After the unprecedentedly cold and wet 2022-2023 we were interested in what might be in store for this growing season’s turn around the sun. We’ve had a string of cooler and wetter seasons and harvests these last five years, and we’ve been joking with friends that a little El Niño might be a nice treat…

And so it was, we got our little treat – an El Niño year. Its first gift was a severe and fairly peculiar frost in the last week of October, which is the typical week for damaging frosts to hit the Beechworth GI. It was an odd frost though because – and fortunately – no other Stanley vineyard we make wine from was damaged in any way, which is not what you’d expect from a broad advective frost event, which typically clip everyone in the mesoclimate. Thorley however was severely reduced: around two thirds singed off the Chardonnay and Nebbiolo, and half of the Riesling. Curiously, the Syrah was rather unaffected, for which we were grateful.

There was pretty decent rain through much of Spring and early Summer and it looked to be shaping up to be a pretty neutral season, but after new year’s things did dry up properly and remained dry until now (mid-July as this is written). And so, we ended up having a fairly early and quick harvest with reduced cropping levels.

Our altitude means that acids were still quite bright, but we’re also seeing a dialled-up wattage, so to speak in the Beechworth wines due to simple concentration factor. Another unexpected corollary is that our malos (which usually take much of winter to complete) were all complete before the winter solstice. This will mean the racking of the wines occurs some three to four months earlier than usual, and probably bring forward some aspects of their pre-bottling elevage. Most of the 2023 wines in oak completed malolactic fermentation in December 2023 or January 2024. All the 2024 wines in oak are through only six months later – to illustrate this contrast.

Where the 2023 wines are shy, tightly coiled and even perhaps backward, we think the 2024 wines will show a degree of confidence and earlier drinkability for this reason. Looking ahead to when we do release our 2024 wines hough, there will definitely be fewer bottles to snaffle – so you’ll have to be a little quicker to secure your favourites!

~Tess & Jeremy

We were recently included in an article for The Weekend Australian, by Nick Ryan, on May 03, 2024. Ryan talks the reader through how tough the 2023 growing season was in this region and how our 2023 Beechworth regional wines respectfully reflect that circumstance whilst still offering high levels of quality and interest. Read on:

“If Tessa Brown and Jeremy Schmolzer spent any more time in their Beechworth Vineyand, they il probably take root. It's the kind of dedication saner people call obsession. But if you want to make wine on feasibility's fringe, you can't really do less.

You see the results of that hard work in the benign seasons where the wines are notable for their alluring fragrance and finely etched detail. You see it even more in the years when nature slips her hobnailed boots on, lines up the tender bits and delivers a kick. The season that started lethargically in the spring of 2022, crawled through a cool, wet summer and stumbled across a receding finishing line late in autumn 2023 would have many vignerons questioning their life choices. But this is what Schmölzer and Brown signed up for...

Nick goes on to review our 2023 Beechworth Riesling, 2023 Beechworth Chardonnay, and 2023 Beechworth Syrah. You can read the full article here.

In April (2024) we had the wonderful Two Wheeled Somm visit us to explore our Stanley site, and taste the wines. Check out the full video via the link here.

“Could you visit Beechworth and not dream of moving there? This stunning wine region is home to some of Australia's best kept wine secrets. In this episode, Tessa Brown and Jeremy Schmölzer show us what the region is made of.” - Two Wheeled Somm.

For more exciting vineyard visits, taking you all over our great state (and more), please follow the Two Wheeled Somm at his YouTube channel here.

Photo credit: Two Wheeled Somm, April 27, 2024.

The Real Review, reviews around 10,000 wines each year, and we’re excited to see we placed #112 (out of 394) in their Top Wineries of Australia for 2024.

So many wineries are producing wines of outstanding quality, year after year. For us, 2023 was a difficult vintage, with a lot of rain, and cooler conditions extending the season well into May. The wines submitted for this year’s Review were a mix of our 2021 Single Site wines (Thorley, and Brunnen vineyards), and our 2022 vintage wines. Top Rank was achieved by three of our wines: 2022 Beechworth Riesling (6th from 32 in Victoria), 2021 Thorley Riesling (7th from 45 in Victoria), and our 2022 Prêt-à-Rosé (8th from 55 in Victoria).

