Hey July,
July and the continued descent into cold continues our run of some beautiful red wines. This month we’ve sourced something a little bit lighter in body, but just as serious in stature from Geelong.
Our second wine from the Moorabool Valley (we’re looking at you, ‘21 Bannockburn Chardonnay) but the first red: July’s wine is the ‘23 Sutherlands Creek Pinot Noir from Mulline Vintners.
Mulline
Mulline is the creation of two Bens, Mullen and Hine, who set out to showcase exciting single site expressions from the Geelong region with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at its core. Ben Mulline heads up the winemaking and prior to setting up Mulline cut his teeth at the likes of Domaine Dujac, Yarra Yering, Oakridge, Leeuwin Estate, Torbreck & Craggy Range before returning to deep dive into the diversity of Geelong’s terroir whilst at Clyde Park. Geelong is a large GI with a wide diversity of both soil and climate, which is very evident across Mulline’s single vineyard wines which highlight the ‘by the sea’ Portarlington vineyard east of the Geelong CBD exposed to Port Phillip Bay, and the warmer clay-dominant Sutherland Creek vineyard north west towards Ballarat.
The Wine
Arguably Mulline's 'signature' site, Pinot Noir, mix of 5 different clones planted in 1998 from the warmer, drier Sutherland Creek vineyard in the Moorabool sub region. Grey & Brown loams with fragmented Granite.
The wine is made with 20% whole bunches. It spends 8 to 10 days on skins during fermentation, before being pressed off to barrel where it spends 8 months elevage in 30% new oak.
“My favourite block of Pinot Noir that comes into the winery and there is nothing else like it in Geelong. Interplanted clones, and hard to determine exactly what they are as the owners don’t even know, but majority of MV6 from working with this site for 5 years now.
I think this makes the most exciting Pinot in the range. Always higher acid, and really aromatic. I find 20 to 25% whole bunch fermentation on this block has worked the best and with looking at the fruit that comes off this site every year it seems to be where it always sits. The most delicate Pinot and showcases the site perfectly. Close planted and always has a very long ripening period, which gives such delicate and fine tannin, and great fruit complexity. Oak use is very much the spicy/savoury end and medium toast, and very tight grain”
– Ben Mullen