Eldorado Road Perseverance Old Vine Shiraz 2017

"Shout it from the rooftops – Eldorado Road, as a label, should be much more famous. The wines are too interesting, too keen, too complex to be 'just another Victorian producer'."  Andrew Graham

"Years of tireless work reconstructing the old vines planted in the 1890s has resulted in tiny amounts of exceptionally good shiraz."  James Halliday

Eldorado Road is run by Paul Dahlenburg (Bear), the winemaker at Baileys of Glenrowan, and his wife Lauretta. They are fiercely loyal to North East Victoria and produce a superb portfolio of wines from vineyards in Eldorado, Beechworth, Glenrowan and Rutherglen. In 2009 Dahlenburg leased a derelict 2ha block of Shiraz planted in the 1890s near Glenrowan and set about the backbreaking job of restoring a section of the vineyard. From his persistence and perseverance comes the beguiling Eldorado Road Perseverance Old Vine Shiraz. Sadly, only a minute amount of this wine is produced each year - the average yield is 800kg/acre. To give perspective, Grand Cru Burgundy yields are 15x that! As you drink this wonderful wine, you can reflect on a unique piece of Australian wine history (read the story by clicking on the 'Dulcies 1890 vineyard' tab above).

"This deserves some respect, so don't rush it. Let it breathe and come to life, for the fruit comes off vines planted in the 1890s. This unfurls to reveal a delicacy and yet it's full of flavour of zesty red fruits, a hint of licorice and more besides. It's the contentment across the palate and the astonishingly fine and pure tannins that really set this apart."  Jane Faulkner

"Grapes from this vineyard are always the first into the winery, which any winemaker will tell you is a rather peculiar thing given that it’s Shiraz. Our theory is that this old vineyard knows what it’s up to and doesn’t waste any time messing around – it’s had 130 years to figure it out after all. The grapes were chilled overnight and then gently destemmed, but not crushed, to retain whole berries. The fruit was transferred separate open fermenters, around 10% whole bunch was placed on top of the Original Block Ferment. Interestingly, this vineyard is interplanted with the white variety Ugni Blanc, 2% of which we co-fermented with the Shiraz. The wine was matured in our finest French oak for 18 months on full lees to build texture."  Eldorado Road

Expert reviews

"This deserves some respect, so don't rush it. Let it breathe and come to life, for the fruit comes off vines planted in the 1890s and there's a dash of ugni blanc in the mix given its dotted throughout the vineyard. This unfurls to reveal a delicacy and yet it's full of flavour of zesty red fruits, a hint of licorice and more besides. It's the contentment across the palate and the astonishingly fine and pure tannins that really set this apart. Screwcap. 14.3% alc. Drink by 2035."  Jane Faulkner, Halliday Wine Companion - 96 points and Special Value Wine  ★  

"It's perfumed. It's tense. It's just above medium bodied. Boysenberry, crunch of cranberry acidity, spiced biscuit, earth and apple skin. Tannin is sure and well-knit, it has bite and energy, and don't mind me, something of an Italianate quality about it. Fresh finish, long too, but with some tar and ferrous character. I think it will live for a very long time. Alcohol: 14.3% Closure: Screwcap. Drink: 20232 – 2040."  Gary Walsh, The Wine Front – 95+ points

"Bright, deep red/purple colour, with a fresh red-fruit and spice aroma, quite complex and the palate is full-bodied and deep, plush and ample in texture, with masses of tannins but they're fine tannins and not coarse or oaky or bitter. A big wine and a very successful balancing act. The palate has a lot of fresh acidity, which keeps it all fresh and lively. Long-term potential. Drink: 2020-2037."  Huon Hooke The Real Review - 95 points

"The almost 130-year-old shiraz vines in Dulcies Vineyard (named after Dulcie Brack, the former mayor of Benalla and owner of this property in the mid-20th century) yield tiny bunches of intensely flavoured grapes. The wine has sumptuous, velvety black fruit flavours, deep and dark, with an underlay of sinewy tannins from the vineyard’s tough, weathered granite soils. It’ll age superbly over many years."  Max Allen, Finacial Review

Dulcies 1890 vineyard

Winemaker Paul Dahlenburg (Bear) knows all about the magic of old vines. Since 1996 he has been making powerfully structured and rich red wines at Baileys of Glenrowan from mature plantings of Shiraz and Durif – some dating back a century or more. In 2009 Dahlenburg approached the owners of a derelict 2ha block of Shiraz planted in the 1890s near Glenrowan to see if he could lease it from them. They tried to talk him out of it, saying it was too run-down and that he’d be better off buying fruit from other vineyards in the area. But Dahlenburg was determined - this vineyard was over 100 years old and it was special – and he set about the backbreaking job of restoring a section of the vineyard. For all his hard work, Dahlenburg retrieved only one tonne of grapes from the 2010 vintage.

