Rollo Crittenden of Crittenden Wines in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula region is with us in this episode of the podcast.
Mornington Peninsula is synonymous with premium quality pinot noir and chardonnay, and Crittenden certainly excels at making wine from those varieties.
But when it comes to differentiating the winery from its peers, Rollo has an ace up his sleeve.
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Since 2011, Crittenden has been making a rare Australian example of the white wines made from savagnin grapes that are unique to the Jura region of France.
Known as ‘Vin Jaune’ wines in Jura, they’re aged for years in barrel under a layer of flor yeast, similar to how fino sherry wines are made in Spain.
And the results are quite extraordinary, as I experienced myself late last year when Rollo presented a retrospective comprising six vintages of Crittenden’s Cri De Couer savagnin wines.
Coming up, you’ll hear how this project has evolved from an accident into one of the most celebrated wines on the contemporary Australian scene.
NB: This interview was recorded following the event late in 2023, right before I took an extended break from the podcast. Keep that in mind when we reference the upcoming pipeline of releases during this interview.
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Rise of grenache, with Hentley Farm Wines
Rollo Crittenden of Crittenden Wines: Full transcript
JAMES ATKINSON: Well, Rollo Crittenden, thanks so much for joining us on the Drinks Adventures podcast.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Thanks, James. Great to be here.
JAMES ATKINSON: It was a sensational lunch yesterday, and we tasted some really beautiful Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but I think really the highlight was the Savagnin.
You guys have been on a really interesting journey with that variety. Originally, you actually weren’t even aware that you had that particular variety planted, were you?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, so we’ve been making Savagnin and labelling Savagnin as Savagnin for, well, since 2011 was, I guess, the first year that we did that. But prior to that, it was actually what we thought was Albariño.
So there’s a funny course of events that took place here in Australia where all of the Albariño plantings, and Albariño being a Spanish variety grown in the Rías Baixas region in Spain in the northwest, all of the Albariño came from eight cuttings that came into Australia in around sort of 1983, I think it was.
And so all the vineyards that have been sort of planted, especially in the sort of early 2000s when something Spanish became quite trendy, all the plantings came from those eight cuttings, so those original eight cuttings, including ours.
We have half an acre, and we found out in 2009 that our Albariño, and in fact all Albariño in Australia at the time was not Albariño. It was a French variety called Savagnin.
And what happened was those eight cuttings when they came into Australia were actually muddled up and were a French variety. So yeah, it was a bit of a frustrating process at the time.
We were sort of quite devastated because we really were enjoying making Albariño, what we thought was Albariño, but as is the labelling laws in Australia, we needed to change it to Savagnin.
And it’s obviously evolved into a really impressive expression of the Vin Jaune style wines from Jura, but it’s had a fairly unorthodox way of getting there.
Savagnin Sous Voile
JAMES ATKINSON: So tell me about the first one that Matt made.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, so it’s funny. So Savagnin, and of course we want to be sure that we’re not confusing this with Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a completely different variety.
So Savagnin has its home in the Jura region in France, in the east of France. And in the Jura region, they make a very unique and particular style of wine called Vin Jaune, which translates directly to yellow wine.
And the reason it’s yellow is because they actually age it almost like a sherry. So they make the base wine, and then they age it under a flor, so under a yeast veil, like a film that grows on top of the surface of the wine in the barrel.
And they age it there for six and a half years, or just under six and a half years, which is the prescribed time that they have to do it. And then at the end, they get this wine that’s this beautiful sort of rich nutty character.
So I sort of wasn’t even really familiar with this style or these wines back when we found out that we had Savagnin and not Albariño.
But Matt, who was our assistant winemaker, he actually was familiar with it. He’d actually by chance been to the Jura and saw an opportunity.
So he, unbeknownst to me, he held back one barrel of our 2011 Savagnin and sort of tried to encourage the flor to grow.
And yeah, and so that was the first wine that we made under that. So he’s sort of two years into the process, or just under two years, he fessed up and said, ‘have a taste of this’.
