An hour from the hubbub of Melbourne’s Central Business District, turning off the freeway and heading into rolling hills, the suburban sprawl falls away in the rear view mirror and the Yarra Valley opens before you like an oil painting.

The landscape is bucolic, the terrain undulates as it does in Tuscany, and birdsong supplants the distant din of the metropolis.

Not only is the Yarra Valley one of Australia’s most celebrated wine regions, chiefly famed for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, it is also one of its most accessible, with more than 80 cellar doors, award-winning restaurants and accommodation to suit most budgets, all a short hop from the country’s second biggest city.

Officially a cool climate region, there’s an abundance of varieties, from Italian grape émigrés to Bordeaux blends and a fresh, modern style of Shiraz.

The Yarra Valley is Victoria’s oldest wine region, but it has succumbed to the vagaries of fashion over its history.

Vines were first planted in 1838, but less than a hundred years later they had all gone, falling victim to the trend for fortified wines from warmer climes and making way for more lucrative crops.

The region’s renaissance began in the early 1960s, with the revival of heritage properties like Yeringberg, alongside new wave wineries including Yarra Yering.

Broadly divided into the Upper and Lower Yarra, based on the path of the Yarra river, the relaxed pace, Mediterranean flavour and spectacular scenery reward a few leisurely days touring, though it is perfectly possible to make a day trip from Melbourne, should time dictate.

Once in the valley, distances between wineries are short and there are handsome small towns, such as Healesville and Yarra Glen, to while away time over a flat white.

Wineries to visit:

Giant Steps

Established in 1997 by drinks industry pioneer Phil Sexton and named after his favourite John Coltrane album, Giant Steps has forged a reputation for single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that showcases a profound sense of place.

The tasting room sits on the main street in Healesville, the team are lovely, booking is encouraged, though walk-ins are welcome.

Yarra Yering

A pioneer of the Yarra Valley renaissance, established in 1969 by an eminent botanist, Dr Bailey Carrodus, the winery’s first Merlot cost more than Penfold’s Grange at the time of its release.

These days the winemaker is Sarah Crowe, who crafts a mostly Bordeaux-inspired portfolio of wines that balance power, structure and understated finesse.

Ten minutes from Healesville, the tasting room is cosy so book ahead.

De Bortoli

The Yarra Valley outpost for a family-owned winery, run by Leanne De Bortoli and her winemaker husband Steve Webber.

The portfolio is impressively broad, with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir rubbing shoulders with newer arrivals such as Gamay and Grenache.

Located at Dixon’s Creek, there’s a large tasting room with commanding views and a popular Italian restaurant, ‘Locale’.

Levantine Hill

If money is no object then you can choose to fly to this state-of-the-art winery by helicopter from central Melbourne.

Most will choose to drive the 10 minutes from Healesville for a tasting flight or classy wine-paired lunch.

Veteran winemaker Paul Bridgeman oversees a prestige portfolio showcasing the elegance and finesse that defines the Yarra Valley’s fruit.

Soumah

Set up by a hospitality veteran, Brett Butcher, the theme is Mediterranean, the colour scheme a blazing azure, while every detail seems to have been meticulously thought through.

The wines are an eclectic and compelling range of mostly Italian varieties, including some Decanter medal winners and there’s a top notch trattoria, so food pairing is a no-brainer.

My perfect day in the Yarra Valley:

Start the day the Aussie way, with a flat white. It’s almost impossible to find bad coffee in these parts, but I’d recommend Montesanto Coffee Roasters in Healesville, where owner Mario knows his beans.

For the best introduction to what the Yarra Valley has to offer, head across the road to Giant Steps for a plot-specific, premium tasting flight, focused on the region’s signature varieties, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

A short drive along the Maroondah Highway, treat yourself to an al fresco lunch at Levantine Hill Estate, with a Mediterranean-inspired menu and paired wines against the backdrop of the valley’s rolling hills.

Book an afternoon tasting at Yarra Yering, just five minutes away, to experience some of the region’s modern history and award-winning cuvées in its homely tasting room.

For a brief diversion, head back into Healesville for a tasting and tour at the famous Four Pillars gin distillery on the edge of town.

Continue the Yarra-meets-the-Med theme with delicious pasta or wood-fired pizza at Soumah, an Italian specialist nestled on a knoll in the Warramate foothills, and stay the night in one of its well appointed vineyard cottages.

Where to stay:

Soumah: Four luxurious cottages and the four bedroom Villa Sophia sit alongside the vines at this Italian-inspired winery near Gruyere.

Chateau Yering: Step back in time at this grand Victorian mansion set amidst a 250 acre estate, with stunning views over the Yarra Valley and 32 suites.

Yarra Gables Motel: A restored farmhouse-turned-motel, with friendly, wine-loving owners, set in beautiful manicured gardens on the edge of Healesville.

Where to eat:

Jayden Ong: Locally-sourced dishes are served alongside the barrels at this Healesville winery and restaurant, which also has a seasonal outdoor barbecue.

Soumah: The culinary theme is Italian at this relaxed trattoria tribute featuring a pizza oven and pasta, while the vineyard views are sublime.

Levantine Hill: High end Mediterranean cuisine, with wine pairing, in a swish restaurant boasting beautiful views of the Yarra Valley from the outdoor terrace.

How to get there:

Melbourne is the nearest international airport, served by Qantas and (from January 2027) by British Airways, around one hour’s drive from the Yarra Valley.

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C yril Henschke took the extraordinary step in 1952 of citing the source vineyard on a wine label: Mount Edelstone Shiraz.

It was unheard of in Australia at the time, but Henschke realised that this 16ha site in South Australia’s Eden Valley produced Shiraz grapes that stood apart from its neighbours and deserved to be celebrated as a unique entity.

Mount Edelstone Shiraz, which celebrates 70 vintages in 2026, provides an important landmark for Australian wine by identifying site and terroir as a defining feature.

While other famous wines capture a distinctive Australian character through multi-regional or multi-variety blends – such as Penfolds’ Grange, Yalumba’s The Signature, Hardy’s Eileen Hardy and Wendouree’s wines – the action that Cyril Henschke took to highlight a single vineyard introduced a new, rarefied Australian fine wine story.

Within two years, Henschke had issued a second single-vineyard Shiraz – from the 4ha Hill of Grace Vineyard, planted in 1860 – which commanded a higher price because of its extremely limited production.

It declared a powerful statement that linked prestige to place. By the early 1980s, key vineyards that provided integral components to famous brands were being mentioned on the labels of a number of elite Australian wines – including Orlando’s St Hugo (from Coonawarra), Centenary Hill and Steingarten (both from Barossa), and St Hallett’s Old Block Shiraz (also from Barossa).

It placed great value on a league of century-old vineyards and their specific characteristics.

Singing their praises

By the 2010s, more Australian winemakers believed these deserved to be vinified and issued as single-site wines, rather than being labelled as ‘Reserve’ wines – a movement that underlined growing ambition to earn more plaudits on the world stage.

Talent and ideas matched this ambition, signalling the emergence of a ‘grand cru’ status in Australian wine – an important refocusing on specific sites that highlights the continuing maturity of Australian winemaking and wine marketing.

Recent historical tastings reveal the distinct personalities of superior locations – most notably Yangarra’s examination of all 15 vintages of its High Sands Grenache, vindicating the winery’s decision to reserve this extraordinary parcel, which defines the best of elite Australian Grenache.

Plenty of flagbearers are capturing specific aspects of the best old vineyards to produce wines of specific character.

Beyond the 10 sites listed here, Cullen’s 1971-planted Margaret River vineyard stands as a leading light of biodynamic viticulture. Brokenwood’s Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz provides a definitive Hunter Valley wine expression.

And also in Margaret River, the Vasse Felix home vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec produce the exemplary Tom Cullity.

Sites in the spotlight

More winemakers are being inspired to pursue single-site expressions of excellence, and to place renewed focus on historic sites in prime locations.

Toby Bekkers spent five years reviving a Clarendon vineyard (planted between 1842 and 1848) that had been the initial poster-site of South Australian wine, but since the 1970s had become derelict through neglect.

Now Bekkers Wines is producing single-site Clarendon Vineyard Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache of outstanding quality.

Sites are flourishing after careful research to maximise the potential of superior terroir. Shaw & Smith’s Lenswood Vineyard introduced intensive vine planting (about 4,800 vines per hectare) to naturally reduce crop load, resulting in exceptional Chardonnay.

In Western Australia’s Franklin River region, Swinney’s bush-vine Mourvedre is planted alongside Grenache and Shiraz on an ironstone gravel hilltop at the family’s Powderbark vineyard – and winemaker Rob Mann is producing three single-variety wines of extraordinary finesse.

Such celebrated outcomes don’t happen by accident. Meticulous, intelligent viticulture and vine health and soil restoration programs ensure these vines continue to produce extraordinary fruit that sits in idyllic balance – many in better shape now than ever.

The best is probably still ahead of us.

Henschke Mount Edelstone Vineyard

Eden Valley, South Australia

The 16ha Mount Edelstone Vineyard was an anomaly when pastoralist Ronald Angas planted only Shiraz vines on its rocky red loam soils in 1912, rather than follow the Barossa tradition of mixing several varieties.

His neighbour Cyril Henschke recognised the unique characteristics of this east-facing, 400m-high site when he started making wine from these grapes in the 1950s, and purchased the vineyard in 1974.

Now, viticulturist Prue Henschke nurtures the network of 1,300 old vines with biodynamic practices that have dramatically improved fruit quality from its 11 blocks – with Blocks G and H in the lower southeast portion of the vineyard being the winemakers’ favourite parcels.

