The team dragged the old dog out of retirement recently.

They needed a head presenter for our Pinot Noir master class. Apparently, sitting by the fireplace with a glass of Syrah doesn’t count as “operational duties”, so I was handed a microphone and told to look smart.

The traditional move at a Pinot master class is to stand there looking deeply serious while talking about forest floor, hints of dried sage and a whisper of smoked bacon.

But I didn’t want to talk about bacon. I wanted to talk about Julius Caesar.

When you stop and think about it, wine is mind-blowingly unique. Where else in modern life can you consume something that is the direct, living descendant of a plant from thousands of years ago?

You certainly can’t say that about a four-and-twenty meat pie.

The genetic lottery

Here’s the part even most wine people never stop to think about. If you plant a grape seed, you don’t get the same vine back.

Grape seeds are like children: a random genetic mix of their parents. Plant a Pinot Noir seed and you might get a vine that produces sour little green berries that taste of nothing.

So for centuries, growers haven’t bothered with seeds. They’ve cut a live branch from their best vine and put it in the ground to grow roots of its own.

That means every Pinot Noir vine in the world, including every one on our hill on Ingram Road, is a cutting of a cutting of a cutting. It has been copied by hand for hundreds of years, and quite possibly for two thousand. The vine in your glass is a living link to the ones Burgundy’s monks tended, and maybe the ones Caesar’s generals came across in Gaul.

Those monks deserve a special mention. They worked out that the same vine tasted completely different at the top of a slope compared to 50 metres further down, and in doing so they gave us the idea of terroir. We are also on a hill. We think about this a lot. (If you’d like the full story, from forgotten clay pots in a cave to Celtic barrels and data nerd monks, [I’ve written it up here].)

When clones go rogue

So if every Pinot vine is a copy and paste of an ancient original, why do we grow seven different Pinot clones at Helen’s Hill (soon to be eight)?

Because Mother Nature is cheeky. Over decades in the sun, a tiny mutation can pop up in a single bud on a single branch. Someone notices that branch is producing smaller berries or ripening a week early, cuts it, plants it, and a new clone is born. Still Pinot Noir, but with a superpower of its own.

At the master class, we lined up five of them. Four are good enough to get a bottle of their own as our Single Clone Reserves:

• Range View (Pommard): The velvet workhorse. If Pinot Noir is a diva, Pommard is the one that turns up to rehearsal on time.
• First Light (MV6): Our heritage line, believed to have come to Australia with James Busby in the 1830s. Deep, dark and built to last.
• The Rogue (943): Tiny berries, loose bunches, serious concentration. You might know it as Project 943. From here on, it’s The Rogue. Seemed only fair.
• The Smuggler (Abel): Snipped from one of Burgundy’s most famous vineyards and smuggled into New Zealand in a gumboot. Or so the story goes.

Each of them has a better backstory than most people I know. Meet the full line-up here.

From Burgundy to Ingram Road

• Ingram Road Pinot Noir uses every clone we grow. The whole family at one table.
• Helen’s Hill Long Walk Pinot Noir brings together five clones.
• Our Single Clone Reserves are the show ponies: four clones, each bottled on its own. Taste them side by side and you’re tasting the family tree.

2026: the year of the show ponies

In 2026, for the first time, all four single clones made the cut. The year was that good.

And for the first time since 2021, we’ll also be making a Winemaker’s Reserve Pinot Noir. It’s in barrel now, and I’m being very patient about it. Mostly.

So next time you pour a glass of Pinot, skip the bacon. Think about two thousand years of people taking cuttings, carrying them across borders (some more legally than others) and planting them on hills just like ours.

See you at the cellar door. I’ll be the one not talking about forest floor.

Allan

Click here to shop our our Single Clone Pinot Noir.

P.S. If you missed my last instalment, you can find it here.