The Renzaglia family (L-R) Mark, Sandy and Sam. Renzaglia Wines

Renzaglia is likely to be a name that you haven’t come across when it comes to Australian wine. I hadn’t discovered them until I judged in the Sydney Royal Wine Show last year with third generation winemaker Sam Renzaglia.

I did have to admit to Sam that I hadn’t heard of his wines (or his location), but welcomed the stories around the history of the winery as well as getting an understanding of their reason for being.

The Renzaglia Wines story began in 1982, in the unlikely site of Alto Pass in Illinois USA. Guy and Betty Renzaglia planted a small vineyard and some 15 years later their son Mark and his Australian wife Sandy established their label in the Wambuul Valley, around 25 km south-east of Bathurst in the cool climate Central Ranges of NSW. Mark had completed an advanced diploma in viticulture at Charles Sturt University and wanted to challenge himself around a viticultural location, just as his parents had done, when they planted in Illinois.

Sam has now taken the winemaking helm and he’s tapped into the diversity and quality of the fruit from across the Central Ranges. Sam is exploring vineyards spanning Wallington in Canowindra, Patina and ChaLou in Orange and First Ridge in Mudgee.

In the winery, Sam’s approach is to be respectful of each variety and its origins. He aims to:

“Capture their inherent character without interference, which means no added yeast, tannin, sugar, or acid. We’re using very little new oak and instead working with an array of fermentation and maturation vessels: concrete, earthenware amphorae, stainless steel, foudre, puncheons, barriques and even glass.”

The Renzaglia Central Ranges Riesling 2024 was sourced from the Patina Vineyard in Orange, at over 900m altitude on the rich volcanic soils of Mt Canobolas. The wine was fermented in amphorae and spent 16 months on full lees. There’s lovely tension, cut and thrust here, with pithy and punchy acidity delivering line, length and precision.

The Renzaglia Central Ranges Chardonnay was also sourced from the Patina Vineyard and went through full malolactic fermentation and is oak free—concrete cubes were the fermentation and maturation vessels utilised, the wine staying on full lees for 10 months. There’s plenty of peachy chardonnay charm here, along with a creaminess and nuttiness, all kept in shape by snappy acidity.

The pinot noir was also sourced from the Patina Vineyard. Renzaglia Central Ranges Pinot Noir 2024 has a lovely suppleness and red fruit drive, with an earthy woodsiness and plenty of texture and mouth-feel.

Sam headed to Mudgee for sangiovese, sourced from First Ridge Vineyard, one of the early adopters of the variety in the region. Renzaglia Central Ranges Sangiovese 2024 shows absolute sangiovese typicity, with plenty of cherry and pot-pourri, mid-weighted in texture, with the hallmark chalky tannins, perky acidity and savouriness bringing it all home rather nicely.

Rounding out the latest releases is Renzaglia Central Ranges Grenache Tempranillo 2024. The fruit was sourced from the Wallington Vineyard in Canowindra, some 120 km from the winery home base. Lower altitude brings a more temperate climate there, ideal for growing the Mediterranean varieties. It’s a 60/40 blend of grenache and tempranillo, and a fair amount of whole bunch was utilised. The wine has lovely fragrance, texture and blue fruitedness, with impressive length, weight and presence.

The labelling of these wines as Central Ranges is great recognition of a region that includes the well-know regions of Mudgee in the north, Orange in the centre and Cowra to the south. Mudgee to Cowra is some 150 km as the crow flies and the area is a whopping 39,645 square kilometres, with a total vineyard area of 4,512 ha.

This is a range of wines that openly champions the Central Ranges and captures the viticultural diversity of this zone superbly. More power to the Renzaglias!

The Hundred Hills estate in Oxfordshire. Hundred Hills Wines

When I asked Stephen Duckett of Oxfordshire vineyard Hundred Hills if he would submit samples to The Real Review Top Wineries of Great Britain 2024, he politely declined, saying “Blind tastings, both philosophically and commercially, don’t really relate to our business.”

Almost all of their wines sell directly to visitors who have toured the vineyard, explored the winery, and tasted with the team. For him, wine is inseparable from the stories and emotions woven into the experience.

If the mountain wouldn’t come to Mahomet, then Mahomet (disguised as myself) would have to go to Hundred Hills. The estate is named not for a literal count of hills but for the medieval Pyrton Hundred in Oxfordshire’s Stonor Valley. Its vineyard amphitheatre is ringed by a high deer fence, bluebells and ancient beech and oak woodland with views across the valley. So that you feel the land and the way each parcel expresses itself differently according to the season, he will march you up to the top of the hill—and march you down again.