From 1989, Prue introduced an upright trellis system to allow more even light onto ripening fruit.

‘This had an immediate effect on the wines,’ she says. ‘It amplified colour and brought great clarity and purity to the fruit flavours and subtle aromas. Vineyard attention led to sharper wine definition.’

This ensures great acid retention in the grapes and promotes an earthy savouriness to the palate, evident during Henschke’s February 2026 tasting event, hosted at the historic cellars in Keyneton, Eden Valley to examine key Mount Edelstone vintages between 1952 and 2022.

Highlights included the sprightly, lean 1958, sustained by the Mount Edelstone vineyard’s characteristic gentle tannins; and the recurring terroir hallmarks that showed off the vineyard’s twin personalities, with warmer vintages showing red earth and red spice as prominent features, and cooler vintages revealing lively sage and bay leaf herbal aromas over lush blackberry and black pepper.

Henschke Hill of Grace

Barossa, South Australia

Success for Mount Edelstone Shiraz inspired Cyril Henschke to elevate another single-site wine, this one produced from an even more precious vineyard resource – the small Hill of Grace Vineyard, with its gnarled Shiraz vines from the 1860s.

Planted on original rootstock, these fragile sentinels are among few surviving ancient relics to have avoided the impact of the destructive vine-root louse phylloxera – and they produce fruit of extraordinary intensity and unique character.

Dry-grown on clay-rich alluvial soils overlain by a layer of fine, sandy-silty loam, Shiraz from a 4ha portion of the Hill of Grace vineyard is treated with reverential care, benefiting from careful organic composting and mulching to ensure maximum microbial activity in the soil and optimal vine health.

Each portion of the vineyard is handpicked at different times around the full moon at Easter (significantly later than neighbouring Eden Valley and Barossa vineyards), yielding only about 2.5 tonnes of tiny berries per hectare, compared to 4 tonnes or so at Jim Barry’s Armagh vineyard, one of South Australia’s elite Shiraz sites.

It provides coiled power in a dark, inky wine that unfurls slowly over time in the cellar to scale monumental peaks.

These include the phenomenal 2010 and 2015 vintages, which best capture characteristic Hill of Grace signatures of dried sage, Chinese five spice and black pepper notes atop vibrant blackberry, dark plum and juicy cranberry.

Tolpuddle Vineyard

Coal River Valley, Tasmania

Soon after Tolpuddle Vineyard in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley was planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines in 1988, it was commanding respect as one of Australia’s elite cool-climate sites, yet Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw saw potential to do a whole lot more when they purchased the vineyard in 2011.

‘It has that special something,’ says Hill Smith, who is also one of the five Co-Chairs at the Decanter World Wine Awards.

‘Tolpuddle has very deliberate focus – but we felt it could be significantly better.’

The revitalisation programme saw a dam installed to help manage frost, ripping of the soil between vine rows to alleviate compaction of the silica-rich, stony ground, and new clones introduced within more intensive vine plantings to increase diversity and complexity of grape flavours and textures.

Through this focused attention to detail, Tolpuddle Chardonnay won immediate acclaim, but careful patience has also seen Pinot Noir flourish, as the influence of clonal diversity from new vines across the site has reached maturity.

‘Pinot Noir is capricious,’ says Shaw. ‘It reacts so sensitively to vintage and yield differences that it took time for Tolpuddle Pinot Noir to show site familiarity, but we have now arrived at a very strong place.’

Distinctive, prominent acidity comes as a consequence of the site’s typically very cold, very dry ripening season – an asset that gives these wines sharp flavour definition and extraordinary longevity.

Yangarra High Sands

McLaren Vale, South Australia

When Yangarra winemaker, the late Peter Fraser, identified as a result of the 2010 vintage that the specific terroir of this site – with Grenache bush vines planted in 1946 on a 1.7ha block of deep, ancient sand at Blewett Springs – produced a parcel of exceptional fruit with unusual delicacy and intensity, he boldly argued that it should be vinified separately and promoted as an elite, single-location Grenache expression.

No one else in Australia at that time had considered elevating Grenache to such a lofty pedestal, but Fraser’s astute observation set in place a movement that has rightly brought a league of superb McLaren Vale Grenache to international attention.

Yangarra High Sands remains the standard bearer for elite Australian Grenache, and a 15-vintage retrospective tasting demonstrated that its fragile beauty captures vintage variation with keen subtlety.

‘I always knew this block was very special. I had something that everyone else wanted, so I gave it my very best attention,’ said Fraser at the tasting.

The site provides fruit of exquisite purity, but minimal-intervention winemaking deserves praise for exercising poise and bringing every component into ideal balance – a talent amplified in more recent vintages, especially the magnificent 2024 High Sands Grenache.

It’s easy to be immediately seduced by its waft of wild herbs framed by fresh plum and wild raspberry, but it’s the lean muscle of a complex mid-palate that marries beauty with power, with its fine-boned frame carrying extraordinary persistence of pure flavours.

Alkina Estate Vineyard

Barossa, South Australia

When Chilean soil expert Dr Pedro Parra examined Alkina vineyard in the Barossa’s Greenock subregion, soon after Argentina’s Alejandro Bulgheroni bought the site in 2015, he confirmed its excellent pedigree – but also dug pits that identified a series of different soil outcrops within the 43ha vineyard.

These ‘polygons’ became the source of tiny fruit parcels that have been vinified separately and delicately in concrete vessels, with no oak influence, to accentuate their different character.

Polygon 1 Shiraz – sourced from a mere six rows of 70-year-old vines planted in granite-flecked schist and iron-rich clay over limestone – shows Barossa Shiraz in a dazzling fresh light, slender and nimble, yet supported by subtle, supple tannins and a lick of savoury minerality that guides a long palate line of rare finesse and purity.

Polygon 1 shows but one facet of Alkina’s studied Shiraz and Grenache output, as there are now 20 polygons defined within the vineyard’s Old Quarter – and more new sections are being identified to produce a suite of exemplary ‘polygon’ wines.

‘These are all significant micro-sites, all with significantly different geologies that introduce vastly different characteristics in the wine,’ explains Parra, ‘and it would be a crime if they were not identified individually and celebrated.’

Bastard Hill Vineyard

Yarra Valley, Victoria

Surrounded by dense temperate rainforest in the remote upper reaches of Victoria’s Yarra Valley, the 13ha Bastard Hill vineyard earned its harsh nickname from the workers who toiled in the especially difficult terrain.

Planted in the 1980s by the region’s leading cool-climate viticulturist, Ray Guerin, this was regarded as one of the great Chardonnay sites in Australia, being a source for Eileen Hardy Chardonnay.

The clearing is flanked by towering eucalyptus trees and giant tree ferns, and scales up from 300m to 400m above sea level.

With vines planted on gradients of up to 32%, riding farm machinery here is fraught with danger. Such difficulty and high labour expenses saw previous owner Accolade lose interest in maintaining such a gnarly site to the highest standards.

When Giant Steps Wine, owned by Jackson Family Wines, purchased the vineyard in August 2022, extensive vineyard restoration work commenced.

Winemaker Melanie Chester didn’t expect the neglected Bastard Hill site to respond immediately to viticultural attention and produce fruit of a standard befitting Giant Steps’ esteemed suite of single-vineyard wines.

But an exceptional 2023 Bastard Hill Chardonnay won immediate accolades, and the quality keeps improving.

A key factor is a rare soil type – rich red basalt that points back to the region’s volcanic activity of 500 million years ago – which produces fruit with an exciting concentration of flavours without sacrificing strident natural acidity.

Jim Barry Wines Florita Vineyard

Clare Valley, South Australia

Racy, citrus-driven Clare Riesling is now a globally recognised style, built on the historical success of the famed Florita Vineyard.

Pioneer wine merchant Leo Buring bought land at Watervale in 1946 and called the site Florita (Spanish for ‘little flower’) because he initially planted Palomino and Pedro Ximénez grapes to make fino-style ‘sherry’.

He then planted Riesling vines in 1962 and his winemaker John Vickery created a benchmark style, winning 50 trophies and 400 gold medals over subsequent decades.

Jim Barry Wines purchased the 32ha Florita site from corporate owner Philip Morris in 1986, but although the Barrys immediately began making superior wines with this stellar resource, they couldn’t use the trademarked Florita name for another 18 years.

‘It was maddening that we couldn’t use the name for so long, because we wanted to shout from the rooftops that we had the most famous Riesling vineyard in Australia,’ says retired managing director Peter Barry.

Jim Barry Wines finally issued its own Florita Riesling in 2004. In this wine, the site’s shallow, loamy soils provide a delicate floral beauty coupled with a rich citrus line, firm acidity promoting sharp, clean flavours with unusual length and persistence.

It boasts the unusual dichotomy of being both pretty and fragile, yet resolute and sturdy – factors that amplify with age.

To highlight this, Jim Barry has been issuing a 10-year-old cellar release of Florita, with the recently reissued 2015 showing gorgeous, developed honeysuckle, toasted cashew and lime marmalade characteristics, without sacrificing the primary citrus zestiness that defines Watervale Riesling.

Grosset Polish Hill River Vineyard

Clare Valley, South Australia

The single-minded pursuit of purity in Riesling expression is Jeffrey Grosset’s winemaking obsession, which led him to plant three different Riesling clones (two German and one rare local variety) on an 8ha vineyard in the stony, austere Polish Hill River region of Clare in 1996.

The site’s 500 million-year-old bedrock of blue slate produced a distinctive type of Riesling wrapped in dark, pensive flavour tones and spiky minerality – far removed from the neighbouring Watervale district’s lively lemon-lime characteristics.

