2022 Griffins Road Chardonnay 
 
In the early 90s my father Norman convinced two of our friends & close neighbours to plant vines for him, Frank Walsh & Pat Griffin both planted Pinot Noir in 1995 on their excellent sites in our little township of Coghills Creek. Pat also wanted plant Chardonnay with his Pinot Noir, a very wise choice!
 
Pat Griffin’s vineyard is on Griffins Road next to Griffins Hill, one of the original farming families of the township, another interesting fact is the vineyard was planted right near the original Myola vineyard which was planted back in 1862 by Mr John Hawkins a site that grew to 11 acres by 1880 narrowing it down to 3 varieties, a very passionate farmer who also had quite an extensive orchard. (he was a correspondent for The Leader news paper in Melbourne retiring to Malvern in 1887. Died 1908 Buried in Coghills Creek.) The Griffins took on the vineyard, orchard & land & continued John’s legacy, nobody can remember what happened to the vineyard most likely the vines were pulled in the depression or it might have been possible that phylloxera made its way to the area.
 
So back to the return of Griffins Road Chardonnay, last produced back the Early 2000s for Eastern Peake. Pat died from a heat attack in the early 2000s which saw a change of ownership for 15 years until recently a new young farming family purchased the site for the land & gave me a call about taking on the vineyard. We agreed to a long term lease which has given us the opportunity to take this site back under our wing. instantly converting the site over to organic & regenerative agriculture practices. Deep red volcanic loam soils moving to grey & chocolate over weathered basalt sit on the south west side of Griffins Hill at 440m altitude, this block of chardonnay was established in 1995 with Clone I10V5.
 
Produced the same way as always, Harvested early april 2022, whole bunch pressed, fermented with the vineyard & cellars naturally occurring indigenous yeasts in 300L hogs heads using a mix Siruge (French) & Stockinger (Austrian) cooperages, during élevage there is absolutely no racking, left on full solids with no interference with the lees, the wine always goes through full malolactic fermentation on its own, a small amount of sulphur post malo in December, racked from barrel 21/3/2023 to stainless tank no fining or filtering, bottled 20/10/2023 A small amount of sulphur pre estate bottling. I can’t express any louder how excited I am to be farming & producing wine from this site, now three vintages in under our custodianship this site has so much to give & the wine being produced is something very special.