It is inevitable that visitors to wineries in Victoria’s North-East form a strong association between many of the region’s wines and those of its largest winery, Brown Brothers. This may well be valid for the wines grown on their large vineyard at Milawa, which has a similar warm to hot climate as Rutherglen, but there’s another string to the Browns’ bow, and it is getting more important all the time. As a recent visitor to this winery I was more than surprised to discover the extent of the developments fostered by this wine family in the cooler King Valley, and to see for the first time the young vineyard at Whitfield, beyond the King Valley. By the time this considerable vineyard scheme has reached its full yielding potential, Brown Bros. will have become one of the major participants in Victoria’s cool climate revolution. The King Valley is one of a network of steeply rolling valleys about 30km south of Milawa, in the foothills of the Great Divide. The Brown family have encouraged about a dozen or so local tobacco growers and graziers to redevelop part or whole of their land towards contract fruit growing for their premium table wines. The jewel in their high-coutry crown is however totally owned and managed by the Browns, who have employed energetic viticulturalist Jim Hardie to assist their own vineyard specialists Peter and Roger full-time in this development. This is their highest vineyard, near Whitfield and christened `Whitlands’, perched 800 metres or so above the Pacific and with a view like few outside Europe. The Browns have experimented with a very close form of planting at Whitlands, resulting in 2240 vines being installed per acre ( instead of the traditional 600 per acre for Australia ). The varieties planted there are Merlot, Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer and Chardonnay. “It’s too cool here for Cabernet Sauvignon”, explains Roger Brown. Roger is the youngest of the four brothers, who with their father, John Brown snr, seem to fill the major mangerial and administrative positions with their company, still a family business in the truest sense of the word. Recent additions of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Meunier look to have promise. The Browns have spent a lot of time and trouble matching grape varieties to the cool climate and deep red soils of Whitlands. “Many grapes are planted in areas unsuited to getting the best fruit from the variety”, Roger continues. “Take the number of delicate white grapes planted in hot Australian areas for instance”. Before fitting into the company and finding his own viticultural niche, Roger spent a couple of years in California. Here he studied horticulture at the Santa Rosa College, Sonoma, and worked in vine nurseries, grafting stations and different horticultural institutes. He is certainly amply qualified to oversee the family’s cool-climate bench-grafting operation. “The risk of phylloxera at Whitlands is very real”, says Roger Brown. This is the motive behind a prolongued and exhaustive bench-grafting developments of Brown Bros., on the vineyard site. “We believe that phylloxera can travel considerable distances with the right wind conditions and we don’t want to be caught unprepared.” Roger Brown has had most success with the dual-purpose rootstocks Schwarzmann, R99 and Kober, which also carry a tolerance to nematodes. Roger mentions the local farmers, many of whom have six or seven vines to make their own wine from, but whose vines are most unlikely to be on grafted stocks. “These people were here well before us”, he adds. “You can’t blame them – the problem hasn’t been well publicised.” The Brown Bros. grafting procedure goes like this. Cuttings from the rootstock vines are taken from the vineyard as near leaf-fall in autumn as possible. “Although vines are dormant in winter, they still use up their reserves of nutrient, which we’d rather retain”, explains Roger Brown. They are then bundled up into plastic bags and placed into a shed with a controlled growing environment. “We sterilize the cuttings with chemical fungicide to avoid fungal problems in storage or in either the callusing room or the hot room. After leaving them in a period of cool storage at 1-2 deg.C in plastic bags, we graft the vines”. The cool storage is able to extend the limits of the grafting season from 2 to 6 months for Brown Bros, so that their grafting can be carried out after the cooler part of winter, in the warmer months of spring. “Next we remove the buds from the rootstock cutting, to ensure that the rootstock is only able to develop a root system, and that all the available nutrients for foliage growth go to the top of the graft. “The rootstock and wine variety, or the scion, are bench-grafted together with an omega-shaped notch. After grafting the cutting is transferred into a hollow plastic tube, which then is itself placed in a tub containing perlite material.” The tubs are placed in a hot callusing-room, whose temperature ranges from 25-27 degrees, with humidity between 80 and 90%. Callus tissue develops around the graft to heal the join, and no taping is needed. A staple is however used to fasten the graft more securely. After about 28 days in this vigorous, warm environment, the grafts develop a root system and callus tissue develops to heal the wounds aropund the graft union. The early growth here pushes the growing tip away from the top of the plant. “Next we begin to harden the plants off before their introduction to the vineyard. We re-pot them to larger pots and put them into shade houses, whose reduced lighting conditions ( which reduce the size of the leaves and reduces light competition ) and damp environment are gradually adapted to brighter and drier conditions over the summer, increasing their tolerance to the natural environment.” Roger Brown leaves the plants in nearly natural conditions for the following winter, during which they are pruned to leave two buds, before being finally replanted to the vineyard. “It’s not a completely new system, we have taken and adapted many different ideas to suit our cold vineyard. Our philosophy is to have a system by which we can readily use unskilled labour, run it economically, work in an unhurried fashion and with a high success-rate with our grafts. We need a controlled environment and we want to handle as many plants indoors as we can at a comfortable level. “We have certainly had our problems, but slowly they are being overcome. This sort of thing doesn’t happen easily.” The first wines to be made from Whitlands fruit were from last vintage, 1987, and small quantities of gewurztraminer and rhine riesling have already been bottled. Although both are from very immature vines, the Browns are delighted with the structure of both wines, and expect them to cellar in classic Alsatian fashion. The small trial quantities of chardonnay and pinot noir, both for still table wines and sparkling wine, also look extremely promising.
