Sorrenberg Wines: Chemical-free practices going strong for 30 years

PUTTING biodynamics into action was a lengthy process for vineyard owners Barry and Jan Morey. Their commitment to the approach is paying off through healthy vines and elegant wines.

Barry and Jan Moree from Sorrenberg Wines at their property in Beechworth.

WHEN Barry and Jan Morey planted their three-hectare vineyard in 1984, they did not set out to produce the latest contemporary wine varieties.

“I always reckon if you keep at what you do you’re probably going to be trendy three times in your life,” Barry, 60, says. “It’s better to grow varieties that suit the environment you are in than what the latest trends are.”

But Barry couldn’t have planned his viticulture strategy more perfectly, even if he had a crystal ball.

For more than 30 years, Barry has stuck to growing for the conditions at his Beechworth property using chemical-free practices, making the transition to biodynamic growing in the late 1990s.

Sorrenberg Vineyard

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He had no way of knowing that 20 years later the interest in chemical-free wine would reach an all-time high, and his boutique winery, Sorrenberg, would reap the benefits.

Sorrenberg wines haven’t changed much since the 1980s — a few new blends here and there. But at the crux of it all are the initial vines, which Barry chose because they suited the soil.

“The three wines I do the most of are the chardonnay, sauvignon blanc-semillon blend and the gamay, even though when we bought this property people said cabernet was best,” he says. “It (cabernet) isn’t very trendy at the moment but luckily we don’t grow a lot of it.

“The chardonnay and the gamay are two varieties that really suit the area and the style of sauvignon blanc-semillon is very different to what’s around, so it’s a good mix.”

Chardonnay and gamay are currently Sorrenberg’s most popular wines.

Barry grew up among the vines — his father grew grapes at Cosgrove, near Dookie.

While Barry is the second generation to run a vineyard in Australia, 11 generations of his German family have been in viticulture, most growing in Germany.

Barry first took an interest in biodynamics at a young age, after learning about Alex Podolinsky, the man who brought biodynamics to Australia.

“I remember seeing him on Landline when I was a teenager,” Barry says. “My father said, ‘What a silly bloke’ but I thought it was quite interesting.”

Barry was fascinated by the approach and intended to adopt biodynamics as soon as he bought the Beechworth property. However, due to the high cost and long process of setting up the unconventional operation, it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that his dream became a reality.

He started the transition to biodynamic farming in 1998 and became certified in 2007. “When I bought this place I wanted to try to do organics, but we came here with a one-week-old baby and proceeded to have three more children, so I just couldn’t do it at that time,” he says. “I also couldn’t afford the biggest expense at that stage, which was an under-vine weeder and I couldn’t quite justify it. In 1998 I found a cheap under-vine weeder and that got me back on the path.”

The vineyard, which covers three hectares, now supports Barry and Jan and their two employees, Hugh Bennett and John Clarke, with their 2017 vintage producing about 19,000 litres of wine, stored in 90 barriques, which are 225-litre barrels.

As a biodynamic farmer, Barry focuses heavily on soil health by adding fermented cow manure, known as preparation 500. Barry dilutes it with water and sprays on the soil once a year.

He also applies minerals and herbs to the soil to replenish the natural ecosystem. Similar to organics, there are no chemicals.

Barry and his team grow about a dozen varieties of grapes and bottle four wines — two single varieties and two blends.

The vines sit on granite soil, which Barry specifically targeted when buying the property.

“Soils are so important when it comes to wine because different wines or varieties thrive on different types of soil,” Barry says. “One of the varieties I grow is gamay and over in Europe it thrives on granitic soil. The chardonnay seems to do well here, too.”

Sorrenberg chardonnay is a single variety wine, while the gamay is blended with a small amount of pinot noir. Their sauvignon blanc-semillon is 80 per cent sauvignon blanc and their final wine is a red blend of mainly cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot, with small quantities of petit verdot, carmenere and malbec.

About 2.4 hectares of the vineyard is devoted to their four main varieties with the remainder of the vines a mix of the rest.

Barry recently planted some sauvignon gris for future blends, but he says his alterations are never a result of changes in wine popularity.

“Cabernet is probably not as popular as shiraz and some of the new Italian varieties and sauvignon blanc has had a bit of a dip at the moment,” he says. “Certainly the gamay and chardonnay are probably the easiest ones to sell but I’m not saying they’re my best wines either.”

