Chandon’s operation in Victoria’s Yarra Valley has succeeded in translating the joy of fine sparkling wine to an Australian outpost that has hospitality at its heart.
There is something magical about stepping over hundreds of bottles of bubbly rushing by to receive their golden foil top before being boxed, aged, bought off a shelf, taken to a celebration and opened for no other reason than sheer pleasure and enjoyment.
I am standing on a bridge over the assembly line at Chandon’s production facility in the Yarra Valley. It is by no means the most beautiful part of the winery – that’s the view from the tasting room overlooking autumn-hued vines with the blue-tinged mountain range in the background – yet stepping over the line of bottles filled with sparkling wine feels as close to walking over a rainbow as I can get as an adult. This is the grown-up version of Willy Wonka’s factory.
It is very hard to look away. It is very hard to leave. Only the invitation to taste the finished product can lure me from the mesmerising sight of these bottles of bliss being dispatched.
“Our wines not only have to be delicious, they, have to have a sense of joy,” says Chandon’s winemaking director, Dan Buckle, as he pours me a glass. “Culturally, corks that go pop and sparkling wine are part of celebratory moments and good times. that is not something to lose sight of. Winemaking can get very nerdy, but it is important to imbue as much as emotion as you can into it.”
It is 35 years since French champagne house Moët & Chandon set up its first Australian outpost in the Yarra valley, with the aim of making sparkling wine using the traditional champagne method but doing it with local grapes. Domaine Chandon – as it was then called – was the brainchild of Moët president count Robert-Jean de vogue, who wanted to expand sparkling wine beyond France.
The late de vogue was a decorated world war ii hero and an early proponent of exploring export markets outside his home country. “too many Frenchmen close their shutters,” he said, according to his obituary in the New York times. “I have opened many windows”.
de vogue headed to Argentina in 1979 and set up the first Chandon vineyard in the foothills of the Andes in Mendoza. “it was an extreme move,” says Chandon Australia estate director Susan Caudry of heading that far beyond the borders of champagne. “but they found a spot where they thought they could make really good bubbles.”
De Vogue bought some land, set up the vineyard and did make really good sparkling wine. “wherever we have gone, we have put down roots and cemented ourselves in a location and built out with a long-term intent,” Caudry adds. “that takes quite a lot of confidence but also plenty of courage.”
Next, de vogue went to California and set up a Chandon in the Napa Valley, in 1973. in the same year he established a winery in brazil, and then Moët & Chandon turned its attention to Australia.
The original tasting room, visitors centre and cellar door building.
It hired winemaker Tony Jordon – who was recommended by none other than James Halliday – to scour the country for a perfect spot to make sparkling wine. Jordon came across an old dairy farm called green point in the Yarra Valley, an hour from Melbourne, that had perfect growing conditions.
“There already was some established winemaking here in the Yarra Valley in 1986,” explains Caudry. “the mid-1980s was the third wave of winemaking in the region. vines were first planted in the Yarra Valley in the 1830s and then pulled out by the 1920s. in the 1960s some really famous wine families came in and planted vineyards and it started to grow. we were in the third wave in the 1980s and that is when businesses like ours came into the region.”
The Yarra Valley is a cool-climate region that is perfect for making sparkling wine. Centred on the Yarra River (which is a lot more attractive snaking its way through the picturesque scenery of the area than when it finally makes it to Melbourne), the region is bordered by the Great Dividing Range. This means that the climate and soil changes greatly within the valley and its 130-plus wineries.
“The Yarra Valley is really defined by the ranges,” says Dan Dujic, Chandon’s viticulturist, as we walk through the vines on the 120ha property. “The climate on this side of the ranges is maritime so we are actually influenced by what happens in Port Phillip Bay, and that is some distance away. The ocean keeps things cool and also keeps the climate warmish in winter; it keeps away the frost. If you go over the ranges it gets quite cold and dry, and warmer in summer as well.”
Estate director Susan Caudry.
Chandon has 40ha of the traditional champagne varieties of chardonnay and pinot noir at Green Point, as well as another 150ha of vines at two other vineyards, one in the Strathbogie Ranges, 150km north, and another at Whitlands High Plateau, near the King Valley. Both are located at a higher elevation, and it even snows in winter. The vines are grown in traditional style and hand-pruned every year – a painstaking process across 190ha.
