This pack contains one bottle each of.. 2024 Home Block Pinot Noir, 2022 Tonimbuk Pinot Noir & 2024 Gippsland ‘Ceramic’ Chardonnay… Full notes on each wine below…

2024 Nikau Home Block Pinot Noir

This years wine is slightly darker than the 2023 but still very light in terms of Pinot. It’s incredibly well structured and has all of the usual brambly Nikau Pinot Noir complexity on such an elegant frame.

It has such a freshness about it this year too that I absolutely love and perhaps a more lively expressive feel to it than last years version. Another hauntingly pure expression of site and season from the Nikau home block and one we are always very very excited to release !

2022 Nikau Tonimbuk Pinot Noir

The last version of this Pinot Noir from this site ! After 5 years of farming this site we had to give up the lease unfortunately. Our accountant said it was costing us approx $30,000 per tonne to farm it. But, the wines from this site are just so damn good which is why I persisted for this long.

 Pinot Noir of various different clones from, including 777, D27, 114,115,D5V12, MV6 and Pommard

 46 year old vines make this one of the oldest pinot vineyards in Victoria. The vines are cane-pruned and grown on weathered granite in a spectacular and isolated location. We have farmed this site organically since 2019 when we began leasing it.

 The vineyard sits on the valley floor surrounded by 50,000 hectares of state forest. Comprised of old volcanic hills and large granite outcrops. It is the gravels and sediments of these features that have slowly made their way down to form the base that these vines now grow from.

To achieve this level of transparency It was crucial to do a few things in the vineyard, and to simplify things in the cellar.

 In the vineyard the first and foremost was to farm the site completely organically. Organic inputs such as fly larvae compost, straw mulch under vine and compost tea applications were implemented immediately.

 In the winery excluding the use of oak (any age at all) was at the top of that list. Add nothing whatsoever to the wines was an equal second. And excluding any manipulation of the must during fermentation was also an important step.

 Essentially the process was .. 100% hand destemmed fruit into a single fermenter, cold soaked and then left for approximately 10 days after ferment began. Pressed to stainless steel where the wine remained until bottling.

There was no movement of the tank, no racking, no pumps, no adds at any stage.

 The result I think speaks for itself. A truly elegant & complex wine which has beautiful cohesion and restraint.

The fine mineral structure it has is very reflective of the quartz granite it has it’s roots in and the volcanic hills that surround. It has such a glass/granite like structure that is just incredible. People talk about detail in wine, especially in regard to structure. This is a clinic in exactly that,  An exceptional last wine from an exceptional site !

2024 Nikau Gippsland ‘Ceramic’ Chardonnay

This is a new, and very exciting cuveé under the Nikau banner !

In 2024 we were lucky enough to get access to some exceptional Chardonnay fruit from the legendary Nicholson River vineyard.This vineyard was instrumental in putting Gippsland Chardonnay on the map in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s (just ask Max Allen) and now has an average vine age of 47 years.

Not that I am one for wine judging results but, notably, this vineyard has produced what was voted Victoria’s best white wine no less than 9 times over the last few decades. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to make wine from this fruit !

 The vineyard sits on the banks of the Nicholson river. The vines are dry grown and farmed using sustainable, organic practices (not certified). The soils as you would expect are alluvial gravels and clays (from silt). It is cropped extremely low at approximately 0.8t to the acre and is entirely comprised of the p58 clone. This clone was one of the first Chardonnay clones brought into Australia, in 1958 in fact (from France). It is itself naturally low cropping and generally produces a very fine, complex wine leaning toward the lemon and lime spectrum.

 We picked the fruit around 11.8b and it was right on the money. The fruit was lightly macerated and then put into the cool room overnight to chill. It was pulled out in the morning and pressed directly to stainless steel tank for the duration of fermentation.

Once ferment had finished the wine was racked to one single 650L ceramic egg for 9 months elevage. The wine was then bottled by hand directly from the egg in late November at which time 10ppm of so2 was added to reduce oxygen exposure.

 I could not be happier with this wine. There are some wines that just look incredible from day one, this was certainly one of those wines !

It’s a stunningly pure, delicate and complex expression of Chardonnay from an exceptional vineyard.

This will be released in two parts. Half released now with another release in Spring/ Summer. This is so it doesn’t all get consumed too early. This is surely a wine that will evolve very gracefully indeed but is oh-so delicious now.

I could not be happier with this wine. It is the stuff Chardonnay dreams are made of !