Place of Changing Winds Harcourt Marsanne Roussanne 2022

Place of Changing Winds is owned and lead by the prolific Robert Walters Chief wine buyer at Bibendum and author of the award winning Bursting Bubbles: A Secret History of Champagne. It's a single site in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria that Walters and his team began planting in 2012. Walters had searched for almost five years to find the right location, which turned out to be in a hamlet called Bullengarook, on the southern foothills of Mount Macedon, about one-hour north-west of Melbourne. To the best of our knowledge, this area was called Warekilla by the original inhabitants, the Wurundjeri people. This means ‘Place of Changing Winds’, a characteristic of the site that still holds true today.

‘No compromise, no regrets’ is the motto here. Rob has drawn on his years of experience observing many of the great growers of the world and translating to his setting what he considered to be best practices. The methods applied are labour-intensive and designed to maximise soil and vine health and foster a strong connection between the plant and its environment—and thus realise an expression of place in the resultant wines. 

The elevation is high (500-plus metres), and average rainfall is typically between 700 and 900mm. It’s a genuinely cool site with cold nights and a massive diurnal range, which Pinot and Chardonnay love. In summer, the range can often exceed 20°C or more, which leads to heavy morning dews and strong frosts. The soil is eroded quartz, sandstone and quartzite over clay and silt, as well as some eroded basalt from a rare form called mugearite. The bedrock is over 400 million years old and was mostly formed at the bottom of the ocean in the Ordovician Period. In simple terms, it is rocky, gravelly soil, historically known as Bullengarook gravel.