The Three Hills Story
‘There’s gold in them thar hills’

Vignerons Hayden, Liz, Erl, Andrew, Lyn and Phil, taken in Dunsborough

Western Australia is one of the most isolated, most lately and most lightly settled places in the world.  In the decade 1890-1900 following the discovery of gold at Coolgardie by Paddy Hannan, the population of Western Australia tripled. The development of a fine wine industry in the South West from the late 1960s is responsible for a somewhat less spectacular but nevertheless spirited surge in the agricultural economy of the South West where traditional agricultural and resource based activities have been marking time for decades.

The release of the Three Hills label is an extension of the story of Margaret River.  The fruit comes from a place with a climate uniquely favourable, in the Australian context, and in the Margaret river context, to the production of fine wine. A small, family enterprise dedicated itself to discovering oenological gold.  How this came to be takes a little telling.  This is the story of Three Hills.

This big Marri was born long before the white man came to these shores.

The region

The Three Hills vineyard lies on the extreme south-western tip of Western Australia some 10km from both the Southern and the Indian Oceans.  The nearest settlement is Karridale, a two-shop crossroads hamlet serving a quiet rural community near the retirement and holiday resort of Augusta.  To the North is the village of Margaret River and the town of Busselton. The region is known internationally as ‘Margaret River’ only because the village is central.  Wine, art, craft, surf, food, beaches and tourism drive the local economy.  Thirty years ago it was beef, sheep and timber.  In the sixties the population of the region numbered less than 10,000 people.  Today, at the turn of the century, this is the fastest growing rural area in Australia.  This transformation owes a lot to the imagination of a small group of individuals who fell in love with the idea of producing fine wine.  In the nineteen sixties Australians were turning from beer and fortified wines to table wines.  The notion was that better wines could be produced in cooler areas.  In Western Australia the industry was centred in the very warm Swan Valley.  The gradient of temperature decline in autumn is steep as one leaves the Swan and travels south.  Established vignerons were quick to caution newcomers that there could be trouble ripening healthy grapes in the south.  This was not so but there would be other surprises.

The beginning
In 1967 Dr Tom Cullity, a Perth physician and wine enthusiast planted the first vines of the modern era in Margaret River at a place he called Vasse Felix midway between Busselton and Margaret River.  He started with 8 acres of land, purchased at the princely sum of $A150 per hectare, planting Rhine Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Shiraz .  The first vintage, 1971, has been described by Cullity as a disaster due to bunch rot and Silver Eyes (a predatory bird), but the 72 Rhine Riesling and 73 Cabernet met with immediate critical acclaim. This was againsta background described pithily by Cullity in these words:

‘I was a busy physician, could get away most week-ends, and used to rise at about 3am, leave Perth in a Peugeot 403 and spend the week-end looking for suitable available land south of Busselton. Over the next few years I averaged this 600 kilometre return trip more than once a fortnight, starting work in the vineyard at about 8am and returning to Perth late on Sunday night.  I spent all my holidays there, living in a shed, usually alone. 

I had never been south of Bunbury in my life, had no practical bent, had never changed a car tyre, did not know what a weed was and knew nothing about vines or wine making. My idea at the time was to buy a small area, plant no more than one acre, and that this had to be convenient to a farmer who would work with me, accept payment and perform this novel operation faithfully at the behest of somebody like myself whose only knowledge was what he had read in books or been told by “experts”.  It was idealistic, poorly conceived logistically, and in an area where it was common to see people with bright ideas founder. Obviously I had to travel up and down and insist on detail and somebody had to be prepared to do it.  The attitude suitable to intensive agriculture and critical wine making procedures is foreign to the instincts of people who graze cattle and milk’. 

Typical west coast scene.

If one is to generalise, medicos and teachers and others entirely new to farming and to wine were driving the new industry.  They were well educated, but in fields other than wine.

The Climate
Cullity made this observation.  ‘It was due to Californian wine scientists that the importance of a cool ripening period was appreciated’.  Cullity was influenced by the ideas of Harold Olmo who recommended that vines for wine production be planted in Mount Barker in 1955, John Gladstones who compared the climate of the South West with that in Bordeaux in a paper circulated in 1965, Bill Jamieson from Agriculture WA and Jack Mann, winemaker at Houghtons who preached that the highest possible quality in table wine would be achieved in cooler areas than the Swan Valley.  He was aware of the assertion of the respected winemaker Maurice  O’Shea, of the Hunter Valley, who had never been to Western Australia, that Albany would make premium wine.

