Carlei Estate

The Free Bacchus Story

In 2020 Sergio Carlei picked one block of Heathcote Shiraz on two different days chosen by the biodynamic calendar, a fruit day and a root day. He made the two batches the same way, forty days on their skins, and bottled 1,333 bottles of each, so the difference could be tasted.

He came to wine the long way round. He graduated as a chemist in 1983 and went into petrochemicals, then retrained as a chiropractor, making wine at home in the meantime with his Calabrian grandfather as his mentor and grapes from the market. After a wine degree he planted a small vineyard at Upper Beaconsfield, in the hills south-east of Melbourne, in 1997, and built a winery beside it.

Heathcote, to the north, is known for deep red Cambrian soil that holds water so well the vines rarely need irrigating. The north of the region is drier than the south, and the south is cooler. Carlei’s Nord and Sud wines, the same clone of Shiraz grown at each end, are built on that difference.

In the cellar he leaves some reds on their skins for up to two months, where his winemaking course taught two weeks. ACO certifies his vineyards’ grapes and a short list of Carlei wines as organic, the Fruit Day Shiraz among them, under the company name The Green Vineyards. The farming follows biodynamic practice and the lunar calendar, but the certificate is organic, not biodynamic, and some wines in the wider range are made from bought fruit that it does not cover.