Size & Type
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$119
“Hand-picked from the ’73 planting, 75% whole berry/25% whole bunch, open-fermented, 10-14 days on skins, matured for 12 months in French barriques (30% new). The fragrant and oh so vitally fresh red and purple fruits, spices and pepper are a serenade to the vintage.” Halliday 97 Points
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I had the great pleasure of working with Doc for just over 4 years. I had been in search of a winery that was pushing the boundaries of excellence and was fortunate enough to be introduced to Yarra Yering. Tasting the wines reminded me of some of the great old Australian and European wines Dad had cracked over time. Working with the man was a mind explosion.
The detail, thoughtful consideration of finer elements of the wine was evident from the first day we met. He was always ahead of his time, always in the pursuit of extra yumminess. In 1996 texture was a major focus, 10 years later the better producers in the industry were thinking texture.
You can read about my 1st vintage with Yarra Yering in 1996 in the Wine Bites Magazine. I’ll get to sharing more about my 2nd stint at YY from 2000-2004 soon. Stay tuned!
For Doc the worst fault a wine could have was not a technical one, it was for the wine to be boring! Most would agree you could never accuse a YY wine of being boring!
From the Winery:
Varietals: 100% Shiraz, 3% Mataro, 1% Viognier, 1% Marsanne.
Vines: 1973 planted 8 acre block of Shiraz at the western extremity of the Yarra Yering vineyard.
Making: Hand harvested, bunches across a sorting table and destemmed with no crushing to retain whole berries. Fermentation in the Yarra Yering half-tonne open-fermenters, hand lunged twice daily. Some use of stalk baskets to build structure and interest. A component of 100% whole bunch fermentation as well as some 20% whole bunch fermentation help to give some volume and plushness to the fruit palate. Air bag pressed to release the last fermenting juice form the many whole berries remaining. The wine then aged for 12 months in French oak puncheons (500L) only 25% new oak.
Having worked at Yarra Yering with Doc, over 4 years, and devoured pretty much every wine made at YY, I’ve got a soft spot for the place.
You can read about my time at Yarra Yering in the Wine Bites Mag!
Talk about a radical shift in thinking, pushing boundaries and certainly, making wine, with a single-minded goal of achieving excellence.
It’s incredibly hard to express, how, my 1st vintage at YY impacted my winemaking. I hope I can do it justice. There are moments in your life when you’re exposed to something that completely contradicts your thinking at that time. Disruptive influences that make you sit back and question your approach. Yarra Yering and Doc represented such a moment, a pivotal point in my wine career. Doc was an incredibly generous, gentleman. The first wine Doc gave me was a 1983 Auguste Clape Cornas, he’d paid $13 a bottle for a case of this incredible Shiraz, today it retails for closer to $200.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried a veritable bounty of European wine before from Bordeaux to Beaujolais, it was that I was drinking the wine and seeing qualities that could be replicated in Australia. I’m not suggesting making boring copies of European wines, but, that the Great European wines have a balance, textures, freshness of flavours, complexity, all packaged in a complete refined elegant package that was possible to achieve in our own backyard. It is these qualities, along with the careful ageing of the wine pre-bottling that are the hallmarks of Yarra Yering.
Mac Forbes map is a first cut at defining Sub-Regions for the Yarra Valley. Yarra Yering is North fo the G in Gruyere just on before the crossroad. You can see the contours of the Warramate ranges South of the road.
The 2017 vintage was near perfect in the Yarra Valley. A long even growing and ripening season saw wines of great definition, line, length, and, sophistication produced across all varieties. Phenological (flavour and tannin) ripeness matched sugar ripeness beautifully. The best 2017’s will be long-live, and, build on the incredible backbone they already have in place.
Sarah Crowe, winemaker, says that the summer was temperate and without any heat-spikes, and the leisurely harvest lasted 10 weeks.
The fruit was near-perfect and there was no mad rush to pick anything, they could wait for perfection.
The vintage and the wines remind her of what the Valley did 25 years ago, lacy wines with freshness, brightness and crunch, shy when young, but wines that flesh out slowly with time.
When asked about the 2017’s and if they are, the best ever? She says “Perhaps yes, with longevity in mind. These are not a flashy as the 2015’s (another near-perfect vintage) but they are beautiful and elegant, and they will fill out and mature slowly, and last a very long time.”
Hand-picked from the '73 planting, 75% whole berry/25% whole bunch, open-fermented, 10-14 days on skins, matured for 12 months in French barriques (30% new). The fragrant and oh so vitally fresh red and purple fruits, spices and pepper are a serenade to the vintage.
Where in the world does the magic happen?
Yarra Yering Vineyards, Briarty Road, Gruyere, Victoria, Australia
Nebbiolo | Piedmont, Castiglione Falletto
Malbec | South Australia, Australia
Red Blend | Tuscany, Chianti Classico
Pinot Noir | Gevrey-Chambertin, Burgundy
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