Its austere personality reflects the struggle endured by such close-planted vines on tough soils, with each producing just two bottles of wine per vine.

‘I saw such particular attributes in the fruit from each site that I saw no point blending them together. I wanted people to see them side by side, so I just went ahead and bottled the Rieslings from both sub-regions separately,’ says Grosset.

This started a new, serious conversation about Riesling in Australia, which Grosset escalated as he honed more fine-chiselled flavour profiles after adopting organic viticulture principles, then achieving biodynamic certification in 2019.

Pursuit of this painstaking vineyard-care model has seen Grosset applauded as an early adopter of sustainability practices, but he simply points to the finished wine, and its extraordinary cellaring life, as his raison d’etre.

‘Quality over quantity,’ he says with an earnest stare, ‘is always the answer.’

Brokenwood Oakey Creek Vineyard

Hunter Valley, New South Wales

Semillon from the Hunter Valley carries unique characteristics that relate directly to site.

As Australia’s most northerly fine wine location, within a sub-tropical zone but also influenced by coastal breezes, the Hunter has produced Semillon for almost 200 years.

Its modern-day expressions of this grape variety combine seemingly disparate elements of bright, citrus-driven fruitiness with steely acidity that allows flavours to develop over time in bottle.

Semillon has thrived thanks to being planted in exactly the right locations – and Oakey Creek Vineyard, from which Brokenwood has sourced Semillon grapes since the early 1990s, ranks among the best.

In 2021 Brokenwood moved decisively to purchase the vineyard from the Drayton family, who planted it in 1982 on free-draining but fertile alluvial soils located close to the creek.

This vineyard is a primary source for Brokenwood’s elite ILR Reserve Semillon (first produced from the 1992 vintage, and released after six years of bottle age) – yet incredibly Brokenwood had never owned a Semillon vineyard.

‘We had always relied on local growers, so to take control of such an important vineyard gives us an opportunity to improve and invest in the vineyard’s future,’ explains chief winemaker Stuart Hordern.

He believes the importance of this vineyard will be more vigorously promoted, suggesting ILR will be labelled as a single-source wine, in addition to the Oakey Creek Semillon as a current-vintage expression.

‘It’s unmistakable where this wine comes from – and that’s rare.’

Giaconda Estate Vineyard

Beechworth, Victoria

The emergence of Giaconda, with its distinctive mineral-driven personality, proved pivotal in shaping the understanding that the best Australian Chardonnay should be defined by site rather than style.

When winemaker Rick Kinzbrunner left Brown Brothers Wines in 1981, he chose to plant his own vineyard on a tiny outcrop of 450 million-year-old granitic loam over clay and decomposed gravel near Beechworth in northern Victoria’s elevated sub-alpine region.

He had a specific goal – to produce rich but balanced Chardonnay in a powerful Burgundian style – but he needed to locate the right geological site. He found exactly what he wanted.

Chardonnay is planted on a relatively cool south-facing slope at more than 400m, providing a slow ripening period, enhanced flavour complexity and elevated natural acid levels.

It provides Giaconda Chardonnay with a robust frame, yet also unique poise and dignity.

Kinzbrunner remains a staunch advocate for a low-intervention winemaking style – pressing the grapes in a basket press, fermenting the must in oak, using no cultured yeasts, and not fining or filtering before bottling.

He believes this ensures the most accurate and authentic representation of his organically managed vineyard.

This supports a confident wine style that hasn’t changed with fashion, showing its personality with pride.

10 great Australian wines from 10 great Australian sites

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The road west out of Melbourne isn’t dramatic. The city quickly gives way to the Docklands, and on to the Westgate Bridge where you’re met with the seemingly unending sprawl of the western suburbs.

But as you drive into the low lying Werribee Plains, the landscape shifts into a distinctly ‘Australian vista’.

Here, the roads are lined with moonah bushes and eucalyptus trees, and expansive, open fields with sheep grazing; the occasional farm windmill.

And, beyond, the granitic You Yangs, formed from molten magma over 200 million years ago, and with them, the promise of something more interesting.

This is the road to Geelong, Victoria’s second city, and the route out to The Great Ocean Road, one of Australia's – and indeed the world’s – greatest highways.

But before that, if you’re a wine lover, there are wine adventures to be had. You just need to know where to look.

The overlooked region

Geelong is one of Victoria’s smallest wine producing regions with approximately 466 hectares under vine and is often overlooked for the larger and more famous Melbourne-fringe wine regions of the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula.

The GI (geographical indication) is one huge expanse of land, covering three unofficial regions, the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast and the Moorabool Valley, with large distances between them.

It’s arguably home to some of Australia’s greatest winemakers. So why don’t more people know about it?

One of Australia’s oldest wine regions

The first plantings in the region were recorded in 1842, and by the 1860’s Geelong was the largest producing region in Victoria, making some of Australia’s finest wines.

This all came to a dramatic halt in 1875 when the first ever phylloxera louse in the country was discovered in Geelong.

By 1893, after comprehensive uprooting, there was no wine industry left in the region.

There was replanting in the 1960s, but there were already more established areas in Victoria including Yarra Valley, Rutherglen, Heathcote and Mornington Peninsula.

In the 1970s glimmers of brilliance started to emerge when Stuart Hooper, with the invaluable wine excellence of Gary Farr, established Bannockburn.

Impossible to generalise

But it’s this that makes it inherently interesting. It’s a region of juxtaposition, one that includes the tourist-friendly cellar doors of wealthy Melbournites’ wine projects, all the way through to emblematic producers.

And neither type of producer would exist without the other. They are truly the pioneers of quality and excellence not only of the region, but Australia as a whole.

It’s a thrilling place where Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Shiraz can all flourish.

It’s all in the soil

The scope of its capability is in part down to its breadth of geographical area and a real geological patchwork.

As Maree Collis of Lethbridge told me: ‘We’re on the edge of the volcanic plains of Victoria and the soils are built by ancient geology, a limestone base and then lava flows creating rocky outcrops and bluestone veins.

‘And across our region of Geelong, there is such varied geology and soil, from basalt derived clay soils, sandy loams, limestone marle to granite soils.

‘The structure in the soil is reflected in the wines, great tannin, texture and acidity with remarkable aging potential.’

Bigger rarely means better

The wineries are small scale, and family owned with no corporate behemoths.

While this might make regional growth slower, it does mean that it’s likely to be more sustainable.

Allowing for thoughtful and reactive practices to not only reflect the eclectic geology of the region, but the environmental challenges facing growers.

It’s not just about growth for growth's sake as Gus Pollard, third generation of the family-owned Bannockburn, explains: ‘[We’re] excited to continue to refine our ability to make wines with a real sense of place, that honestly express the uniqueness of this small corner of the world.

‘It feels like we’re now in a period where there’s a new level of purity and clarity in what we’re producing.’

Even as Bannockburn celebrates its 50th anniversary, new winemakers are being attracted to the region too.

Ben Mullen, winemaker and co-owner of Mulline Vintners told me: ‘One of the reasons I moved down to Geelong, is that I can make premium Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Syrah all in the same place, from three very separate sub-regions.

‘The vine age is all getting to 25-30 years on average, so perfect for the quality I want to produce and the style I want to make them.’

An exciting future ahead despite the challenges

There is a palpable energy from many of the producers. Pollard says: “It’s a challenging region to farm and make wine in. Water availability is always a consideration, yields are naturally low, and producing high quality wine here is labour intensive.

‘It’s not the easiest place to get established, but those challenges are also a big part of what defines the wines.’

This sentiment is echoed by Mullen. He says: ‘We don’t get large crops but we do get great fruit concentration and quality, and with more people starting to find out about the region, visiting and drinking the wines, it’s really exciting!’

Focusing on single sites and individual blocks seems to be consistent with everyone I spoke to.

Collis explained: IIn recent years other producers from the region are beginning to showcase their individual sites and I think it’s very exciting to see the influence of site and maker, “the hand of god versus the hand of man”. I think that Geelong is emerging as a very exciting region for Pinot Noir especially.’

As Bannockburn looks forward to another 50 years, Pollards says that, ‘what’s exciting is that we’re still a relatively small and sparsely planted region with a strong group of dedicated producers.

‘There’s real potential for growth, both in terms of size and recognition. The individuality of the region is a big part of the appeal. The wines have a clear identity on the world stage, which isn’t something every region can claim.’

In a time where provenance and stories are at the centre of wine, no region can better express both of these than Geelong, it’s an exciting time for this often overlooked area.

Wines from Geelong

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Alex Hunt MW, Roger Jones and Beth Pearce MW tasted 80 wines, with 6 Outstanding and 26 Highly Recommended

Cool-climate Australian Chardonnay: Panel tasting scores

80 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 6

Highly recommended 26

Recommended 39

Commended 9

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release, 100% Chardonnay still wines produced in any of Australia’s cool-climate regions

Scroll down to see the top-scoring wines from our cool-climate Australian Chardonnay panel tasting

Regionality on show

It has been said that Chardonnay represents one of the clearest and most precise lenses through which we can view terroir, and this impressive tasting offered ample evidence to support that assertion.

The affinity between Australia and Chardonnay is well established, of course, so expectations were high before this tasting.

On the other hand, however, there have been times when this particular lens has proved to be ill-focused, with regional differences blurred either by too-obvious winemaking or by the terroir-masking fallacy of early picking.

Not so on this occasion, with all three of the judges discovering commendably distinct regional expressions.

Beth Pearce MW commented that ‘more than ever, the wines seem to be showing a sense of place rather than simply reflecting the winemakers’ preferences for reduction and/or ripeness’.

