Krinklewood Estate

The Free Bacchus Story

In 2008 it rained through the whole of the Hunter Valley vintage, and downy mildew broke out in the Krinklewood vines. Rod Windrim had been farming the estate biodynamically since 2002. A contact in the cotton industry was breeding a fungus that feeds on the mildew’s spores, so the Windrims brewed it into a compost tea and sprayed it, and, as Rod tells it, they picked every grape on the property.

Rod and Suzanne Windrim had started with a small vineyard at Pokolbin in 1981. They sold it in 1989, took the Krinklewood name to a larger property on Wollombi Road at Broke, and planted vines there, conventionally, in 1998. Then Rod read Nicolas Joly on biodynamics and took a night course. The conversion began in 2002, and in 2007 Australian Certified Organic certified the whole property, winery included, as organic and biodynamic.

The Hunter is an unlikely place for it. The valley is warm and humid, rain can fall at harvest, and its signature wine is Semillon picked early to make a white that is delicate and low in alcohol. Broke Fordwich, the sub-region Krinklewood is in, has its own geology, a plug of red volcanic clay called the Fordwich Sill.

After Suzanne’s death Rod put Krinklewood up for sale, and it was on the market for three years. Oscar Martin, a co-founder of the media company Pedestrian.TV, bought it in August 2020 and readily admits he is a novice at farming. Valentina Moresco, from Piedmont, has been head winemaker since 2018 and now runs the estate as general manager too. Not everything grows at Broke. Some wines, the Basket Press Shiraz among them, are blended with fruit bought from McLaren Vale in South Australia, and the estate names the source on each wine. ACO lists those wines as certified too.