“That is our big labour for the year, but it does give us real consistency,” says Dujic. Chandon machine-harvests its grapes but it is not done by robots – yet. “I am looking forward to the robots,” laughs Dujic at the mental image I conjure up. “That will happen one day, but at the moment the machine is like an inverted U-shape that goes over the vine and the beaters shake it until the grapes fall off. The advantage is we get to harvest in the middle of the night when it is really cool. We don’t want to do it during the day in the hot sun.”
The grapes are pressed immediately after picking, the juice is blended, fermented, and then placed in bottles with yeast and sugar to create the bubbles. This process, known as méthode traditionnelle, has been perfected over centuries in Champagne and involves the bottles being riddled – placed on racks at a 35-degree angle and turned frequently by machinery – to help the yeast settle in the neck. The yeast is removed via a freezing process, and then the wine bottles get a cork and are packaged up and aged for at least 12 months, before making their way to bottle shops, bars, and restaurants.
Winemaking director Dan Buckle.
Chandon, in the Yarra Valley released its first vintage in 1989. The year before, it had finished restoring the original 1880s homestead on the property and spent millions building a cellar door, a visitors’ centre, and a tasting room with one of the best views of the Yarra Valley (it arguably still is). In a fairly innovative move at the time, Jordon prioritised hospitality and the experience of the visitor, offering tastings not standing up at a bar but seated with a platter of cheese and biscuits.
“I think Tony was quite visionary and he had seen the success of the Californian winery, which was up and running with a really significant hospitality aspect. There were already fine dining restaurants in the Napa Valley in the 1970s and 1980s,” explains Caudry. “To take that concept of hospitality and food and bring it here, that was actually really unusual at the time, not just having a cellar door.”
The visitors’ centre.
It was unusual enough to lodge in my teenage memory. Having grown up in the nearby Dandenong Ranges with a mother who had emigrated from England, we often took overseas visitors to the wineries of the Yarra Valley. The only one I liked, as I was too young to taste the wines, was Chandon, as it came with a platter of food, a place to sit and an incredible view. While I was clearly not the target audience, being the non-drinking kind, the ethos of Chandon remained the same – it was about the experience and the enjoyment of the consumer, not just going through the motions of tasting multiple wines, reading the sometimes-incomprehensible tasting notes, and spitting in a bucket.
The restaurant offers a three-course seasonal “feasting” menu.
“It says something about the business mindset, and that was to be inclusive and not exclusive,” says Caudry. “So much of wine is excluding. I think we have always been strong in the inclusive element and hospitality has always been a part of that.”
Since my visits in the 1990s and 2000s (including a mortifying one where as a newly minted P-plater I had to drive my increasingly happy parents and relatives around the wineries for the day), the hospitality offering at Chandon has changed quite a bit. The original tasting room, visitors centre and cellar door building were renovated by interior design firm Foolscap Studio in 2018. The revamp was inspired by fizzing bubbles, popped corks and colours from the vineyard, and included nods to a French bistro aesthetic. Booths and banquettes were made from materials such as aged leather and green velvet, and there are brass light fittings and a stunning marble bar counter. The refit has taken out several restaurant and bar design awards. “They did a beautiful job,” says Caudry.
The revamped interior
The restaurant is also now under the helm of executive chef Joshua Smyth, who offers a three-course seasonal “feasting” menu that uses the best of local produce and includes delicious dishes such as grilled zucchini with marinated Yarra Valley feta (made just up the road), chardonnay-cured ocean trout, and an incredible Eton mess made with Chandon-macerated strawberries (plain sober strawberries will never be good enough again). All accompanied by multiple glasses of sparkling wine and that extraordinary view overlooking the vineyard and the hills and mountains of the Great Dividing Range.
“We wanted to give people an experience that wasn’t the same as everywhere else,” says Caudry, as we sit on the restaurant patio and sample the best of Smyth’s menu, the sparkling wines on offer, and as a few other side projects Buckle and his team have been working on.
“The pleasure has to be there,” adds Buckle about the experience of sparkling wine. “I am always thinking, how do I get that in a bottle, that sense of relaxation and excitement that happens in a moment?”
Sitting in that very moment, with a glass in hand, soaking up the late afternoon sunshine as it sets on the golden-leafed vineyard laid out before us, I think he – and Chandon – have it in the bag.
