Place of Changing Winds, Heathcote Syrah 2022

There is a lot of buzz around Place of Changing Winds, the brainchild of Australian wine importer turned winemaker, Robert Walters, who had a long-held dream to find somewhere special to make wine of great quality that conveys a real sense of place.

He found this place is in the foothills between Mount Macedon and Mount Bullengarook, Victoria. The site was historically known as Warekilla, local Wurunjeri language for Place of Changing Winds.

Surrounded by forest, never previously planted to vines, and standing at around 500 metres above sea level, it is cool and rainy, with huge diurnal ranges. A far cry from Australia's typical winemaking climate, but more akin to the cool climate regions of Burgundy and Champagne that so inspired him, and are perfectly suited to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but bring with them huge challenges like disease pressure.

He also hasn't chosen the easy route in his planting decisions, opting to commit to extreme high density planting, believing that this makes the roots dig deeper ultimately producing fruit of greater concentration and a truer sense of place. It also means, however, extremely low yields and labour intensive vineyard work.

His no-compromise, highly considered approach is inspired by some of the world's greatest winemakers that he worked with as an importer, most notably Burgundy's high density pioneer Olivier Lamy. All the difficult decisions are aimed at establishing a system that is well adapted to the place and to their goals of quality and expression of place. These include organic farming, hand-picking and destemming, spontaneous fermentation and ageing in Stockinger barrels, and bottling without fining or filtration.

As well as the estate-grown fruit, he works with Rhône varieties from two exceptional 'grower vineyards' further north: Heathcote and Harcourt.