The genesis of Hundred Hills lay in a blind tasting of Nyetimber’s 1992 sparkling wine. Stephen and his wife Fiona were astonished. Stephen, an Oxford graduate with a Fulbright MBA from Harvard, had built technology businesses in Europe and the US. Fiona, whom he had met at Hertford College, had studied French and Russian before completing a PhD on language acquisition. Inspired, they resolved in 2000 to make high-quality English sparkling wine.

Stephen’s research quickly led to the importance of climate and soil. Oxford studies showed England’s growing season had warmed by 2°C since the 1970s. With soils akin to Champagne in many regions, he sought the expert guidance of Dr Michel Salgues, a Champenois who had established Roederer Estate in California’s cool Anderson Valley in Mendocino County.

“Fiona called him up out of the blue and charmed him with her fluent French,” says Stephen.

From 2009, Salgues helped the Ducketts survey potential sites, seeking chalk valleys with airflow, drainage, and frost protection. After examining 300 locations and narrowing the choice down to 100, they chose Bank Farm, once owned by royal photographer Norman Parkinson. Six miles north of Henley-on-Thames, the property is based in a naturally dry chalk valley with substantial aquifers. Samples sent to Champagne were so close in composition that the Comité Champagne asked which part of the Côte des Blancs they had come from.

With Burgundian clones supplied by Pierre Marie Guillaume, and guidance from the champenois viticulturist, Frank Mazy, 60,000 vines were planted in 2014 and 26,000 more the following year. The 17-ha vineyard required no irrigation, with cuttings mulched back into the soil to maintain fertility. Designed to be carbon neutral, it was complemented in 2016 by a Chiltern barn-style winery built by local architects.

“The key starts with the vine,” Stephen explains.

“It has to struggle, so the energy goes into the fruit, not the canopy.”

Chalk soils with low potassium and nitrogen provide just that struggle. The vineyard team strips leaves to keep mildew at bay, uses grass cover for water management, and relies on orange oil, sulphur, and minimal copper rather than herbicides.

Yields average six tonnes per hectare, with vines spaced densely to encourage quality. With protection from wind but good ventilation, precision management—removing underripe second buds, controlling grape moth, encouraging airflow—ensures only the best fruit reaches the press. The vineyard is a menagerie, the deer fence does its job, but pheasants and squirrels are more of a nuisance, while hares, badgers and birds don’t seem to affect the vineyard.

Two 4-tonne Coquard presses handle the harvest of around 100 tonnes annually. The juice is settled, then fermented parcel by parcel in stainless steel, large French oak vats, or barriques, depending on variety and style. More chardonnay sees oak than pinot, with bâtonnage adding richness. Malolactic fermentation may or may not be used, depending on the year.

The wines spend at least 30 months on lees, often longer, and another nine months in bottle before release. Stephen won’t grow meunier, seeing it as high yielding and short-lived compared to chardonnay and pinot noir. Production reaches about 80,000 bottles, with 50,000 reserved for the Hundred Hills label and the rest going into second wines and private collaborations, including with Christ Church College, Oxford.

Rather than saturate retail shelves, Hundred Hills is built on direct experience. Visits are limited to private events, supported by two clubs: Friends of Hundred Hills, and the Hundred Club, an exclusive group of 100 enthusiasts who invest £20,000 each to take part in tastings, events, and creating cuvées. The rest of the wines find their way onto the lists of restaurants such as Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, The Fat Duck, Hélène Darroze and Michelin star newcomer, Lita in Marylebone.

“We’re building a boutique, hand-sold brand,” Stephen says.

“Today you have to create a direct experience in a noisy market. People who come here become our natural ambassadors.”

Stephen Duckett of Hundred Hills. Hundred Hills Instagram

He describes the wines as “wine first, sparkling second”—fresh, lively, and designed to pair with food as naturally as still wines. Stephen is convinced traditional loyalties to Champagne houses are eroding.

“Non-vintage is a 19th-century strategy,” he argues.

“The new generations want change and novelty. They don’t trust big brands. Their trust comes from experiencing it themselves.”

For Hundred Hills, that shift is an opportunity.

The vineyard is very much a family business. Stephen and Fiona’s eldest daughter Amy manages sales and marketing, creating her own demi-sec cuvée, Doe-Eyed Queen. Lauren has also worked in the vineyard and winery. Together with a young, dedicated team led by vineyard manager Enrico from Piemonte, the Ducketts aim to keep reinvesting profits to improve year on year. For Stephen, the journey is the reward.

“I’m not planning to retire in my lifetime,” he smiles.

Despite his initial reservations, Stephen did submit his wines for The Real Review Top Wineries of Great Britain 2025, shooting in at number six for the first time.

The Anselmi vineyards in Veneto. Anselmi Wines

If you haven’t heard about PIWI grape varieties (pronounced pee-vee) you surely will soon. They are currently making news in Europe.

