Estate-grown on the oldest vineyard blocks, with all four Burgundian clones (76, 95, 96 and 227) plus P58 and 11OV1. Pale straw-green; immaculately made and proportioned; white peach and nectarine fruit is focused by the natural acidity of the wine; while the fruit is very fine, it has easily absorbed the impact of barrel fermentation (30% new oak). Screwcap, 13.5% alc Rating: 95 points Drink: to 2015 Price: $19 James Halliday
Modestly brilliant James Halliday, June 13, 2010
You are unlikely to find your way to Hoddles Creek Estate by accident. While it is a simple matter of turning right (if you are coming from Melbourne) off the Warburton Highway into Gembrook Road, you drive through 4.7km of temperate rainforest with little habitation and no vineyards before you reach 505 Gembrook Road, and even then there is no large sign saying you have reached your destination.
The D’Anna family took 37 years to decide to plant a vineyard on the property they’d bought in 1960. The 25ha sloping sites lie either side of the highway, and feel right, the care taken in pruning and training the vines very obvious. There is also a well designed split-level concrete winery cut into the side of the hill, the lower levels barrel cellars that are reluctant to warm even on the hottest summer day.
The key to the estate is son Franco D’Anna (with wife and children), assisted by Uncle Bruno. Franco’s first step into wine came when he was 13, with odd jobs at the family’s liquor store, becoming chief buyer aged 21. He then did a business degree at the University of Melbourne before enrolling in the viticulture course at Charles Sturt University.
A vintage at Coldstream Hills and consultancy advice from Peter Dredge of Red Edge and Mario Marson, ex Mount Mary, put him on his way. (“Mario told me later he would never have taken on the consulting role if he had known I did not have an oenology degree,” recalls Franco with a smile.) He is a remarkably fast learner, yet a modest one.
Franco and Bruno work through the winter pruning the vineyard. “I really enjoy it, and anyway, there is nothing happening in the winery,” says Franco. But it is in the winery that his remarkable skills become obvious: he is highly intelligent, and has an instinctive feel for the wines. “You just know if they are right,” he explains.
There is no recipe. I tasted each chardonnay from ’03 to ’09; all are brilliantly fresh, yet subtly different. In ’06 Franco used more solids in the juice, successfully introducing an element of Burgundian funk; the ’07 (made from second crop in the wake of frost) had no new oak.
In the context of often high prices in the Yarra Valley, these are all bargains. James Halliday
NEW wineries keep arriving in the Yarra Valley at much the same breathtaking rate as elsewhere in0 the country, but the beauty of the valley and its proximity to Melbourne is no greater guarantee of success than elsewhere. That said, two very different ventures (Hoddles Creek Estate) seem to have what it takes. James Halliday
