Georgia Dale has skin in the wine game
Among the giants of the Yarra Valley, Georgia Dale’s wine label is a three-year-old minnow — but she has a grand plan...
Georgia Dale’s wine label XI.XI may be only three years old, and a small player among the giants of the Yarra Valley, but she has a grand plan: to become a renowned producer of Blanc de Blancs, the great love of her life (after her husband Scott, of course). Blanc de Blancs are sparkling wines made with white grapes in the traditional method, or “méthode traditionelle” if you’re feeling Frenchy. It’s a sort of vinous alchemy: you start with a base wine – usually chardonnay – and induce a secondary fermentation by adding yeast and a sugar solution, then immediately bottle it. The yeast, a single-celled fungus, feasts on that sugar and has a right old party in the bottle, creating complex flavours and aromatics, plus the all-important fizz.
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The resulting wine, after years of ageing, can be liquid gold. But there’s an element of serendipity to the process, too, which Dale loves. “You never quite know what you’re going to get with that secondary fermentation,” she says. “There’s a kind of magic in that.”
Dale was 27 when she hit refresh on her career. She’d spent years managing restaurants in Melbourne, and was fed up with hospitality. So she did a wine science degree, then landed a job at the Yarra’s Domaine Chandon, an outpost of Moët & Chandon. She soaked up knowledge at other places, too – California, the Adelaide Hills – before lobbing back in the Yarra to set up on her own account with XI.XI, pronounced “Eleven Eleven”.
Dale, 35, is pictured in a fermentation tank, clearing out shiraz skins – she loves making reds, too, and they’re bankrolling the operation until the first of her Blanc de Blancs, the 2020 vintage, is released in 2024. There’ll be a release every year after that – and she’ll be on her way. “I can’t wait!” she beams.