Collection: Hersey Vineyard

Just like the Italians, we must address the elephant in the room: Hersey Vineyard is located in Kuitpo, a region within the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. However, it has a little corner of our website as it is our family vineyard. The wines are made by one of my best mates, Damon Koerner, and me. We first started working together in 2011 at The Lane Vineyard, and the rest is history!

In 2012 my parents, Garry and Melinda, bought a vineyard in Kuitpo in the Adelaide Hills. It was planted solely to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay by Ursula Pridham, the first qualified female winemaker in Australia. She had Marienberg at the time, which was based in McLaren Vale. The fruit had various purchasers, the most famous being Penfolds, who would take the Chardonnay for Yattarna. As a result of age, the then custodians, the Pridhams, retired and mothballed the vineyard for numerous years before we took on the task of bringing it back to life. 2014 was our first crop, just 1.5 tonnes from 3.5 hectares of Chardonnay. While obviously not commercially viable at that yield, the Chardonnay it produced was magic, absolutely stunning, with a fierce line of acidity and minerality.

We produce an 'Estate Chardonnay' and an 'Estate Pinot Noir'. The Pinot Noir isn't particularly complex, but in keeping with the region it has plenty of flesh and is more than agreeable. The Chardonnay, on the other hand, is very good. It is age-worthy and holds its own amongst very reputable wines from around the globe. That being said, the Pinot Noir flies out the door and the Chardonnay just plods along!

The Chardonnay is hand-picked over multiple passes through the vineyard, resulting in fruit with varying levels of ripeness and acidity. The wine is pressed to stainless steel tanks and settled overnight before going to barrel on its lees. The barrels are 400L Chassin barrels, of which 20% are new. There is NO batonnage but full malolactic fermentation. The key to our winemaking philosophy is to never chase flavour. If we can sense a winemaking character during production, that is fine, but if we can taste a flavour or character from the winemaking, we have gone too far. Flavour will always build with time, but you can never regain balance. Some might see full malo as a method of chasing flavour, but in my eyes it is about chasing structure. Pick the fruit early enough that the acidity is prominent and let the wine go through full malo; it will translate the minerality and structure more so than a wine without malo. As for batonnage: my high school was next to a Weet-Bix factory, and an Adelaide Hills Chardonnay that has had lees work will always remind me of Weet-Bix on a 40 degree day. Even handled lightly, the lees character will build over time to resemble soggy Weet-Bix. It is a big no from me.