The Real Review Top Wineries Certificate is awarded to a select group of wineries that consistently produce exceptional wine. The Top Wineries list is a national benchmark that shows where our winery is placed among our peers, year-to-year. To read more about how The Real Review select and rank wineries, click here.

To view the full list of The Real Review Top Wineries Australia 2024, click here.

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We were lucky enough to be selected by Max Allen (Australian Financial Review) in his 20 top drinks of 2023.

Those beverages that he claims “I’ll look back on to remind me of 2023”… See the below exert from the article published November 24, 2023, where Max includes our 2021 Obstgarten Riesling Selection:

“When you look back at your life, what moments come to mind? Milestones of family and friends, births, deaths and marriages, for sure. But what else? Some remember significant sporting moments: the season their team won the flag, or where they were when Sam Kerr kicked that goal. Some think of holidays they took. Others recall memorable meals.

I think about the drinks. I mark my life in bottles and glasses: the first time I tasted Grange (Tony Bilson’s restaurant in Sydney, September 1990); the wine we drank at our wedding (Cope Williams Romsey Brut); tasting the first orange wine made in Australia (by T’Gallant’s Kevin McCarthy, in 2007). So here, for my annual round-up of top drinks this year, I’ve compiled a list of the bottles I’ll look back on to remind me of 2023.”

What Max says about our riesling: “Whereas the Adelina is a fabulous example of the classic Australian dry riesling style, this is a shimmering example of the slightly sweet but dry-finishing riesling style inspired by wines produced in Germany. It is 10 per cent alcohol and contains around 40 grams per litre of grape sugar: bright yellow fruit – crunchy yellow peach, perhaps, or slightly underripe apricot – tumbles across the tongue carried by precise, focused citrussy acidity and a touch of marmaladey Botrytis complexity. Thrilling.”

Read the full article here.

A very foggy day in May in our Thorley Vineyard, Stanley. The image was taken on the same day, only a few ours apart!

We remember telling anyone who asked about the 2021-2022 growing season, exactly what we thought: that it made us really work for it, but that what was in the cellar was delicious, so we’re at peace.

Part of what has been tricky about anticipating how climate change might impact us has been recognising… “OK, it’s not just all hotter and drier and earlier, it can be all over the place, and it can definitely be wetter and colder too.” … And that’s exactly how the 2022-2023 growing season played out.

Wine Australia is reporting the smallest crush since the year 2000, 23 years ago! There are a few influences playing into that of course, and an awful lot of grapes simply weren’t picked this vintage in the hot irrigated areas because the market has dried up internationally for cheap red wine. But it was a season marked by near-weekly heavy rainfalls across eastern Australia, and quite extreme disease pressure. For our part, 2022-2023 was cold, almost relentlessly wet, and very, very late ripening, if at all.

I (Tess) personally quite like the challenge of the differing seasons because I’m a viticulturist foremost. We have a host of little tricks up our sleeves for what to tweak as the vines grow, and it makes you feel great to get good results when what you try works well, and particularly when the tools are generally physical and/ or cultural. It’s not all machines and chemicals – especially for us, who are working (uncertified) organically. I thought we were selective in 2022, but in 2023 we needed to be neurotically selective, and it means we ended up with about a 40% reduced harvest. A few varieties like our Thorley Syrah didn’t get there in terms of ripeness (for dry table wine), and a couple of other vineyards that we buy fruit from simply could not supply grapes, due to disease losses. We do feel a deep sense of respect for nature and her patterns, there’s an anchoring safety in having something vastly bigger than us directing our efforts and calling the shots, even if it does make us work hard for the results.

What did we do? We adapted! We are, for the first time, making two sparkling wines. The 2023 Thorley Nebbiolo will be a crémant rosé style, and Lord it smells good out of barrel. The Brunnen Pinot and Chardonnay will make a traditional method sparkling wine, and we presume it will see two or three years on lees before disgorgement. So, the earliest drinkers will see that wine in the Spring of 2026.

The whites we have made like Thorley Chardonnay and Riesling and our popular Prêt-à-Blanc blend have romped through to harvest with little issue beyond picking around some botrytis, and the lighter reds we make from Pinot Noir are wonderfully fragrant and purply spicy. They’re all of course puppies in barrel and tank but all signs are encouraging, and as most reds were picked in May the tannins are so physiologically ripe, they should make quite harmoniously drinking wines in youth.

