There are no more quiet achievers behind a small Australian vineyard and winery than Nat and Rosalie White of Main Ridge on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Main Ridge was amongst the first of the Mornington Peninsula’s multitude of vineyards and its winery, erected for the first vintage in 1980, was the area’s first on a commercial scale. Its early wines were quick to capture the attention of most people who tasted them. They were clearly assembled with sensitivity and skill, but with the benefit of perfect hindsight fell prey to many of the traps that befell most of the early Australian attempts at cool climate viticulture. Those which performed best were usually those of warmer years and, as sounds perfectly reasonable with the benefit of hindsight, tended to be those made from the Burgundian, rather than the Bordeaux varieties. Nat White’s journey is typical of so many pioneers of new cool viticultural regions. His is a vigorous site with deep red basalt soils which demands the vines receive constant attention during the growing season to monitor and reduce foliage growth. Main Ridge has a north-facing slope which, until recently, was surrounded by huge introduced trees. They are now no more and their removal not only adds to the view from the vineyard, but is sure to improve airflow throughout the site. The Whites have needed to be vigilant against botrytis, and this measure can be expected to make their lives a little easier. Although the first Main Ridge wines to win popular acclaim were made from cabernet sauvignon its performance was erratic enough now to be fully replaced by pinot noir and chardonnay. Even though rare wines like the excellent 1990 vintage show next to nothing these days of the under-ripe capsicum flavour so often found in Mornington Peninsula cabernets and blends, Nat White was quick to recognise that the Bordeaux varieties and the Peninsula do not make a happy marriage, despite the fact they always sold out at the cellar-door. Despite the ill-founded beliefs of certain viticultural consultants that regions like Mornington can produce outstanding wine at or around five tonnes per acre, Main Ridge’s own experience would confirm the contrary. Around the turn of last decade it was cropping chardonnay around four and over tonnes per acre, while present rates are more like 1-2 tonnes per acre. Ask yourself how many others are cropping this low and compare the prices of most other Peninsula makers to Main Ridge’s; in a more mature market the wines of Main Ridge would be several times their price. Similarly, Nat White crops his pinot noir around 1.5-3 tonnes per acre (usually below 2.5), depending on the season. Again, compare the yields and prices. You can’t take much for granted when making wine in a new region and nor can you suddenly start playing every oenological trick in your hand. Different techniques, malolactic fermentation in chardonnay for instance, need to be tested over different seasons and to different extents. That’s how you build up a library of knowledge built on your own experience. So Main Ridge’s wines have reflected an unhurried evolution that reflects the mature and measured approach of Nat White, a former engineer. Their clarity and brightness of clean, ripe cool climate fruit are so subtly and seamlessly offset by winemaking enhancements that it becomes easy to miss them. Like a cut stone, these are wines you can examine from any angle, only find neatly worked and shaped edges, with nothing sticking out or out of place. That’s what balance and harmony are all about. The tastings below will not only help you with the bottles of Main Ridge you may have in your cellar, but reflect Nat White’s patient and keenly focused evolution towards the style and sophistication he most admires in wine.
