Viticulture

Rocky Passes is a  cool climate vineyard specialising in northern Rhône varieties: Syrah (Shiraz) and Viognier. It sits at the southern end of Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges in the Upper Goulburn Valley winegrowing region.  

The border between the Upper Goulburn and Goulburn Valley regions passes through our property, and the border of the Strathbogie region is about 100 metres away, just over the road.
We are in a very unique position and often refer to our property as “the corner block”.

The Rocky Passes vineyard is at 300 metres above sea level on a gentle north east facing slope.  It has clay loam soil over ironstone buckshot and is at the edge of an mudstone-granite ridge.  We have no salinity problems, although north-west of our property does.

Being small, we are able to treat our vineyard and wine with extra care.  We have used minimal irrigation to establish the vineyard and, although not certified yet, we use organic practices and biodynamic preparations to produce unique quality wines.  We crop at around 2 tons per acre to optimise ripening and flavour, and we prune and pick by hand. Our main preventative against fungal disease is careful canopy management to allow airflow.

All of the vines are on root stock … good insurance against phylloxera which is in vineyards north and south of Whiteheads Creek.  The Syrah (Shiraz) clone is 1654 on Paulsen root stock; and the Viognier is 1103 on Paulsen rootstock.  The rootstock was chosen for drought tolerance.

The Mean January Temperature [MJT] is 21.1 degrees; Heat Degree Days [HDD] is 1510 degrees; average 600mm average rainfall.