Steve Pannell, one of the hottest properties in Australian winemaking today, has announced that he is shortly to quit his post at The Hardy Wine Company. He has been Group Red Winemaker there for several years after joining the company late in 1994. This news follows closely on the heels of Rob Bowen being appointed as Chief Winemaker for the Houghton label, itself a Hardy brand, after the equally unexpected departure of Larry Cherubino. Pannell isn’t rushing into another position, but has told me he wants to spend a vintage or two in Italy. It’s also high time, he suggested, to think about creating his own wine brand. And for something completely different! One of the frustrating things about living so close to the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula is how few new wineries of genuine class have emerged from either over the last decade. Without doubt, the most significant recent development on the Mornington Peninsula has been Kooyong, which recently released the third vintage of its varietal Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. With five separate and quite distinctly different vineyards at its disposal on a single site of diverse geology, each of which is planted to its own matrix of different clones of the two varieties, Kooyong has an extraordinary ability to create diversity of flavour and structure from within its own boundaries. This then gives winemaker Sandro Mosele unrivalled potential (in this country, at least) to blend parcels together to create his impression of Kooyong’s house style and to express its various terroirs. The good news for Kooyong enthusiasts is that the vineyard is shortly to release a series of individual vineyard wines from pinot noir and chardonnay, each of which is closely identified with the block responsible for it. The quantities released will begin fairly small, and Mosele is keen to keep the price of these wines below $60 per bottle. From what I have seen of the 2001 individual vineyard wines, this is a very fair proposition, and gives wine enthusiasts the chance to explore the differences between closely delineated terroirs within a single site, as well as clonal differences, other factors such as winemaking largely being equal. My expectation is that while the wines are young, clonal differences will account as much as terroir for the major differences between them. But, however, as the wines age, the differences in terroir will become more paramount.
