If you want to understand what wine-lovers mean when they talk of ‘terroir’, look no further than this wine, which has a mineral structure and searing elegance that demonstrates its origin on hard limestone soils close to the Southern Ocean.
There’s an appealing dynamic between depth and freshness evident in the nose of this wine – bright, just-barely-ripe raspberries mingle with fleshy black cherries, delicate violet notes waft over green tobacco, warm baking spices rub shoulders with graphite. It’s fruity and sensuous, while at the same time vegetal and lean. On the palate, that tug-of-war continues – it shows ripe fruit flavours, silky-soft tannins and a slightly denser weight than many Australian pinots, but the bright acidity lifts the wine, and a strong mineral backbone frames it on the palate. The finish is long and high-toned – the wine seems to lift off the palate and disappear into the stratosphere, leaving behind a wake of sparkling fresh acidity and delicate pops of limestone minerality. It’s the kind of wine that strikes a fine balance not only between its different component parts, but also between drinkability and intellectual stimulation – a wine you could share with anyone from a friend who has no interest in wine to the most nerdy cork dork.
Pinot noir is one of the wine world’s most revered grapes. Notoriously fickle to grown and make, it makes what many see as the pinnacle of red wine in France’s Burgundy, but it’s also found many happy homes around the world, and none more so than in Australia across our cooler viticultural regions.
Found in minute quantities, some non-organic salts are dissolved in wine and can play a significant part in its flavour. While there is some debate about whether or not the presence of these mineral salts in wine comes directly from the soil the grapes were grown in – no proposed mechanism has been scientifically proven to transmit these molecules from soil to grape as yet – it’s hard to deny that the same grape variety will taste dramatically different when grown on different types of soil.
On the surface, it’s easy to compare the Geelong wine region with the Mornington Peninsula. Its Bellarine Peninsula embraces Port Phillip Bay in tandem with the Mornington Peninsula, and two of the regional heroes are chardonnay and pinot noir, but the two are remarkably dissimilar, with Geelong sprawling both along the coast and bay, as well as inland, unlike water-flanked Mornington. While Mornington catches the light with a good dose of glamour, Geelong has a quieter resolve and greater subregional diversity, with lighter soils making fragrant wines as well as volcanic sites producing those with dark fruit profiles and rugged minerality.
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