After the Black Saturday fires of 2009, with smoke taint a genuine risk across the valley, Mount Mary made a decision to declassify this fruit rather than release wines they couldn't stand behind. The wine they released was called Reflexion. Since then, the label has persisted as a wine drawn from the estate's younger blocks, fruit that carries the same site character as the flagships but hasn't yet settled into the depth and consistency the main label demands. The intention, kept intact by Sam Middleton since he took over the winemaking in 2011, is wines that reward opening now rather than patience. Immediate, transparent, and made for drinking.
Marli Russell is a different kind of ambition. In 2008, David Middleton planted seven Rhone varieties on the property, a considered response to a warming climate and a longer-standing curiosity about the full range of what the site might express. The range is named for his mother Marli, who co-founded Mount Mary with John Middleton in 1971, and whose instinct for forward thinking it is meant to honour. First released in 2014, a decade into its life, the wines are finding the kind of character and composure that comes with vine age and accumulated knowledge of a site.
2024 was an exceptional season for both ranges. A cool, slow first half held ripening back and built the kind of tension that shows as real precision in the glass. A dry February then brought focus and brightness, particularly to the red varieties. The results are three wines of genuine clarity and character, the kind that the site delivers when everything falls into place. And in 2024, it very much did.
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