I’m like, ‘gee, I don’t know what that is, but it’s quite delicious and quite unique’. And so yeah, and I guess that’s, that was the beginning of our journey on this Savagnin, Vin Jaune style of wine.
We can’t call it Vin Jaune, but we actually, it’s the style that we now produce and have done ever since.
JAMES ATKINSON: And how has that evolved the program in terms of how much you’re setting aside, has it grown in volume over the years?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Well, we only have a very small amount under vine, as I mentioned, so we’ve got half an acre.
So that might give us, you know, in a good year, you know, about a bit over a ton or in a bad year, you know, under a ton in terms of a bad year, quantity wise.
And so we’re never going to be big producers. We, you know, we usually make around about sort of four barrels. You know, if we’re lucky, it might be up as five barrels.
I guess, you know, from that regard, it’s sort of nice because it’s quite a unique wine and it’s quite a time investment and a challenging process.
So it’s not something we would ever want to really commercialise in a big way. It’s a style that we’ve made, you know, consistently. But, yeah, we feel that it’s got a limit to the amount that we’d ever want to produce.
JAMES ATKINSON: Not planting more Sauvignon or anything like that.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Not at this stage. No, no. I think we’ll sort of, yeah, we’ll let that be our, you know, bit of fun that we have and certainly, you know, enjoy making that wine.
But, yeah, we’ll leave the broader production to our pinots and Chardonnays, I think, is the key there.
JAMES ATKINSON: You know, when you looked at those wines, you know, the vertical tasting, there was sort of a real stability of the style, I guess, even from the beginning.
I mean, it’s evolved a little bit, but have you learnt a lot about how to make that wine along the way?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: It’s been quite a journey, yeah. I think certainly in terms of, I guess, the process, because in many ways you are dancing with the devil making these wines.
And also in many ways, it does defy all of your instincts as a winemaker because, you know, naturally you’d want to keep barrels top right up because, you know, oxygen is the, I guess, the enemy of wine.
And then you also want to make sure usually you’re adding, of course, sulphur, sulphur dioxide, which is a preservative and that goes into pretty much all wine or all, in my view, decent wine.
So, you know, those two things prevent, you know, I guess, volatility and excessive oxidation and, you know, all sorts of funky things.
But to make these wines, of course, you want to grow that yeast veil on top of the wine so you can’t add any sulphur and you actually need to let it, you know, let the ullage increase over time as the wine evaporates a little bit in barrel, the surface area comes up.
So I guess that journey has been quite interesting for us and we’ve very much…
I’ve had some good help and some ideas and done a lot of research, but yeah, you are still feeling your way with these wines and it’s an evolving journey.
We’re still on it, which is fun.
JAMES ATKINSON: Have you managed to get to Jura yourself and did that motivate you to visit, actually, having sort of, you know, taken an interest in this style?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Absolutely, yeah. So I was over there, I think we would have been around about 2016, I was in the UK, so I made a little jump across to the Jura region, and yeah, it was amazing.
I mean, it might have evolved a little bit now, but it was quite interesting, you know, travelling around and I made some appointments and visited these wineries and they were all a bit confused, like, what interest do you have? Why are you here?
You know, this is a farming region that, you know, they make these wines and I think many of the producers don’t even understand what a cult their wines or how highly regarded their wines are around the world.
Some do, but a lot of the smaller producers just do what they do because that’s what their forebears did and that’s what their children will do and it’s just a way of, you know, making a product that they love. So, yeah.
JAMES ATKINSON: So, there’s not really much structured tourism there?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Very little, very little, yeah. It’s predominantly, you know, like, there’s the town of Arbois, which is a nice little town and they have beautiful scenery, like, absolutely magic.
It’s the home of Comte Cheese, it’s, you know, the home, or it’s not far from Bress Chicken, which is that very famous breed of chicken that’s just an amazing flavoured chicken.
You know, there’s so many, like, you know, morel mushrooms grow prolifically in the region.
