Travelled for about 90 mins from Melbourne CBD to Gippsland an area west of Melbourne
William Downie (http://www.williamdownie.com.au/)
This is regarded by many to be one of the ‘hot’ wineries to watch, Bill’s passion for Pinot Noir is astounding, the philosophy is to produce a wine which has the quality levels you would expect from a leading burgundy producer but which shows the essence of the site & wine making in Australia – something he is very much achieving, but which will grow with his winery, making the future interesting for us all!
We arrived on a cool-ish spring day, a little mist and rain in the air – but Bill has a big log fire going with a delicious lunch (which matched the wines very well – everyone at Estbek when we have Lamb on the menu next spring; these really are the wines to have!)
Will also post some pictures later on of his vineyard which has been planted to NV6 & Pommard clones, with planting of the entire vineyard equalling 11 thousand plants per hectare.
We tasted across the range from a Pinot Noir (Gippsland) from 2010 which has not been treated with SO2 which was an interesting curio to try also a Petit Mangseng 2009 from King Valley made following the fires of that year which affected the Yarra & Gippsland fruit so with his free time Bill decided to give this a go (having long been a lover of its wines in France).
Followed by three Pinots from Yarra (which was lighter in style), Gippsland (tighter, more for keeping) & Mornington (lighter & more structured). The mornington was most peoples favourite – mine was the Gippsland.
No comments:
Post a Comment