Background

In 2001 I visited Burgundy, the home of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, for the first time. It struck me that as a winemaker, there was little difference between what was happening in terms of winemaking there to what we were doing back home in Australia. Yet, it was the complete opposite when my attention turned to the vineyards.

Going through wine school in the 1990’s, the focus in viticulture was on divided canopies and trying to balance plant vigour via bud numbers left at pruning. This meant that on vigorous sites, the advice was to plant less vines per hectare, which in turn created a bigger vine with a larger canopy that was often divided into two: Lyre, or Scott Henry style trellising.

The Burgundian model was quite different. It involved increasing competition and keeping the vines smaller and compact, resulting in a much larger vine number per hectare, and therefore a smaller yield per vine. Putting aside the obvious terroir differences, it made me question if this was one of the major reasons that could account for the quality differences when comparing Burgundy to Australia.

The equipment and workload required to run a high-density vineyard was, and still is, the major drawback that stops many from attempting this in Australia. There are some older examples of this style of vineyard in Australia, namely associated with Gary Farr and a few others, but these are rare and often quite small. Back in the mid 2000’s our first foray into higher density was to reduce the vine spacing by half and narrow the rows to the smallest width that our existing equipment could work in. Using this methodology, we planted a block to 2.2m rows with 0.75m vine spacing. While acknowledging all the variables, over the years I observed a noticeable improvement in quality. 

Around 2012-14, both Micheal Dhillon at Bindi and Robert Walters at Place of Changing Winds planted vineyards which addressed the row width issue using specialized Niko tractors, enabling the rows to be reduced down to Burgundian standards. It was these vineyards that demonstrated that equipment was not a barrier. 

Tim Brown was heavily involved in both these vineyards, and we were friends from a much earlier time when we both worked at Rochford back in 1994. Tim was in the vineyard, and I was doing my first vintage. We started to work together on the Mornington Peninsula as well as travelling overseas, mostly in France and Italy, to further our knowledge and contacts.

One evening sometime in 2017, I was at a restaurant where I was showing some French wines to a group organized by a friend. One of the people there was Tony Todaro. We connected, and over time we started to discuss Australian wine and our thoughts on what the future might hold. The result of this is that in 2019, Elanto was planted on a site that fitted the requirements to justify such a planting. Tim Brown worked very closely with us throughout the whole establishment process, before going on to establish his own high-density vineyard in Macedon. However, it isn’t only about vineyard architecture. Amongst the inspirational producers we have been fortunate to meet, viticultural practices can differ significantly to common practice here in Australia. Adopting these practices also significantly influences both the vines and resulting wines.

Elanto is a culmination of ideas and thoughts gathered over many years of working in wine, especially on the Mornington Peninsula. We all look forward to what this vineyard will do in the future.

– Sandro Mosele