Gil1
1980
10 November 1980
Chardonnay
PIETER van Gent is striving to make only wines he regards as special for distribution through his de Windmolen (Windmill) Winery.
He buys all his grapes from growers within six kilometres of its Mudgee site and hopes eventually to sell only "one red, one white and the fortifieds".
In Canberra last week to offer his wines to his mail-order and potential customers at the Oak Barrel in Fyshwick, he offered the 1980 chardon nay, a 1980 trebianno, the 1979 shiraz; a home bottling red and his Pipeclay port, muscat and vermouth.
The home-bottling wine is a concession to demand. I did not taste it, my belief being that the wine companies do it so much better than I can hope to, and very cheaply when the quality of wine offered in bottle these days is considered.
Mr. van Gent is excited, and understandably, about the chardonnay.
It is made in the traditional manner and stored in large old wood.
It is not fined and filtered to the extent, of today's wines from bigger makers and the old wood imparts a subtle flavour on top of the quick touch of new American and French oak given earlier.
It has a cool sensation on the palate but with a crisp finish.
It is flavoursome and certainly his "main wine by far".
There are those who think the chardonnay thing is being overdone in Australia now and there is some strength to their arguments.
However, wines with the individuality that this one displays, and especially if one has the patience to wait for it to mature as it gives indications that it will, are well worthy of attention.
There was a trebianno too, but I found it a bit blowsy, probably due to over-ripe fruit. It is fairly sweet and could well prove popular with people gradually working away from the moselle-style wines.
The shiraz has good colour and is a big wine with considerable promise.
It suffered from having travelled too recently, down from Mudgee in the boot of a car in widely ranging temperatures on the day before.
It did develop in the glass, giving further indications that it might be a long-keeper.
The port is made from cabernet, without aged base material and is blended with brandy, which gives it a distinctive softness without it being too spirity. It would be an interesting wine to keep but has already sold surprisingly well in Australia, England and Holland.
This also means that the winemaker has had little opportunity to begin building up stocks of a base material.
The same problem besets his muscat. After the big, rich wines of north-east Victoria, also sampled recently, it is more like a very sweet red wine, but again has an individual character and leaves one wondering what will happen to it in bottle. The qualification is that whatever it is, for some time at least it should be good.
Time prohibited the tasting of the vermouth but the winemaker is pleased with it after having experimented for some time with herbs from Holland. He finds it is gaining an increasing acceptance and sees it as becoming another prestige line for him.
A man with a background in the liquor trade in Holland, going back four generations, Mr. van Gent began his career in Australian wines hosing out casks for Penfolds at Tempe. He was with Penfolds for 11 years before going to Mudgee where he set about confounding the view that the area was not suitable for white wines.
He has since branched again, this time to his own winery, specially designed and built for the Australian (as in Mudgee) conditions and to enhance his view that people visiting wineries should be aware of the connection between the land, the building and the product.
He also shows the inventiveness both of the Australian winemaker and of necessity. Plagued by back trouble but wanting to limit his operation to himself and his family as nearly as possible, he looked for a way to bypass the handling of "hundreds of baskets of grapes coming in for crushing".
He designed and built, from various pieces, a small portable crusher with tank attached, which goes into the field when he has decided when and where to pick.
Consequently what arrives back at the winery is not hundreds of baskets of grapes but one container of juice which is easily pump-injected into his wine-making system2
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1998
Wine Producers
Pieter Van Gent Winery & Vineyard Black Springs Road, Mudgee 28503