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Wine Information
Curly Flat is owned and operated by Jenifer Kolkka and Phillip Moraghan. Everyone in the Curly Flat vineyard and winery team is focused on producing the best wines possible from their carefully selected and nurtured site. The team at Curly Flat has an interesting, diverse and complementary skills set. While some now have formal viticulture and wine science qualifications, all have practical skills acquired in different backgrounds – Robert the builder, Lisa with a degree in communication studies, Matt a civil engineer, Ben a quality control officer, Jenifer did accounting, and it goes on. Interestingly, the average length of service of the vineyard team now exceeds seven years – most unusual, yet very valued.
Phillip came from a farming background but strayed into the world of accounting and finance before coming back to his roots. He had a long held interest in wine, and developed affection for Pinot Noir while doing post-graduate business studies in Switzerland. This affection grew as he spent increasing amounts of his scarce spare time in Burgundy, as did his determination to return to Australia and grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Fortunately, Jenifer shared that vision.
There are no passive or external financial investors; hence we do not have to compromise on quality to meet financial targets of others. An example of this culture of not compromising quality was our decision to declassify the entire vintage of 2000 Chardonnay because it did not reach our benchmark scores – this was the genesis of our ‘junior’ label, Williams Crossing.
Phillip and Jeni’s mentor in establishing the vineyard and early winemaking experiences was Macedon Ranges pioneer Laurie Williams of Flynn and Williams.
Vuosikerta 2002
Australia 2002 was a cold year with plenty of winter and spring rain to support the vines for the year. Summer and fall were completely dry. The summer was the coldest on record. Fall had one of the warmest endings. All of this meant that we had very low yields of grapes and produced high quality wines. The grapes had a very good scent (nose and taste, more floral than usual), good concentration and good acidity. A great year for whites and maybe a few reds. However, it was important to pick the grapes very ripe and keep the nitrogen to a minimum.