries, macerated strawberries and dried cranberries, some celery salt and white pepper adding savoury punctuation. This drinks in the supple mould, with a gentle tug of tannin and acid giving definition, as you might expect from pinot noir, and though pinot meunier can tend to the less complex than its more noble cousin, this mounts a pretty compelling case for equal billing.

Themes of this wine

Pinot meunier

Pinot meunier is a grape mainly consigned to sparkling wine production, with still red wines relatively rare. But in Australia, though the output is modest, the grape has a meaningful place as a quality grape for red wine production (alongside sparkling wine), and with a noble history that stretches back to the 1830s.

Henty

Henty spills across the extreme south-west of Victoria, with less than 200 hectares planted to vines and a decidedly cool climate, favouring riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir. While it may not be heavily planted, the region boasts some of this country’s most exciting vineyard land, largely planted to basalt soils over clay and with bracing breezes funnelling across from the Southern Ocean bringing night-time temperatures down significantly. Many would argue that it is home to two vineyards that vie to be the country’s best producers of riesling: Crawford River and Seppelt Drumborg.

2021 Seppelt ‘Drumborg’ Pinot Meunier

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“One of the highlights of my drinking year.”
— Max Allen, Wine Writer
“The future of wine in Australia.”
— Broadsheet
“The cutting edge of Australian wine.”
— The Australian
Nadeson Collis ‘Coda’ Sparkling NV
A unique sparkling wine drawn solely from a solera started in 2003 – think artisan Champagne, shot through with nutty sherry-like notes, but built on fruit intensity.

  • Producer

    Lethbridge

  • Region

    Henty

  • RRP

    $145

  • Vintage

    NV

  • Variety/Varieties

    Chardonnay Pinot gris/grigio Pinot meunier Pinot noir

  • Alc./Vol.

    13.5%

While the fizz project was originally started by Lethbridge’s Ray Nadeson and Maree Collis for home consumption, this unique sparkling wine – drawn solely from a solera started in 2003 ­– now vies for the honour of Australia’s most complex and fascinating sparkling wine. Think artisan Champagne, shot through with nutty sherry-like notes, but built on the fruit intensity and electric acidity of Henty fruit.

Tasting note

This is oh-so complex, reminiscent of top artisan Champagne, but distinctly individual, too. A lash of sea spray, with brittle notes of dry sherry, cracked roasted nuts aplenty, salted caramel, sourdough rye, hints of citrus peel, with brusquely tart cider apples, Comté cheese rind, dried apple… so much going on. There’s a real sense of intensity and density here, but brightly fresh and vibrant with a softer, pillowy fizz carrying the flavours along with a racy line of acid through the endless finish. This is one of the most layered and engaging bottles of fizz ever made on our shores.

Themes of this wine

Sparkling wine

There are many different ways to make sparkling wine. The most famous is the method widely associated with Champagne, where still wine is refermented in bottle with added sugar and yeast to create bubbles, then matured on the lees to create layers of flavour and textural detail. But pétillant naturel (pét-nat) or méthode ancestrale is an even older approach, with the primary ferment finishing in bottle to create the bubbles, with the result usually simpler and brighter, with less leesy complexity. Then there are more modern methods, like Charmat, where the fizz-producing ferment occurs in tank, then the wine is bottled cold to retain the bubbles, and the result is, well, bubbly wine, without any bottle-conditioned character.

Solera

A solera is a method of maturing wine from various vintages, with new material added each year to make up for what has been drawn off to be bottled. This can be done in a large vat or tank, or it can be managed over a series of smaller barrels, where wine is transferred from youngest to the oldest blend at the end of the solera, which is combination of many vintages and will be the most layered wine. This process is used for sherry for a complex and consistent result, as well as port and other fortified wines. It is also used for Champagne and sparkling wines, often adding sherry-like notes, to add as reserve wine to mix with the current vintage.

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.

Pinot noir

Pinot noir is one of the wine world’s most revered grapes. Notoriously fickle to grow and make, it makes what many see as the pinnacle of red wine in France’s Burgundy, but it has also found many happy homes around the world, and none more so than in Australia across our cooler viticultural regions.

Pinot meunier

Pinot meunier is a grape mainly consigned to sparkling wine production, with still red wines relatively rare. But in Australia, though the output is modest, the grape has a meaningful place as a quality grape for red wine production (alongside sparkling wine), and with a noble history that stretches back to the 1830s.