This would be academic were the wines not delicious, but happily there was much to enjoy here on a hedonistic level, too.

Roger Jones noted: ‘It was good to see high marks from across the regions,’ and the fact that 40% of entries scored 90 points or above demonstrates that our high expectations were borne out.

A rich and diverse palette

The most reliably excellent region was Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, with wines that combined beguiling texture with a zesty energy and an ability to age.

Jones observed that wines from here ‘need a bit longer to evolve, but when they do, they certainly develop well, balancing perfume, gunflint as well as delicate ripe stone fruit’.

Meanwhile, Margaret River in Western Australia showcased its trademark blend of density, complexity and freshness, which Pearce found ‘very impressive, effortless in its power and quality, particularly in the 2023 vintage’.

At their best, Tasmania’s steely tension and the Burgundy-esque poise of the Yarra Valley in Victoria drew admiration from the panel, while the standout surprise was Geelong, another Victorian sub-region.

Pearce praised its ‘confident balance’, and the entries from here showed that regardless of whether the wines are from a young or more mature vintage,

Geelong offers a characteristic energy, grip and aromatic profile that combine to make these some of the country’s most thrilling expressions of the Chardonnay grape.

What to eat with cool-climate Australian Chardonnay, by Fiona Beckett

Chardonnay is such a blissful pairing for so many dishes that the only question is, how far do you push the boat out with the food?

With the lovely acidity of these cool-climate wines, seafood would be my first port of call, especially for younger vintages – I’m particularly thinking in terms of grilled lobster, langoustines and seared scallops, or a luxurious fish pie.

Chicken, of course, is another reliable go-to. A simply roasted bird with delicious, umami-rich, crisp skin would be heaven for older vintages, as would fried chicken (perhaps American-style rather than Korean), with a cream gravy – in fact, virtually anything creamy is spot-on with Chardonnay, especially when topped with pastry, as in a chicken pot pie. That might sound too homely, but simple is what to aim for with wines of this quality.

There are also, of course, vegetables that are particularly Chardonnay-friendly, such as corn, butternut squash (especially with sage) and braised fennel; and mushrooms, too (especially in a risotto). In short, tomato- and red wine-based sauces aside, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.

See all notes and scores from the cool-climate Australian Chardonnay tasting

The judges

Alex Hunt MW is purchasing director at London-based merchant Berkmann Wine Cellars. He became a Master of Wine in 2010, and was awarded the Bollinger Tasting Medal that year. A seasoned wine judge, his writing has appeared in a number of prominent titles, including Decanter

Roger Jones is the retired former owner of The Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant in Wiltshire. He is now a wine writer, judge (including for DWWA) and consultant with a particular interest in the hospitality trade, as well as helping charities

Beth Pearce MW is the recently appointed head of buying at Flint Wines. Her extensive experience in the wine industry includes roles in retail and buying at Majestic and most recently buying director at Lay & Wheeler

Cool-climate Australian Chardonnay panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

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Surrounded by water on three sides, Mornington Peninsula is undeniably a maritime wine region. The cool coastal climate plays a significant role in the styles of wine produced here. But there’s more to Mornington than sandy beaches and sea breezes.

Located 70km south of Melbourne – about an hour’s drive away – Mornington is one of 21 wine regions in the state of Victoria, nestled in the southeastern corner of Australia. At 976ha, it’s not the largest, but it certainly overdelivers when it comes to wine quality, producing world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 14 superb wines from Mornington Peninsula

‘Mornington is a very special part of Australia,’ says winemaker Martin Spedding, owner of Ten Minutes by Tractor. ‘It’s obviously right at the very bottom of mainland Australia. It’s got the Southern Ocean on one side: Bass Strait. It’s surrounded by water with Port Phillip Bay and the western port, so it has a very maritime climate,’ he adds.

‘For a very small region, it’s got an incredibly diverse landscape, and that difference in altitude, in aspect, the influence of the water bodies that sit around the peninsula, they really create an incredibly rich tapestry of terroir – which from a Pinot and Chardonnay perspective is fantastic.’

Cool customer

Three bodies of water border the Peninsula. Port Phillip Bay lies on the west side, Western Port Bay is on the east and Bass Strait lies at the bottom. With no vineyard in the area more than 7km away from the ocean and crisp coastal breezes blowing all year round, it’s no wonder that the climate is cool. Indeed, the mean temperature in January – the warmest month of the year – is just 19.3℃.

This comparative coolness means that disease pressure is low in the region. It also helps to create a long and balanced growing season for vines. The maritime influence means the risk of spring frost is also very low, so early-ripening varieties flourish in the mild summer and autumn, producing grapes packed with fruit flavour and with high natural acidity.

In addition, Mornington Peninsula lies at a relatively low latitude for viticulture (38° 35’S) meaning that light during the growing season is abundant and intense. As a result vineyards require careful canopy management and grapes tend to develop thicker skins, which affects the tannins and colour of the final wines.

Down to earth

The maritime climate is just one contributing factor to Mornington Peninsula’s unique terroir. Its geology and topography are also distinctive. The ridges and rolling hills of the peninsula were shaped by volcanic activity 60 million years ago and subsequent seismic shifts over the last 15 million years.

Growers in the region refer to sites being ‘up the hill’ or ‘down the hill’. Tim Perrin, chief winemaker at Kooyong and Port Philip Estate explains. ‘Elevation is not huge, but Red Hill is the hill we speak of, and Main Ridge. They’re the two grape-growing areas that we refer to as up the hill. Then everything else down back towards Melbourne is lower elevation, down the hill.’

Soil profiles change with elevation. ‘Soils up in Red Hill and Main Ridge are more red volcanic from extinct volcanos; they become more sort of sedimentary limes as we come back down the hill towards more northern parts of the peninsula,’ says Perrin.

Geologically, Mornington Peninsula’s ancient soils are very diverse. They range from yellow and brown soils over friable rock to well-drained clay soils; from volcanic red clay to deep, fertile sandy soils. This geological patchwork has been explored and mapped by the region’s growers, helping them to identify unique microsites – often within one single vineyard.

Early days

Although winemaking history in Mornington stretches as far back as the late 1800s, the story of wine production in the modern era took off in the 1970s. Most of the region’s oldest vines date to this time. ‘Some plantings even go back before that,’ says Spedding. ‘But in terms of the last century, you’re talking of the 1970s.’

‘If you look at current plantings that still exist, you’d look at the Myer family with Elgee Park,’ says Rollo Crittenden of Crittenden Estate. Mornington Peninsula’s oldest winery, Elgee Park was founded in 1972.

‘In the late 70s at Main Ridge Estate, Nat White was probably one of the first small commercial producers who had Pinot Noir,’ he adds.

Small is beautiful

Today Pinot Noir accounts for 49% of the region’s plantings, followed by Chardonnay at 27%. After those, Pinot Gris is the most widely planted grape (13%), with small amounts of other varieties including Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc (see At a glance box below).

In fact ‘small’ is the watchword for Mornington Peninsula. Thanks to that geological and topographical patchwork, the region has developed as a network of around 200 small-scale vineyards, most of which are family-run. These boutique producers are by their nature focused on attention to detail.

The result is a community of winemakers who have become increasingly committed to sustainable and regenerative viticulture, single-vineyard expression and low-intervention winemaking. Backed by solid technical know-how, they are pushing for pristine fruit quality to produce terroir-driven wines that require minimal handling in the winery.

In the glass

For wine lovers this pursuit translates into a range of Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays that can easily rival classic benchmark styles from Burgundy – but for a fraction of the price. Expressive and elegant, they show considered balance between minerality and fruit, all underpinned by that distinctive cool climate freshness.

Some can already claim to cult status; the best regularly appear on the winner’s podium at global wine competitions. Most recently Moorooduc Estate’s Robinson Chardonnay 2022 scooped a gold at Decanter World Wine Awards 2025.

As vines get older and understanding of individual sites deepens, these wines will only get better. Vertical tastings are already proving the long-term cellaring potential of top ageworthy expressions. Personally I can’t wait to see what lies over the horizon for this distinctive maritime region as it sails into the future.

Mornington Peninsula at a glance

Vineyard area: 976ha

Plantings: 59% red, 41% white

Grapes: Pinot Noir (49%), Chardonnay (27%), Pinot Gris (13%), Shiraz (4%), Sauvignon Blanc (2%), others, including Tempranillo and Gamay (5%)

Production: 1,863 tonnes annual crush in 2024

Climate: Maritime

Number of vineyards: 200

Number of wineries: 60

Source: Wine Australia Region Snapshot 2023-2024

Mornington Peninsula: 14 wines to try

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Nestled in the far southeastern corner of Australia, the state of Victoria is small in the context of Australian states, making up just 3% of the nation’s land, but is a behemoth culturally, with a quarter of the population calling it home.

Most dwell in the multicultural food mecca that is the city of Melbourne, the state capital. Despite its modest footprint, Victoria is home to more wine regions and more individual wineries than any other Australian state and is wonderfully diverse.

From sub-alpine to maritime, continental to Mediterranean, its varied and various regions produce high-quality expressions of international grapes such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Scroll down to see an introduction to the key wine areas in Victoria

However, it has also seen a flourishing of alternative grape varieties over recent years, dominated by (though not limited to) Italian grapes (see ‘Putting down roots’, February 2025 issue).

This diversity and quality make this small but mighty state a haven for wine enthusiasts. While there are 21 wine regions in Victoria, here we take you on a whistlestop tour of the 12 most prominent.

This is not to trivialise the remaining nine, though they are comparatively smaller or still in their phase of emergence within the Victorian wine landscape.

