Ten Minutes by Tractor

Ten Minutes by Tractor

Ten Minutes by Tractor is rated as one of Australia's best wineries by wine guru James Halliday and the wines regularly receive rave reviews from such celebrated wine writers as Jancis Robinson MW, Huon Hooke, Matthew Jukes, and Nick Stock of the Penguin Guide to Australian Wines. Since Martin Spedding took over the winery in 2004, he has transformed it in to one of Australia's leading estates, focussing on the quality of the grapes from the three original vineyards, each of them a ten minute tractor ride away from each other.

The McCutcheon, Wallis and Judd vineyards are all within the Main Ridge sub region, one of the coolest and highest parts of the Mornington Peninsula. In addition to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Pinot Gris is also grown on the Wallis Vineyard and Sauvignon Blanc on the Judd Vineyard. Each block on each vineyard is picked and vinified separately, allowing maximum flexibility just before bottling to identify the best performing blocks and vineyards to be able to release single vineyard wines or to select the best blends.

All of the wines (except the barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc) are fermented by using the indigenous or 'wild yeasts' that reside in the vineyard, on the skins of the grapes and in the winery. The Pinot Noir is aged for 12 to 18 months in French oak barriques and lightly fined. The Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc are also fermented in French oak barrels. All the wines are bottled under screwcap to prevent cork taint, random oxidation and to preserve the pristine characters of the wines. The wines all display and envious purity of fruit flavour and complexity, and whist the 10X wines are made in a fairly rich and definitely Australian style, the single vineyard wines are easily as good as top level Burgundy, with delicacy and structure.