Hunter-Gatherer's Brian Martin on vintage 2020
Brian Martin from Hunter-Gatherer in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges was the fourth winemaker to join us in The Wine Loop. We caught up with him this week to hear how vintage 2020 has been in this challenging world and what it has looked like for his wines including Riesling, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and friends…
Q. How has this vintage shaped up for you? In particular, with the weather and fire conditions across Victoria as well as the current coronavirus situation– how has this impacted Hunter-Gatherer Vintners?
What a crazy year 2020 has been so far. Our hearts go out to our colleagues in fire affected regions who have had damage to their vineyards or lost their crop this year due to smoke taint.
While we were lucky to have any grapes to pick this year, unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of them on the vines to pick. Crop levels were down significantly in our Pinot and Chardonnay due to poor fruit set, caused by excessive heat and wind during flowering in December. The quality of what we picked though is really good this year. One crop which did well in both quantity and quality was our Riesling, as this variety flowers a little later than Pinot and Chardonnay and missed the unfavourable weather.
As for the impact of Covid-19, we closed our cellar door in mid-March and this combined with the shutdown of the hospitality sector has certainly put a dent in our sales - but we’ve had many supporters who have purchased our wine on-line which has been fantastic.
Q. In a time where we are staying home more often than not, what gems can we expect to find for delivery in your online store?
We’ve got some great deals on our online store on all our wines (www.hgwines.com.au/winestore) with some extra good deals on our Prosecco and our Sparkling Shiraz.
Q. 2020 is definitely already turning out to be a hard one to predict. But what new releases and plans does this year have in store for Hunter-Gatherer?
We’ve been experimenting with a little skin contact and some wild barrel ferment in our dry Riesling this year and we are introducing a new Riesling this year with some residual sugar left in it. We taste all the vats daily during fermentation and towards the end of the ferment were loving the sugar/acid balance in one of our Riesling batches so we decided to stop the ferment early, leaving 40 grams per litre of residual sugar in it.
We’re developing a big following for our Heathcote Sangiovese and we’ve made another cracker this year, again using fruit from the Chalmers vineyard.
Looking forward to catching up with Brian later this year. More vintage updates coming soon, along with 2020 event news!