VINO COTTO | WOOLSHED CREEK WHITE | WOOLSHED CREEK RED | RIESLING | PINOT GRIS | CHARDONNAY | ROSE | PINOT NOIR | DINNY'S BLOCK | MERLOT | GRACIANO | SHIRAZ | TEMPRANILLO
Our planting of Tempranillo in 2000 was driven by a desire to experiment. The best, most interesting wines in the world arise from not only the best sites, but from those where the best variety for that site has been discovered. When you have the right variety in the right place, you start making wines with real depth of personality and character.
As there are literally thousands of grapevine varieties in cultivation, it is unlikely that the first varieties planted in a vineyard will necessarily be the best. It takes some time to see what works, and make educated guesses for other varieties to try.
In the first rush to treat the Canberra District climate as cool, what may have been overlooked is how dry and how continental our climate is. Rather like parts of Spain in fact. Tempranillo is the major quality red variety of Spain.
A feature of Tempranillo is its relatively large berries, and berry size needs to be restricted in order to make good red wines. This is the reason we chose to plant Tempranillo in our rockiest block, and irrigation management is focussed on restricting berry size also.
Immediately adjacent to the Tempranillo vines at the northern end of the Rock block is a stand of large eucalypts, mostly yellow-box. The 2003 and 2004 vintages of Tempranillo had a strong "perfume" character, which some tasters saw as "minty" or "eucalyptus" or "menthol". Whether this arises from the trees is not certain but seems possible as there is some evidence for the ability of eucalyptus oil from the atmosphere being able to accumulate in grapes.
In 2004, we grafted Pinot Noir vines in the southern half of the Rock block to Tempranillo, and these were first harvested in 2007 (but were somewhat over-cropped and the wine became our Woolshed Creek Red No. 4).