Later, on the basis of his own experience, Cullity had this to say:

‘My guess is that the unclouded sky is more significant than was realised and that south of Margaret River more cloudy conditions, causing lower vine temperature amongst other things, should lead to longer and slower ripening and more elegant wine’. 

Cullity went to Margaret River in search of elegant wine.  Before he had produced his first wine others like Bill Pannel (Moss Wood) and the Cullen family, the Horgans at Leeuwin and David Hohnen at Cape Mentelle were in hot pursuit.  All these producers established their vineyards north of Witchcliffe, a hamlet some 8Km south of Margaret River townsite. This pattern has continued despite Cullity’s recommendation of the cloudy country to the south.

Mid winter.

Continental heating
Australia is a low latitude continental landmass that gets very warm to hot in the months of February, March and April when the vine matures its fruit.  Few Australian viticultural environments have the protection from hot winds that is afforded parts of Europe by the combination of the Mediterranean Sea, the Pyrenees and the European Alps.  Albany at 35 degrees south is slightly closer to the equator than Gibraltar at 36 degrees north.  On first sight therefore, one might expect the wines of the South West to have more in common with those of Algeria than Montpellier, Avignon, Bordeaux or Dijon.  However, the South West of Western Australia gets first use of Indian Ocean air as it moves west to East and is less troubled by damaging heat events than all points to the east.  Natural acidity is better conserved and the grape arrives at the winery in a superior condition to produce natural wines with less human intervention.Generalising if one searches the continent for the best climates to conserve flavour it is the cloudy regions adjacent to the south coast that offer the best environments.In the extreme South of Western Australia the autumn months of March and April are fine and balmy, and the winds in the main gently off the sea, as the continent gradually cools.  The low-pressure systems that bring the winter rain are still coursing the southern ocean well to the south.  Any rain originating in cyclone activity of the tropics tends to sweep inland to the east leaving the vines to mature their fruit free of misadventure.

The extreme southwest around Augusta and Karridale is a land of gently sloping hills, ancient soils and giant trees.  Winters are mild in temperature but can be wild and wet.  It is a land of dry summers where the vine needs deep soils to sustain it over the seven drought months from November to May.  In favourable circumstances irrigation is unnecessary.  Leafing out in September, escaping any winter frost, the vine produces all its foliage by mid January, growth ceases and the fruit readily accumulates sugar to mature the fruit between March and April.  A long growing season and an absence of heat in autumn yields favourable conditions to ripen equally the very early varieties and the very late i.e. Pinot Noir through to Cabernet Sauvignon and Mourvedre, with a fine chance of producing exceptional wine across the board.  This is highly unusual in the world of viticulture.  In higher latitudes one must match a variety to growing season and ripening time in order to escape unwanted heat while avoiding the onset of winter that will curtail sugar accumulation.  Inevitably, seasons are more variable at higher latitudes.

In Karridale, Cullity’s cloudy south, the autumn morning mists arising from the overnight chilling of humid air moving in off the ocean rapidly dissipate after sunrise.  Overnight humidity is 100%, falling to perhaps 55% at midday.  It is rare for daytime temperatures to exceed 24degrees Centigrade, the fruit slowly ripening while retaining in greater concentration the array of flavours possible in any given grape variety.  In the Australian context, this is unusual.

The characteristics that give Margaret River its potential for quality wine production are most defined in the country south of Witchcliffe, within 20km of Cape Leeuwin.  Tom Cullity’s observations have been confirmed in climatic studies by John Gladstones and more latterly by the author.  In these studies of heat accumulation in the pre vintage period, the Three Hills environment at Karridale is compared with benchmark locations in Australia and overseas.  These papers can be accessed at http://www.happs.com.au/pages/research.html.  I conclude that we have an outstanding opportunity to produce wines of great stature from mid to late season varieties and real advantages, although less pronounced, with earlier varieties.