Henty

Henty spills across the extreme south-west of Victoria, with less than 200 hectares planted to vines and a decidedly cool climate, favouring riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir. While it may not be heavily planted, the region boasts some of this country’s most exciting vineyard land, largely planted to basalt soils over clay and with bracing breezes funnelling across from the Southern Ocean bringing night-time temperatures down significantly. Many would argue that it is home to two vineyards that vie to be the country’s best producers of riesling: Crawford River and Seppelt Drumborg.

Nadeson Collis ‘Coda’ Sparkling NV

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Each month, get 3 bottles of our freshest discoveries. We taste thousands to bring you the best.

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“One of the highlights of my drinking year.”
— Max Allen, Wine Writer
“The future of wine in Australia.”
— Broadsheet
“The cutting edge of Australian wine.”
— The Australian
Dhiaga is Justin Purser and Joyce Clery’s portal for expressing their love for Italian grapes, as expressed through Victorian vineyards and innovative winemaking techniques. The pair craft both recognisably classic expressions, as well as creative diversions, such as their dry, hop-infused Moscato that’s given gentle fizz through the pét-nat method. Justin Purser is perhaps best...

  • Producer

  • Region

    Grampians Henty Pyrenees Swan Hill Victoria

  • RRP

    $

  • Vintage

  • Variety/Varieties

  • Alc./Vol.

    %

Dhiaga is Justin Purser and Joyce Clery’s portal for expressing their love for Italian grapes, as expressed through Victorian vineyards and innovative winemaking techniques. The pair craft both recognisably classic expressions, as well as creative diversions, such as their dry, hop-infused Moscato that’s given gentle fizz through the pét-nat method.

Justin Purser is perhaps best known for being at the tiller of Victorian icon Best’s, in Great Western, where he has been the winemaker for the better part of a decade. But Purser and his business partner Joyce Clery have also been deeply invested in their own project. Meaning heavenly or divine in Irish, Dhiaga is where the pair indulge their passion for grape varieties that excel in Northern Italy, where they have both worked.

Purser studied at Charles Sturt University, which is renowned for its wine science degree, but he actually studied visual arts, before decamping to Sydney to enrol in a graphic design degree, then finally correcting course to graduate in oenology at Adelaide University in 2004. Joyce is an Honours Graduate in Hospitality Management, a trained jazz singer and a qualified chef. The pair met while working together in a fine-dining restaurant in Sydney, after having managed wine lists in various hotels and restaurants around the world, but they both harboured a desire to make wine themselves.

Purser worked at Primo Estate, where Joe Grilli instilled in him both an interest in Italian varieties, as well as a passion for experimentation. Grilli entrusted the management of Primo Estate’s Adelaide Hills nebbiolo block to Purser, as well as the responsibility of making the wine. He credits this as a turning point in his career. Purser also endured an icy time at Peregrine, in Central Otago, before he worked alongside Clery at Azienda Agricola Brezza, in Barolo. Enzo Brezza taught Purser the finer points of nebbiolo making, and also handed him the responsibility of managing the cellar – no small thing at such an esteemed address. Purser then directed a winemaking team at Domaine de Montille, in Burgundy, for four years. Lured back to Australia, he took the winemaking baton at Best’s from Adam Wadewitz in 2011.

The pair’s launched their Dhiaga label in 2018, though it included a nebbiolo made in 2015. Their philosophy begins with a focus on primely sited vineyards of mature vines and follows with a lightness of touch, but not at the expense of expression “We produce wines simply, with little or no processing aids or adjuncts, no filtration, the bare minimum of sulphur or none at all. We want to make wines that push the boundaries without compromising on quality,” says Purser.

Today, a nebbiolo, moscato (the hoppy one), gewürztraminer (arguably native to Northern Italy, and named after the town of Termeno, formerly known as Tramin), arneis and rosé, mainly made from nebbiolo make up the Dhiaga range.

Justin Purser

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Each month, get 3 bottles of our freshest discoveries. We taste thousands to bring you the best.

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“One of the highlights of my drinking year.”
— Max Allen, Wine Writer
“The future of wine in Australia.”
— Broadsheet
“The cutting edge of Australian wine.”
— The Australian
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2021 Seppelt ‘Drumborg’ Pinot Meunier

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