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History

My name is Drew Noon. My wife Raegan and I independently own and run our small vineyard and winery in McLaren Vale, South Australia. I grew up on this property and my father David established our family wine business in 1976. The winemaking duties have been under my guidance from the vintage of 1996. We only make red wines. We have always produced full bodied styles that are made by hand (Noon family hands) and that is still the case today. We work with small vineyard blocks, so our wines are only produced in small quantities.

When I was younger I didn't fully appreciate what we had here but now I regard our old vines as precious and invaluable and we work hard to preserve them.

The bush training method we use to grow our vines requires much more hand labour than modern vineyards. They need individual attention so most of the vineyard work is done by hand from winter pruning through to harvest. Our small scale makes this hand tending possible.

I also now appreciate the importance of producing our wines in a way which is sustainable. In my youth this was not part of my conscious motivation. Except for the seasonal differences, our environment seemed unchanging and robust. Now I understand that the way we farm today is very important for tomorrow.

These days we are careful to minimise soil cultivation and the use of sprays so that the health of the soil is maintained or improved over time.

What we do is not all about money. It's a way of life for our family. Rae and I love growing the vines and guiding the wine through maturation and into bottle. We set high standards for ourselves and it's very satisfying work. To be responsible for creating a special part of people's meal table is a great privilege and a responsibility we take very seriously.

We feel lucky to be able to make this our life's work.

Drew (and Rae) Noon.

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Vineyards

We manage our estate vineyards by hand, with as few sprays as possible. The vines are picked and pruned by hand; just copper and sulphur are used if required for fungal disease control, and soil tillage is kept to a minimum.

As a consequence you may notice, if you visit the winery, that the surrounding old vines look a little wild, but proud! There are no trellis wires or irrigation pipes. There is some grass on the vineyard floor and the vines all look slightly different to each other; all individuals. They are not uniform like the surrounding vineyards which were designed for mechanisation.

In the 1930′s, when these vines were planted, machine harvesters were not invented (nor was television!) and there were many vineyards in the area which looked a little “free range” like ours. This method of growing (known as bush training or bush vines) has largely disappeared now because it requires all of the vineyard operations to be carried out by hand. It’s slower, more labour intensive work but it means all of our vines get the individual attention they deserve.

We appreciate the importance of producing our wines in a way which is sustainable and we are members of the Sustainable Australia Winegrowing program.

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Winemaking

No single aspect of serving wine makes or mars it so easily as getting the temperature right.” So says Hugh Johnson in his Pocket Wine Book and I couldn’t agree more. But how good are we at getting it right?

The temperature of white wines is routinely adjusted before we serve them, without even giving it conscious thought. It’s a matter of habit to put our white wines in the fridge ahead of time and an embarrassment to serve them too warm (the fridge is actually too cold but it works ok because they quickly come up to the right drinking temperature in your glass in the warmer weather).

But when it comes to reds, we are typically much less careful. We know they usually taste best at ‘cellar temperature’ and sub-consciously we know that our ‘cellar’ (which is usually just a room of the house) is warmer than ideal. But isn’t that close enough? And what can you do about it anyway?

Well, that depends on how much pleasure you derive from your red wine. A solution is worth finding and fairly easy if the answer is “a lot”!

 

‘Wine cabinets’ are now readily available and not expensive for the small, basic ones which will hold around 30 bottles at ideal serving temperature.

The ideal serving temperature depends on the body and tannin level of the wine. Lighter bodied reds without significant tannin structure (Beaujolais or basic Pinot Noir from a cool climate) are best served cooler, at say 12-14 degrees. We don’t traditionally make many of these styles of red wines in Australia but they are becoming more common.

Fuller bodied reds with significant structure are at the opposite end of the scale and are best served somewhat warmer, as the tannin will predominate at lower temperatures, giving an overly dry aftertaste. We recommend 16-18 degrees for consuming our reds. If these types of wine are served too warm though (a common occurrence I would suggest) they can taste hot from their higher alcohol levels and lack vitality.

As Murray Tyrrell observed more than 40 years ago, in Australia we generally serve our red wines too hot and our white wines too cold. Reds should be at no more than 18 degrees in the glass for the biggest wines and whites should be at no less than 6 degrees for the lightest wines.

Considering the time, effort and money that has gone into getting the wine to your table, it’s worth maximising your enjoyment by serving it at the right temperature. If you’ve not experienced the effect before, try tasting the same wine at two different temperatures only 5 degrees apart and see for yourself. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes.

 

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Inside information

Soils and wine - a mysterious relationship!

We can easily see that the flavour of wine is influenced by the terroir in which it is grown. For example Riesling from Germany tastes very different from Riesling grown in the Clare Valley. The topography of the landscape, the weather, the soil, the vineyard management, local cultures and traditions all have the ability to influence how foods and wines from different places taste. But as we refine our search to identify the most important factors responsible for these differences, we run early on into the problem of trying to understand and quantify the relative importance of soil. This is made even more interesting by the traditional promotion of soil as the basis of vineyard terroir by the French and the appeal of the notion to wine consumers. It’s tempting to associate the stony/mineral flavours of Mosel Riesling with the slate soils the vines grow in. Or the pithy dryness of Chablis with the chalk-rich soil in which it grows. But we cannot explain this relationship yet in scientific terms. There is no known mechanism for how soil could directly influence wine flavour (we can demonstrate an indirect effect via soil physical differences influencing moisture retention which impacts on vine growth but no direct flavour effect).

 

So soil and wine flavour…is there really a link?

McLaren Vale has an exciting project underway to determine districts within the region based on flavour and early indications suggest that soil/geology has a role to play. However this study will require many more years of tasting experience and investigation to be certain.

We have several advantages in conducting this research. One is the diversity of soils/geologies we have within our small region, minimising the effect that other influences such as climate play. Another is the absence of phylloxera (an insect which kills grapevines by attacking their roots, now spread to most wine regions of the world) which allows us to grow our vines here on their own roots, giving the most direct connection possible with the vineyard soil/geology.

 

This could be more important than is generally recognised, perhaps allowing our vines to more readily reflect their terroir and produce wines with a ‘sense of place’, without the confounding effect of rootstocks. Australian wines (generally) have been described as bright in fruit character or ‘bottled sunshine’. Perhaps the absence of rootstocks impacts on the clarity and purity of wines produced here? There is much about the influence of rootstocks which is not known but our feeling is that if you really wish to see the influence of soil on wine then they are a confounding factor which is best avoided. For clarity of site expression, you can’t beat the root system that nature provided.

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