So, it’s one of those areas where it’s a very particular type of cuisine and it’s very rich food, you know, so you’re talking lots of dairy, lots of creamy dishes, and as a result, these wines, you know, just pair perfectly with the food and vice versa.
It’s just such a regional cuisine that you… It seems like a light bulb moment when you go there and get to taste everything and you go, oh, I see these wines have context and I think that’s important.
JAMES ATKINSON: Absolutely. And what was it like? I mean, did you get to have a look around in some pretty sort of ancient-looking barrel rooms and that type of thing?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, they’re fairly rustic, you know, there’s very little stainless steel and not much bling there. They’re all pretty basic.
And interestingly, when they’re doing the aging of their Vin Jaune, these wines, they’re invariably aged in attics, so they like to have that sort of temperature fluctuation, the warmth of summer and the cool of winter.
And so, you know, you really are, you just get up into these places when there’s, you know, really old barrels that are just very rudimentarily stored. And yeah, it’s pretty rustic, so yeah.
JAMES ATKINSON: And how would the conditions in Mornington, where you are, kind of compare to those conditions in Jura?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Well, we’re both really cool climates, and I think that’s key.
I guess the main difference is that we’re a maritime climate, being, you know, quite close to Port Phillip Bay, Western Port Bay, and then, of course, pass straight down to our south, whereas, you know, you’re very continental, very inland, alpine sort of climate in the Jura region.
But once you remove those two components, you are talking cool climates, and we have found, you know, that our Savagnin, it ripens beautifully, the flavours are lovely, and certainly, you know, we feel that our climate’s perfect for growing Savagnin, absolutely.
JAMES ATKINSON: Do you think, you know, when you taste your Savagnin wines compared to those of Jura, is there something still about them that is distinctly Mornington?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: It’s interesting because the wine’s Savagnin, when it’s made in this Vin Jaune, it’s very much a wine of its process, you know.
So if you make a Savagnin and then bottle it without any of this flor ageing, which we’ve done, we’ve made quite a few like that, and you know, you just get this really lovely lemon zest and lemon curd sort of character, really sort of bright, juicy wine.
JAMES ATKINSON: Was it an un-oaked wine?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: We’ve done older oak, yes, aged in oak barrels, but not with the idea of imparting oak flavour into the wine.
So yeah, they actually quite often make this style as well in the Jura, and they call it ‘Oeil’, which is sort of the eye, and it’s topped up into the bunghole is how they refer to it.
But when you do that ageing process underfloor, the wine does evolve into this really sort of rich, nutty, almost curry leaf characters and all sorts of other sort of secondary characters.
But I do feel that you can still see a sense of both variety, and I would like to think a sense of place as well in our wines.
You know, it was interesting as we tasted through the full range of Savagnin that we made yesterday, you really can see a theme that goes beyond just the wine making that I feel you can see, you know, a sense of place and region and variety.
JAMES ATKINSON: What was the reaction from your peers in Mornington when they kind of got to see these wines that contrast very much with everything else that would be available?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, look, a great deal of curiosity, I would say. Certainly, you know, if you look at the Mornington Peninsula, we are well known for making Chardonnay and Pinot Noir primarily, but those two varieties make up nearly 80% of the region under vine in our region.
And I feel that there was this sort of little bit of, yeah, like curiosity, a bit of scepticism, what’s this all about? It’s a complete departure from standard wine making practices.
It’s a journey that we didn’t intentionally go on in many ways, so, you know, I guess we’re a passenger in that regard too.
But I think that’s swung around and there’s a lot of support and I think a lot of my peers in the region do, you know, appreciate the wines and yeah, certainly hunt them out when they can, which is good.
JAMES ATKINSON: And obviously, you know, you really kind of put yourself on the map with some of the accolades like Alternative Varieties Wine Show, I think it was 2017, Best French Varietal and Best White Wine of Show, which, you know, you must have thought at that point, we’re onto something here.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. Those wines have really caught the imagination of, you know, a lot of media and a lot of, you know, certainly in the show system, it’s done particularly well.
