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April 17, 2013
Moffatdale’s Wally Pesudovs has been quietly celebrating a victory. After five years of hard work, four failed crops and $18,000 in outlays, he’s finally released his first wine.
Not that there’s very much of it to go around … his 250 litre harvest produced just 288 bottles.
To make matters worse, it’s an Italian red wine variety called Nebbiolo which few Australians have ever heard of.
But right now diners on the Sunshine Coast are paying as much $120 a bottle to get their hands it.
And it’s a 100 per cent home-grown, South Burnett product.
Wally is no stranger to wine. During the day, he and his wife Cathie run Clovely Estate’s cellar door and the adjoining Old Dairy Restaurant and Clovely Cottage B&B at Moffatdale.
They’re also one of the key organisers of the popular Vine Dining festival that runs in Moffatdale every August.
The couple took up managing the cellar door in the early 2000s because both of them have had a life-long interest in wine, loved the South Burnett lifestyle, and saw Clovely as a refreshing change from their previous work in the Sunshine Coast’s building industry.
Wally’s battle with Nebbiolo started five years ago when he decided he’d like to plant a small vineyard as an interest, and his son Nick – who’s studying for a Master Of Wine degree – persuaded him to plant “the noble grape”.
Although Nebbiolo is little known in Australia, it’s been grown in the Piedmont wine region of Italy for hundreds of years and is widely regarded as one of the best Italian red wine grapes, famous for producing tremendously good wines.
However, it’s equally famous for being very difficult to grow.
Over the next few years Wally learned first-hand that this reputation was well-deserved.
He planted his grapes in 2009 and tended them carefully but the first year the vines were so young they didn’t really produce anything.
The next year, they did produce some grapes but they were so small he turned them into wine jelly because they weren’t suitable for anything else.
Then in 2011 – when he looked like getting his first real harvest – the floods came.
In 2012, Wally finally secured the first real harvest from his 19 carefully manicured rows and called Nick in again – partly to say “You won’t believe this, but I’ve actually got a harvest!” and then “Now, how do we make wine out of this?”
Nick, who’d worked at Clovely Estate’s winery and also at nearby Barambah Wines, took over the role of winemaker and oversaw the complex process of turning the grapes into juice, then into wine over the course of the following year.
The result was released in individually packaged bottles just before Christmas … about four weeks before Wally saw his 2013 harvest washed away in the Australia Day floods.
“I didn’t mind getting nothing from my first two harvests because the vines were young and Nebbiolo is the sort of variety that takes awhile to get going,” Wally said.
“And while I was a bit annoyed that the 2011 floods took away what looked like being my first real harvest, I was philosophical about that, too, because three years is still young for a grape like this. Besides, that year everyone in the South Burnett lost their own grape harvests.
“But this year really hurt because I was just a few days away from the best harvest yet.
“So the 2012 Nebbiolo is all the Nebbiolo I’ll be producing for awhile until I can get another crop which, hopefully, will be next summer.”
Reaction to the wine has been extremely positive.
It’s being stocked by two leading restaurants on the Sunshine Coast and other outlets have expressed interest in it as well. This is partly because of the rarity of Nebbiolo in Australia, and partly because it’s a very good wine that will only get better with age.
“A top shelf Nebbiolo will get better in the bottle for up to 30 years,” Wally said.
“So while my 2012 Nebbiolo is really good right now, we estimate it can be cellared for 20 to 25 years and will only keep improving.”
How long the wine will be available, though, is anybody’s guess.
“If more restaurants take it up we could run out very quickly, we haven’t got much stock, after all,” he said.
“But we’ve been letting all our customers know so they can take advantage of this if they’re interested in trying Nebbiolo.
“We’ve had a very good reaction to that. But they have to drop by the cellar door to get it because we can’t do mail orders.”