The Three Hills Property
The Three Hills Estate comprises 135 hectares with some 23 hectares planted to red grape varieties and 14 to white.  Two creeks flow into the Glenarty that in turn empties into the Blackwood only a few kilometres to the east.  These creeks dissect the property into three hills.  These hills are part of the eastern edge of the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge, the resistant granite block that rebuffs the long swells of the Indian Ocean.  The soils are derived from Granites.  The hills are remnants of an ancient plateau that shows evidence of extensive working since Archaean times.  Despite their ancient geological origins the hills are crowned with majestic stands of Marri (Eucalyptus Diversicolour) with the occasional Jarrah (Eucalyptus Marginata) and Peppermint (Agonis Flexuosa).  Soils are relatively deep and but thin down as they descend into the valleys.  Winter rainfall is heavy and variable at between thirty to sixty inches but confined to the months of May till September.

Lyn picking Marsanne

The Quest
The Happ family’s first vines were planted in 1978 near Dunsborough in the north of the Margaret River region in the country near Cape Naturaliste overlooking Geographe Bay.  The decision to plant the Three Hills vineyard inconveniently 90 kilometres to the South was deliberate.  It was based upon the observation that the thermometer in the lighthouse at Cape Naturaliste exceeds 30C on about 15 occasions over the summer while the Leeuwin lighthouse sees only two days of similar warmth. In designing the new vineyard it was decided to set new parameters. These included:

• A decision to properly explore the range of flavours that can be achieved by utilizing different grape varieties.  There are many experimental plots, with twenty-one red varieties and nine white.
• Decisions to design the new plantings to maximise fruit and leaf exposure. Consequently the trellising and training system is radically new, the vines must be harvested by hand and worked by quite small tractors.  It is a vineyard designed for the vines rather than the tractor.  There is absolutely no compromise of quality to achieve other ends.
• A decision to limit yields to 10 tons to the hectare.  This can only be achieved with some varieties by heavy fruit thinning at verasion, a process that goes somewhat against the grain, but vital in achieving the objective.
• The avoidance of irrigation except during establishment.
• The monitoring of ripening temperatures, at twenty minute intervals, at the vineyard and at fifteen benchmark locations across the south West of Western Australia between Perth and Bremer Bay.  Hourly temperature records have been accessed from benchmark locations overseas for purposes of comparison.  The hope was that we could predict with some certainty what varieties should do well in the new vineyard, before we actually made the wine.  It is vital that we know how our environment relates to places in Europe and elsewhere where wine of known characteristics is produced.
• A deliberate decision to release only the best wines from the best years under the Three Hills Label.

After he had sold Vasse Felix ending his direct association with the Industry, Dr Tom Cullity made a number of recommendations to those who would follow him including the following:

• To have continuity vineyards should have family owner-occupiers or an established management structure on larger plans.
• Nobody working for you is ever good enough.  The best manure is the owners’ footprint.
• The wine farmers should avoid any close association with blatant publicity.  It is a two edged sword. Premium wines create their own aura if they deserve it.
• If you can’t make wine simply, from clean fruit, don’t make it at all.

These comments seem to encapsulate the stoic determination, and eternal optimism of the true pioneer, an attribute apt to be very well developed in the ‘sometimes difficult’ environments of Western Australia. The early Gold prospectors were men of stamina capable of enduring adversity.  In growing grapes at our Three Hills vineyard we have been reminded occasionally that we are working at the margin.  The sight of a row of vines and steel posts flattened by the wind can be disconcerting.  We have seen a forest giant resting across rows of vines in midwinter when the soils get wet and sloppy, thirty giant trees falling like dominoes in a south westerly gale.  The birds are relentless, every year.  If the fruit is not securely netted we lose the lot.  To arrive at the vineyard to see your bird nets in the trees can be……….. troubling.   Eagles and the foxes take the ducks that are responsible for keeping the snails at bay.  One could go on…..

At the other extreme is the sensation of trying a new wine as the lees settle and its true character emerges, and one realises that here, in this glass, is something special.

An owner-winemaker must reflect that he is too close at times to the task at hand.  When you taste his wines, remember that he will be as sensitive to criticism as if you were passing remarks about his children.  There is real gold……… and fools gold….. and shades between.

The proof of a pudding is in the eating.  Ultimately, unless the wines tell a story there is in fact, no story to be told.

I have always thought that it would be comforting to have a little gold mine, there to spend some months of the year……….and in the other months, perhaps to have a little boat……………..

Erland Happ  September 2001