As Graeme says, winemaking is not all that dissimilar to making a fruit cake; ‘good ingredients, a guiding hand and get the timing right’. He also says that winemaking is 20% winemaking, 80% cleaning up!
Ferments are conducted in open stainless steel fermenters, where they are hand plunged until such time as they are deemed ready to be pressed.
The traditional Shiraz Cabernet, Graeme’s Blend, is matured in 60% fine grained American oak, 40% French. Everything else in high quality, fine grained French oak. Malo-lactic fermentation occurs naturally in spring creating wines with softer acid and more complexity.
All of the reds are of exemplary quality and have the power to age gracefully. Indeed the 1980 Shiraz Cabernets are still drinking beautifully.
Graeme Leith has been the winemaker ever since the first vintage, now lost in the mists of time.
Graeme first became acquainted with wine, as did so many other Melbournians, with the odd bottle of Rutherglen red purchased from Jimmy Watson’s in Lygon street Carlton. But Graeme really became fascinated by the product of the grape in Perugia, in 1960, where he was attending the university for foreigners doing a three month course in Italian language.
Every Thursday evening he and his friends would eat at a little trattoria, the food was good and the wine was sublime; but one night the wine was very ordinary. 'Where’s the good wine?', they asked, to be told that the barrel had run out, this wine was from the vineyard next door. How could they be so different?
A short trip on the Lambretta established that it was so: neighbouring vineyards, one producing good wine, and one bad.
The question was why? And so the first seed was sown, and the first step of a journey into the alchemy of wine; turning bunches of grapes into that magical, constantly changing and always fascinating beverage, wine.
When the chance came, he and partner Sue Mackinnon seized it, planted their vines at Kingower, and the journey continued in earnest. They complemented their winemaking with the growing of organic vegetables and the intention was to make a Shiraz Cabernet blend, with as little chemical input as possible, along with a few small batches of whites. Working for a vintage at the Laira vineyard at Coonawarra convinced Graeme that good fruit goes obligingly through the process of turning itself into wine; all you’ve got to do is hold its hand or in the case of Pinot Noir assist it with clean feet!
The first wine, a glorious concentrated red, had too little chemical input, no sulphur was added as a preservative and the wine had a very short life span. From then on all wines have had minimal sulphur additions to keep them alive and well, as Graeme accepted that the Romans had it right two thousand years ago when they burned sulphur in their amphorae. Unirrigated, ripe fruit, traditional methods of hand plunging in small stainless steel fermenters and hand presses cranking down the ‘cake’ into the night was the formula for the next twenty years, and many superb wines have been produced.
Some more sophisticated wine making equipment has been added over the last ten years or so, including an air bag press, and they know they’re making wines as good as, or better than the 1982 Shiraz Cabernet, the first wine Passing Clouds showed, the first gold medal, a wine that is still alive though wearying after 25 years.
As Cameron takes over the winemaking he is upholding these philosophies, tradition is an important part of a winery such as Passing Clouds. Modern theories are being used (sparingly) – particularly with the higher percentages of Chardonnay and Pinot from Daylesford. Cameron is having success with some new approaches in the winery, such as barrel fermenting Pinot, the use of as many whole berries/bunches as possible and carbonic maceration.