I first heard about the Cloudburst vineyard in 2008, when I was travelling through Margaret River in Western Australia.
Jamie McCall of Burnside Organic Farm, producers of tiny quantities of very good, earthy zinfandel, told me about a crazy American, Will Berliner, who had established a small block of vines on Caves Road a couple of years earlier -- crazy because this vineyard was dry-grown, biodynamically farmed and close-planted, in a region where almost all other vineyards are irrigated, chemically farmed and wide-spaced.
So I was excited when, in mid 2012, Will sent me his first wine -- a 2010 chardonnay -- to taste. It was extremely good: rich and complex and multilayered, but with a spine of minerality keeping it balanced and poised on the tongue.
This was an extraordinary debut for a new vineyard; Cloudburst was clearly a name to watch. But the $100-plus price tag and the fact that pretty much all of the wine had already been sold to flash restaurants in the US meant I wasn't all that inclined to write about it: I mean, I know I rave about obscure wines in this column all the time, but they are usually obtainable, at least if you're prepared to do some searching/emailing/hunting.
The good news is that this situation is gradually changing. Will Berliner caused a huge kerfuffle at the Margaret River Wine Show last November when his 2010 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon walked away with no fewer than three trophies: best single vineyard estate red, best red of the show and best cabernet -- not a bad result for a crazy newcomer in a region awash with excellent producers.
The rush of local attention has inspired him to make his wines more available locally. On the weekend of February 8-9, Cloudburst will be one of 35 Australian artisan producers showing their new releases at the Rootstock Festival in Sydney, along with more than 30 other winemakers from around the world.