Alpine Valleys

In the state’s northeast at the foot of the Victorian Alps, this cool-climate region excels with elegant, fresh wines.

Prosecco (permitted within Australia as a synonym for northern Italy’s Glera grape), Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir currently dominate its small-scale production, although alternative varieties – from Saperavi to Sangiovese – have been on the rise significantly.

Beechworth

Known for world-class Chardonnay, with names such as Giaconda and Savaterre leading the way, Beechworth also shines with Shiraz and Nebbiolo; the latter produces some of the country’s best expressions. Despite only having about 30 producers, Beechworth is a powerhouse in terms of Australia’s premium offerings.

Geelong

Once Victoria’s largest wine region before undergoing a century-long pause after phylloxera ravaged the area in the 1870s and ’80s, Geelong has rebounded as a benchmark for rich, ageworthy Chardonnay and savoury, structured Pinot.

Renowned producers such as By Farr and Bannockburn shine with both varieties, made in a Burgundian style. Medium-bodied and savoury Shiraz is a strong feature of the region, too.

Gippsland

The sprawling region of Gippsland reaches from southeast of Melbourne for more than 300km to the border with New South Wales. It’s rainy and windswept, with a mere 50 or so wineries working with super-low yields.

Here, the focus is on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with wine styles varying depending on where they’re planted.

East Gippsland is all about power and structure, whereas South Gippsland tends to yield wines of delicacy and elegance.

Grampians

The picturesque Grampians region in western Victoria boasts a Mediterranean climate thanks to its proximity (100km- 200km) to the cooling Southern Ocean.

The region focuses on Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling, with elegance a key feature.

The Grampians National Park offers stunning mountainous backdrops, while the region is steeped in Australian wine history thanks to producers such as Best Great Western and Seppelt Wines.

Heathcote

The Heathcote region is in central Victoria, about 110km north of Melbourne. This is one of Victoria’s largest Shiraz-producing areas, its warm climate and ancient Cambrian soils producing rich wines with dark, inky fruit and a firm structure.

While Shiraz dominates, varieties such as Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache and Viognier also thrive.

King Valley

Thanks to the influence of Italian immigrants, the cool-climate King Valley in northeastern Victoria is considered to be the home of Italian grape varieties and styles in Australia.

Today, pioneering families are producing the likes of Prosecco, Pinot Grigio, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo and Barbera.

The classic French grapes are also widely planted.

Macedon Ranges

Lying about an hour’s drive northwest of Melbourne, Macedon Ranges is Australia’s coolest mainland wine region. It has built a reputation for high-quality Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, both still and sparkling.

However, the region also produces high-quality aromatic whites, as well as richer reds in the warmer northern areas.

Mornington Peninsula

Located about an hour’s drive south of Melbourne, Mornington Peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides, making for a truly maritime climate. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the focus here; high-quality Pinot Gris also features.

Proximity to the ocean creates a cool, temperate climate that is ideal for high- quality wine production. As such, the focus is on boutique offerings from small-scale producers.

Murray Darling

Straddling the Murray river in far northwestern Victoria, Murray Darling is a hub for viticulture and other forms of agriculture. Historically known for large-scale production, it’s now recognised for championing alternative grapes.

The Chalmers family has been at the forefront of this movement, importing and promoting alternative varieties over the last 30 years or so.

Rutherglen

Bordering New South Wales in northeastern Victoria, Rutherglen is renowned for producing some of the world’s greatest fortified wines. It is characterised by a continental climate, with warm, sunny days and cool nights, thanks to the nearby Victorian Alps.

Fortified Muscat and Topaque wines from this region can reach immense levels of complexity, while red wines exhibit power and structure.

Yarra Valley

Sitting about 50km northeast of Melbourne, the Yarra Valley is Victoria’s oldest wine region. This cool-climate area is focused on producing pithy, grapefruit-driven Chardonnay and fragrant, light-to-medium-bodied Pinot Noir.

The region’s lower-lying and warmer sites also produce elegant and ageworthy Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.

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There’s a new jewel in Giant Steps’ collection of celebrated vineyard sites. Bastard Hill has given the specialist Yarra Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir producer special cause for celebration – especially due to its gifts from a superb 2023 vintage.

The famed Bastard Hill Vineyard sits in the steepest, remote upper reaches of the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia. It was purchased by Jackson Family Wines, owner of Giant Steps, in August 2022.

Now, the first wines from the site have been released – earlier than anticipated. Melanie Chester, head of winemaking and viticulture at Giant Steps since 2021, had not expected the neglected Bastard Hill site to immediately produce fruit of a standard befitting the winery’s esteemed range of single-vineyard wines.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of Giant Steps 2023 wines

Grapes from the superb 2023 vintage changed her mind. A cold, wet spring followed by an even-tempered summer ensured a long growing period. This aided complex flavour development and ensured superb fruit quality at harvest.

‘It kept showing something fabulous in the barrel,’ she says. ‘Each time we looked at Bastard Hill fruit, it kept delivering more. We held these wines back for an extra three months – and that has produced fabulous results.’

Deciding to buy

It shows the Bastard Hill purchase to be a wise investment. ‘It was the right choice – and many have said only Giant Steps could get the best out of this historic site, because we have the resources but also the will to do it,’ says Chester.

‘It was called Bastard Hill because it’s such a difficult site to physically grapple with, but we know that the most difficult sites produce the most extraordinary wines,’ she adds.

When whispers circulated around the Yarra Valley during 2022 that Bastard Hill Vineyard would soon be put up for sale by Accolade Wines, people quickly alerted Chester to the news. At the time purchasing a new vineyard was not on her mind.

In only her second year at the helm of Giant Steps, she had revitalisation projects underway at five other vineyards providing fruit for the winery.

But she also knew the opportunity to procure such a famed site as Bastard Hill was too good to ignore. Especially after learning that two other potential purchasers had shown interest in the site.

Red soils, white wines

The 31 hectare Bastard Hill property has 13ha of vines, first planted in the 1980s by Australia’s leading cool-climate viticulturist, Ray Guerin. He also planted Giant Steps’ Applejack Vineyard in 1997.

Regarded as one of the great Chardonnay sites in Australia, Bastard Hill Vineyard was a source for the Eileen Hardy Chardonnay, produced by the Accolade brand, Hardy’s.

It produces fruit with an exciting concentration of flavours, without sacrificing strident natural acidity.

A key factor is a rare soil type at Bastard Hill – rich red basalt that points back to the region’s volcanic activity 500 million years ago. The chance to own a large vineyard on red basalt soil was alluring – even though Giant Steps already had access to fruit planted on red basalt soil from the Primavera Vineyard, owned by Lou Primavera.

Curiously this vineyard ripens later than other sites in the region and produces Pinot Noir of significantly different character.

Where the lyrebirds dwell

A visit to the remote Bastard Hill Vineyard underlines its unique characteristics. To reach it you drive along a winding dirt trail through dense temperate rainforest, teeming with towering eucalyptus trees and giant ferns.

Lyrebirds and kangaroos dart between thick scrub, before reaching an especially steep, vine-covered clearing that scales up from 300m to 400m above sea level.

With vines planted on gradients up to 32%, riding farm machinery here is fraught with danger. Such difficulty and high labour expenses saw previous owners Accolade lose interest in maintaining such a gnarly site to meet the highest standards.

It’s a significant financial undertaking for Giant Steps to embrace Bastard Hill. Not only for its undisclosed purchase price; but also for rejuvenation and improvements that require twice the staff and double the cost when compared to Giant Steps’ other Yarra Valley sites.

Work is in motion to improve the vineyard. That includes high fencing to keep wildlife out of the vineyard; improved cover crops to resolve soil erosion; and construction of a dam to ensure water security.

Chester, who is working closely with original vineyard manager Guerin, also aims to plant more Chardonnay vines on the steepest slopes that Accolade had earlier ripped up and left fallow.

Winemaking philosophy

This represents another exciting chapter in the Giant Steps story. The winery was established by Phil Sexton, who scoured the Yarra Valley for ideal sites to produce superior Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Sexton, who founded Devil’s Lair in Margaret River in 1981, planted his first vineyard in 1997 and released the first Giant Steps wine in 2001.

But the brand’s reputation soared after Steve Flamsteed joined as chief winemaker in 2003. Although he left in 2021, when Giant Steps was sold to Jackson Family Wines, Flamsteed remains a consultant to Chester.

She has embraced and enhanced his quest to produce single-vineyard wines that show qualities particular to each site, rather than have a dominant house winemaking style.

This is especially evident in Giants Steps’ range of four Chardonnay and five Pinot Noir single vineyard wines from the strong 2023 vintage.

‘We have the freedom to chase and celebrate the variables, says Chester. ‘It’s the significant points of difference that make this range of wines so important.’

With such a diverse suite of outstanding Chardonnay and Pinot Noir parcels – each from dramatically different sites on different soils, with a diverse mix of clones – Giant Steps has the components to make iconic blends. So will a super-cuvée arrive in the future, to demonstrate what the sum of these special parts can produce?

It’s a query that evokes a cheeky smile from Chester. ‘It’s certainly something we’re aware of. We know what we’re dealing with here – and it’s truly something special.’

Giant Steps: 2023 releases

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‘We’re about to celebrate 150 years of continuous family ownership.’ says Wendy Killeen of Stanton & Killeen, a lauded Rutherglen producer spanning seven generations. ‘We’re one of three continuous historical family operations in the region.’

It’s a mild summer’s day in northeast Victoria, and the region’s putting on a superb showing of crisp blue skies and slow bucolic charm reminiscent of a bygone era.

