Owner Michael Twelftree with HP Chu translating

Today we had the extraordinary pleasure and honor to meet Michael Twelftree, owner and director of TWO HANDS WINES. We heard him speak about his wines and we tasted a stunning range of 8 expressions from his vineyards. We also got to ask some questions. Twelftree is one of South Australia’s most respected and innovative producers of fine wine, but I must admit I was not expecting Michael Twelftree to speak so clearly about all the things I’ve been expecting to hear but have rarely heard these last few years. The topic we should all be addressing in the study of wine is not so much how good wine can be when it comes from a cool climate, but how we might continue to produce wines of the best quality when the climate is extremely hot.

Mr. Twelftree explained that innovation begins in the vineyard, where TWO HANDS is adapting to climate change. Summers in Australia are getting hotter and hotter, with sizzling heat waves and crop-destroying drought almost every year. TWO HANDS winery maintains a water reserve of 32 million liters to irrigate vineyards during bud break, when the plants need water most for shoot and leaf growth. They also use this reserve to prepare vines for heat waves that might last as long as a week and spike temperatures above 45 degrees. In Australia heatwaves (so far) are intense and frightening, but brief, like typhoons. Down under, weather travels from west to east crossing most of the Australian continent before reaching TWO HANDS. With as much as 8 days warning, vineyard managers prepare for heat waves by irrigating generously to increase water reserves in the vines so that they can withstand super-high temperatures for days until the wave passes.

But many of TWO HANDS’ vineyards are very old and dry-farmed. Rows in most of these old vineyards are oriented East to West, and so the summer sun hits them on the North side. TWO HANDS has developed a ‘clay spray’ that covers the fruit zone on the sunny side and effectively prevents any sunlight from reaching the grapes. It must be a strange sight to see rows of vines shining white in the sun. To insulate the earth and protect shallow roots, TWO HANDS packs straw under the rows. While the air temperature soars into the 40s, temperature beneath the straw remains low, 12-13C. Moreover, TWO HANDS plants a cover crop between the rows and then rolls it flat for even more insulation as it gradually decays and fertilizes the soil.

Evidently Michael Twelftree doesn’t like oaky wine, not at all

We go to so many tastings, and we’ve gotten used to marketing strategies clothed as homage to terroir, production value clothed as respect for high-quality grapes. Typically, producers set up oak regimes where cheaper wines are processed entirely in stainless or spend just a few months in oak, while more expensive expressions spend much more time in barrels and those mostly new. Thus, the vast majority of expensive wines in the world exhibit aroma and flavor characteristics of new French-oak, and they say it’s because better grapes can ‘stand up’ to the wood, that the oak ‘adds complexity’.

Speaking for myself, I don’t particularly like the aromas and flavors of new oak in wine, though of course there are a few exceptions… We rarely come across a producer departing from the pattern… There was one guy in the Limari Valley in Chile who laughed about conditioning his new barrels with cheap wine… but Michael Twelftree’s strategy is a little different. Indeed he is the first wine producer I’ve met who relies so completely on blind tasting to settle the identity of his brands.

“We taste from more than 90 barrels a day, and we taste them all blind.” Nothing except what’s in the glass indicates whether it’s Shiraz or Cabernet, Mourvedre or Grenache, much less where the wines have come from. They just decide which ones we think are best, rating them from A+ down to D.”

In this evaluation process (not surprisingly given their preferences) Twelftree and his winemakers find that wine from new-oak barrels never earn the highest marks but instead fall in the lower ranges and are perhaps declassified altogether, especially in more difficult years. They use oak as an oxygenating tool, not because they like its aromas and flavors, and this practice is hardly new. All the barrels for TWO HANDS are 300-liter hogsheads, not the smaller Bariques (225L), and he uses them at least 8 times before discarding them. Alcohol

Only when the owner has the will to express his own preferences and the energy to back them up can you see as many iconoclastic practices in play as we see them in play at TWO HANDS. Michael Twelftree makes most of the other producers we encounter seem like slaves to fashion. Bravo Mr Twelftree, and bravo New Century for bringing in such an innovative line of wines. They aren’t cheap of course, but don’t miss the chance to try them if you can.