Mulline


— About —

THE ESTATE

Mulline is the creation of two Ben’s, Mullen and Hine who set out to showcase exciting single site expressions from the Geelong region with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at the centre of this. Ben Mulline heads up the winemaking and prior to setting up Mulline cut his teeth at the likes of Domaine Dujac, Yarra Yering, Oakridge, Leeuwin Estate, Torbreck & Craggy Range before returning to deep dive into the diversity of Geelong’s terrior whilst at Clyde Park.

Geelong geographically is a large GI and has a lot of diversity in both soil and climate, evident in Mulline’s single vineyard wines. From the ‘by the sea’ Portarlington vineyard east of the Geelong CBD exposed to Port Phillip Bay to the warmer clay dominant Sutherland Creek vineyard North West towards Ballarat.

Their largest purchase each vintage is from Sutherland Creek in the Moorabool GI, North West of Geelong, one of the original GI planted pre Phylloxera. After these vines were destroyed and the land without vines for some time the Farr family started planting in 70’s.
As Ben describes it it’s and old inland sea – hard, dry soil but mineral soils. Very flat. Lots of westerly’s in late spring , early summer. 1/2 less rain the rest of Peninsula so needs to be irrigated. A Mediterranean climate vs Maritime of Drysdale and Portarlington, the other two sites.

 

THE WINEMAKING

Mulline currently make all the wines in a shared winery as they continue to look for a suitable site to establish their own winery in years to come. In terms  of the production over 70% is Pinot Noir with the remaining including their single site Chardonnay bottlings, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris.

Wild fermentation on all the wines.

WHITE – With their white wines they use a lot of solids, not racking/settling post pressing, it all goes into the barrels. Also important to know that apart from a portion of the regional Sauvignon Blanc bottling the whites don’t see any malolactic.

RED – The red’s see different percentages of whole-bunch dependant on site, 7 to 10 days fermentation then pressed off to barrel. Varying degrees of new oak from 20% to 30%.