2022 Place of Changing Winds Tradition White

WINEMAKER: Robert Walters
REGION: Macedon Ranges, VIC
VARIETY: Marsanne, Roussanne, Chardonnay
VITICULTURE: Organic

This year, the POCW team decided to see if a blend of the three white grapes they have in the cellar might work as well as the Tradition red. They were blown away by the result, and so were we. This is one-third Chardonnay from a new Dominique Laurent Tronçais cask and two-thirds Marsanne and Roussanne. It has all the generosity of this producer’s Marsanne/Roussanne with the cut and thrust of the Chardonnay (not to mention some seriously classy oak). The first year of aging was in a mixture of 500-litre cask, Wineglobes and neutral barriques. The wine spent its second year in steel. It was bottled at the end of November 2023.

The vintage: The 2022 season demanded a huge amount of work from the POCW vineyard team. The long, slow ripening season was the second of three consecutive La Niña vintages, and harvest was even later than 2021, beginning in the third week of April (so, very late!). In the end, thanks to meticulous canopy management, very low yields and a few warm days at the very end of the season, the Place of Changing Winds team harvested a small crop of perfectly clean, ripe fruit. The bunches were once again very small (average 46 grams—tiny!), and each parcel was picked separately as each arrived at maturity. In the end, 7.2 tonnes of Pinot and 2.2 tonnes of Chardonnay were harvested—at an average of just over 200 grams of fruit per vine. To give that very low number some context, when you convert these yields to hectolitres per hectare (hl/ha), you arrive at a figure of less than 20hl/ha—roughly half the quantity permitted in Burgundy’s Grand Cru vineyards.

The wines: In 2022, Place of Changing Winds made a Larderdark Chardonnay, a vineyard-wide blend under the Between Two Mountains label. There is no High Density this year, nor will there be one from 2023. This is because the estate’s highest-density vines are always the last to ripen, and in the cool, late seasons of ’22 and ’23, the fruit from these vines did not reach the point where they justified a separate cuvée. The fruit, therefore, went into the Between Two Mountains blend. Remember, however, that all the vines at Place of Changing Winds are high density! The 2022 Pinot has wonderful finesse and perfume, while the Chardonnay is a powerful yet racy wine with a lot of character. All three are the product of the place, a no-compromise approach in the vines and cellar and, of course, the long 2022 season. This release also sees the return of the Tradition label—the first release of the red since 2019 and the first white Tradition ever. Both are superb.