Hoddles Crk 1er Pinot Noir 2024

From one of the Yarra Valley’s most revered vineyards, the Hoddles Creek Estate 1er Pinot Noir 2024 captures the essence of elevation, patience, and precision. The fruit is drawn exclusively from the Top Paddock Vineyard, a west-facing slope that gently falls to the south—an orientation that encourages slow ripening and even tannin maturity.

Planted to 28 rows of Pinot Noir, this site was identified in 2005 as producing distinctively finer fruit compared to the rest of the estate. The vines are meticulously balanced, shoot-thinned around the crown, and cropped to 1.3kg per vine to ensure concentration and structure. The cooler, south-facing exposure allows for 25% whole cluster inclusion in fermentation, giving the wine its signature lift, aromatic spice, and refined tannin weave.

Franco D’Anna’s approach to red winemaking is rooted in texture and intuition rather than formula. Each ferment is assessed every six hours, allowing him to guide tannin extraction according to the natural rhythm of the wine. The fruit is gently plunged, spending 18 months in French oak casks before bottling unfined, unfiltered, and unstabilised—a testament to the purity of both site and craft.