The AI summary on Google reads:

“PIWI grape varieties, short for the German “pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebsorten” (fungus-resistant grape varieties), are a group of grapevines bred for their resistance to common fungal diseases like mildew and botrytis. These varieties are typically interspecific hybrids, created by crossing Vitis vinifera (European wine grapevines) with other Vitis species known for their natural resistance. This resistance allows for a significant reduction in the use of pesticides and other treatments in vineyards, making them a more sustainable option.”

Although PIWI varieties are being widely talked about in Europe, they are yet to make an impact in Australia, perhaps because the climate change effects which are prompting their adoption in Europe haven’t affected Australia in the same way—yet.

Anselmi, a leading Veneto wine producer in the Soave region, has embraced the PIWI movement, incorporating some PIWI varieties in its current commercial releases.

Lisa Anselmi, daughter of proprietor Roberto Anselmi, toured Australia recently to promote the latest wines and to explain this new initiative.

“It’s more humid now in the Veneto,” Lisa told me, “and these varieties are more resistant to moulds and mildews. They also mean that we can spray the vines less often, which is a good thing.”

Anselmi has made a special 7-hectare planting of 40,000 PIWI vines, at a density of 6-7,000 vines per hectare. They are individually trained on steel stakes as bush vines, necessitating less intervention including less spraying, says Lisa. For a vivid drone’s-eye view of this vineyard, have a look at the Anselmi website.

The first wines to include wine from these vines are vintage 2023, two of which are newly released in Australia (importer: Single Vineyard Sellers).

The ‘entry-level’ wine, San Vincenzo 2023 (AUD $50), contains some PIWI varieties along with the customary garganega—the traditional premium grape of Soave—sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. The 2023 Capitel Foscarino (AUD $75) also includes PIWI varieties. It’s about 50% garganega, with some chardonnay.

PIWI varieties have been mainly bred in Germany, but also France. Anselmi are using three: sauvignier gris (a pink skinned grape that is said to have a complex aromatic character), muscaris (which is aromatic and has floral and citrus characters), and ‘resistant riesling’.

Says Lisa:

“For Anselmi, hybrid grapes are the key to a truly sustainable future for Italian viticulture: they allow us to make better wines while reducing the use of fungicides to zero—even in the face of climate change. Reducing treatments for fungal diseases means a significant drop in chemical products used in the vineyard.”

In a statement, Roberto Anselmi explains the rationale:

“Severe weather events in recent years have had a strong impact: today the rainfall is more concentrated and the storms increasingly intense. The resulting moisture in the vineyards causes the spread of fungal diseases such as peronospora and oidium. To combat their growing presence, the most used solution is to spray the vines with a number of fungicides never seen before.

“Reducing the need of treatments for fungal diseases will significantly decrease the amount of chemical products used in vineyards.

“We strongly believe that, with the worsening effects of climate change, hybrid grapes will play an increasingly important role in viticultural sustainability.”

Roberto Anselmi, a charismatic figure in the region, famously deserted the Soave appellation some years ago when he decided to delete the name Soave from his bottles because the standards required by the Soave appellation were not high enough.

His famous dry white wines, Capital Foscarino, Capitel Croce and San Vincenzo, which were labelled Soave up till 1999, are now appellated simply Veneto Bianco.

There are just five wines, the three above plus a gorgeous sweet wine, I Capitelli, and a cabernet sauvignon named Realda. The production is 750,000 bottles a year of which San Vincenzo makes up 450,000. Roberto runs the company today with daughter Lisa in charge of marketing and public relations, and son Tommaso, as viticulturist.

It’s a tight, efficiently-run family business, making superb and innovative wines, at the cutting edge of the Veneto.

Keith Tulloch has no plans to retire but will be taking more of a back seat. Tulloch Wines

There have been big changes at the Hunter Valley’s Keith Tulloch Wines.

The Hermitage Road property, with the Field of Mars vineyard and winery and cellar door buildings, was sold in 2023 to Chinese interests, while Keith and his wife Amanda and family retain ownership of their Latara vineyard property, brand, company, wine stocks and equipment. The land and buildings are leased back to the Tullochs and they have the right to continue to use them. The buyer, Sun Investments, has also bought the Casuarina property next door.

Keith and Amanda have lodged a development application with Cessnock Council for a new development on their Latara property, which occupies a plumb position on the corner of McDonald’s Road and Deasy’s Road, Pokolbin. This 12ha property has excellent potential for business development, Keith says.

Keith Tulloch comes from a distinguished line of Hunter wine people. One of his first jobs after graduating from wine college was as Len Evans’s winemaker at the Evans Wine Company. He and Amanda started KTW 25 years ago and built on the existing site 15 years ago. They’ve no plans to retire but will be taking more of a back seat in the future.

