When Portarlington Pinot Noir 2022 won a major trophy at the influential Australian Pinot Noir Challenge it was a surprise to those who were unfamiliar with the winemaking of Barossa-born Ben Mullen. For those who had been following his career, working at some of the most influential domaines in the world, before setting up his own winery, Mulline Vintners, it was all part of a natural progression.
Going places: Ben Mullen, winemaker and co-owner of Mulline Vintners
Mullen has cut his teeth at the likes of Leeuwin Estate, Yarra Yering, Craggy Range and Clyde Park but it was the five years working at Torbreck while he studied oenology which were the most career-defining, working under the guidance of Barossa legend Dave Powell and then, with his help, working a vintage at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy.
Although he was there for just three months Mullen describes it as the defining moment of his career.
"At the end of my time at Torbreck, Dave Powell sent me to Burgundy and I did a vintage a Dujac in 2013 and that was the first time making Pinot – seeing the variety and what can be done with it and that completely changed my mind of where I wanted to head with my career."
Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, French oak, whole bunch, and site-specificity, they are all part of the Mulline Vintners canon as he shows the world the quality of wines you can make in this up-coming corner of Australia.
Let's start at the beginning
Mulline Vintners started life in 2018 and is based in the Geelong region of Victoria, 50 miles south west of Melbourne. The broader Geelong region is large but the vineyards are quite spread out with less area under vine than, say, Mornington Peninsula or Yarra Valley.
“Geelong was the first place that commercial vineyards were planted in Victoria in the 1850s,” says Mullen. “The Swiss came over, planted a lot of Pinot and some aromatic whites, but these were all pulled up.”
It wasn’t until the 1970s that vineyard planting began again in the region, but most of the vines in the ground today have been planted in the past two decades, and are very international in their makeup.
Mulline doesn’t own any vineyards, and has operated on a negociant basis since the beginning, working with growers across the region, taking single site, single variety fruit for its flagship range and blending sub-regional parcels for what Mullen calls the ‘bistro range’.
“We really had nothing to start with,” says Mullen. “After working in New Zealand for a few years I kind of ended up back in Melbourne, and at that time was looking for a full time job and got one at a winery down in Geelong,” he says. “I did a couple of harvests with them and then wanted to kind of spread out and do my own project.”
“The whole idea of what we're trying to do is showcase Geelong as a region. Our big focus with the brand is to show the different styles of wine that can be made here and try to position it as one of the premium grape growing regions of Victoria.”
The winery’s first harvest was 2019 and was relatively small - some 18,000 bottles were made largely from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. At that stage, says Mullen, “it was all about me chatting to growers and going out to find quality fruit.”
Letting the terroir do the talking
Just like Dujac: The focus has always been on single vineyard fruit. Photo ©Dujac/ Peter Smith
The focus from the beginning was ‘single vineyard’ and there was a lot of ground covered sourcing grapes back in 2019, and even more now as Mulline makes wines from every sub-region of Geelong. “I now bottle five single vineyard Pinots,” says Mullen, “it’s the first time that every sub-region in Geelong has its own Pinot bottled.”
Geelong itself is split up into three very different sub-regions (Moorabool Valley, The Bellarine Peninsula and Surf Coast), with the Mulline winery situated in Sutherlands Creek in the Moorabool Valley. The winemaking facility is shared with a handful of other producers, including Empire of Dirt, and Mullen enjoys working alongside other winemakers during vintage, sharing ideas and expertise.
The single-site wines themselves are all named after the townships where the grapes are grown - such as Drysdale, Bannockburn and Portarlington - giving each one regional identity. Mulline’s second range (the Regional Range) focuses on variety rather than site, with each wine made up of grapes from across the Geelong region; wines in this range include Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Syrah as well as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
You can tell the two ranges apart easily from their labels; while both feature abstract artwork on the front label, the Regional Range has the name of the variety bolding plastered across it, the Single Vineyard wines are left blank.
Mullen talks about the complexity and individuality of the wines from the single vineyard sites, which stands them apart from the regional wines, which he says are “delicious and can be drunk earlier if you want to as well.”
This is important for the business as they are increasingly working with restaurant customers who use the regional wines as by-the-glass pours. The Pinot Noir does particularly well in this environment, says Mullen. “That wine has seen significant growth in the eastern states in Australia, where it’s being poured by-the-glass,” he says. “That’s exactly the SKU that everyone is just going for when they go out and have dinner.”
As well as growth in this area with the Pinot and the other two key Mulline varieties - Chardonnay and Syrah - Mullen is keen to continue his direct-to-consumer relationship through cellar door activities and a soon-to-be-launched wine club. The idea of the club is to make sure that die-hard fans of the winery don’t miss out on small batch wines that are still being produced, sometimes just a couple of barrels from a particular parcel of grapes.
“Those wines are becoming harder to get for some of our personal customers, so by putting a wine club together this means that club members get offered these wines first,” he says.
Ben Hine and Ben Mullen (l-r)
The other Ben
Before we wrap up and taste the latest Mulline releases, brought into the UK by Pol Roger Portfolio, there’s time to circle back to the winery’s name and find out a little bit about the other Ben.
Working behind the scenes as the business manager at Mulline Vintners, Ben Hine has a background in hospitality and law, and splits his time between working as a financial services lawyer in Melbourne and running the back end business at Mulline. With the business growing a little quicker than expected, Ben Hine ensures that things run smoothly away from the cellar.
“He does a lot of the back of house spreadsheets, and the business side of it,” says Mullen. “Given that the volume of wine that we're making is more than what we thought we were going to get to at this stage, it’s important that we make sure that the cash flows and people are getting paid on time.”
Between them they are running a tight ship. With Ben Hine’s expertise behind the scenes, it offers Ben Mullen the time to scour the Geelong region looking for the next exciting parcel of fruit and to fine tune each single vineyard and regional wine in the cellar.
The results so far are superb; tasting through a snapshot of the two ranges it’s clear that there’s a focus on freshness and ripeness here; this is precision winemaking, across both ranges the grapes have been picked at just the right time to retain lovely balanced acidity while offering generous but not over-blown fruit characters.
How were the wines tasting?
Mulline Sauvignon Blanc 2021
A sunshine wine, ripe green melon upfront then a green jalapeno tang. This is delicious, it really smacks you around the chops with that bright fruit and focussed acidity. Made from Bordeaux clones in old French barriques and matured on its gross lees. A Sauvignon which thinks outside of the box.
Mulline Sutherlands Creek Chardonnay 2021
A whip smart Chardonnay that bucks the current ‘over-lean’ trend and offers just the right amount of richness. It’s rounded with dried mango fruit and lime-flecked acidity. Made in French barrique, 25% new oak, no malo and no battonage.
Mulline Sutherlands Creek Pinot Noir 2021
Pale and perfumed with pronounced red and black fruit pastille notes, raspberry fruit and a cranberry acidity. A really pretty Pinot with enough clout despite its pale hue; and just a hint of spice on the close. 30% whole bunch, 8-9 days on skins, fermented warm (30°C) in an open top fermenter.
Mulline Syrah 2021
Made from Sutherland and Portarlington fruit. Black pepper on the nose then a real tingle of spice on the palate, but this time it's szechuan pepper, backed up by blackberry and ripe plum fruit, violets and earth. A delightful wine, chewy and rich. 20% whole bunch, six months in old oak.
The wines of Mulline Vintners are sold and distributed in the UK by Pol Roger Portfolio which is a commercial partner of The Buyer. To discover more about them click here.