So, 2023’s wines will be marked simply by an adaptive approach. The first peek will be the 2023 Prêt-à-Blanc and Hollenspass, which will hit the website in November of 2023. We look forward to your feedback when that time comes.

It feels harder to learn new things as we get older and creakier but we have such a great peer group of brains and experience around us in Northeast Victoria, that the sparkling process in particular is proving to be quite energising – which is about as nice a silver-lining as it gets!

Here’s to the next 12-months…

Cheers, T&J xx

Check out a recent article, written by Jeni Port, for the Cellaring Issue of Halliday Wine Companion Magazine June / July issue. All About riesling, being one of, if not the most, versatile grape variety. With it’s appeal lying in more than just the versatility, but how Aussie winemakers are keeping this popular grape fresh and interesting. We get some time to share with Jeni, what we’re doing with this noble grape.

Read the full article here.

Officially released on May 22, 2023 we have four very special wines to introduce to you:

2022 Beechworth Riesling 2022 Beechworth Chardonnay (SOLD OUT) 2022 Beechworth Pinot Noir 2022 Beechworth Syrah All are RRP AUD $44.00

A new range for us, of single varietal wines, intended to showcase the mostly higher altitude Beechworth vineyards we’re working with. The wines are grown on the region’s Ordovician sandstone and shale soils, and the basis of these wines are four classic varieties from our Thorley, Brunnen and new Palmer vineyards, all of which are situated above 700m ASL in Stanley. The Palmer vineyard is the old Ninth Mile site, sold in late 2021, about 0.6Ha of mature Pinot Noir and Riesling in the Stanley township. Blending of small amounts from the lower altitude Indigo (350m ASL) and Abotomey (550m ASL) vineyards provides a depth of fruit in the reds suited to this earlier release. These wines are our first single varietals of the 2022 vintage from Beechworth and provide an earlier drinking snapshot of what is to come from our premium Single Site wines (August 2024 release).

How was 2022? Like much of eastern Australia, the 2022 season in Beechworth was cool to mild with rainfall throughout the growing season months. This created the expected challenges in the vineyards around disease pressure, combined with the slowest and latest ripening we’ve experienced to date. Our final harvest date of May 11th was exactly three weeks before the first snowfall at Thorley. Yields were around average albeit with some variability across sites and varieties. What has been unexpected, and pleasing, is how much flesh these wines do have on their bones. For a season that should have prescribed an overarching leanness, we feel these wines exhibit texture, weight, and a purity of fruit.

Making headlines…We featured in an article (Thursday April 6, 2023), by the lovely Will Lennox, in The Australian.
”Some of the world’s top restaurants are turning to small Aussie producers to fill their patron’s glasses - and there is the demand to back it up.”

The article highlights that our 2017 Obstgarten Riesling is on at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck!

Read the full article here.

We are delighted to share our new releases:

This release includes:
2018 Prêt-à-Rouge
2018 Blauburgunder
2018 Indigo Shiraz
2018 Obstgarten Riesling
2017 Brunnen Pinot Noir

Now is your only chance to get your hands on our 2018 Blauburgunder,an experimental Pinot Noir batch we made in 2018 that all indications tell us we’ll be keeping going in future years. Inspired during his internship at Weingut Keller in Rhinehessen for vintage 2015, Jeremy had for several years been wanting to make a ‘Red Riesling’: Klaus Peter Keller’s description of Pinot Noir. We obviously already make Pinot Noir, but this is cast through a very different lens. It’s essentially a white-drinking red wine, and Blauburgunder is the Austrian word for Pinot Noir. Plenty of fragrance, bright acidity and light handling in the cellar make a perfumed, low tannin Pinot Noir ideally suited to taking a light chill in the warmer months. It’s already just about gone but we’ve got a few cases held aside for mail order. The 2019 Blauburgunder has a skin contact Pinot Gris for a sibling, which will be labelled Grauburgunder; a red-drinking white wine – geddit?
 
Another new face is our 2018 Indigo Shiraz, the best two barrels of the Indigo Shiraz parcels the we make our Rouge blend from. Since we’ll have two barrels of 2018 Thorley Shiraz to release in September, we thought it would be fun to show two Beechworth Shiraz with identical winemaking, similar soil types (Ordovician mudstone and shale) but 500 metres difference in altitude informing a huge difference in character. Our winemaking is pretty fresh and lean in style.

