Why choose Pinot Noir?

For many in the world of wine, to be able to make excellent wine from the Pinot Noir grape is the Holy Grail of grapegrowing.

There are many interesting books, filled with often purple prose, written about those people who have sought out places for vineyards that will reproduce the wonderful flavours of Burgundy in other parts of the planet.

For us from the outset, it has been far more important to determine which varieties will ripen here (remember, we chose the place first, the grapes came later).

For example, an analysis of the climate numbers showed that our climate is totally unsuited to Shiraz (the greatest red grape in mainstream Australian winemaking), Cabernet, even Merlot, among the red varieties, and also to Semillon and Verdhelo among the whites.

In fact, on climatic data, Pinot and Chardonnay are right for here, but the doubt remained as to whether our soils would be favourable in the long term to what we were led to believe is such a fussy variety as Pinot noir.

We planted Pinot and for the white grapes we chose a little bit of Chardonnay, but mostly Riesling, because we believe that Riesling makes the greatest white wine.

As it turned out, the enemy was not the lack of sunshine. It was frost. Our site needed frost control to minimise the damage of both Spring and Autumn frosts.

Snow comes soon after harvest, but severe frost necessitates spraying vines to protect the fruit in low lying areas.

The Taralga Terroir

We learned through this trial planting that careful site selection in the Taralga district was the most important factor in successful grapegrowing. (In fact, careful site selection was and is paramount in all the great cool-climate districts of the world.)

Correct choice of varieties is also crucial, but is not as important as this primary factor. We have persisted with this trial planting because it does produce the right kinds of great flavours in Pinot noir (plums and rhubarb).

However, we have concentrated further plantings at a site that we subsequently chose out on Bannaby Hill, some 6 km east of the village. Although this is at a higher altitude, it meets all the site selection criteria. (North-facing, steep slopes minimise the frost risk and maximise the all-important sunshine warmth for ripening.)

The higher altitude of this site imparts flavours into the berry spectrum.

The higher altitude at Glenarm (Bannaby Hill) imparts flavours into the berry spectrum.

Using a table of data from James Halliday's Wine Atlas of Australia and New Zealand, it is instructive to compare key climate numbers for Dijon in Burgundy to that derived from the Taralga P.O. Weather Station data:

(Also included is data for Cessnock and Mildura to give some idea the upper end of the range applicable to two established important districts showing data for hot and very hot climates respectively.)

Comparison with the Côte d'Or

What this shows is that both the Mean July/January Temperature (MJT) and the heat degree days (HDD) are just a little higher in Burgundy than in Taralga.

The Mean Annual Range (MAR) figure merely indicates that Burgundy has much lower winter temperatures than those in the Southern Tablelands!

So long as the vines are not killed by winter freeze injury, and the temperatures get low enough in winter (<7 oC average minimum), then the climate is suitable. Taralga easily meets these requirements.

The average rainfall figures (the figures don't reflect the drought years here!) are similar but do not show that Autumn in Taralga is generally drier than in Burgundy, which is an advantage during the critical ripening period.

For most experts the MJT and HDD indices are the most important. The fact that Taralga's are slightly lower indicates that if anything, budburst in Spring and Vintage (Autumn) might be slightly later than in Burgundy.

In practice, the dates are virtually identical (correcting for the fact that the sites are in different hemispheres, of course).

Budburst occurs in Burgundy in early April; vintage is in late September.

Here, for the same grape varieties, budburst is generally around the first week of October (long weekend), vintage occurs generally in the second week of April (about Easter), the exact parallel.

The climate at Glenarm vineyard is similar to that of the Burgundy region in France.

Taralga - a cold climate grapegrowing district.

In summary, the Taralga climate is definitely a cold-climate grapegrowing district.

It is indeed very suitable for the growing of Pinot noir and Chardonnay, the great grape varieties of Burgundy, which makes it an exciting region.

However, there are other varieties for which it is also well suited, which we have chosen to plant, simply because we like them.

So we have also planted Riesling, as mentioned above, Chenin blanc (the grape for Vouvray sparkling wines from the Loire), and Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais.

Unlike many of those districts in Australia where there are plantings of the latter variety, we believe that we have both the right cold climate and the soils.

We think it a good strategy to plant such varieties as these latter on this basis, simply because, in the long term, it may well be that the district is found to be far more suited to these or other similarly capriciously planted varieties than the so-called "noble" varieties.

(For example, who would have thought back in the 19th century, that the Hunter Valley, a hot climate, would become the great producer it is of sublime Semillon and Shiraz? The raw climate data does not suggest this.)

The high country of the Great Divide near Taralga - vineyards at up to 1000 metres

Similarly, while the search for the ideal grape for the Taralga district continues down the years, we're happy to let our Pinot noir wines promote this district as having a great climate for Pinot.

This sort of search is one of the exciting aspects of living on the Great Dividing Range. There are so many micro- and meso-climates as yet unexplored for activities such as grapegrowing that real pioneering can still be done in what are otherwise old established grazing districts of Australia.

Remember that the Great Divide is a large and unique region. One could say that, like the Cote d'Or, which is Burgundy, it is a rather unexceptional range of low hills running in a north-south direction.

Unlike the Cote, it is much, much longer, so has a huge potential for the production of all sorts of different styles of wines. - Paul Miskelly, 2004

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