“We are wine people for life. We can’t imagine doing anything else,” says Keith.

Their son Alisdair has his own wine brand, Aeon Wines, and is developing a vineyard in the Huon Valley in southern Tasmania. To date he has released three Hunter Valley red wines under the Aeon label: a syrah, a syrah pinot noir blend and a syrah touriga viognier blend (the word syrah is used for shiraz on all of them).

The Tasmanian property has been planted to pinot noir and shiraz, on 1m x 1m spacing, and a first crop is expected in 2026.

“We were hoping for a 2025 vintage, but it turns out that vines are slower growing in Tasmania than in the Hunter,” says Keith.

Daughter Jess and her husband Ben Whittemore-Tulloch have a distillery at the KTW winery. Ben is a distiller and produces shiraz gin, chardonnay gin and semillon gin under the FAR brand (it stands for Forage And Roam). Their first shiraz gin won a gold medal at the Melbourne spirits show.

“The new development will incorporate all of that,” says Keith. “Three parts of a circle. It will be diverse, focusing on much more than just KTW”.

Meanwhile, it will be business as usual at Keith Tulloch Wines.

A memorable dinner was held in Sydney recently to salute Keith and Amanda’s achievements at this watershed time in their lives.

Friends and long-time customers Peter and Judi Dazeley raided their cellar for the dinner wines: a bracket of semillons, then one of chardonnays, and two brackets of shiraz.

• Keith Tulloch Field of Mars Block 2A Semillon 2017 and 2013 and regular Semillon 2011
• Keith Tulloch Field of Mars Chardonnay 2017, 2016 and 2013
• Keith Tulloch Kester Shiraz 2014, 2010 and 2003
• Keith Tulloch Field of Mars Shiraz 2011 and 2017

It was a spectacular lineup which amply demonstrated how Hunter Valley wines of all three varieties age superbly and reward careful cellaring.

The 2011 Field of Mars Shiraz was the star in a consistently excellent group of shiraz, a powerful, robust and character-filled red that will power on for many more years.

In the Kester Shiraz group, the 2014 was the stand-out, with power and concentration, while the 2010 was perhaps more typical Hunter: medium bodied, elegant and beautiful, and very regional in its aroma and flavour. The ’03, while showing some of the hot-year characteristics of the vintage, had nevertheless also aged well.

The semillons were gorgeous. The 2017 was wonderfully fragrant and fresh with just a lacing of toast and promising to go for another decade; the 2013 was scored at the same high level but was a quite different style: delicate, mineral, seriously refined and also promising at least another decade of enjoyment. The regular estate wine from 2011 was a fuller, richer wine and drinking at its peak, with a shorter lifespan than the Field of Mars bottlings—but there’s no great hurry to drink it.

Chardonnay in the Hunter is perhaps the least renowned of the three for its cellaring potential, but this is a misconception. Field of Mars Chardonnay, along with Tyrrell’s Vat 47, Lake’s Folly and a few others, has runs on the board for longevity. The 2017 and 2016 were both glorious wines of great flavour, concentration and elegance, the 2016 having a little more of the smoked-charcuterie flinty reductive character than the others. The 2013 was the least of the trio but still a good wine, drinking well but not recommended for further cellaring. Ten years is a good age to be drinking top Hunter chardonnay.

Shiraz and semillon? From the best vintages, these wines are capable of long-term aging, 20 years for semillon and 20 and more for shiraz.

If only we could be confident that future generations will value cellaring and enjoying aged wines as do previous generations!

Huntington Estate’s Tim and Nicky Stevens. Huntington Estate Wines

Wine, food and music are perfect partners, which is why musical events are often staged at wineries. Huntington Estate’s owners Tim and Nicky Stevens hosted a memorable lunch-time concert recently at Sydney’s Bathers’ Pavilion.

Huntington Estate had hosted 30 great concert weekends at its Mudgee winery up until the COVID pandemic. There had been three attempts to stage a shortened event since then, all thwarted by circumstances. The catalyst for this event was the Stevens’ desire to farewell one of their favourite and most regular musical acts, the Goldner String Quartet, who officially retired last year. This remarkable string quartet consists of two married couples, who have been playing, touring and recording together for 30 years.

Dene Olding is principal violinist, his wife Irina Morozova plays viola, Dimity Hall also plays violin and her husband Julian Smiles plays cello. They re-formed for the day with accordionist James Crabbe and a string bassist Andrew Meisel to make The Huntington Sextet, with the single aim of performing a new piece, Bubble & Squeak, by a favourite local composer, Holly Harrison.

Dene Olding introduced the (quite short) piece and mentioned that a certain famous composer said that if you applauded long enough they would repeat the performance, and that is exactly what happened!