These remarkable old vines were originally shipped from France to Glenrowan back in the late 1800s. Established before federation, with only rainfall to sustain them, they endured prevailing weather to forge an existence. It’s truly remarkable these vines still survive today, but thanks to Dahlenburg, this old block continues to tell its own story and reward the drinking public with wines born from another era. Only a minute amount of the Perseverance Old Vine Shiraz is produced each year - the average yield is 800kg/acre. To give perspective, Grand Cru Burgundy yields are 15x that! 

Wine writer Campbell Mattinson penned a beautiful story about the vineyard in 2013 for WineFront. His article titled 'Eldorado Rooad: Dulcie's Vineyard' is reproduced below. 

AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER IS A VINEYARD. It’s been growing out there on a skinny shoulder of the Warby Ranges – near Glenrowan, in north-east Victoria – since rootlings were transported direct from France and planted there way back in 1890. It’s one of the originals, a key piece of Australian vineyard history, yet almost no one has heard of it. If it wasn’t for Paul Dahlenberg, it would now be mostly dead.

Not that it’s in great health even now. Most of the vineyard is a mess of gaps and weeds and gums. It looks like a shattered rock, smithereened, branches tossed like hair, yellow grass far outnumbering green leaf. It hasn’t been in proper commercial production, with any kind of consistency, any time over the past 30 years, and while various efforts have been made to revive it, it’s been severely neglected for most of the past 15 years. Or more. Through one of the most devastating droughts in the region’s history.

This tired old scrappy vineyard now sits lonely, haphazard, rock wallabies bouncing through. Wine people have been known to take one look at it and run a mile. One accidental consultant solemnly advised Dahlenberg, Look Paul, all this place is going to do is suck up all your money for no return.

What am I supposed to do, Paul replied, just sit back and let it die? After it’s been growing out on this hill here for all these years?

Dahlenberg doesn’t own the place, but ever since he first saw it he’s felt a kind of regional responsibility. He first heard of it many years ago, when its then owner Dulcie Brack called to ask him if he wanted to buy her grapes – in his role as manager at nearby Baileys of Glenrowan. He said he was interested, and would come out and take a look when he could.

Well, she said – and it’s tempting to describe her as an eccentric old duck – I’m picking tomorrow if you want them.

Hang on, he said, I haven’t even seen the place yet.

If you don’t come tomorrow, you can’t have the grapes, she said.

We can’t take the grapes tomorrow.

Then I’m not selling them to you, she replied.

And that was that.

Dahlenberg didn’t see the place until many years later, and this is the enduring story of this land. It’s hidden, neglected, you’d never stumble upon it by accident. Not a great many people have ever seen it. You could call it the secret history of the region; stray left or right of the Hume Highway and the trade traffic blows down to nothing and the loneliness beats like a clock. Dahlenberg is still reluctant to show the place to people, for fear of their reaction. He didn’t even show it to his wife for the first two years of him working on it. If you don’t know what to expect of a run down vineyard, it can shock people, he says. He doesn’t mean it like this, but the effect on you is simple: when you visit this beat up old secret it feels like a right of passage, like you’ve been afforded a privilege. It’s the same feeling you get as when someone reluctantly allows you into their heart.

When Paul approached the current owners and asked if he could lease it from them, even they tried to talk him out of it. There were, they said, many other vineyards in the region in much better shape.

But, he replied, none of them were planted in 1890.

The deal was and continues to be done on a handshake. She’s no longer with us, but Paul still calls the place Dulcie’s Vineyard.

When you look at the vineyard today, many thoughts run through your head – but one of them is its gorgeous orchard character. As a landscape it’s a big eccentric garden. Grape vines galore, most of them shiraz but some of them trebbiano, misfits and accidents, intertwined. Right there sharing the vineyard space are 16 almond trees, 1 mulberry, 1 large black fig, 3 nectarine trees, 1 walnut, 1 pear tree, 10 peach trees, 4 apricot trees, 1 lemon and 3 orange trees.

I know this because Dulcie Brack – who was once the mayor of nearby regional town Benalla, her reputation rightly formidable – itemised her vineyard garden in a letter to the late Peter Brown, of Brown Brothers, back in 1988. This letter is typed in courier font, on a manual typewriter that was likely old, even at the time. If you want to know what it’s like to toil away on a hillside somewhere in the middle of stinking hot nowhere – if you want to know how hard the country is out here – then it pays to consider the mood behind her words. Today the old vines are, just, still going but this scrawny place with boulders jutting through its skin like compound fractures is enough to crack you.

From the vantage of her remote wooden verandah, where she lived alone, the letter Dulcie Brack writes to Peter Brown states in part:

"I have had a dream about those grapes, but last March almost killed me, from sunrise to sunset at 45% heat on the hillsides and burnt black.

"At least I tried, but without someone to rely on, I am lost and tired.

"The dream is now further away than ever.

