Our day began with a stop at De Bortoli, or “DeBort’s”, as our guide Brian calls it. Brian tells us that shortening names is a national pastime in Australia as he switches on the “air con” in the van after finishing our “brekky” (breakfast). As we arrive, we are again in awe of another amazing view of the Yarra.
Steve Weber hosted our tasting in a private room and showed us a truly profound flight of Chardonnays from the Yarra. There were quite a few standouts in what will likely be my favorite flight from the trip. The Oakridge Chardonnay 2009 was a deadringer for Chablis with more mineral than fruit, crisp acids and great balance. The 2007 Yering Station ‘Willowlake’ Chardonnay offered cheese-like aromas, truffle tones, oyster shell and lots of citrus. Mayer’s ‘Bloody Hill’ Chardonnay 2008 was an amazing crossover wine for typical Chard drinkers to head to Burgundy: typical apple/pear flavors with mushroom, mineral and crisp acidity. The PHI Chardonnay 2008 was a little more in the box with white peach, baked apples and pears doused in Meyer lemon and orange juice, toasted oak and that pervading minerality.
For fun, Steve pulled some De Bortoli wines for us to taste: a 2010 Pinot Gris, their Reserve Riesling 2010 which was quite delicious, and an Edelzwicker 2010 which Jens was particularly enamored with. These were all very interesting and a great look at the potential this region has for amazing white wines. I’m definitely going to be seeking out some of these Chardonnays for my personal cellar.
We headed over to Yering Station. To precursor, I think that after we’d had so much Pinot at the beginning of our trip and such an amazing flight of white wines, we were not so much into this flight. Also, the facility was a little warm which made the wines show a little too much alcohol. We tore through about ten Pinot Noirs from the 2008 vintage and five barrel samples from 2010. None of the wines were particularly standouts, but it looks that the 2010 vintage will be warmer and riper in this region. We enjoyed a terrific lunch of duck breast and duck foie with pistachio sauce as well.
The most exciting part of our visit, for me, was watching the bottling line for their sparkling wine, which I had never had the opportunity to see. It’s fascinating that such a complicated process can occur in such a short bottling line. From the freezing of the yeast and removal, the dosage, to corking. Fascinating.
We headed out to the Strathbogie Ranges and visited Plunket Fowles with Sam Plunkett. This winery took a bit more of a New World approach to its winemaking. I don’t personally approve of this winemaking style when taken to this extent. He had a reverse osmosis filter, wood chips, bags of acid for adding to the wines, and some kind of plastic containers he was aging wine in instead of barrels. In my opinion, this is taking the “winemaking” a little too far. When you tamper this much with wine, how can you really taste the vineyard?
We stayed at the Euroa Butter Factory that evening, a real butter factory converted to accommodations. Sam joined us for dinner at a local restaurant that reminded me of dining in the American South. I had a marvelous Murphy’s Stout Meat Pie in Guiness sauce. Russ brought a 1999 Ferraton ‘Le Meal’ Hermitage that we enjoyed tremendously.
Bellies full, we returned to our rooms where I met my roommate, who I affectionately named Hunterwasser. Thank God Jens used to play hockey. He used a coat hanger to whack him right into our bag of Lamb & Mint-flavored potato chips so we could transport him outside to enjoy his evening buffet of bugs. I, for one, would be happy not to wake up to find him sitting on my face...
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