Although we are talking about a relatively short period of time, the story I am about to tell is not a simple one. This is because the Place of Changing Winds project is the culmination of a thirty-year journey in wine and involves many growers, consultants, winemakers, employees and friends. But any vineyard story should begin with the place, so let’s start there.

The Site

Located between two mountains—Mt Macedon and Mt Bullengarook—our site was historically known as Warekilla, local Wurunjeri language for Place of Changing Winds. It’s a rolling, hilly, rocky place, surrounded by forest, that sits at around 500 metres elevation, on the southern edge of the foothills of Mt Macedon. The altitude and the proximity to the forest makes for a genuinely cool site, typically with good rain, cold nights and massive diurnal range (variation between minimum and maximum temperatures), which both Pinot and Chardonnay love. In summer the diurnal range will often exceed 20 degrees C, sometimes even 25, which leads to heavy morning dews. In winter and spring this means regular frosts. Throughout the growing season, this means significant disease pressure. Our annual rainfall is typically between 700 and 900mm although who can talk of what’s typical these days? We have almost 45,000 vines planted across our 3.1 hectares of vineyard. The farm itself is over 33 hectares so the vineyard makes up only a small part of our environment. 

Our soils, or the part of our soils in which our vines grow, are made up predominantly of eroded quartz, sandstone and quartzite mixed through clay, sand and silt. It’s generally a rocky soil (30-40% rock in some areas) with a geology that was once locally known as “Bullengarook gravel”. These rocks formed at the bottom of the ocean over 400 million years ago, in the Ordovician period. As you may have worked out, there is constant variation across the site with more or less rock, more or less clay and silt, more or less sand, and varying levels of top soil. While our geology is generally not volcanic in origin, there is a small section, on southern edge of the vineyard, that is influenced by a rare type of eroded basalt, called mugearite.

The Practice

The idea of the Place of Changing Winds vineyard, and, long term, the running of our farm, is to create a largely self-contained environment, run without synthetic chemicals and with a system of practices that we believe maximize quality and expression of place. The vines were planted here between 2012 and 2018 to a density of 10,000, 12,000, 14,500, 20,000, 25,000 and 33,000 thousand vines per hectare. The logic behind these high density plantings are various and complex but in simple terms they help to force the vine roots down, making the vines pump from the sub soil, and they reduce the yields per vine significantly. The aim is to create vines with a naturally balanced canopy and fewer, smaller bunches that we hope will produce wines of great quality and great expression of place. If all goes well, we will get perhaps 400gm of fruit per plant – a very low figure. As it stands our yields are currently less than 200 gm per yielding vine. Of course, high density will not work for every place and, on its own, is no guarantee of quality. 

Around these densities, we have developed a system of agriculture that is labour intensive and focused on soil health, vine health and quality. We use only biological, mineral and plant based products and have never used synthetic herbicides, insecticides or fertilisers. We dry grow although we do have irrigation in place for young vines or extreme conditions. Our general principal is to avoid giving water once the vine is established. The absence of synthetic chemicals and the careful cultivation of our soils are both designed to maximize life in the soil, which in turn ensures a strong connection between the plant and its environment. Cultivation also tears the superficial roots and, again, likely focusses the vine’s attention on its roots in the subsoil, below the more vigorous topsoil, where the vine can more easily access water. Thoughtful cultivation also breaks the surface of the soil, allowing water to penetrate rather than running off, and it de-compacts and oxygenates, amongst a number of other benefits. There is a lot of confusion around this practice; when done correctly, minimally and at the right times, we believe careful cultivation to be enormously beneficial to both the soil and the health of the vine. Regardless, it is absolutely required in an organically managed, high-density vineyard like ours, and it is only one element of a complex and comprehensive system of agronomy that we have established at Place of Changing Winds. 

We use a method of pruning often referred to as Poussard which we started to apply in 2014. It has taken us years to master but it has been worth the considerable effort. Poussard pruning, which might be called ‘vascular pruning’ or ‘sap flow pruning’, respects the natural biology of the vine and creates a more robust plant that is far more resistant to wood disease.

The vineyard is planted to nine clones (types) of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, on both own roots and a variety of rootstocks and with variation in trellising, density and pruning styles (bush-vine, spur-pruned, cane-pruned).

To understand how to establish and manage this kind of vineyard in the way described above took a lot of research, hard work, trial and error, and significant investment. This work will never end but every year we get closer to establishing a system that is well adapted to our place and to our goals (quality + expression of place). It is a system that is clearly not for everyone, and that’s as it should be. 

It’s worth pointing out that our ‘no compromise’ approach is extremely expensive and labour intensive. We employ more than three full time people to manage only 3.1 hectares of vines and we employ an additional team of five or six staff throughout the season. So that’s more than two people per hectare, full time equivalent, throughout the season, and this doesn’t include any additional labour that is brought in at key moments. To give you a comparison, conventional viticulture in Australia often works on roughly one full time person per 50 hectares! We also have to do a great deal of our work by hand including all pruning, shoot thinning, lateral removal, tressage (arching the shoots to avoid trimming), spraying by back pack and a lot of hand weeding and whipper snipping. There are also parts of our vineyard where none of the work can be done by tractor (so it’s all by hand or with a winch). And anything we do, even with machine, requires specialized equipment and takes far longer.

