The winery and vineyard
Cushendall is a boutique winery and vineyard in the cool climate area of Taralga.
With a climate similar to Burgundy in France, our vineyards are planted to the varieties made famous by that and nearby regions:
- Pinot Noir - the elegant 'aristocrat' of the world of wine excels in the climate and exhibits the characteristic flavours and aromas of plum and rhubarb.
- Chenin Blanc - the grape of the Loire Valley, a delighful crisp white wine with hints of passionfruit and green apple skin.
- Gamay - the grape of Beaujolais - a lovely light lunchtime red, exuberant, and youthful cherry and confectionary flavours.
- Riesling - steely and lean as you would expect from these cool climate plantings.
The flavour intensity of our fruit is high as a result of slower ripening, and the "Bannaby Mist" on our Glenarm vineyard assists in the crucial slow ripening process.
Our grapes are hand-picked as vines are high-trellissed and sloping to gain the best growing in our 'terroir', then crushed in a hand press at our Taralga winery.
Limited supplies of current vintages are available. For mail orders and enquiries, please contact us. Vignerons Lic. No. 24009069
Taralga - a cold climate grapegrowing district
The Taralga climate is definitely a cold-climate grapegrowing district.
It is indeed very suitable for the growing of Pinot noir and Chardonnay, the great grape varieties of Burgundy, which makes it an exciting region.
However, there are other varieties for which it is also well suited, which we have chosen to plant, simply because we like them.
So we have also planted Riesling, as mentioned above, Chenin blanc (the grape for Vouvray sparkling wines from the Loire), and Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais.
Unlike many of those districts in Australia where there are plantings of the latter variety, we believe that we have both the right cold climate and the soils.
We think it a good strategy to plant such varieties as these latter on this basis, simply because, in the long term, it may well be that the district is found to be far more suited to these or other similarly capriciously planted varieties than the so-called "noble" varieties.
Similarly, while the search for the ideal grape for the Taralga district continues down the years, we're happy to let our Pinot noir wines promote this district as having a great climate for Pinot.
This sort of search is one of the exciting aspects of living on the Great Dividing Range. There are so many micro- and meso-climates as yet unexplored for activities such as grapegrowing that real pioneering can still be done in what are otherwise old established grazing districts of Australia.
Remember that the Great Divide is a large and unique region. One could say that, like the Cote d'Or, which is Burgundy, it is a rather unexceptional range of low hills running in a north-south direction.
Unlike the Cote, it is much, much longer, so has a huge potential for the production of all sorts of different styles of wines.
Paul Miskelly, 2004
Contact us
Links
- Taralga's the toast of Europe Goulburn Post 21/9/2007