One of the great things about a day in the Yarra Valley with Australian Wine Tour Co is the sheer variety of the wineries we visit. A typical day tour of four wineries will include sophisticated, highly developed wineries such as Domaine Chandon, with its cutting-edge winemaking refinements, its elaborate, modern dining facilities and sweeping vistas from which to view its parading army of vines. It includes Balgownie Estate, whose luxury spa tempts you to return for an overnighter. And it will also take in wineries for which time seems to have stood still – wineries with a look and ambience that harks back to the 1940s and beyond, and whose focus is on retaining the skills of the past, using equipment and buildings that impress not with their elegant modernity, but their rustic simplicity. And, of course, the quality of their wines. One such is Yering Farm.
Yering Farm is the third stop on a memorable day’s tasting and learning. We started at Punt Road, where our guide gave us our crash course in wine tasting, and went on to a delicious lunch at Balgownie Estate, where slow-cooked beef helped us investigate the merits of one of its full bodied Merlots. It was now time to step into the past.
Arriving at Yering Farm, the unsurfaced driveway off the main road sets the tone of a winery that seems in no great hurry to join the 21st century. As we approach the cellar door past immaculately groomed vines, we experience one of the most agreeable sights rural Australia has to offer – the sharp contrast between perfectly manicured land and the sheds that house the farm’s people and machinery. The old winemaking building that serves as Yering’s cellar door looks as though, rather than being built, it grew there naturally, and over a long, long time. Its vines, on the other hand, betray the obsessive care that makes its wines so prized.
And indeed Yering does go back a long way – to the 1850s, whentwo Scots brothers, the Ryries, acquired 43,000 acres in the Yarra Valley and decided to give it the same name used by the indigenous people – Yering. They were primarily interested in cattle, but planted a few vines. Then the property was bought by Paul de Castella, a founding father of Yarra Valley winemaking, who developed it into a winery respected for its award-winning wines. Respect, though, couldn’t forfend the collapse of the wine industry at the twin hands of the phylloxera mite and world economic depression.
It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that, after several changes of hands, the Rathbone family acquired Yering Farm and began to ascend to the heights of winemaking. In 2008 they secured the services of Willy Lunn, who remains their chief winemaker to this day. Then in 2011 Andy Clarke joined as chief viticulturalist, bringing with him a broad experience of agriculture. Between them they lead a small but dedicated team who use modern computer mapping techniques to aid canopy management in their vineyards, and select the best grapes from the best blocks.
Wisely, they chose to preserve one of the old wine-making sheds as the Yering Farm cellar door, but don’t let its delightful dilapidation fool you – behind it lies some cutting edge viticulture and winemaking that produces stunning vintages that regularly win awards.
With its alluvial duplex clay soil and gently sloping hills, Yering Farm shares the Valley’s characteristic strength as a grower of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes. Its 2013 Pinot Noir won gold at the recent Royal Melbourne Wine Awards. Contemporary viticulture techniques enable them also to produce Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignons of great character, and Spud, our driver-guide, gave us a well-judged taste tour – enough tastes to appreciate the breadth of the Yering Farm offering, but not so many that our palates lost their focus.
As at all the cellar doors on our tour, Yering Farm are happy to take and ship orders at the discounted AWTC price, and we were not the only ones to order a case, before getting back into the bus and heading back from the 1950s to the 21st century, with a visit to the splendid modernity of Domaine Chandon – and some serious bubbles.