Barry says the sauvignon blanc and semillon blend is his most “left-field” wine as it goes through a complex fermentation process.

“It goes through primary and a secondary fermentation (malolactic and yeast fermentation) and it spends time in barrels on yeast lees,” he says.

“It makes it a more food-friendly wine and something with a bit more mouth-feel.”

One of the biggest differences between Sorrenberg and conventional wineries is the appearance of the vineyard.

Without chemicals, other plants naturally grow beneath and between the vines.

Barry uses under-vine cultivation with an old silly plough — a single-wheeled, hand-pushed plough — for weed management.

“The vineyard is not as neat as a weed-sprayed (one) but I accept that so I don’t get too stressed about it,” he says. “The greens under the vines, I just try to control it, not kill it, it doesn’t impinge on any of the vines.”

In autumn, crops of oats or legumes are planted between the vines in every second row as an added method to promote soil health and control weed growth.

The alternate rows — known as the grass rows — are sown with clover and ryegrass. Traffic is kept to the grass rows as much as possible.

“We let the cover crops grow and then put the mower mulcher over it and plough it in to try to add organic matter to it,” Barry says.

Organic sprays are used for disease prevention but are not a cure. A destructive outbreak of the fungus botrytis in 2011 destroyed 30 per cent of Sorrenberg’s white vines and 10 per cent of the reds.

Barry says his hands-on approach in the vineyard helped prevent further losses.

“Some people didn’t pick a grape, some people just walked away from their vineyard, conventional people walked away, so I thought we did really well,” he says. “We spent a lot of time in the vineyard opening up the canopy making sure airflow was there.”

Their other “disaster year” was 2007 when frosts totally wiped out the vineyard.

“It was challenging for a few years after that, a real kick in the guts,” Barry says.

A frost fan was installed in the vineyard soon after to prevent any future severe frost damage.

In addition to applying preparation 500, Barry also uses compost that he creates from pruning offcuts, shredded office paper, cow and chook manure and some grass, covered with straw for protection.

“It goes directly in the vineyard, not on to the vines,” Barry says. “I really encourage good stuff growing between the vines, not just under the vines, as the whole environment is between the vines.”

He first started making compost in 2000, but it took him five years to produce a good batch. “If you’re going to do it you need to be passionate about it,” he says.

As a result of the natural farming practices, Barry says the vineyard is no longer reliant on irrigation because of the improved water-holding capacity in the soil.

Sorrenberg sells to restaurants and bottle shops in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, as well as through a website.

About a decade ago, Barry and Jan began exporting a small amount of wine to England and then Germany and Japan with help from Wine Australia, an Australian Government market development group.

“There are plenty of opportunities to export for people wanting it but it can be very costly for a small person to export 40 cases here and 20 cases there, which some of the export orders are,” Barry says. “In Germany we sell to restaurants, England is to a wholesaler and Japan is a fairly new market.”

For flexibility, they don’t have an active cellar door. “I love being a farmer and running the vineyard, I don’t particularly want to run a shop,” Barry says. “By appointment we do tastings but it can be hard to catch us both.

“If people come and you look after them, they can become customers for life, but it’s just not something I want to do every weekend.

“I want to be a farmer.”

Farm facts

SORRENBERG

Barry and Jan Morey run Sorrenberg vineyard and winery on three hectares at Beechworth in North East Victoria.

The biodynamic vineyard is managed without chemicals and with a focus on soil health through use of fermented manure, minerals and herbs, which replenish the natural ecosystem.

The Moreys have about 2.4 hectares under chardonnay, gamay, sauvignon blanc and semillon vines, with the remainder under cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot, carmenere, malbec and sauvignon gris.

They produce four types of wine: chardonnay, gamay, sauvignon blanc-semillon and a red blend. Wines sell for $30 to $58.

sorrenberg.com

Biodynamic boom

According to Wine Australia, certified organic or biodynamic wine exports from Australia were worth $12 million in 2016.

This represents less than 1 per cent of all Australian wine exports, however, this small part of the market grew by 37 per cent in value and 50 per cent in volume in 2016 compared with the previous 12 months.

Demeter is the biodynamic certifying body in Australia.

To become Demeter-certified, a grower must use environmentally friendly, ecologically safe and biological methods to care for the soil, plants and animals, without the use of artificial or synthetic chemicals, fertilisers or genetically modified organisms.