In fact, walking into most Rutherglen barrel rooms brings the eerie, all-consuming feeling that you’ve stepped back in time. Dust dances in the dim, dappled light filtering down from the old, low tin-shed roofs.

Rows of elderly oak barrels sit stoic, proud and dutiful. They exude the haunting presence that can only come from having weathered world wars, livelihood-draining drought, the great depression and devastating floods, to name a few.

In these cellars, the digital age feels like a distant, whimsical dream you suddenly can’t recall. Or perhaps you don’t want to, for risk of cooling the warm nostalgia. All of this raises a niggling question, however – has much changed over 170-odd years of Rutherglen wine?

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 18 wines from Rutherglen

Going for gold

The Victorian gold rush brought an avalanche of wealth to the Australian economy in the 1850s and 1860s. And when prospectors struck gold at a site in northeast Victoria in September 1860, the town that became Rutherglen was set up almost overnight.

A frenzied mass of wealth-hunting workers descended on the area and, only one month later, there were 40 stores and dozens of makeshift pubs sprawled across the goldfields.

One man, however, had previously discovered a different type of gold; one that was hidden in plain sight – the mineral rich red loam over clay.

Lindsay Brown planted Rutherglen’s first 1.6ha of vines in 1851; thus he is referred to as the father of the Rutherglen wine industry.

He’s credited with the enduring quote: ‘Dig gentleman dig, but no deeper than six inches, for there is more gold to be won from the top six inches than from all of the depths below.’

Land and climate

The traditional home of the Yorta Yorta people, Rutherglen is located 296 kilometres northeast of Melbourne, Victoria. The region is 998 km2 with a total of 781 hectares under vine and around 20 wineries.

Being in Victoria’s far northeast, Australia’s longest river, the Murray River, forms the border to New South Wales and to the region itself.

Rutherglen boasts a continental climate with warm, sunny days, and cool nights thanks to airflow from the nearby Victorian Alps. All of this makes for long, dry growing seasons resulting in wines of intensity, richness, and concentration.

This is quintessential Australian farmland; arid and sprawling, dusty and uncompromising. A vast, dry expanse of paddock and gum. Yet, punctuating this harsh terrain is lush green vineyard oases responsible for some of the most unique wines in the world.

‘Rutherglen’s unique selling point is our world-class fortified wines,’ says winemaker Jen Pfeiffer of Pfeiffer Wines. ‘Specifically, Rutherglen Topaque and Rutherglen Muscat. These wines are not only unique to Australia, but they are unique to Rutherglen, and attract attention on a world stage.’

Rutherglen fortified style guide

Muscat

Grape variety: Muscat à Petits Grains Rouge

Typical aromas: orange blossom, espresso, Turkish Delight, nuts, toffee, dark chocolate, Christmas spice, rose hip, raisins

Typical flavours: Raisin, dried fig, roasted nuts, Christmas spice, toffee, salted caramel, dark chocolate, molasses

Sweetness: high

Alcohol: usually around 18%

Classification system: Rutherglen Muscat is classified using a tiered system that indicates the wine’s level of complexity. In order of lowest to highest, the tiers are Rutherglen Muscat, Classic Rutherglen Muscat, Grand Rutherglen Muscat and Rare Rutherglen Muscat. Each classification increases progressively in terms of richness, complexity, age, and intensity.

Topaque

Grape variety: Muscadelle

Typical aromas: cold tea leaf, toffee, honey, citrus, quince, candied fruits, butterscotch

Typical flavours: toffee, honey, cold tea, malt, walnut

Sweetness: high

Alcohol: usually around 18%

Classification system: Topaque uses the same classification system as Muscat, using the classifications of Rutherglen Topaque, Classic Rutherglen Topaque, Grand Rutherglen Topaque and Rare Rutherglen Topaque.

Source: Winemakers of Rutherglen 

Wine styles

The three main types of fortified wines coming out of Rutherglen are Muscat, Topaque and ‘port’ (see above). While the latter is undoubtedly world class, it’s the former two that the region is most famous for, and in that order. A mix of large and small format barrels hold these sleeping giants, with some of the material dating back to before the First World War.

Winemakers use these barrels as solera systems, blending older material with younger to create rich and often profoundly complex fortified wines. The grapes need to be very ripe for the production of these wines, making Rutherglen’s warm and sunny climate a perfect fit.

The highest quality examples are developed in barrels over generations, and many 40-something-year-old winemakers are still pouring their ‘Dad’s wine’ and referring to themselves as ‘custodians’.

When it comes to table wines, old-vine Durif and Shiraz lead the charge, having garnered a reputation for balancing power and elegance, making them primed for the cellar. Durif is the most unique table wine offering, however, and is somewhat synonymous with Rutherglen.

These wines are typically deep inky purple-red in colour, full-bodied, and packed with dark fruit, spice and leather notes.

Sometimes referred to as ‘Shiraz on steroids’, certain iterations are not for the faint of heart. ‘Durif drinkers drink with their eyes,’ says Pfeiffer, a glint in her own pupil. ‘They see that dark, inky colour and they know exactly what’s coming!’

Cabernet Sauvignon also features prominently in the region, with various other red grapes to a lesser extent. Rich and textural whites are plentiful, with extensive plantings of Marsanne, Viognier, Roussanne and Chardonnay. Table wines are important for the sustainability of the region, not only in terms of broadening appeal, but in preserving its legacy.

‘We exist in a ‘table wine world’ these days,’ says Pfeiffer. ‘So strength in our table wines helps us in our pursuit of making (and funding) our grand old fortified wines. While we produce big bold reds such as Durif, and fuller, textural styles of Marsanne, many table wines are being made with a light touch as well, such as the Pfeiffer Gamay, which is 100% carbonic maceration.’

Past and future

Rutherglen’s popularity has waxed and waned over time, leading to a need for evolution while balancing respect for history and tradition. ‘Rutherglen was once 100% fortified in its production and all sent to the Mother Country via horse and cart, train and ship,’ says winemaker Nick Brown.

Along with his two sisters, Nick owns and runs three Rutherglen wineries: All Saints Estate, St Leonards and Mount Ophir Estate. ‘Fortified production is far less these days, yet no less important, but we are showing through new varietal plantings and technology that we are progressive and energetic.’

This is incontrovertibly true. Sustainable Winegrowing Australia (SWA) is the country’s national programme for grape growers and winemakers committed to making sustainable wine. It involves comprehensive training, the implementation of specific processes and a willingness to change; not to mention the rigorous audits.

It’s abundantly clear that a commitment to the future is rife within this small-but-determined collective of collaborative wineries. In fact, Rutherglen has positioned itself as a leader in sustainable winegrowing. ‘Winemakers of Rutherglen’ is a membership association with 16 members,’ says Killeen. ‘Of the members, there are 13 SWA certified wineries which is 80% of membership. The hope is we will be 100% SWA certified in the coming months.’

Has much changed over 170-odd years of Rutherglen wine? It’s a firm ‘yes’, and it’s not stopping any time soon. ‘Innovation by our community members will take Rutherglen to another level,’ notes Killeen. Equally, however, nothing has been fixed that wasn’t broken, and nestled in those old, dimly lit barrel rooms, Rutherglen’s historical fortified wines remain perfectly the same.

Eight Rutherglen names to know

All Saints Estate

All Saints was established in 1864 and is now owned by fourth generation siblings, Eliza, Angela and Nick Brown. They have some brilliant old-vine plantings, such as Shiraz planted in 1920, Muscat planted in 1930, Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1950 and Marsanne planted in 1958. Known for producing both high-quality fortified and still wines, the winery is a striking and regal heritage listed redbrick castle, with a stunning cellar door and an acclaimed restaurant.

Campbells

A name synonymous with Rutherglen, Campbells produces an array of quality bottles spanning red, white, rose, sparkling and, of course, fortified wines. Currently owned by fifth generation sisters Jane and Julie Campbell, the winery’s famed cuvées include Bobbie Burns Shiraz and The Merchant Prince Rare Rutherglen Muscat. Known for its consistency of quality, Campbells puts the diversity of Rutherglen wines on display.

Chambers Rosewood Vineyards

An historic, family-owned producer established in 1858. Over generations, Chambers has garnered a reputation for producing some of the most complex fortified wines of the region. It also makes a range of still wines, including the rarely seen Gouais Blanc variety, made from 100-year-old vines, and Blue Imperial (a Rutherglen synonym for Cinsault).

Jones Winery & Vineyard

Established in 1860, Jones is a family-owned producer of six generations. Siblings Mandy Jones and Arthur Jones are at the helm, with Mandy in charge of winemaking; she has a reputation for a deft hand with specialties of Durif, Shiraz and Muscat. While Mandy worked in Bordeaux for 14 years, she was also a student at Le Cordon Bleu. Needless to say, the winery restaurant is highly regarded.

Morris of Rutherglen

This stalwart producer was established in 1859 and by 1885, a mere 26 years later, it had grown to over 80ha making them the biggest producer in the southern hemisphere. Since that time, Morris has continuously commanded the attention of the wine world with. Fourth generation winemaker, Charles Henry (Mick) Morris is considered a pioneer of Durif production in the region. His grandson, sixth-generation Madden Morris, is now chief winemaker.

Pfeiffer Wines

There’s a loveable quirk and energy about winemaker Jen Pfeiffer which permeates the business. The wines, however, are totally serious in terms of quality and expressiveness. Beside its wonderfully complex and beguiling fortified wines, Pfeiffer lays claim to a 3ha plot of Pinot Noir vines, with clonal lineage that goes back to pre-phylloxera Clos de Vougeot. There’s also old-vine Gamay, which yields a bright and pure expression. The relatively cool Sunday Creek vineyard makes for surprisingly bright, tensile and fresh Rutherglen table wines.