"So Peter it appears a lost cause. Remember that song "Bubbles"? That’s me. I’m dreaming dreams, I’m scheming schemes, I’m building castles high …"

Dulcie also notes that she has "bags of vine spray" in her inventory, but she has "not used (it) more than once, when I found it killed off the many Blue Wrens which kept my vines free of pests.

"The kangaroos who come in I will not kill, or allow to be killed," she writes. "They even come up to the house, and it’s something to look out your bedroom window and see a 7ft buck standing up a few feet from your window, his harem around him with joeys in their pouches. I see no evidence of them destroying anything but know they eat a quantity of grapes."

Dahlenberg has been tending a section of this vineyard – there’s too much to do to concentrate on it all – since 2009. He has isolated the vines he knows are the oldest, and is hell bent on slowly resurrecting them, and treating their produce with appropriate care. The trebbiano goes straight in with the shiraz, not that there’s much of it. The reason the trebbiano goes in with the shiraz has no truck with fashion, and is simply because "it’s part of the vineyard’s story". This endeavour is no easy task, nor a fast one.

For all his work Dahlenberg and his four kids (now adults) have retrieved one tonne of grapes from the 2010 vintage, and roughly two tonnes from the 2012 vintage. If things hold this 2013 vintage, he’ll be back to one tonne.

This is heritage winegrowing and making, but most of all it’s pure heart. It’s about a man and his family and their efforts to both keep history alive, and create it anew.

"I kept thinking what a tragedy it would be if we just left these vines to die, 10 percent, 20 percent each year. When we first started working in here we had to wait for Spring, just to see which of the vines were dead, and which were still breathing."

About the winery

Eldorado Road is run by Paul Dahlenburg (Bear), the winemaker at Baileys of Glenrowan, and his wife Lauretta (Laurie). Having spent a career making wine and tending to the vineyards of others, they decided to release wines under their own label in 2010 and Eldorado Road was born. They are fiercely loyal to North East Victoria and produce a superb portfolio of wines from vineyards in Eldorado, Beechworth, Glenrowan and Rutherglen.

The couple established Eldorado in the Beechworth foothills equidistant between Beechworth and Wangaratta; on Eldorado Road just outside the quaint hamlet of Eldorado. Here they planted small parcels of Nero d'Avola and Durif. The property was selected and purchased principally because it is located on a seam of free draining red decomposed granite loaded with granite buckshot, flanked by granite hills and fed by the gentle flowing Reedy Creek which weaves its way through the property on its journey to the Ovens River.

Climate mapping matched to geography and terroir suggested that Nero d'Avola would thrive on the property and discussions with Allesio Planeta, a revered producer hailing from Sicily (the indigenous home of Nero d’Avola), convinced them to plant the variety. Over a decade later, Huon Hooke believes that Eldorado Road arguably produces Australia’s best Nero d’Avola.

Durif was planted in 2008 from cuttings taken from an original Rutherglen clone kindly provided by Stanton & Killeen. Paul and Laurie believed the cooler location on Eldorado Road would produce a Durif expressing power, intense perfume and a level of finesse not often associated with the variety. They mix grapes from their cool-climate home vineyard with grapes from a proven mature vineyard in Rutherglen to add some generosity, as it always comes in at a riper Baumé than the Eldorado fruit. To quote Jeni Port, "Eldorado Roads Durif needs to be tasted by every drinker who was ever scared witless by the grape. This is not scary, rather it's brilliantly delivered as a serious wine of some beauty: aromatic, blueberry, plum, dark chocolate and spice all lifted, fresh and plush. Bravo."

Dahlenburg knows all about the magic of old vines. Since 1996 he has been making powerfully structured and rich red wines at Baileys from mature plantings of Shiraz and Durif – some dating back a century or more. In 2009 Dahlenburg approached the owners of a derelict 2ha block of Shiraz planted in the 1890s near Glenrowan to see if he could lease it from them. They tried to talk him out of it, saying it was too run-down and that he’d be better off buying fruit from other vineyards in the area. But Dahlenburg was determined - this vineyard was over 100 years old and it was special – and he set about the backbreaking job of restoring a section of the vineyard. For all his hard work, Dahlenburg retrieved only one tonne of grapes from the 2010 vintage.

These remarkable old vines were originally shipped from France to Glenrowan back in the late 1800s. Established before federation, with only rainfall to sustain them, they endured prevailing weather to forge an existence. It’s truly remarkable these vines still survive today, but thanks to Dahlenburg, this old block continues to tell its own story and reward the drinking public with wines born from another era. Only a minute amount of the Perseverance Old Vine Shiraz is produced each year - the average yield is 800kg/acre. To give perspective, Grand Cru Burgundy yields are 15x that! 

The best quality Beechworth Chardonnay is sourced from one of the coolest vineyards in the GI located at 550m above sea level. The purity of this fruit allows Eldorado Road to create a powerful, complex wine with many similarities to those of Chablis.

"Here at Eldorado Road we make good wine at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good wine."