I mean, they’re very unique and very, I guess, different in their style. And in that regard, I feel, you know, they do have a bit of a following and the accolades flow through, which is great because, you know, it could have gone the other way.
I think, I’d say if we were on this journey maybe 20 years ago, people would say, oh, this, you know, this has no home, this has no place and we don’t really, so we’re probably quite lucky that, you know, the market and the Wine media, you know, have certainly encouraged this process.
JAMES ATKINSON: And are you kind of following the same, you know, is it six and a half years that you’re kind of using as your benchmark for aging as well?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: No, we go a little bit less. It’s interesting. They do six, six, I think it’s six and a quarter in the Jura.
They’re bound by the AOC and their regulations. And for them to put Vin Jaune on the label, they have to age it for six and a quarter years.
That’s part one of the prescribed processes amongst others. Of course, in Australia, we’re not bound.
Well, we don’t call it Vin Jaune because that’s a protected term. But we’re not bound by any sort of rules or regulations.
And so that gives us the liberty to, I guess, tailor our wine making process to produce the best wine that we can.
And invariably, we find that around sort of four years seems to be where we’re landing.
It’s sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit less. But four years, we feel we have that really nice character in our wines, and that’s what we’ve been going for.
JAMES ATKINSON: And when they’re in bottle, they age quite nicely, don’t they, as we saw yesterday?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, absolutely. The wines, I mean, you’ve got to appreciate that this is an oxidative wine making style, as well as all the other beautiful sort of rich nutty aldehydes and other sort of marmy characters that you get out.
You do get a degree of oxidation into the wine as well, which is often the enemy. But when you have that oxidation going hand in hand with all these other characters, they make beautiful wines.
And as a result, the wines are sort of very stable when they go to bottle. They are oxidised.
They last a very long time. I’ve drunk some quite old Vin Jaune out of the Jura, but I hear people sort of saying, ‘I had the opportunity to taste a 1940 Vin Jaune and it was just absolutely singing’.
And I think the thing is these wines are just so stable that they just last for decades and decades.
So even yesterday going back to that 2011, the first that we made, there was still youth and vitality there. It was still a delicious wine.
JAMES ATKINSON: Absolutely. And I guess the cool climate must be important just from the point of view of if it was warmer, then some of those nasties might really start to rule the roofs, I guess.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: I think it’s an interesting process. And not to get too techy or geeky on this, but a big component of grape juice is acid.
And so as a winemaker, you sort of worry about two components. It’s the acid level, the total amount of acid that’s there, but it’s also the pH of the wine.
And if something has a low pH, it’s quite protected. So Savagnin naturally has a high acid, low pH, and certainly that’s accentuated when it’s grown in a cooler climate like ours.
And so that really means that you’re not getting, if it has a high pH, if it was growing in a warmer climate, it would naturally drop a lot of that acid out and have a higher pH.
And yes, you’re right, you’d be quite vulnerable to all sorts of funky things growing in the barrels and maybe continuing to grow in the bottle as well after bottling.
So yeah, we’re quite fortunate that we do have that sort of cooler climate and that lower pH in our wines.
JAMES ATKINSON: Is it something that’s sold mainly through restaurants, or do you have a bit of a fan base for it just within your wine club and that type of thing as well?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: It’s got a great following, and yeah, certainly the wine has, it’s no problem selling out each year that we produce it, which is great.
But we do try and spread it around. You know, I like to get people to taste the wine. We’ve got a few restaurants that like pouring it. They might put it under Coravin, and for me that’s fantastic.
I’d rather it gets consumed and tasted and people enjoy it rather than being bought by collectors and stuck in cellars and being sort of squirrelled away for decades and not seeing the light of day.
Where’s the fun in that? Especially being such a unique style and character, I think it’s better to get it out there. So we try and divide it up.