Scion Wine

A modern and progressive Rutherglen producer breathing new life into the region. Wine styles are bright and vivacious, including various takes on Durif presented in fresh and new-school iterations. Sustainability permeates every move at Scion; it’s hard not to like the wines and wine labels (see below). Winemaker Rowly Milhinch is self-taught, though with a history of winemaking in his heritage, being a descendant of George Francis Morris, founder of Morris of Rutherglen (see above).

Stanton & Killeen

A pioneering family-owned winery whose first vintage was in 1875. Stanton & Killeen is run by mother and daughter duo, Wendy and Natasha Killeen, who are sustainably and environmentally minded. Stanton & Killeen is best known for its high-quality, supremely ageworthy Portuguese-styled vintage ports, as well as its excellent Muscat and Topaque offerings. However, it also produces excellent table wines and has actively explored championed Portuguese table wines in its portfolio.

Rutherglen at a glance

Number of producers: 20

Land under vine: 781ha

Key varieties: Durif, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Muscat à Petits Grains Rouge, Muscadelle, Chardonnay, Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier

Soils: Three main soil types: sandy loam, red loam over clay, and shale and quartz

Climate: A continental climate with with warm, sunny days, and cool nights thanks to airflow from the nearby Victorian Alps

Top recent vintages: Table Wines: 2021, 2018, 2017, 2015, 2013. Fortified Wines: 2019, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2013

Rutherglen: 18 top wines to try

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In a small pocket of the far southeastern corner of mainland Australia lies the Moorabool Valley, a lush, cool, undulating oasis etched into a barren, windswept plain about 20 minutes’ drive from the city of Geelong.

Once part of the ocean floor, the region was uplifted some 20,000 years ago following millennia of volcanic disruption, resulting in a complex geology of limestone and basalt.

Today, when it comes to capturing this marginal terroir in a bottle, one name stands out: By Farr.

Known for disruption of its own, this small-but-mighty producer’s success story is built upon decades of iconoclastic grit, unwavering integrity and fierce determination.

‘I’m never content,’ says Nick Farr, second-generation winemaker and current custodian. ‘I’m always striving for better in the vineyard.’

It’s a sunny spring day, following a week or so of anomalous rain and high, blustery winds.

Nick’s ambling along the dirt roads in a white pickup truck, windows down, the valley putting on a resplendent display of luxuriant greens and bucolic majesty.

‘If I lose my edge, we won’t improve,’ he continues earnestly.

There’s a strong sense that contentment has never been a part of the programme at By Farr, and Nick is clearly indefatigable in his pursuit of greatness.

At times, the essence of his now retired and famously bloody-minded father Gary Farr seems to emanate from him, but in sensibility alone; Nick forms his own opinions and, by all accounts, he can more than hold his own during robust discussions with his father.

Burgundian love affair

‘Wine royalty’ is a phrase that often appears alongside the Farr name. It’s a name that elicits great respect and admiration, but it often comes with a side order of fear and even scorn.

Gary has never been one to mince his words nor temper his actions, holding firm in the belief that those who don’t like his wine are themselves to blame (but given that the late Len Evans, the godfather of Australian wine, once said that Gary made ‘Australia’s best Pinot’, perhaps he has earned the right).

‘Gary’s legacy is the foundations he’s built and his determination to succeed for generations to come,’ says Nick of his father.

Gary Farr’s journey in the Moorabool Valley started quite literally just over the fence at Bannockburn Vineyards, where he began his career as its inaugural winemaker in 1978.

It was a time when Bordeaux varieties reigned supreme in Australia, and Pinot Noir was yet to permeate the collective winemaker psyche. Bannockburn’s founder Stuart Hooper was a staunch Burgundy fanatic, however, and he enthusiastically planted Burgundian varieties, to general consternation.

This sparked a Chardonnay and Pinot Noir love affair for Gary who, in 1983, embarked on a learning trip to France, visiting Alsace, Bordeaux and Burgundy to absorb their winemaking techniques.

Burgundy struck a resonant chord with him, not only in the context of what he wanted to achieve back at Bannockburn but also on a personal level.

The next year, Gary applied to join the winemaking team at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, where a young Jacques Seysses was already making waves.

Of similar minds, they became fast friends, with Gary making yearly pilgrimages and an undeniable contribution to Dujac’s success over decades.

Despite Gary’s vast experience abroad, it was his time in Burgundy, and specifically his 10 vintages at Domaine Dujac, that had the most material influence on his general ethos.

He became an early pioneer of Burgundian winemaking techniques in Australia, employing barrel fermentation for Chardonnay and extensive whole-bunch fermentation for Pinot Noir in the Bannockburn cellar.

With this, Gary found form, producing a series of powerful, complex wines that exhibited impressive fruit density and structure, cut by mineral nuance.

This success brought respect and fame to Bannockburn and the Gary Farr star rose along with it. However, much as his son does today, Gary considered contentment to be the enemy of improvement.

A new identity

In 1994, Gary and his wife Robyn purchased a neighbouring property, followed by another in 1998. Six years later, Gary left Bannockburn Vineyards to focus solely on his new venture, By Farr.

The final piece of the puzzle was the section of land that separated the two original properties, which Nick and his wife Cassie purchased in 2011. ‘By Farr was developed because dad wanted his own identity,’ says Nick.

‘He knew of the limestone in the site, and that the quality and variation of the soil were far greater than what he’d seen anywhere else.’

Nick had grown up running around vineyards with Gary, and ultimately working alongside him, but Nick’s success is a product of his own graft.

He has gained work experience at Rosemount Estate in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, as well as several overseas at the likes of Cristom Vineyards in Oregon, Au Bon Climat in California and, of course, Domaine Dujac in Burgundy.

On land traditionally owned by the Wadawurrung and Eastern Maar peoples, the By Farr farm sits on 53ha, with 17ha under vine and the rest maintained as grazing and cropping for cattle and horses.

The vineyards are planted with Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Gamay and Shiraz (along with small plantings of Nebbiolo and Garganega) with all of the By Farr wines made solely from estate fruit for diligent quality control.

By Farr is most celebrated for its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines, which always come from single vineyards, having brought fame to sites such as ‘Sangreal’, ‘Tout Près’, ‘Farrside’ and ‘Côte Vineyard’.

However, it also produces a Viognier, largely considered to be one of Australia’s finest, and a Shiraz of equal merit. As with the top Burgundy domaines, production volumes are low and there’s no cellar door sales set-up.

Techniques on trial

Nick pulls up at the Tout Près block; French for ‘very cosy’, referring to its high-density planting. It yields one of By Farr’s, if not Australia’s, most revered Pinot Noirs, (almost) always fermented with 100% whole bunches and 100% new oak (à la Dujac), and exhibiting immense depth, power and longevity.

They’re about to hand-weed the entire plot, aligning with their move to organic viticulture – a decision made at the end of 2019.

By Farr’s attention to detail in the vineyard is abundantly apparent. Nick points to trials they’re currently running on barley straw compared to bean straw for under-vine mulching. ‘Straw keeps the soil surface cool and helps with moisture retention,’ he says. ‘But when it breaks down, it leaches nitrogen from the soil, so we sow and grow legume crops to offset this.’

As Nick talks about the vineyard, it becomes clear that everything is on trial in the pursuit of improvement. ‘We used to use cow manure for compost, but then we trialled pig manure and it has worked really well because of its lower pH.’

The vines glow with health and vitality, the native-grass cover crops hum with life, but a mobile phone also buzzes incessantly on the pickup’s dashboard.

First it was a broken-down bottling machine that threw out the schedule (Nick fixed it by hand), then there was an issue around packaging. It’s chaotic, but Nick exudes calm assurance.

Spinning plates is just a part of the gig and, with two young kids at home, downtime is scarce. ‘The only time I get to myself is between 4.30 and 5pm,’ he quips.

‘The By Farr philosophy is passion, persistence, patience,’ says Nick with his trademark blend of concision and precision. It’s a philosophy writ large. ‘As the vineyards continue to mature and our approach adapts, the wine can only become more interesting and characterful.’

There’s an incontrovertible singularity and earthen heart to this small, irreverent producer. Regardless of what the Farr family achieves, they won’t be content.

Anyone opening a bottle of By Farr, however, undoubtedly will be.

By Farr: revered Australian Pinot Noir and Chardonnay

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Kim Chalmers is a managing director of her family vine grape and wine business in Victoria, Australia. Starting her career as a composer, Kim came back to her viticulture roots in 2005 working in the nursery, vineyards and winery to import, promote, propagate, sustainably grow and authentically make wines from grape varieties new to Australia. The Chalmers family has imported over 50 grape varieties into Australia over the last two decades, many of which have helped shape the modern face of Australian wine. 

How did you get here?

I grew up immersed in the family nursery and vineyard business, went off to study and then teach music composition, then came back to the family business when I was 27.

What’s the best thing about your job?

The versatility. Every day is different. Working across nursery propagation, grape farming, winemaking, marketing, travel and plenty of research and development. It’s never boring.

What’s the most common misconception about your job?

That Chalmers is a large company. We have a wide network and have made a significant impression on the Australian industry but we are still a small family business.

What’s your greatest moment, professionally?

Presenting to 1,000 industry professionals at the Australia Wine Industry Technical Conference in 2016, about hot-climate grape growing and winemaking, and climate change. I followed the director of Germany’s Geisenheim institute, which was terrifying, but my story resonated. It felt like a turning point.

And your greatest mistake?

Not travelling more before having kids. There is so much to see and learn around the world, and it’s trickier to be away now.

Which Italian grapes are most in demand in Australia?

