Soils are a super important part of the equation. As we all know soil is part of the “Terrior” of a specific plant, or more importantly is one of the elements that contributes substantially to the plants character and how that is reflected in the grapes and finally in wine. Some varietals lean towards the expression of “Terrior” better than others, such as Riesling, or to an extent Pinot Noir, this is because these wines do not have too many more elements in the wine making that make a wine more or less expressive.
This is a snapshot of our Pinot Noir block, not all of our property looks like this, however it gives you a good idea what the composition is of the soil below our Pinot Noir. In fact we probably have around three seams of soil going through our property, in the most part though we generally have Yellow Chromosols (see image), or Grey Kandosols.
Yellow Chromosols
Most of our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay has these soils running through them, as you can see there generally is a 20-30 cm of general earth matter as a top layer to the soil but this soon becomes a yellow predominantly clay soil. This clay content is key to our watering regime as it reduces our need to water in the summer due to its natural ability to retain liquid in a Bulbus fashion for a long period of time, inversely it is hard to work with when water logged. At times there are big lumps of quartz running through the soil which has been know to provide benefitial qualities to vine growing and wine quality.
Grey Kandosols
Our Riesling is the block most exposed to this type of soil, generally these soils don’t hold water as well as the Chromosols however they do have other qualities such as bound nutrients that the Chromosols just seem to not have. This block needs a little more watering however the Riesling seems to live quite happily and produce a fantastic crop.
Soil Era
Most soils in Australia are amazingly old, and most soils in Australia need a lot of help as they have gone so long untouched… that being said it is what makes our wines so special and unique. Soils from our vineyard are from the Lower Ordovician Period which is between 488.3 millions of years ago to 443.7 millions of years ago. According to scientist during this era most of the tropics where entirely ocean and most of the worlds land was collected to a subcontinent called Gondwana. If you seek to look for other similar locales with soils from the same era you could have a closer look to Lake Winnipeg, Canada!
This is a snapshot of our Pinot Noir block, not all of our property looks like this, however it gives you a good idea what the composition is of the soil below our Pinot Noir. In fact we probably have around three seams of soil going through our property, in the most part though we generally have Yellow Chromosols (see image), or Grey Kandosols.
Yellow Chromosols
Most of our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay has these soils running through them, as you can see there generally is a 20-30 cm of general earth matter as a top layer to the soil but this soon becomes a yellow predominantly clay soil. This clay content is key to our watering regime as it reduces our need to water in the summer due to its natural ability to retain liquid in a Bulbus fashion for a long period of time, inversely it is hard to work with when water logged. At times there are big lumps of quartz running through the soil which has been know to provide benefitial qualities to vine growing and wine quality.
Grey Kandosols
Our Riesling is the block most exposed to this type of soil, generally these soils don’t hold water as well as the Chromosols however they do have other qualities such as bound nutrients that the Chromosols just seem to not have. This block needs a little more watering however the Riesling seems to live quite happily and produce a fantastic crop.
Soil Era
Most soils in Australia are amazingly old, and most soils in Australia need a lot of help as they have gone so long untouched… that being said it is what makes our wines so special and unique. Soils from our vineyard are from the Lower Ordovician Period which is between 488.3 millions of years ago to 443.7 millions of years ago. According to scientist during this era most of the tropics where entirely ocean and most of the worlds land was collected to a subcontinent called Gondwana. If you seek to look for other similar locales with soils from the same era you could have a closer look to Lake Winnipeg, Canada!