Giaconda Roussanne Estate Vineyard 2023

The Estate Vineyard Roussanne is Giaconda's most recent and most surprising addition — a wine that arrived without fanfare with its maiden 2022 vintage and immediately announced itself as one of the most compelling expressions of the variety produced anywhere outside the Rhône Valley. The variety is planted on Giaconda's warm north-facing amphitheatre block in Beechworth, and is steadily improving as Rick and Nathan Kinzbrunner learn how to manage the new site and experiment with fermentation and barrel regimes — gradually finding the best vineyard management practices and crop level to bring power and concentration while maintaining refinement. The same philosophy applied across the entire estate governs the Roussanne: indigenous yeast fermentation, minimal sulphur, no filtration, gravity flow, and ageing in French oak in Giaconda's granite maturation cave — the terroir doing the heavy lifting, the winemaking stepping back to let it speak. 

Intensely aromatic, displaying notes of verbena, musky pear, lychee, yellow peach, pure honey and subtle herb garden nuances, complemented by hints of quartz and minerality — rich, textured and wonderfully buoyant on the palate, with flavours of ripe pear, yellow peach, manuka honey and delicate spice, the palate combining remarkable viscosity with chalky mineral textures creating both generosity and precision. Long, fresh and highly persistent, revealing layers of flint, green lime, star anise and mineral complexity at the finish — decadent yet controlled, vibrant acidity providing exceptional balance. Andrew Caillard MW awarded the 2024 a perfect 100 points. For a wine only a handful of vintages old, the trajectory is extraordinary — and the allocations already vanish before most people know they exist.