Cloudburst: producer profile

I was in the right place at the right time. Invited to be an international judge at the Margaret River Wine Show in Western Australia in 2013, I was surprised, as were some of the other judges, that we declared the top red of the show to be the 2010 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon.

I’d never heard of it, this being the inaugural vintage, but it easily matched in quality the region’s iconic wines. At the awards ceremony, the little-known American victor, a producer of documentary films, seemed slightly bemused but also confident that his success was deserved.

Scroll down for tasting notes of Cloudburst Chardonnay

Going back further – nearly 20 years ago – to a blind tasting of Chardonnays at Margaret River’s Cullen estate, I unhesitatingly identified a wine as grand cru Burgundy. I was wrong: it was from Margaret River.

My error was repeated at a similar tasting before the 2013 Margaret River Wine Show began. I put at least four of the region’s Chardonnays into the Burgundy camp. Nor do I feel any embarrassment about admitting it.

The New Yorker in Margaret River

Like Margaret River’s Cabernet Sauvignons, Chardonnays from here can be fabulous, and Will Berliner’s Cloudburst Chardonnay is up there with his Cabernet – Jane Anson tasted the 2017 when it was released on La Place de Bordeaux in September.

Berliner, a transplanted New Yorker with an Australian wife, asserts that Margaret River is a very special place. It’s defined, as is Bordeaux, by its maritime climate: hot but breezy, with warm summers giving impressive fruit to the wines, while unpredictable rainfall and storms give individuality to the vintages, as well as a mineral character that derives less from the soil than from gusts from the ocean.

When Berliner talks about his project, he hardly mentions winemaking. It’s the farming that obsesses him; the sense of place of his 1.2 hectares in the unofficial Margaret River sub-region of Wilyabrup, close to the Woodlands wine estate.

Despite his biology degree from Yale, Berliner’s approach is intuitive rather than scientific. He and his wife bought and planted land in 2005, and moved permanently to Margaret River in 2012. ‘Not having come up in wine was entirely to my advantage. I wasn’t beholden to the myriad sacred cows,’ he told me.

Although he enlisted Stuart Watson of Woodlands as co-winemaker, he also took courses at the University of California, Davis.

Resolutely non-interventionist

Berliner is clearly enthralled by his patch of land. ‘Cloudburst is within the sound of the sea on land that has never seen chemical agriculture. The soil itself contains astonishing biodiversity.’

There were no errors of the past, such as chemical fertilisers, to be undone. The Cloudburst vineyard was an unused artist’s palette. The newly planted vines, cuttings of the Gingin clone from a neighbouring vineyard, were ungrafted, as phylloxera is not present here, and the density was Burgundian in its rigour, at 1m by 1m.

‘In contrast to the popular notion that such density creates a struggle for resources, the vines are incredibly vibrant and there is no sign of competitive stress.’ The vineyard was also dry-farmed. If a plant failed to take, he simply replanted it the following year, although this meant it took some time for the vineyard to be fully populated.

Berliner is resolutely non-interventionist. All vineyard tasks are done by hand, wielding secateurs to remove defective berries and tugging wheelbarrows down the rows. The farming is biodynamic, but Berliner isn’t interested in certification. Although mulch derived from his own compost is spread between the rows, there is no ploughing or green cover.

‘Our job is to listen [to nature] and get out of the way.’ A mystical appreciation of his property has emerged, and Berliner regards his vineyard as a community of communicating vines.

The winemaking is simplicity itself. The grapes are whole-bunch pressed into barrel and fermented with natural yeasts. The wine goes through malolactic fermentation and is aged, with minimal stirring of the lees, for 10 months in oak, of which 35% to 80% is new. Sometimes there’s a light filtration before bottling. Annual production is about 2,500 bottles.

High praise, high price

The success of the 2010 Cabernet at the Margaret River show, and the rave reviews for all his wines from Australia’s top critics as well as from international tasters has made Cloudburst a cult wine, with prices to match.

The production of Cloudburst’s Chardonnay, Cabernet, and Malbec totals 5,500 bottles, so there’s a scarcity factor too. But scarcity and high prices are no guarantee of favour.

Cloudburst persuades with its quality; that combination of richness, limpidity and freshness that is the hallmark of Margaret River wines at their best. Their consistency demonstrates that the ‘discovery’ of the 2010 Cabernet in 2013 was no fluke.

I like to imagine that the great names of the region – Cullen, Leeuwin, Vasse Felix, Moss Wood – did not observe Cloudburst’s rise to fame with dismay and envy, but instead welcomed a new star into their ranks.

Six vintages of Cloudburst Chardonnay

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