Sense of place: High-density wine-growing at Elanto Vineyard
The Burgundy-obsessed Australian wine-grower trying to emulate the nectar of that Pinot Eden is a well-worn trope. But it is one thing to mimic the cellar practices of your idols and quite another to dig down to the root of what makes for memorable, inimitable excellence. And another still to turn that concept into a reality.
Sandro Mosele is the mastermind and co-owner of Elanto Vineyard, a 2019-planted southeast-facing site that is home to 10.6 hectares of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The vines are trained 0.5m from the ground and planted at a density of 11,111 vines per hectare in rows spaced 1.2 metres x 0.75 metres. But this isn’t a numbers game; this is a far-reaching farming equation.
Sandro was a key player in propelling the Mornington Peninsula Pinot scene from age of innocence to captivating 21st century adolescence—an era that has seen prowess with this variety and its beguiling Burgundy playmate, Chardonnay ,soar across Australia’s cooler climes.
Sandro now aims to take everything he’s learned to its apogee, with a comprehensive high-density vision that has taken shape in Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula.
The term high-density (HD) is often used interchangeably with “close-planting” but here entails a more thoroughly holistic approach. Close-planting is far from a novelty here; Bannockburn’s Hooper family planted its Serré Vineyard near Geelong in 1984 and, importantly, has incredibly impressive results to show for it, as has its neighbour at By Farr. Others have followed suit.
Elanto has come to the HD party at a time when the interplay of vineyard factors is better understood and articulated in both Burgundy and overseas, and Sandro’s peninsula quest owes a debt to the Macedon examples of Michael Dhillon at Bindi and Robert Walters at Place of Changing Winds. He also took advice from eminent French soil microbiologist Claude Bourguignon on whether the site had some magic that HD vine-growing could extract and express.
In this video, Sandro shares his insight on the rationale behind this expensive, labour-intensive system of wine farming, highlighting the interconnected steps, the work they entail and the desired result in the wines grown on this patch of land overlooking Western Port in Victoria.
All the stills (bar those featuring actual wine and a conventional-spacing vineyard row) and video imagery here comes courtesy of Pete Rohen, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. They look fantastic. Thanks also to Sandro for his time, and to Anthony Jones of Elanto for arranging this interview.