Bathers’ Pavilion has a second kitchen to cater for the upstairs room. It produced a superb meal, the highlight being steamed baby snapper with a scallop mousse and the most amazing beurre blanc-like sauce incorporating fennel and chardonnay. The two whites served with it were also excellent and well chosen to accompany the dish: 2018 Huntington Estate Special Reserve Semillon and 2022 Huntington Estate Barrel Fermented Chardonnay. The chardonnay is still available, for AUD $35 ex-winery.

A beef cheek main course with spinach and red-wine sauce was matched with 2021 Grand Reserve Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon and 2018 Special Reserve Shiraz, both trophy winners and available at AUD $54 and $100 respectively. As good as these were, a glass of the trophy-winning Special Reserve Grenache 2023 (remarkably, still available at AUD $54) stole the spotlight.

This year marks 20 years since Tim Stevens took over Huntington Estate from the Roberts family, and Stevens, never lost for words, embarked on an abbreviated run-down of the 20 vintages.

2020 – bushfires. Entire crop lost.

2019 – mouse plague (Nicky threatened to go back to England).

2006 – “the only vintage I’ve had that could be described as normal”.

2010 – hot and dry.

2011 and 12 – cold and wet.

2013-20 – really hot, and drier and drier.

2021-23 – cold and wet.

2023 – “The best vintage we’ve ever seen at Huntington Estate”. It produced the grenache that beat all the South Australian grenaches to win the trophy at the Sydney wine show.

Then there were the vintages memorable for Stevens family events.

2011 – Son Freddy was born. “A great vintage for us”.

2013 – While climbing onto a fermenter, he fell 4 metres off a ladder that had not been properly secured. “It should have killed me.”

2015 – Son Charlie was born.

1955 – “My year. Alas, no vintage port was declared in Portugal.”

*NB. For more complete (and more helpful!) details of Huntington vintages, refer to the website.

Aerial view of the Marnong Estate in Sunbury. Marnong Estate Wines

Alex Beckett has landed a dream job: working for a wealthy boss who has a grand ambition and the money to make it come true.

Formerly winemaker Briar Ridge in the Hunter Valley, Alex’s new job is with Marnong Estate, in the Sunbury region, close to Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport.

The owner is Dino Strano, a Sicilian migrant who made his money in the construction industry. Strano has spent AUD $22 million on a winery that will be processing grapes from 34 ha of vines—although there will are a few more hectares still to be planted. The winery will have the capacity for 250 tonnes of grapes. Few small wineries have an optical grape sorter, an expensive piece of kit, but Marnong Estate does.

As Alex says, Dino has made a lot of money and genuinely wants to leave something behind, to build something of quality.

“He loves wine and wants to make Australia’s best wine,” says Alex.

Marnong Estate is cool and elevated, at 310 metres altitude. The Sunbury region is a large area, “a classic but not well-known region”, which is home to two historic wineries, Craiglee and Goona Warra. Craiglee is famous for its shiraz, but its mesoclimate is much warmer than Marnong, which Alex describes as being located in a wind tunnel, and much colder than Craiglee. It’s too cold to grow shiraz or nebbiolo. The main focus is on pinot noir and chardonnay but with some Italian grape varieties as well. 85% of the present plantings are pinot noir.

“We are colder than Mornington Peninsula,” says Alex. “Our mean growing season temperature is 14.2 degrees. Mornington’s is 15 (at Main Ridge).”

The first vines were planted in 2017, and Marnong Estate already has accommodation in the form of 10 architect designed cabins, a café and two restaurants as well as the vineyard and winery. Construction of an 80-room hotel is soon to begin. The 600-ha property, once owned by the Angliss family, is a working farm and home to a wide assortment of animals, which city children come out to Marnong Estate to see. Clearly, the Stranos are people who don’t let the grass grow under their feet.

Marnong Estate Winemaker Alex Beckett. Linkedin

“The growth has been very rapid since 2022. COVID got in the way but we’re making up for lost time. We’re still only half-way through the build,” says Alex.

Alex Beckett has been at Marnong since 2023, his first vintage being 2024. The 2024 wines are a re-launch of the brand with new labelling and four 2024 wines—two pinot noirs, a sangiovese and a montepulciano—are on sale now. There’s also a 2023 shiraz that was made in the Yarra Valley from grapes grown in a warmer vineyard a little further north from Marnong, but still Sunbury origin. Mark O’Callaghan of winemaking consultants WineNet has been involved for the initial vintages.

There are another 10ha of vines to go in—high-density pinot noir and chardonnay, and some Sicilian varieties. Marnong Estate already has fiano, dolcetto, pinot bianco, nebbiolo and prosecco planted.

Just 15 minutes from the airport and 35 minutes from Melbourne CBD, Marnong Estate is well placed to capture the interest of tourists. Time will tell if it’s also going to make the kind of splash on the wine scene that its owners covet. One thing is for sure, they’re going to give it a red-hot go.

