Jeni-Port-on-VSandB

Standing atop the Thorley vineyard at Stanley in the middle of winter, the white caps of Mt. Buffalo feel very close and snow is definitely in the air. Growing grapes and making wine off the grid in these 830-metre-high, sub-alpine conditions is not for the faint of heart.

Tessa Brown prefers to use a far more poetic metaphor.

“We have to get used to dancing on a flying carpet,” she says about both the challenging Stanley climate and the unpredictability of climate change.

It’s a wild ride all right, with no two seasons, vintages, the same. But extreme variability is part of the “dance” that Tessa and Jeremy Schmölzer have been waltzing to in recent years with Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown, their Stanley-based label led by riesling, chardonnay, nebbiolo and shiraz. Thankfully, the couple move fast on their feet.

In 2023, as the calendar turned from late April into May, the nebbiolo vines were losing their leaves, yet grape juices were barely hitting ripeness at 11º baumé. What to do with such low sugars and high acids, brought on by the cold and wet year? They made a sparkling nebbiolo.

Resourceful, yes, and the quality of the methode traditionnelle sparkling – their very first – which was oak-fermented, underwent a full second malolactic fermentation, and aged on lees for two years, is testament to the talent of these two winemakers.

"Because we’re not particularly tweaky and technical winemakers who would sort of airbrush the differences between the seasons, I think we are a producer whose vintage variation is more noticeable,” Tessa says. 

It could be argued that this is what makes the wines of Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown so exceptional – an approach that goes to the heart of good winemaking, allowing each vintage its own voice.

Sometimes, as in the ’23 vintage, that voice can take a little longer to be heard. Many of the ’23 wines on release were coiled and tight, and needed time. Jeremy says that now, as three-year-olds, they are starting to fulfil their early promise. 

In the ’24 vintage, concentrated fruit teams up with a wonderful, approachable complexity, already open and inviting. The ’25 “village” wines, as the couple refer to their non-Beechworth selections, generally sourced from growers in the King Valley, are all out now and in good voice. 

But the wine that both casual drinkers and sommeliers can’t get enough of is VS&B riesling. They make three under the Obstgarten (German for “orchard") range: Obstgarten T (dry), Obstgarten K (kabinett off-dry style) and Obstgarten Selection (spätlese off-dry style). An auslese style, still humming along in the Stanley winery, is also in the works. 

The German connection in name and style is deliberate. Jeremy, who has Austrian heritage, admits to an obsession with the grape – something that was fuelled by his time working vintage at legendary Weingut Keller in Germany’s Rheinhessen in 2015. Tessa, following her obsession with nebbiolo, worked vintage that same year at Giuseppe Rinaldi in Barolo.

“When I worked at Keller I was still kind of green, so it was nice to go in without any pre-conceptions,” he says. What he learnt was instrumental in the approach taken with the VS&B rieslings, especially when it comes to the role of residual sugar. 

"We are still looking for dryness in a sweet wine if that makes sense,” he says. "You look for the acid to appear over the sugar, and then there are winemaking things that I picked up from the Germans that expand on that. 

"If you look at the spätlese Selection Riesling, that is skin-contacted for a good 12-plus hours... I remember winemakers in Germany talking about getting a kind of grassy smell out of the juice as you soak it, and sometimes they leave it for days. 

“The stems on riesling are quite nicely mild, you get a fairly constrained spice character, a nice gingery tinge. It builds phenolics by doing that, too, so the end of every sip is a drying texture.”

Understanding the relationship between sugar and acid in riesling is an art. Tessa describes it as “bliss point chemistry.” Just don’t expect to see mention of sugar on their labels.

No preconceptions are allowed. Just taste what is in the glass and be amazed.