Challenging. That’s the word you see in vintage reports when a harvest was pretty tough. Usually, the ‘challenging’ reference is followed up with some sort of positive spin about how there are still plenty of great wines, or how every vigneron conquered the weather demons every time.
2023 in the Macedon Ranges was challenging. It’s not challenging like a wet year in the Hunter Valley, where half the red grapes don’t get ripe, but a series of frost and rain events throughout the cool 2023 Macedon Ranges growing season lobbed up plenty of, erm, challenges.
You can see the season writ large in the 2023 Curly Flat Pinot Noir trio too. Typically, the Curly site at Lancefield is the warmer end of the Ranges and produces what are often lush wines (for a chilly region). But these ’23s aren’t lush – there’s a herbal line through here that had me thinking of Alsace Pinot, with crunch and ferrous tannins, which is unsurprising given that 2023 was one of the wettest and coolest vintages (with over double the average growing season rainfall) since the Curly Flat vineyard was first planted in 1992.
That all sounds negative, but it’s important to point out that they’re not bad wines, but of a style that is very different to the usual Curly Flat norm.
Let’s have a look:
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