Dinner among the oak vats and massive barrels at Quinta da Pacheca. Huon Hooke

The one-week river cruise on Portugal’s Douro River was not intended to be work, but hey: you can’t send me on a trip through a vineyard area as exciting as the Douro and expect me to go cold turkey.

So it was that I found myself with a shipload of 120 people at Quinta da Pacheca, near Lamego in the heart of the port-wine country. One evening, the SS São Gabriel docked in Lamego and off we went by bus to dinner.

Pacheca is a highly professional business located on a property which dates back to 1738 in name, and even earlier as an actual farm. This is even before the Douro DOC (Controlled Denomination of Origin), the world’s first appellation control system, was created—in 1758.

It’s 40 years since my only other visit to this spectacular and remote vineyard region, so I was especially excited. At the entrance to the winery (a quinta is a winery, a farm or just any property) stood an ancient olive tree, 1200 years old according to our guide, and not even the oldest in Portugal. It still produces olives and appears in perfect health.

On entering the fermentation cellar I was amazed and thrilled to see a large room filled with lagares. These are wide, shallow stone troughs built of gleaming white granite, in which the grapes are fermented. Pacheca has eight of them. During the vintage, workers link arms and form a chain, and walk back and forth from one end of the lagar to the other, stamping the grapes as they go to break their skins and release the juice.

This is the traditional way to produce port, but it fell out of popularity in the last half of the last century partly because of the lack of manpower: people were leaving the rural life for the cities, an exodus that still continues, starving the port vineyards of people-power. Also, new fermentation methods that did not rely on people had been invented: stainless steel tanks with automatic pump-over and pigeage systems to macerate the fermenting grapes. However, traditionalists always maintained that lagares produced the best result.

Our group was given a brief tour and explanation of the winery, then went down to the barrel hall for an excellent dinner among the oak vats and massive barrels. The walls of this cellar are thick with black mould such as you find in many cellars in Champagne, Burgundy and the Rhône. It all adds to the atmosphere.

The Pacheca Superior white 2023 and red 2022 were the best wines so far on the tour (granted, wines served on the ship as part of a tour package should never be expected to be the highest level!). The white was barrel fermented and blended from viosinho, gouveio, códega do larinho, arinto, and códega; the red from touriga franca, touriga nacional, tinta roriz (tempranillo), tinta barroca, and sousão. And yes, Portugal has one of the largest collections of indigenous vines of any country.

We finished with Pacheca 30 year old Tawny, which was quite exquisite.

I later drank the Pacheca Tinto 2022 regular bottling, and also found it of very good quality if not as distinguished as the Tinto Superior ‘22.

Quinta da Pacheca may be an ancient name but it has only quite recently opened its doors to the public and become a tourist destination—in 1995 to be precise. It opened its hotel, The Wine House Hotel Quinta da Pacheca, in 2009. It has 75 hectares of vines and is evidently focused on table wines as much as fortified.

It is well worth a visit.

(Continued tomorrow)

The Pike Family (L-R) Alister, Jamie, Andrew, Cathy and Stuart. Pikes Wines

Clare Valley stalwart Pikes Wines celebrated their 40^th anniversary in 2024. Established in 1984 by brothers Andrew and Neil Pike along with their parents Edgar and Merle, this is one of the great wine success stories of the Clare Valley.

Edgar Pike was part of the famous Pikes brewing dynasty, but with the business starting to falter in the 1960s, he was encouraged to look elsewhere for work, and horticulture and viticulture were the encouraged paths. Edgar, his wife Merle and the boys lived in Padthaway for a period of time running vineyards, then Langhorne Creek and Edgar was very much at home among the vines. This gave Andrew and Neil a taste of vineyard life and set the brothers on their vinous path, Andrew into viticulture and Neil into winemaking. Both lads studied at the famed Roseworthy Agricultural College.

Andrew was Wynns vineyard manager in Coonawarra and he then helped established Penfolds Clare Estate in the late 1970s and this is when his affinity with the region materialised. Also cementing his move to Clare was that his future wife Cathy had been transferred to Clare with her job, so it was logical that he should follow. Likewise, Neil was making wine in Clare, for the Mitchells, who had established their own label a few years earlier. Indeed, the first vintages of Pikes were made at the Mitchell winery.

In 1984, a 27ha site came up for sale opposite Penfolds Clare Estate in Polish Hill River and Andrew, Cathy and Neil, along with Edgar and Merle providing security, made the decision to purchase it, and thus Pikes Wines was born.

Neil threw himself headlong into establishing Pikes, while Andrew remained at Penfolds and later the Southcorp behemoth, heading up the 6,000ha viticulture side of the business. Andrew left this corporate role in 1998 to focus on the family venture.

