De Bortoli Wines

History

De Bortoli Wines is a third generation winery established by Vittorio and Giuseppina De Bortoli in 1928, who emigrated to Australia from Italy. Arriving in Melbourne, Vittorio went to Griffith to do farm work, having a hard time earning enough money to survive, and found other work including at Jones’ Winery.

By 1927 Vittorio saved enough money to purchase a 55-acre farm in Bilbul, with his future brother-in-law Giovanni arrived to help. A grape surplus in 1928 meant Vittorio could not sell his grapes so he made his own wines to enjoy with his family and friends, at the time there was mainly just fortified wines in the market.

The wine making venture expanded and became so successful it become the core business, with De Bortoli one of the first companies to produce dry table wines. Vittorio had three children, Florrie, Deen, and Eola, and the winery survived the Depression and World War II, which because of their Italian heritage they risked losing all they had built.

As the war ended, normality returned and in 1952 a rationing system on alcohol was lifted, causing a consumer boom. On that year Deen joined the family business, with a passion for machinery and new technology available to winemakers, working hard to increase the capacity of the winery. He energetically expanded the company, building and implementing innovations.

During the 1980s Deen and his son Darren made a sweet white wine from botrytised Semillon, and Noble One became Australia’s benchmark sweet white wine. In 1987 the company purchased its Yarra Valley estate and 1990s saw the setup of a large vineyard in the King Valley in Northeastern Victoria.

Deen also oversaw the purchase of a winery and vineyard in Hunter Valley in 2002. Deen lived to celebrate De Bortoli Wines’ 75^th anniversary but died suddenly in 2003. The third generation are the current custodians of De Bortoli.

Environmental Protection

There are numerous measures De Bortoli adopted for environmental protection, including elimination of all sodium based products, recycle waste water to irrigate crops, low energy waste water treatment plant, comprehensive recycling program, composting and mulching in vineyards and biological farming methods. Ultimate goal is to be a zero waste wine company.

De Bortoli has implemented a number of water saving and recycling initiatives in the vineyards, with an upgrade to the waste water treatment facility. Because of the salinity issues, a focus was to eliminate all sodium based chemicals from the production and cleaning processes, making the waste water good to be used for irrigating grain and fodder crops in Bilbul.

At the Yarra site an aerobic biological water treatment plant allows the winery to recycle all the waste water for irrigation purposes. Use of compost and mulch helps retain soil moisture and reduced water requirements by up to 50%. Spreading a layer of hydrated lime over the surface of dams also helped to reduce evaporation of water by 30%.

Biological farming is practiced as the natural fungicides kill beneficial micro-organisms as well as the bad guys, using the compost tea allows the micro-organisms to compete the disease causing ones, improving the health of vines and soil.

Other practices include mechanical weed removal, cover crop to suppress weed, mulching provides the habitat and food source for beneficial insects. In fact, the health of the soils is monitored by counting worms and monitoring their activity.

Noble One

Deen De Bortoli, an admirer of sweet wines from Germany, wanted to try to make a similar style and believed the conditions in Griffith were favorable to experiment, with autumn in Riverina often having long, dry, warm days interspersed with sprinkling of showers and heavy morning dews.

No market for sweet wines at the time, many local growers were reluctant to encourage mould on their grapes. With the surplus of Semillon grapes, the rotten grapes were purchased and the family were on hand to pick the grapes since many pickers had left late in the season. Noble One is now the flagship wine for De Bortoli family.

I have recently tasted the 2009 Noble One and below is my tasting note:

Appearance

Bright and clear, it has deep amber color, with watery rims and legs.

Nose

Clean, with pronounced intensity of citrus fruit of mandarin orange and orange marmalade, stone fruit of apricot, tropical fruit of pineapple, dried fruit of raisin and cooked peach, oxidation notes of caramel, maturity notes of honey. The wine is developing.

Palate

Sweet with high acidity, the wine has low alcohol and full body, demonstrating pronounced intensity of flavors including citrus fruit of orange peel and marmalade, stone fruit of apricot, dried fruit of raisin, maturity notes of honey, kernel notes of roasted almond. The wine has a long finish.

Conclusion

Very good quality Australian botrytis Semillon, with a very intense nose of good complexity, the wine has high acidity to balance the sweetness, making it refreshing and showing a finesse. On the palate it is equally concentrated with also a long finish. It is ready to drink now though can further develop for another 10-15 years.