Whilst the success of wine production can, in part, be attributed to what the French call Terroir (the combination of soil, site and immediate environment of the vineyard), to that must be added the people involvement - the annual and long-term management practices and all decisions on variety, clones, rootstocks, trellis systems that combine to produce the finest of wine grapes.

The choice of trellis systems sets Curly Flat apart from most vineyards.  The trellis is horizontally divided and two types are used - the main type is the Lyre trellis (shaped like a Lyre bird's tail) - the other type is Geneva Double Curtain (GDC).  Divided trellis systems, particularly the Lyre, are more costly to construct and manage, thus rarely used.  Only manual harvest is possible thereby greatly reducing its attraction to larger more commercial wine concerns.  The vine canopy has two curtains of foliage.  This allows sunshine inside the trellis walls to maximise exposure to sunlight, facilitating better ripening, improved wine colour, increased intensity of flavour and reduced plant disease risks.

In choice of vines, Curly Flat follows the European approach of selected multiple clones of each variety to gain increased complexity; to date Curly Flat has five clones of Pinot Noir and four of Chardonnay.  Curly Flat was selected by the Victorian & Murray Valley Vine Improvement Association to be one of only two Victorian mothervine custodians of the most recently introduced Burgundy Pinot Noir clones, 114 and 115.

Education, training and experience are core to having the necessary skills to manage the growing and making of fine wines.  Our vineyard is tended by a dedicated team of five full time vineyard staff suppoerted by numerous part-time and casual staff.  Several of our vineyard staff are studying, or have completed, apprenticeships in Viticulture.  In addition to the team of five, Phillip, Jillian (our Winery Manager who also has an degree (with Honours) in Ag. Science). Jeni's brother, Robert, who has been with since the first planting is the vineyard manager.

While we have a wealth of knowledge and experience in our vineyard team, Curly Flat retains a viticulture consultant, Ben Rose of Performance Viticulture, to broaden our knowledge and to continually subject our activities and ideas to external review.

Our Winery Culture
The foundation of our winery culture is the belief that it is the grapes from the vineyard that are the primary determinant of final wine quality.

In essence, good wine comes from good fruit - the better the fruit, the more the winemaker becomes a custodian of nature's handiwork.  Thus the winery culture at Curly Flat is one of guidance of the natural ingredients from the vine to wine, with minimal intervention.  Nothing integrates the constituent parts of wine as well as Mother Nature.

Every effort is directed to growing fruit that will convert to very good (sometimes great) wine.

The 2002 vintage was the first to be processed in our gravity based winery at Curly Flat Vineyard.  The multilevel winery features a barrel hall cut into the hill, sited under the grape receival area and crush pad.   The roof of the barrel room forms the floor of the crush pad.  This constuction incorporates the first use of Bonacci Beams - a revolutionary patented building system developed by leading structural engineer and friend, Nat Bonacci of Bonacci Group.  This structure uses a folded plate steel shell as the formwork for the concrete beams and the shell doubles as reinforcement for the beam. 

None of our fruit is actually crushed - the Pinot Noir is a combination of whole bunch and de-stemmed fruit, while the Chardonnay is all whole bunch pressed.  Both practices follow the traditional minimalist approach to these two classic varieties.

Phillip & our Winery Manager Jillian are now guiding the grapes through the vinification process, but with close assistance of advisory services from one of Australia's leading winemakers and acknowledged pinot noir expert.

The vintages prior to 2002 were made in association with a neighbouring winery with significant labour and equipment input from Curly Flat.  Our relentless pursuit of excellence in the vineyard requires complementary attention in the post-harvest winery processes, hence it was inevitable that we would build our own winery to achieve full control of all winery processes at Curly Flat.

As in viticulture, education, training and experience are considered essential.  Phillip's early winery experience was under the tutelage of his mentor Laurie Williams of Flynn & Williams. Building on that, each year Phillip works vintage in the Northern hemisphere with the most recent being the 2002 vintage working with Luisa Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards in Oregon's Willamette Valley.  There Phillip worked with super premium, small lot Pinot Noir in a manner closely aligned to what we are doing at Curly Flat