We certainly have, you know, sell a bit through the cellar door, and we’ve got some dedicated wine club members that always want their allocation or a few bottles.
But we get it out to our distributors and we get it out to the market and try and share it around. So, absolutely.
JAMES ATKINSON: What are the other projects that you’re working on at the moment?
Has it just really been mainly just about, you know, the work that you’ve done over many years in the vineyard, building on that and just finessing your pinots and chardonnays, you know, from year to year?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, you know, I think that if you look at the amount of Savagnin that we produce compared to the number and amount of pinots and chardonnays, I think it’s a blip in our production, but certainly one that, you know, has a lot of following and focus.
But primarily, I guess, I do see ourselves as chardonnay and pinot producers, and we make quite a range, and the majority of our plantings are to chardonnay and pinot.
Crittenden Pinot Noir
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Certainly, you know, once you love pinot, you never go back. It’s just such a great variety, and I feel, you know, we’ve been evolving our viticultural and wine-making processes to really, you know, bring out the best in our fruit.
And that includes, you know, from a viticultural, about 15 years ago, we’ve been on a journey, we started on a journey to convert effectively to organics, so we’ve eradicated synthetic chemicals, but beyond that, we also invest heavily in soil health and soil nutrition through composting and intero cropping.
And so we’ve just seen this great evolution, I guess, in the quality of our wines as a result. So, yeah, there’s certainly projects that occupy a lot of our time and effort.
And it’s interesting, and it almost sounds cliched, but the more we do in the vineyard, the less we have to do in the winery, because the wines, you know, I guess, take on a natural flow from there.
And I think that’s really important, because it means that the wines become less forced, you know, they become just a natural flow.
And yeah, I guess more elegant wines, more restrained wines as a result.
JAMES ATKINSON: And how do you compare and contrast the Mornington style of Pinot and Chardonnay versus some of the other celebrated regions for those styles?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Certainly, I feel, I’d like to think that the Mornington Peninsula is up there, right at the top when it comes to Australian Pinot Noir and Chardonnay production.
There is definitely a regional style, you know, we get these lovely sort of bright cherry characters in our wines, not usually dark or brooding, usually quite elegant styles of Pinots.
But then there’s a whole myriad of different producers and regions or subregions and site differentiation and that gives a lot of nuance and subtlety from site to site and producer to producer within that context of our regional style, which I think is great.
Certainly some fantastic wines coming out of our region, that’s for sure.
JAMES ATKINSON: And are you expanding? Have you been planting more vines and that type of thing?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: We, unfortunately, we don’t have any more land to plant.
JAMES ATKINSON: And are you 100% estate or do you buy some fruit in as well?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: No, we’re not. We bring some fruit in. We work with some other local growers as well and then we’ve got some other varieties that we also produce like Tempranillo and Sangiovese that we do even need to look further afield beyond just the Mornington Peninsula.
But certainly we do work with other growers in our region to supplement. But all of our estate fruit goes into single vineyard wine. So that’s our Kangerong, The Zumma and Cri De Couer all come from our 11-acre home vineyard.
JAMES ATKINSON: And actually we haven’t talked about the Macvin. Is that sort of essentially like a fortified expression of the Savagnin?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, it is. So Macvin is a…
JAMES ATKINSON: I’m sure I’m butchering the pronunciation.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: No, no, no. But it’s a style that they produce also in the Jura.
And it’s, you know, I mean, if you think about it, the Vin Jaune is very little known.
And then, you know, Macvin is even less known. It virtually doesn’t exist and barely makes it to Australia.
But if you get the opportunity, I would encourage people to hunt it down. Macvin is an extension basically of Savagnin.
So what you do is you take some of that flor-aged wine. So for us, that’s sort of four year old flor-aged wine.
And then you blend it with current vintage grape juice, so 50-50. So you’ve got this lovely nutty rich wine with the alcohol and all that, you know, floor character.
And then you’ve got this bright, clean, juicy grape juice. But of course, you’ve got the sweetness from that grape juice too.
