First taste: Giant Steps 2022 single-vineyard Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs

Melanie Chester cannot contain her excitement about the quality and purity of Giant Steps’ 2022 Pinot Noirs.

‘There’s nothing more delicious than young Pinot that has fruit flavour,’ she enthuses, as we taste her newly bottled single-vineyard wines from Victoria’s Yarra Valley as well as the Coal River Valley in Tasmania.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of seven new 2022 single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs from Giant Steps

Chester joined Giants Steps in November 2021 as its new head of winemaking and viticulture. The 2022 vintage was her first fully in charge – an exceptionally low-yielding year about 25% down on normal, with the weight of grape bunches up to 40% below average.

‘We ended up with caviar,’ she says of the thrice-selected grapes, adding that the ‘focus on delicacy and detail’ in both vineyard and winery produces ‘uniquely pure Pinot Noir’.

Giant Steps was acquired in 2020 by California-based multinational wine company Jackson Family Wines for an undisclosed sum.

They recruited Chester from Sutton Grange in Victoria’s Bendigo region, where she had been head winemaker for 6.5 years. Chester recalls being dropped in the deep end with no handover at Sutton Grange – a stark contrast to Giant Steps, where she describes her predecessor Steve Flamsteed and Giant Steps’ founder Phil Sexton as her ‘second spouses’.

Sexton, who founded Devil’s Lair in Margaret River in 1981, planted his eponymous vineyard in 1997 and released the first Giant Steps wine in 2001. He remains with the company today as general manager.

Flamsteed, who joined Giant Steps as chief winemaker in 2003 and was instrumental in cementing the winery’s reputation for cool-climate, single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, consults for half a day a week.

Chester says she and her ‘second spouses’ have walked the vineyards together and discussed the history, strengths and weaknesses of each block and how they perform in different seasons.

Awe-inspiring vineyards

In August 2022, Giant Steps acquired its second Upper Yarra vineyard, Bastard Hill, the region’s steepest, which has been a long-term contributor to Hardy’s flagship Chardonnay Eileen Hardy. It was planted by the region’s leading cool-climate viticulturalist, Ray Guerin, who also planted Giant Steps’ Applejack vineyard in 1997.

‘With no financial pressure, which is quite freeing,’ Chester has relished her move to Giant Steps. Though she admits she is still ‘in awe’ of the three estate vineyards, which are ‘humbling to make wine from’, her immediate goal is ‘to make every vine a winner’.

She is currently managing Chardonnay canopies at Applejack to reduce the grapes’ malic acid (thereby the degree of malolactic fermentation). Work is also underway to improve viticulture at Bastard Hill to the ‘immaculate standard’ of Sexton and Applejack, because Chester believes the latest acquisition has ‘incredible potential’ and scope for expansion.

Giant Steps has long-term relationships with several other Yarra Valley single vineyards: Tarraford (8.5ha, planted 1988), Gruyere Farm (1.6ha, 1995), Wombat Creek (16ha, 1988) and Primavera (12ha, 2001).

But with fierce competition for quality Yarra Valley fruit, Giant Steps is looking further afield. The winery has been buying grapes from the Nocton Vineyard in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley since 2017 but Chester reveals she has ‘a couple of irons in the fire and an eye on something permanent in Tasmania’.

Mainly known for its Kendall-Jackson brand, Jackson Family Estates is actually an umbrella company for 40 wineries in Napa Valley, Sonoma, Mendocino, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Oregon, plus Australia, South Africa, Chile, France and Italy.

It owns more than 5,500ha of vineyards worldwide, and recently announced its intention to produce still and sparkling wine in England.

Unique gravity winemaking

In the winery, it’s ‘embarrassingly simple’, says Chester, who is adopting an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to the handpicking, fastidious sorting and unique gravity-driven winemaking.

Chester knows of no one else who drains and returns by gravity as Giant Steps does with its Pinot Noir fermenters that stand three metres tall (they use a crane to return the juice). She is convinced it makes for fresher wines ‘which speak of the vineyard’; not fining or filtering helps too. All that’s required of her is ‘careful shepherding’.

She says she is engaged in ‘deep and meaningfuls’ with Flamsteed about replicating Giant Steps’ gravity-driven process and natural yeast cultures at a new winery being built at the Sexton vineyard, which she hopes will be completed by the end of 2024. All existing equipment will be transferred, including floors, drains, barrels and bungs, which host yeast strains.

However, before any new wineries, major investment interstate or implementing Jackson Family Wines’ sustainability goals (organic conversion by 2030 and becoming carbon positive by 2050), priority number one for Chester is clear: a massive fence.

When your grapes are like caviar, it pays to keep the wild deer away.

First taste: Giant Steps 2022 single-vineyard Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs

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