Kooyong

Sandro Mosele has the world at his feet. This former genetics student and employee of the Grollo property development empire is calling the shots for what is perhaps the most exciting new pinot noir and chardonnay project in Australia. Now a graduate of Charles Sturt University, he’s in charge of the vineyard, winemaking and business operations for Chris and Gail Aylward. A couple of property developers who met Mosele at Grollo, the Aylwards own the Kooyong wine label, whose debut last year with the 1999 releases was greeted with justifiable fanfare and recognition.

Priced either side of $40, Kooyong’s wines are never going to be cheap. Their potential and promise does however suggest that the Mornington Peninsula might finally have unearthed a new flagship brand in the top end of the quality spectrum with the volume to satisfy its likely market.

Still enjoying his first full-time job in wine, Mosele started at Kooyong in 1995, two months before the Aylwards bought their 230 acre property on Hunt’s Rd near Balnarring at the northern end of the Mornington Peninsula. Chosen for its comparatively warm Peninsula climate, its yellow clay soils of poor vigour and its gentle north-facing slopes, the vineyard was planted between 1996 and 1998 to its present size of 83 acres. While early plantings were largely established with Scott Henry and Geneva Double Curtain GDC trellises, Mosele has since overseen a total change in preference to vertical shoot positioning, the canopy design most suited to the region. Aside from its tiny pockets of pinot gris and shiraz, the vineyard is exclusively devoted to the Burgundian varieties.

Kooyong’s wine will only be grown and made on the property. Established with 1.5 metre spacings, the vineyard’s 54 acres of pinot noir boasts ten clones in commercial production, including a solid representation from the latest two releases from Dijon. The 27 acres of chardonnay feature seven clones including Mendoza, the backbone of most of WA’s premier chardonnays.

Mosele caps yields at two tonnes an acre or below and keeps separate in the winery all the different combinations of clone and site available to him, fully exploiting what he describes as the ‘free complexity’ his vineyard’s set-up provides him with. His pinot is fermented open, his chardonnay entirely in barrel.

‘I’m not looking for up-front fruit in either of the wines, especially the chardonnay’ he explains. ‘I’m not trying to make squeaky-clean wines, and don’t mind the presence of a few sulphides. I want a more mineral expression of chardonnay, supported by quality French oak and the benefits of lees contact.’ Although some barrels may go through, Mosele sulphurs his chardonnay about half way through six months of battonage to prevent it.

A fine effort from first-cropped vines, the 1999 Chardonnay is stylish, fine and savoury, with genuine complexity and attitude. Earthy, creamy leesy influences work well with restrained citrus fruit and dusty vanilla oak, while it finishes with bright acids.

Similarly, Mosele tries to avoid primary strawberry flavours in his pinot noir, happy to ‘blow off’ some fruit in open fermentation. ‘I prefer structure and longevity, balanced tannins and good oak support’, he says. I want some secondary characters to come through the wine, even if they take time to evolve.’ The grapes are fully destemmed, and Mosele is hoping to use 100 indigenous yeasts for all his wines in 2002.

Again from a first crop, the 1999 Pinot Noir offers spicy and musky pinot flavours of sweet red cherries, with farmyard and gamey complexity. Forward and juicy, it’s fractionally sappy, but should build in texture.

Kooyong’s approach is to sell off any wine that doesn’t meet style or quality expectations. Only a third of the 1999 wine was sold under the Kooyong label, and the label’s production will be capped at a rigorous 10,000 cases in total.

Given the efforts taken at Kooyong to create an admirable resource of diversity and complexity, Sandro Mosele is surprised by his enthusiasm for creating ‘individual vineyard’ wines from special parcels grown within the estate. ‘I’m starting to believe that single parcels can be at least as complex as a blend and that they deserve to be protected. So from the 2001 vintage we have two other pinot noirs and two other chardonnays in the pipeline apart from the Kooyong wines themselves’, he says.

Mosele reckons it will take some time to make the quintessential Kooyong. ‘If we make wine that tastes like someone else’s, we might as well buy their wine’, he says. ‘We don’t have a standard formula and we want to make wine representative of what we do and what the site can produce, which may not necessarily be Australian in style.’ Please login to post comment