So blend that 50-50. And then you fortify it. So you add a grape spirit, taking it up to about 17% alcohol.
And that then prevents any sort of further yeast growth because you’ve got that sugar there, which is a bit of a liability.
You don’t want it kicking off. And then we put that back to barrel and it sits there for up to another year. And it just sort of develops in a slightly different direction.
And then we bottle it after that. So you’ve got this lovely, sort of rich, complex wine with sweetness.
So it’s quite sweet. And then you’ve got the alcohol, which gives it that nice warmth.
Yeah, it’s a lovely wine to enjoy at the end of a meal. Perfect dessert wine. Nothing too rich or chocolatey. Something sort of fresh, but still a bit of sweetness to it. Works really well.
And it has a place in sort of the Crittenden range, which is like your flagship top flight wines.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, Cri De Couer means ‘cry of the heart’. And I guess that’s what we’re trying to convey with those wines, is that these are all wines of the heart.
These are passion projects. And so, yeah, invariably quite small production, but we do make four wines across the range with Chardonnay and Pinot, and then of course the Savagnin and the Macvin, rounding it out.
JAMES ATKINSON: And is your dad, I mean, the winery was established by him. Is he still very involved? And what does he think of what you’ve managed to achieve with Savagnin?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, Dad’s still involved. He was always a very sort of, I guess, progressive wine producer.
You know, back in the 80s and 90s and 2000s even, he was very progressive in terms of he was the first to plant Arneis in Australia.
He, you know, had a great love of Nebbiolo before it was even really heard of, making all sorts of interesting Italian varieties.
And, you know, in that regard, he’s a great champion of change and evolution. And so, yeah, I think he’s really enjoyed watching and being a part of this journey with Savagnin.
And in particular, also very passionate because his background was horticulture. So his great passion is growing things.
And I think also to be a part of that evolution of that vineyard that, you know, he planted back in 1982 over 40 years ago, for him, I think was just such a, you know, and back then you farm conventionally, you know, if there was a problem, there was a chemical to fix it.
So, you know, there was glyphosates and all sorts of things going on. But yeah, to, I guess, be on that journey of change and evolution is, yeah, being a firm believer. So it’s great.
JAMES ATKINSON: It seems like Mornington must be in a good position to sort of fulfill the consumer demand for grapes like Pinot Noir, which is obviously one of the most, and rightfully so, one of the trendiest kind of grapes at the moment.
Is that being good for the region that you’ve been in a position to sort of fulfill what consumers are looking for?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, absolutely. Pinot Noir as a variety the world over is certainly in vogue at the moment, which is great, and it’s very easy to see why.
Pinot is very alluring, it’s elegant, it’s very food friendly. It doesn’t dominate food, it complements food.
And yeah, certainly to be in a region that has championed Pinot Noir is fantastic and a great opportunity.
We’ve made a bit of a rod for our own back though. I mean, as a region, there’s just not enough Pinot to quench the thirst of our consumers.
And so we do find that we are, yeah, it’s just a fruit shortage and on the back of three very small vintages as well, which is a bit frustrating.
So we’re going through fruit set at the moment for the 2024 vintage and it looks like there’s an OK crop out there, which will be nice.
So hopefully we can start to increase our production a little bit and meet the needs of our consumers.
JAMES ATKINSON: The wines we saw yesterday were 22s mostly. So when are they actually about to hit the market?
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, that was a little preview, which was good. That Kangerong Pinot is out now, so that’s already on the market.
The Zumma will be out in June next year and the Cri De Couer will be out in August. So yeah, they’re here for a good time, not a long time, those wines, but it’s nice to have that demand that sort of pulls them through.
But yeah, so current vintage is 21, but we just thought we’d give a little prelude into what’s up and coming.
JAMES ATKINSON: Wonderful. Well, congratulations on the wines and thanks for coming by for a chat.
ROLLO CRITTENDEN: Yeah, great. Thanks, James. It’s been a pleasure.
