Description
About Garagiste
Garagiste premium Mornington Peninsula wines truly express a sense of the place where they were grown. Focusing on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir we intend to highlight the subtleties of the Peninsula’s different sub-regions with small batches of very limited wines.
Garagiste is the brainchild of Barnaby Flanders.
After leaving Allies Wines in 2003 he embarked on a mission to produce small batch premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay under his own label in his beloved Mornington Peninsula.
Barney loves the sub-regionality to be exploited in Mornington Peninsula, the slight alterations in aspect and soil profile within this small wine producing region provide him with the scaffolding around which he builds his stunning harem of small batch wines.
They are only ever made in small quantities so time is of the essence if you want to explore the world of Garagiste.
While both the Tuerong and Balnarring sites play important roles in the Garagiste story, inevitably it is the Merricks Grove vineyard that stars as the headline act. It was here in 2000, that Barney Flanders first began to cut his teeth as a winegrower. Since day one, he has been in control of every aspect of the Merricks vines—with all the advantages that this brings—and today he governs each step from earth to bottle; still a relatively rare phenomenon in the Australian wine scene.
Merricks Grove was planted in 1994 and is the highest of Garagiste’s vineyards. Predominantly south facing with undulations and variations, the grey sandy loams are marbled with red ironstone, giving Flanders more red dirt than can be found at Tuerong and Balnarring. The grapes also ripen later here, and so most years Merricks is the last vineyard to be picked. All these factors (altitude, volcanic influence, length of season—and likely more) combine to create Garagiste’s finest, most linear and savoury expressions of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