Neil retired in 2020, with Andrew, Cathy and their sons buying his share. These days, it’s left to the sons to run the wine and brewery business. In discussion with one of them, Managing Director Jamie Pike, I posed some questions, reflecting on the family’s 40 years in the wine business.

In an industry that ebbs and flows, one thing that has remained constant is how they make their Pikes Traditionale Riesling. This wine is, year in, year out one of the great wine bargains. This is Clare riesling in all its glory, pure, unadulterated and lip-smackingly crisp and crunchy on release.

It’s still vinified the same way as it was 40 years ago, sourced predominantly from high-altitude east-west orientated vineyards. The grapes are machine harvested in the cool of the night, with the free-run juice being separated and fermented with a neutral, white wine yeast. As it was, and is, this is a fabulous expression of riesling.

Their top of the range riesling, The Merle, named after the matriarch, is the pick of the vineyards and is also made the same way, and only produced in the best years.

According to Jamie:

“The philosophy for our riesling, and indeed right across our offering, is that 100% of our focus is on quality, without compromise, and the wines should always speak of their place.”

There has been change though in the way they approach their reds. In the late 1990s they strayed into the ‘Parker style’ of wines: higher alcohols, more oak, more of everything. They saw the error of their ways and in the late noughties pared back the new oak and alcohols and went back to more structured and balanced wines that were reflective of their site.

What has also evolved at Pikes is their varietal mix. Sure, riesling, shiraz and cabernet have long played a role, but Pikes were also one of the early pioneers of sangiovese in the country, planting this variety of Tuscan origin over 30 years ago. Now, sangiovese is the most planted red variety across Pikes 100+ hectares of vineyards providing fruit for both rose and dry red wines.

Pikes then planted pinot grigio shortly after sangiovese: again, one of the first movers with this variety and now it delivers similar volumes of grapes to the winery as sangiovese.

There’s been a few misfires as well: savagnin, viognier and merlot were trialled, but the resulting wines determined that they were not to continue.

And what of the future? Jamie opines that:

“It’s hard to predict. The wine industry is experiencing tough times. But I’m optimistic, we have a strong brand and absolute commitment to quality. In tough times customers turn to trusted brands and value for money, and people know that is exactly what the distinctive Pike Fish on the label represents. It’s our family seal of quality and we’ll never waver from that path.”

Raise a glass of riesling and here’s to another 40 years and beyond of Pikes.

Handpicking in the Clos Henri vineyard. Clos Henri Wines

The 2024 vintage in Marlborough, as described in the accompanying piece, was warm, dry and windy. This comes with assumptions which are understandable, such as very ripe wines, soft acidities and an early harvest. However, Damien Yvon of organic vineyard Clos Henri explains that things are not quite that simple.

In fact, the 2024 sauvignon blanc vintage at Clos Henri was their second-latest of their 21 harvests. Additionally, picking happened over a long period, lasting from March 20 until April 19—a full month. Although it is true that the vintage was sunny and the dry, windy conditions resulted in small berries with intense flavours and ripeness, the acidities in the grapes remained high, which was one of the reasons picking was delayed. Damien does not adjust for acidity in his winery, so the team had to wait for acidity levels to drop to a reasonable level before the fruit could be harvested.

Another complicating factor is related to soil, especially since these vines are close-planted and established with minimal irrigation. The winter of 2023 was unusually dry so the season which would lead to the 2024 harvest started with low moisture reserves. This meant that the areas which contain clays, like the Southern Valleys, were better able to weather the drought than the free-draining gravels of the Wairau Valley.

Clos Henri’s vineyard straddles both soil types, sitting across both hillside clays and flatter terrace gravels of the Delta Hill formation near the confluence of the Wairau and the Waihopai. This allowed the vines on clay soils to ripen more consistently and avoid shutdown due to water stress, resulting in a reversal of picking order with the vines grown on gravel (which they call the ‘stones’).

Clos Henri had to wait for autumnal dew precipitation to revive the vines on the ‘stones’ before ripening could resume. They finally picked the fruit for their Otira Stones well after all the Waimaunga Clays had ripened (they also have pinot noir on the vineyard). This change in order has resulted in particularly perfumed wine from the clays, giving them an edge in their youth as they are simply more expressive, but the ‘stones’ give a density and power which will emerge in time.

It does not always play out as planned, but Damien is confident that when all of the wines are finally finished (only the estate sauvignon blanc has been released so far), the strategy of waiting it out will deliver qualitative rewards.

Some of the A Thousand Gods wine range. A Thousand Gods Wines

*This is a continuation from last week’s piece, which can be found here.