This is a long way of saying that what we do is very expensive, and far more time consuming than a conventional vineyard. This obviously has an impact on pricing and on quality.

A Little History

For much of my career I have worked as a wine buyer and for the last twenty years I have focused a great deal of my energy on chasing down allocations from great growers and producers wherever I could find them. This led me to develop an obsessive interest in the kinds of places and practices that lead to the world’s greatest wines. In particular I became obsessed with the kind of methodology, in both the vineyard and the cellar, that consistently led to the wines that excited me most – wines of great intensity, finesse and perfume, wines that spoke loudly of place. 

Repeatedly visiting and spending time with those great growers who produced such wines, as well as invaluable time spent with vineyard consultants, agronomists, geologists and (more recently) scientists, along with a reasonable amount of historical research, all helped to inform the vision for the establishment of Place of Changing Winds as well as the practices that we have subsequently implemented and developed. In the beginning I was fortunate to be able to discuss my assumptions with many experienced growers and specialists as well as considering what the latest research had to offer. I finally reached a point whereby the only way to answer my questions definitively was in the field, and I set out to search for a site where I could justify implementing the approach that was developing in my mind. 

In around 2008 my partner, Kate Millard, and I had also begun searching for a suitable site. Frustratingly, we could not find anything that met all of our requirements until, in 2011, we came across an interesting site that was for sale in Bullengarook. That property would become Place of Changing Winds. As soon as Kate and I visited the property, we knew it was the one. It just felt right and the geology (free draining yet with enough clay), the rainfall, the cool climate at some 500+ meters altitude, the aspects that were available, and the history of the property (with no chemical inputs for decades) gave me some confidence that we could grow serious and unique wine here.

The People

We have been extremely lucky in the people who have decided to join or contribute to our mission. Of course, it has helped that, from the start my attitude has been about doing something important and taking a no compromise approach. Good people are often attracted to good projects. But you also need some luck. Below are some of the key people who have been (or are still) involved in the project.

Rémi Jacquemain: Rémi has been the ‘regisseur’ (or manager), and number one worrier, at Place of Changing Winds and my right-hand (and left-hand!) man since 2017. Rémi’s deep passion, scientific background, intelligence, diligence and hands on, practical experience have been invaluable to the our project. Rémi has both a Viticulture Masters degree and Diploma of Oenology (Winemaking-Oenology Masters Degree) from Bordeaux University where he trained under some the world’s most important wine scientists. He also had some six or seven years of work experience in Bordeaux, Beaujolais, and various estates in Australia before joining the order of Changing Winds. Rémi runs the day to day of the vineyard and cellars and has driven a constant evolution in our practice. He and I are often found debating and researching every detail in order to help steer Place of Changing Winds on the righteous path that both of us wish to follow – the path that we hope will lead to the highest quality, most expressive wines possible. We are leaving no stone unturned.

Lachlan McCallum: Coming soon…

Romuald Cacheux: Coming soon…

Tom Myers: In our early years when I started to look closely at Poussard style pruning I spoke with Olivier Lamy (who had, several years early pioneered Poussard pruning back to the Côte d’Or) and asked him if he knew of any pruners who had had experience with Poussard that might be willing to come to Australia to assist us. I didn’t want consultants but rather experienced people who could prune with us. Several months later Olivier put Tom Myers in touch with me. Although Tom was based in Piemonte (where he still lives and works, now having established his own exciting project, Cantina D’Arcy) he originally hailed from New Zealand and had family living in Melbourne, so he was happy to find an additional excuse to visit Australia. He joined us for the winter of 2015 and he returned for every pruning and shoot thinning season until 2020 when he began Cantina D’Arcy. I don’t think Tom would mind me describing him as a pruning nerd, although he is much more than that. He is also one of the most passionate vineyard and wine people I know. He is bound to do some great work at Cantina D’Arcy

Tom Trewin: Brother Tom worked with us for four years after an already impressive career that included five years in the army, with deployments to East Timor, as a Combat Engineer, and Afghanistan, as an Explosive Detection Dog Handler, and then another five years as an agricultural contractor whilst he completed a Diploma of Agriculture followed by a Bachelor of Agriculture (Viticulture & Winemaking) at La Trobe University. Tom’s diligence, hard work and passion to learn was enourmous for us. He has recently returned to his family farm and, although we miss him, we wish him all the best.

Other part time workers include or have included Isabelle Fabio Andreetta, Agnes, Karen Agnew, Oli Bevan, Kevin Bouillet, Chris Challis, Martin Clavel, Antoine Courtinat, Georgia Dale, Tom Handyside, Steph Koomen, Geoff Macintosh, Tim Mead, Gary Richardson, Jonathon Robson, Carl Schröder, and Michael Wuttke. If I’ve forgotten anyone let me know! All have played their role and their commitment and hard work has been appreciated.

See also: Respect for those great growers, agronomists and producers who most inspired or helped us along the way.

Robert Walters
October 2022