2022 Bannockburn De La Terre Pinot Noir, Geelong

The 2022 vintage offers a wine of wildness and prettiness courtesy of the stems and the soils. An intriguing and complex fragrance which draws one back to the glass, with elegance and freshness in the flavours.

De La Terre is a beautiful, sloping vineyard that was planted in 2007 to 10,000 vines per hectare. This density is still very rare in an Australian setting, and results in a natural yield of around 500 grams per vine or less (i.e., Burgundy Grand Cru levels). Like all the vineyards today, it is organically managed and lies right beside the Serré vineyard (although DLT is on the slope and Serré sits on a small plateau directly above). Despite this proximity, both wines are very different, with De La Terre gifting an inkier, wilder and spicier expression of Pinot than Serré. Factors in these differences include the slope on which the majority of the vineyard is planted, the clonal selection (777), and the north-south row orientation rather than the east-west of Serré.