Curly Flat visit
Posted by Circa on May 3rd, 2010
While Matt Wilkinson is on holiday, The Journal will be updated by Sommelier Liam O’Brien and Sous Chef Jake Nicolson.
Recently, I took two weeks off to do some vintage work at Curly Flat, a wine producer in Lancefield, Macedon Ranges (70km north of Melbourne). Having grown up in Woodend, it was great to spend some time near my old stomping ground. The Macedon Ranges is one of, if not the, coldest wine growing regions in mainland Australia and as such is perfect for growing fine Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – two of my favourite varieties. No surprise then that Curly Flat specialises in these two varieties, with a little Pinot Grigio and Rosé to round out the range. Circa has been buying Curly Flat wines for many years and I can still remember the excitement my mentor, Chris Crawford showed when serving the Curly Flat Chardonnay in my early days at the restaurant.
Getting up at 6am every day for the commute was a rude shock to the system but it was a change that the night-owl hospitality worker soon adjusts to – given that it is more ‘normal’ than our regular working week. So to be up before the sun and asleep before midnight was a strange but welcome treat and there were some amazing sunrises to ease my feeble mind into the day ahead. I usually arrived by 730am and after a quick caffeine fix it was into the winery where I was given the responsibility of ferment management along with another sommelier Ben Richards (most recently of Fins restaurant in Kingscliffe, Queensland).This seemingly important task that connotes some serious level of knowledge and perhaps even chemistry, is actually just about taking temperatures and baumé (sugar levels) of the all the ferments, and plunging the caps of the Pinot Noir. Not that I am belittling the task. It was certainly much better than being put on cleaning duties (which often happens in other wineries to untrained newbies such as we were) and I am truly grateful to the team for all their help and for being so generous with their time explaining what they were doing and why they were doing it. I was one of the last to join up and in fact, invited myself, so they would’ve been excused for not giving me the time of day but they were great, and so, a shout out to my peeps from the Flat: Phil, Jennifer, Matt, Ben, Lisa, Blair, Ben, Tiff, and the token Frenchy, Tomas. They’re a really great crew and I’m looking forward to catching up with them at the end of vintage bonfire in a few weeks.
2010 as a vintage looks to be of very high quality in Macedon, and most of Victoria for that matter. The one consistent thing seems to be that most winemakers were thankful for how relatively easy it was given the stress of drought and fires of the last few years. After seeing the vibrant, healthy fruit come into the winery and looking after some of the wines at Curly Flat I can’t wait to see how the wines shape up.