When last we left Simon Sharpe, he had found himself back in Marlborough for vintage, leaving his wife and young son back in France, as COVID rapidly swept across the globe. With international travel shut down and New Zealand’s borders closed, he hunkered down with the rest of the the country in the relative safety of the South Island (which remained COVID-free).

When the national lockdown lifted, Simon raced back to Cahors to get his family and they migrated back to New Zealand in the midst of tight border controls and quarantines. International travel at that time was surreal and spooky as massive airports echoed with the sound of silence and emptiness. It was a challenging time to move half-way across the world, but it was worth it for them to be back in Aotearoa and because of the immense potential which awaited them with A Thousand Gods.

Simon made just the one wine in 2019, which was simply called Sauvignon Blanc (it was 100% sauvignon blanc from Churton Vineyard). Because he was still living in France at the time, he did not get to taste the wine regularly during its evolution, like one normally would in a winery. But when he returned in 2020 and saw the wine again after nearly a year of ageing at The Coterie, it affirmed everything they had risked and put on the line. In fact, it exceeded all of his expectations and the 2019 Blanc is spectacular—even now, nearly six years later.

The young family settled down in Christchurch and continued making their wine at The Coterie in 2021. The fruit which they received and continue to receive from Churton is at the heart of the project. The biodynamic farming, care and attention in the vineyard meant that it was possible for Simon and Lauren to make ‘fully natural wine’ without any additions or adjustments while also having the confidence that the wine will be stable and ageworthy, like the best examples they had come to love in France.

Credit must also be given to Sam Weaver’s foresight in planting that hillside site at a time when most plantings were on easier land to work lower down. Additionally, many thought Weaver was crazy to plant what he did. Instead of the MS (UCD 1) clone, which dominates plantings of sauvignon blanc in Marlborough, he planted Bordeaux clones.

With Simon’s background in wine science and more specifically sauvignon blanc aromatic compounds (refer to part one for that history), he knew he could make a completely different kind of wine from this fruit. The fruit had more terpenes rather than thiols and methoxypyrazines. Although terpenes also change with time, they don’t degrade as quickly and traditionally get more honeyed while having better stability over the long term (terpenes are responsible for the aromatic development of riesling, albariño and chenin blanc, for instance).

A Thousand Gods would be made at The Coterie for its first three years before Simon and Lauren decided to bring it closer to home and truck the fruit from Churton down to Canterbury. In 2022, they made the wine at Greystone in Waipara but now have their own urban winery (which they live above) in Rolleston. The industrial zone there is a far cry from the idyllic Occitanie which they left behind, but the strength of their conviction has borne fruit in the quality of their wines.

The relationship with Churton is incredibly strong. To the best of their knowledge, they are the only winery to use all four varieties from Churton: sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, viognier and the incredible, rare petit manseng. From these four varieties, they make a wide range, from sparkling through to skin-fermented. All the wines adhere to the same philosophy, which relies entirely on what comes from the vineyard with no additions.

Their Java sparkling wines, which are made in the style of pétillant naturel, are not actually bottled during primary ferment. They are closer in technique to the ‘new school’ of pét nat which has evolved in Europe over time and utilises a stable, dry base wine to which they add unfermented juice from the following vintage. When this starts to ferment, they bottle the wine and complete the fermentation in the bottle, resulting in a lower pressure, in line with pét nat effervescence. Their first vintage of Java was filtered, but the wine appears more stable without filtration so they no longer filter their sparkling wines. They don’t disgorge them either.

For stability, Simon and Lauren rely on malolactic fermentation and slow ageing in old oak barrels without sulfur, which they find helps to eliminate volatile compounds which might develop in bottle otherwise. They are also allowed to become stable in this environment so that they are more resilient in bottle.

The Real Review has highlighted two of their wines before, the Love Letters and Blanc. The former is a Pfifferling Tavel-like style made predominantly from pinot noir which is pressed off its skins at a stage between a traditional rosé and a red wine. The Blanc is the new name for the wine previously known as Sauvignon Blanc but is essentially the same wine as the 2019, which started everything. They also make another wine from sauvignon blanc called Giare, which is fermented and aged in a large giare (clay ‘amphora’) which was a gift from Simon’s old boss at Mas del Perie, which was used to age chenin blanc back in Cahors.

A Thousand Gods also make a fascinating light pinot noir called Flos: a name Lauren came up with, which means flower, or the best part of. That fruit is from Churton’s challenging Abyss block and has a tendency to be hard and firm but is spectacular quality. They had to learn how to be very gentle with it to allow all of its delicacy to express itself.

The project continues to evolve and grow, but the wines being made at A Thousand Gods are very good and very singular. The incorporation of techniques from the natural wine world with the technical training and scientific background which they each gained in their formative years has allowed them to carve out a path entirely their own in Marlborough, the home of sauvignon blanc.