Bowerbird
Macedon Ranges, Victoria
Kirilly Gordon’s enviable winemaking experience at Hanging Rock Vineyard, Bindi, Bress, overseas in Friuli Venezia-Giulia and the Southern Rhône led to her recent appointment at Yarra Valley icon Denton, where she produces some of the region’s most recognised wines.
Bowerbird is a natural continuation of her passion as a modern, environmentally conscientious winemaker. As the name suggests, the assortment of wines is eclectic and eye-catching. Two wines are from the renowned Malakoff vineyard in Victoria’s Pyrenees (the spicy Shiraz and polished Nebbiolo), while the textural skin-contact Viognier is from the Bellarine Peninsula.
Kirilly’s inspired focus on Nebbiolo, Shiraz and Viognier has been capturing wine drinkers’ imagination since 2016. Her then newfound love for Condrieu, along with her friendship with fellow vigneron Christina Gillies of Rupert’s Ridge Vineyard, compelled, challenged her even, to make her first Viognier. Since then, her wines have earned her a spot among the region’s top emerging winemakers who are reshaping the winemaking landscape with their refreshing vision for the future. These are made uncompromisingly and with cutting-edge precision, which puts them right at the top of wine lists.
Sourcing fruit from one of the state’s most celebrated sites that supplies precious material to winemaking luminaries of our times, Kirilly is driven partly by intuition and feel, partly by science. However, her close relationship with growers is the overriding factor in the pristine quality of the wines she produces from their sites.
It’s our greatest pleasure to include Bowerbird Wines in our Victoria portfolio and with that, continue to build and strengthen bonds with our customers, thanks to this small yet characterful selection of wines from the great Victoria gold country.
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Vaite Teriierooiterai – Master of Wine Business, AWAC and WSET Diploma candidate
2021 Syrah
Both the Syrah and the Nebbiolo fruit come from the Malakoff Vineyard in the Pyrenees, owned and farmed by Robert and Cameron John.
The Pyrenees being further inland, has a more continental climate with cooler nights along with warmer sunny days, the low humidity leads to low disease pressure but dryer conditions. The fruit is grown on a north-east facing slope of red pervious clay with quartz gravel and ironstone, giving the Shiraz and Nebbiolo off Malakoff a lovely long ripening period allowing development of physiological ripeness for flavour and tannin structure.
Winemaking:
The fruit was picked on the 21st of March at 14.3 Baume with a selective harvester. The harvester picks the berries straight off the vine leaving behind any stalks or leaves or inferior quality berries. The berries remain whole for the most part which allows for the whole berry to ferment, a process Kirilly’s traditionally favoured, but without the stalks, which can add their own type of tannin when included in the ferment.
It spent 10 days on skins including 2 days of cold soak, before pressing to barrel with 25% new oak (each year Kirilly adds a new French, 36 months seasoned, medium toast barrel to her collection). The wine spent 12 months in barrel, was racked a few times and sulphured and then spent another year in bottle before being released.
Tasting Notes:
“Deep, bright ruby in colour, the nose is of dark red fruits - morello cherries and mulberries. The French oak is well integrated, adding lovely mocha, spicy roundness. The palate is soft and generous, medium bodied with fine glossy tannins making this a very approachable wine.” Kirilly Gordon, Bowerbird Wines