A gorgeous Cellar Door beckons at the end of the main street in Healesville, Victoria. This gem of the Yarra Valley is a Must-Do on your visit to the region. The location is 314 Maroondah Highway, and this is the Cellar door of Giant Steps. Currently open from 11am – 4pm Thursday to Monday and I’d recommend booking as space is limited and the Cellar Door manager takes a great pride in giving time and presence to maximise your visit. It’s a lovely space, with a cute-as-a-button courtyard, and you can choose your spot to settle down to a regional overview tasting ($10) or take a look at the Single Vineyard wines for $20 a tasting. Of course, I did almost all of it – just for your benefit!
Before you get to the single vineyard wines, Giant Steps do two expressions of ‘regional’ Chardonnay. The first – 2022 Yarra Valley Chardonnay sees about 15% new oak, and sets the tone for what’s to come – with a crackling acidity, and a balance of stonefruit and citrus flavours with a savoury backbone. The finish is complex, dry and lengthy. The 2021 Clay Ferment Chardonnay is a more fruity expression, but also showcases a bit of lees-influenced minerality. Both of these have just a nudge of reductive flintiness in the nose and through the palate.
One of the Single Vineyard wines – the 2021 Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay has a unique clone – Gin Gin – and has distinctive notes of spicy ginger (not sure if that’s the clone’s signature) and a creamy lemon curd spread across the back of the palate – with a similar silky texture to boot. Quite weighty and concentrated. 2021 Tarraford Vineyard Chardonnay is from a cool sloping site, and has a noticeably saline acidity that gives drive and line through the palate and highlights the minerality present. However, the fruit here is well-rounded and quite unctuous – the most generous example on show so far. A very good wine. My last of the whites – 2021 Wombat Creek Vineyard Chardonnay is probably as distinctive as the Sexton. It’s quite ethereal, with a perfumed, elegant nose and then a real pop of fruit. Not just in the usual citrus-peach arena, but almost a cranberry, white cherry nibble of red flavours coming through.
Trotting over to reds – which in Yarra will often mean Pinot Noir – the 2022 Yarra Valley Pinot Noir shows a lovely whole-bunch winemaking character that’s very appealing. Brightly perfumed and broad on the palate with that mild, stalky, bitter note a good foil to some ripe cherry flavours. 2021 Primavera Vineyard Pinot Noir is grown on fertile red volcanic soils in the Upper Yarra at Wooli Yarrock. Quite a few savoury flavours bleed through the sweeter fruits – with tamarillo and rhubarb featuring in my tasting notes. Also, some good use of new oak and a maker who’s not afraid to present some grippy tannin in their Pinot! 2021 Sexton Vineyard Pinot Noir has tremendous flow through the palate. Just ripe, rounded and generous. A bit more spice than others, and a touch of orange peel in there too.
The last couple of wines that I tasted take us outside the ‘Chardonnay and Pinot’ combo of the Yarra Valley. First, a wine sourced from Tasmanian fruit – Tassie being very much on-trend at the moment. 2020 Fatal Shore Pinot Noir is from Coal River Valley vineyard, next door to Tolpuddle. It starts smoky, with spice, roasted nuts and mocha characters to the perfume. Then quite brooding and dark into the palate – some lush, dense fruit packed into this one. A final dash on the reds leads to 2019 Harry’s Monster – which in various vintages can be a Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon led blend, with some Petit Verdot (in this year as little as 1%). It’s a terrific Bordeaux style red – cassis, mulberry, espresso, blueberry and cedar get framed by long, chalky tannins and enough oak to give solid structure and balance.
