Giaconda
Giaconda is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery — Campbell Mattinson's highest honour.
From a four-hectare hillside in Beechworth, Rick Kinzbrunner has spent over 40 years making some of Australia's most sought-after wine.
In the early 1980s Rick Kinzbrunner – who knew the lands of north-east Victoria well – walked up a hill in the Beechworth wine region, nearby to the Victorian Alps, and started the Giaconda legend. From this distance it looks as though he did so with ease, but given the toughness of the granite-strewn soils here, and the dryness of the summers, and the intense cold of winter, it must have been anything but. Kinzbrunner though had the belief, and the knowledge. Neither has ever wavered. His estate is small (four hectares) in size, but is huge in presence, both in the glass and by reputation.
Giaconda is renowned for its chardonnay, most famously, and most astonishingly. It’s made in an intense, complex, arresting style, oblivious to fashion; every release of this wine, it seems, comes out with all guns blazing. Put it this way: if ever a wine was the master of its own domain, it is Giaconda Chardonnay. The past four vintages, on The Winefront site, have scored 97+, 97+, 98 and 98. Such a run of scores is almost unrivalled on The Winefront site; only Penfolds Grange might come close. Grange achieves this level with the resources of a corporate giant, drawn from vineyards across an entire State. Giaconda does it from a tiny patch, off its own back.
And it’s been doing it since the 1980s. Along the way it has become one half of the dynamic duo of Australian chardonnay: Leeuwin Estate, and Giaconda, both of them single vineyard releases, by independent producers, and both of them reliably stellar. (More recently this duo has, arguably, been joined by Oakridge, to make a trinity).
Chardonnay will forever lead the Giaconda charge, but its nebbiolo continues to improve, and to impress. It is now a wine of note. Along the Giaconda journey of the past 40 plus years there have been high points too of roussanne, shiraz, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon (the latter now long gone). When Kinzbrunner and his team sets its mind to something, excellence follows. The quality at Giaconda is so relentlessly good, it’s imposing.
If there’s any such thing as a living legend of Australian wine, Rick Kinzbrunner both qualifies, and has repeatedly franked his right to such a title. His is a legend of the unresting kind. He grows his chardonnay out of the same rock-strewn soil that once provoked a gold rush. Every year, when Kinzbrunner releases his latest produce, he provokes a rush anew.
Giaconda Chardonnay reviews on The Winefront.
Giaconda Nebbiolo reviews on The Winefront.
There was a morning in 2019, when I lived in north-east Victoria, when I drove from Wangaratta up to the town of Beechworth, as a thunderstorm rolled in. I stopped by the side of the road and snapped a pic of the Giaconda vineyard, just as the rain started to come down. You can see the drops hitting the water, and some lens blur courtesy of water on the lens. It’s a pretty dull photo but it captures a moment, of a kind. We’re looking at a south-facing slope there.
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