Chuffed to have our wines in June / July Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine. Thanks to Mike Bennie for the kind words. "The 2017 Schmölzer & Brown Brunnen Chardonnay would be arguably my favourite yet." 

Read the full article here

We've got small amounts of a range of wines on offer, more variety than we've ever been able to send out. You can even buy a completely mixed six or a dozen's worth of pairs. It feels awfully grown up!

2017 was the kind of season we would in some senses like to get every year, because we like lightness in our wines, higher natural acid and slow ripening. However, it's more important for us to be able to parse the differences in the growing conditions each year through the wines we make, so we content ourselves with these bright, light and aromatic examples for the time that we have them.

This release includes:
2017 Thorley Shiraz: (less than 150 bottles)
2017 Obstgarten Riesling Selection RSB (less than 150 bottles)
2017 Brunnen Chardonnay
2016 Brunnen Pinot Noir
2017 Prêt-à-Rouge
MIXED SIX
MIXED DOZEN

Quantities are limited so all offers are subject to availability. We offer special discounts to our newsletter subscribers so sign up today!

Hello friends, 

Another harvest has drawn to a close. It blows our mind that it's already our fifth vintage.

This year we've harvested our second crop of Thorley Shiraz - two barriques this year instead of one - and coaxed the first 300 kilograms of Chardonnay from Thorley also, which has made a single barrique. These small volumes feel something like the accoutrements of legitimacy. We might just be actual live vignerons after all.

We'll start pruning in a few weeks and the Chardonnay, which has struggled so much since planting, looks almost healthy with warm ruddy brown canes of a good thickness with healthy buds. The trunks on our Shiraz are thickening slowly and cane length is getting longer, and almost all of the Riesling, and definitely all of the Nebbiolo will be up to or on the wire once we cut off everything spindly and unnecessary. Whether or not these slowpokes will have fruit for us in 2019 is a secret held within their buds. I could slice the tops off them with a scalpel and look for bunch primordia with an eyeglass, but it kills each bud you look at, so we content ourselves with mystery instead.

2018 has been warmer, drier, earlier and the wines look at this stage a little more plump and dense. We'll know more after we bottle the 2018 Prêt-à-Rosé and 2018 Prêt-à-Blanc in a month.

Kindest
Tess & Jeremy

We bought this beautiful block of land at the end of 2012 from a multigenerational apple grower Bill Detlefsen and his wife, Barbara. Bill’s great uncle, Oliver James Thorley, selected the block upon his return to Australia from World War 1 and it had been in the family for close to 100 years before we bought it. It grew apples without irrigation, crops of potatoes and ran grazing sheep.

The name Thorley means 'thorn clearing' in old English, which is a fitting description of the open north-facing paddocks that are surrounded by forest and the odd huge stand of blackberries. It seemed fitting to continue this connection to both the land and its colonial (at least) history. Thorley ranges from about 800-840m altitude and has an annual average rainfall of 1100mm, balanced by free-draining, low fertility soils derived mostly from ordovician era shale, slate & mudstone. 

We’ve planted two hectares of medium density vines covering the varieties Chardonnay, Riesling, Nebbiolo and Shiraz. We’d love to expand the vineyard in the future and hope these varieties will tell us which way we should go. The climate is marked by cold winters, mild to warm summers with high diurnal temperature variations, all of which is great for promoting later ripening with high natural acidity.

The first wine from this vineyard is Shiraz which is currently available. 

VS&B is chuffed to be included in Gourmet Traveller’s article “Beechworth's new winemakers”. GT spoke with us about the hard work behind our budding vineyard in the context of the incredible Northeast region. Their story introduces the great legacy of the Beechworth area with producers like Giaconda, Castagna, Sorrenberg, Savaterre and Fighting Gully Road. It highlights some of next generation of winemakers including our peers, and good friends, Chris Catlow, Pete Graham, Scion, Simão & Co and Eminence Wines. 

We feel so grateful to be in such great company! Read the full story on the Gourmet Traveller website.

Young Gun of Wine is an award that recognises talent amongst the new crop of wine makers. They have announced its ‘Top 12’ list for 2016 and Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown is thrilled to be amongst the finalists. The winners will soon be revealed at a special ceremony.

In addition to this great honour, the incredible wine publication Alquimie has included a story on the Awards which beautifully features the wines of the finalists.