Lyons Will Estate is a cool climate winery located in the Macedon Ranges.
Our energy is completely focused on varietals that flourish with ease in this region, specialising in Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay and Riesling.
Family owned and with ingrained European roots we intend to produce wines that ring true to this stunning and rare environment, that is the beauty of the Macedon Ranges.
Our energy is completely focused on varietals that flourish with ease in this region, specialising in Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay and Riesling.
Family owned and with ingrained European roots we intend to produce wines that ring true to this stunning and rare environment, that is the beauty of the Macedon Ranges.
2015 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay Officially Released!
After much anticipation and a huge amount of patience, it comes with great pleasure to introduce our 2015 vintage. Both wines are looking bright and youthful with plenty of character to match.
Stylistically very similar to V14 - this release certainly shows the weather conditions the fruit had to contend with during the year. In a nutshell there was plenty of hang time, providing depth of flavour and great acid structure, making both wines well rounded and typical to the Macedon Ranges.
Grab yourself a bottle or two, or perhaps even better still come visit us call 0412681940 for appointments or check out our online store to purchase.
Stylistically very similar to V14 - this release certainly shows the weather conditions the fruit had to contend with during the year. In a nutshell there was plenty of hang time, providing depth of flavour and great acid structure, making both wines well rounded and typical to the Macedon Ranges.
Grab yourself a bottle or two, or perhaps even better still come visit us call 0412681940 for appointments or check out our online store to purchase.
the 2016 Vintage update
The 2016 vintage: a strange year indeed!
At Lyons Will we have a relatively predictable spring and summer pattern, however, this year was a little unusual… I guess we can start with the super dry winter, not necessarily our coldest winter on record but quite dry, which made things great from a pruning prospective but meant that our dams didn’t get any natural run off for the second year running. Further to that it fair to say that our subsoils would be pretty parched, meaning that even if the plants wanted to reach down for some moisture then they would struggle a little. 
Spring came along with a bang, actually it came three weeks early and its was very warm indeed, the vines reacted to this with amazing shoot growth leaving us a little caught out in the shoot thinning department! However we managed and had some really great flowering and healthy shoot growth.
Then fire…. The Cobaw fires ripped through dangerously close to our house and continued for over ten days, everyone was evacuated and no one had power, luckily for us we were unscathed and in fact were one of the only properties in our area unaffected. In a strike of pure luck the grass was still very green and the plants where in flowering so no damage to our vineyard occurred and no chance of smoke taint. Summer came on strong but unlike other regions we got the odd spell of rain here and there, which is a lot more than we have had in recent years, temperatures on the other hand were very strange and seem to have fluctuated from very warm to relatively cool. Still the little rain we did receive meant we didn’t have to irrigate that often (if any) for quite long stints at a time and the vines still looked in good condition.
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the 2016 Vintage update.. contVeraison came very early, which is normally a very good indicator that harvest will also come in early. So early in fact we missed our netting window and got severely attacked by the super hungry and at times homeless native birds, whom’s habitat was severely damaged or destroyed by the earlier fires. According to our estimates we approximately lost nearly 15% of our yields across both Pinot and Chardonnay.
For the Third year in a row harvest came early, nearly three weeks early, with the Chardonnay being picked on the 9th of March and Pinot on the 14th. Due to bird damage the fruit numbers were lower than last year with Chardonnay yield being just under two tonnes and Pinot being four and a half. The quality of the fruit picked though was very good, Chardonnay not expressing too many signs of sunburn or raisoning and Pinot producing some nice beautifully tight bunches.
We expect good coloration and great flavors from the skins, seeds and stems and more importantly we were able to bring in the fruit in the morning for processing that afternoon…with everything in tank or vats by tea time. The numbers: Total Pinot yield was 1.6 tonnes to the acre, picked at 225 brix, 3.2 pH and 6.8 TA (total acid). Chardonnay ended up just under 1 tonne to the acre, picked at 23 brix, 3.2 pH and 7.0 TA. The Chardonnay is currently sitting pretty in barrel, whilst the Pinot, after enjoying some time fermenting away in open vat was transferred to barrel just last week after about 2 weeks on skin. |
