Eruptions on the Mornington Peninsula 

BY ANGUS HUGHSON | SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Visitors to Melbourne, on Australia’s south-eastern coast, are spoiled for choice. The state capital is not only a mecca for sport, nightlife and fine dining; it is also surrounded by wine regions. No less than four, with their unique climate and terroir, sit less than an hour’s drive from the Central Business District, from almost seaside locations to inland at altitudes of 800 meters.

Melbourne’s vibrant ethnic community, primarily Southern Europeans who immigrated after the Second World War, was a vital, if not the most important, driver of modern Australian wine culture. Victoria had already seen the local populace gorge on the finest produce worldwide thanks to the discovery of vast gold quantities in the nineteenth century. The Grand Vins of Bordeaux, Champagne and Sauternes were in particularly high demand.

There were also early aspirations for vignerons, with the first vineyards planted around Melbourne in the 1830s, but phylloxera, which arrived forty years later, ended that. It would take almost a century for them to return. As the nation’s unofficial food and wine capital, a crown that is only recently being challenged, it was inevitable that Melbourne’s pulsing culture would also be the chrysalis for a fine wine industry. The Yarra Valley was the natural choice for the first tentative steps back into winemaking, where vineyards had been first planted in the nineteenth century. I will explore the Yarra Valley in more detail in an upcoming report. There is another region also worth a deep exploration: the small but mighty Mornington Peninsula.

Main Ridge Estate's Half Acre Pinot Noir block was planted in 1975.

Wine Gardens

Mornington is not a place where you will find a sea of vines, rolling landscapes or hectare after hectare of neat rows. It is much more common to find isolated plots that optimize what can be pretty complex geography. It is a reasonably large GI of over 700 square kilometers, but there are fewer than 1,000 hectares under vine, around one-fifth the size of Chablis. But that should not be seen as a lack of confidence or intent. Mornington is a relatively young wine region, with strong competition for land and low yields that are attractive only to the most quality-conscious vignerons. In addition, the geography is far from uniform, which makes parts of the Peninsula unsuitable for fine wine production. This is not the place for broad-scale agriculture. It is quite the opposite, made up of 200 vineyards, mainly small plots, farmed by 60 wineries.

The Mornington Peninsula is almost postage stamp size in an Australian context, dwarfed by the also relatively small Margaret River, at 6,000 hectares. Yet despite its size, it is also one of the nation's leading homes of sophisticated and stylish Chardonnay and, particularly, Pinot Noir. This is due to a highly unique range of factors coming together, including climate and soil, as well as the caliber of practitioners drawn to its location. The stunning beauty and the breezy seaside lifestyle are also strong motivators.

For Australian vignerons with hopes of crafting great Chardonnay and/or Pinot Noir, a location close to the country’s southern coast is almost obligatory. The cooling Great Southern Ocean is necessary to provide relief during the summer depths. The Mornington Peninsula is blessed with significant bodies of water on three sides as it juts out into the ocean, bordered by Port Phillip Bay on its western flank, Western Port to the east and Bass Strait, which reaches across to Tasmania. Humidity plays a part in reducing water stress. It’s a rare trifecta that helps retain the flavor and perfume delicacies of Pinot Noir. But that exposure is also a double-edged sword. Spring can be a time of unsettled weather as warmer influences from the continental land mass meet the cool ocean currents. It can make for a difficult flowering. In 2020, overall yields dropped to under two tonnes per hectare. The average is close to five, similar to what is typically found in Grand Cru Burgundy.