Nero d’Avola and Fiano are really settling into the scene now with mainstream presence after almost 20 years of production in Australia. Classics like Sangiovese and Nebbiolo are always steady and of course the controversial Prosecco (Glera) is huge in Australia.

Why do the Italian grapes in particular work so well there?

Most Australian vineyards were established with just a handful of the famous French varieties despite our continent having a whole range of diverse wine-growing regions. Imagine if Austria and the Algarve grew the same varieties? The success of Italian varieties across Australia has been the clever viticultural decisions made about what to grow where, connecting to our places more intuitively and choosing grape varieties which have the viticultural characteristics to thrive in that environment. These diverse varieties, from Mediterranean ones like Nero d’Avola or Vermentino to cooler climate ones like Teroldego or Ribolla Gialla, are offering growers the opportunity to express their unique sites better.

Are there any grapes that you’re particularly excited by?

Falanghina and Pecorino are working really well so far, after we introduced them in 2015 – high-acid, textural whites are in demand. We recently imported Nerello Mascalese, after a 12-year process of sourcing and importation. At the moment we have just one mother plant, but there is a list of more than 50 producers waiting for vines. We will never be able to make Etna wines but we are excited to see what Australian Nerello will be.

What do the Italians think?

We have a great network of colleagues in Italy who are very enthusiastic about the globalisation of Italian grape varieties. While some regions see non-Italian wines made from Italian grapes as competition, our colleagues see it as free advertising for their varieties. An international marketing campaign. Giuseppe Russo from Girolamo Russo has shared his clones with us and can’t wait to see how his beloved Etna grapes perform in Australia.

What’s the key message about the wines you’re making from these varieties?

We are making Australian wine. We happen to be using grapes that originated in Italy. But we are not emulating wine styles. We choose the varieties we grow based on their viticultural attributes, their suitability to our site and climate. The wines we make from them are guided by what we see in the fruit, not any preconceived tradition of style. A Barossa producer doesn’t get asked why they grow French grapes when you’re talking about Shiraz. We don’t compare their wine to a St-Joseph, because Shiraz has been adopted and considered as Australian now. The same goes for Arneis or Aglianico. We are using a broader varietal language to express and define the regional Australian wines of the future.

What are the main challenges involved in getting the vines over to Australia?

Sourcing clean, healthy, quality clones overseas, strict importation conditions and long quarantine periods before plants are released add complexity to the process. But no pain, no gain. Strong biosecurity is a good thing. In the end we can take that one mother plant and create hundreds of vines and the first wines in about three years. From the selection of a new import to the first wine being made in Australia takes on average about five years.

What message would you give wine-growers in Australia and beyond who are worried about climate change?

Be worried. Act now. Reduce emissions however you can. In terms of being able to continue to make delicious wines sustainably, be sensitive to your site’s conditions and be ahead of the curve on where the climate is going, design your vineyard architecture and choose your varieties and rootstocks wisely for the lowest environmental impact and best wine quality. Great wine can be grown anywhere with the right ingredients and cultural attitude.

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Australia is known for flying winemakers and flying doctors. It also has a distinguished tradition of high-flying winemaker doctors: from early settlers Dr Christopher Penfold and Dr Henry Lindeman whose names live on in famous wine estates, to Margaret River’s modern pioneers, Drs Cullity (Vasse Felix), Cullen (Cullen) Pannell (Moss Wood) and others.

And Dr Richard McIntyre of Moorooduc Estate, who planted one of Mornington Peninsula’s earliest vineyards in 1983 and is today known for being at the forefront of cool-climate viticulture.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of Moorooduc Estate’s latest releases and older vintages

Pragmatism brought McIntyre to Victoria’s southernmost maritime region. Being within an hour’s drive of Melbourne allowed the avid collector of Australian wine to pursue (and self-finance) a desire to make wine, while still practising surgery.

But there was a certain serendipity too, which started a decade earlier.

During a four-year stint as a registrar in Oxford in the 1970s, while studying for a PhD in Medical Sciences, McIntyre discovered Old World wine, particularly Burgundy. The young doctor fell in love with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

By 1980, when McIntyre returned to Australia, it was still early days for home-grown Chardonnay; Pinot Noir was embryonic. Undeterred, in 1983 McIntyre planted both grapes from the outset (albeit only two rows of Pinot Noir). Fast forward to today and both varieties have become synonymous with Moorooduc Estate and Mornington Peninsula as a whole.

Putting down roots

McIntyre believes his scientific background has served Moorooduc Estate well, over and above an understanding of wine chemistry. It encouraged him to ‘ask questions, try to find answers – especially by trial and observation – share knowledge and collaborate with others, even if they were competitors’.

And he was in good company. Civil engineer and oenology graduate Nat White had planted Main Ridge Estate in 1976, making his first wines in 1980, while nurseryman Garry Crittenden (Crittenden Estate) had acquired a vineyard in the same year. They became McIntyre’s mentors.

Crittenden’s belief in the potential of northern Mornington encouraged McIntyre to put down roots in the Moorooduc district in 1982. Based on incorrect weather data (which suggested the climate was too warm for Pinot Noir), both planted Cabernet Sauvignon, as had White. However, even though the peninsula itself is regarded as marginal, the warmer, drier north and Moorooduc Estate’s northwest-facing aspect made sense for late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon.

McIntyre’s eldest daughter Kate recalls fond childhood memories of accompanying her father to the vineyard every Saturday after his hospital rounds, listening to The Goon Show on the car radio. Other than an annual ski trip the family spent holidays at the vineyard, with McIntyre taking a month off surgery at harvest. But the Moorooduc property tugged at the heartstrings of the then 53-year-old McIntyre and in 2000 he, wife Jill and their young family left Melbourne to relocate to Mornington permanently.

Nat White made the McIntyres’ first vintage in 1986 – a single barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon. McIntyre began making the wines with his mentor’s help once a winery was completed in 1987. Describing White’s training as ‘super safe’ (the Australian tradition), the pair began to deviate from the script.

‘Dangerous’ techniques

Adopting what McIntyre calls ‘dangerous’ techniques, they started extending macerations, naturally fermenting and leaving wines unsulphured over the winter to undergo spontaneous malolactic fermentations.

Daughter Kate – who became a Master of Wine in 2010 – recalls the reaction of James Halliday to wild ferments. ‘Isn’t it terribly risky?’ Australia’s foremost wine critic asked her. This was around the millennium; only in the past decade have wild ferments become commonplace for Australia’s top Chardonnays. (Perhaps the sourdough bread McIntyre bakes for the cellar door every Saturday got him ahead of the curve?)

Dangerous deviations and innovative experimentations had successfully enhanced the wines of Moorooduc Estate, and others followed their lead. With savoury nuance, texture and layers to balance the region’s intense fruit and high natural acidity, the world-class potential of Mornington Peninsula’s Chardonnay and Pinot Noir was becoming evident.

Encouraged to focus on these varieties by Kate (now working in the family business), McIntyre not only planted the rest of the vineyard with them but, in 2006, head-grafted the Cabernet Sauvignon over to Pinot Noir too. These plantings enabled McIntyre to explore the broader selection of Burgundian clones as well as New Zealand’s Abel clone which had become available, allowing him to build more layers and texture in the wines.

Another way was to explore different sites. Having increased the capacity of the winery tenfold in 2001, McIntyre began sourcing fruit from other vineyards. In addition, he made small-batch wines for clients, notably Ten Minutes by Tractor (from 1999 to 2016).

Vineyards and wines

Mornington Peninsula’s diverse terroir includes lower sites on the north’s sedimentary soils and cooler, higher sites on southern volcanic soils, which typically ripen two to three weeks later. The impact of cooling airflows differs, depending on the undulating topography and exposure to Port Phillip Bay to the west, Bass Strait to the south or Western Port Bay to the east.

It was gratifying, says McIntyre, to discover that working with multiple vineyards of similar age, similarly managed and planted to the same clone ‘confirmed the importance of terroir in the production of high-quality wine in our part of the world’.

In 2010, he restructured the range, introducing top-tier, single-vineyard Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from the McIntyre, Robinson and Garden (Pinot Noir only) vineyards.

The Estate range has become a vineyard blend: principally McIntyre for the Chardonnay plus some Robinson, while the Estate Pinot Noir is typically equal parts McIntyre, Robinson and Garden vineyards. In the past, declassified fruit went into second label, Devil Bend Creek. But for about 10 years it was mainly sourced from the Osborn family’s vineyard, for whom McIntyre had made wine. Moorooduc Estate also makes small amounts of Shiraz and Pinot Gris.

Discussing the estate’s evolution with McIntyre during a visit in 2010, I learned about his pride and joy – a gravity-fed ‘Heath Robinson Tower of Power’ rigged up to protect his hand-picked Pinot Noir. I also learned about the errors. He admitted searching for more length and intensity than was appropriate in young vines, then picking too ripe and using too much (up to 50%) new oak. Today he picks earlier – also because the climate is warmer – and uses less new oak: the 2016s have 25%; the 2018s, 20%. It integrates exceptionally well in the single-vineyard wines.

Balance and tannins

Despite the earlier picking, Moorooduc’s Chardonnays don’t compare with Australia’s new-wave lean and mineral examples, which are harvested earlier still, and often made without malolactic fermentation or bâtonnage. McIntyre’s Chardonnays – and Pinots – are weightier, with flavoursome, supple fruit and savoury, textural layers. They also have beautiful balance: the Chardonnays with firm acidity and surprisingly low alcohol; the Pinot Noirs with ample savoury tannins.

‘We love tannin,’ enthuses Kate, who has been the estate’s marketing manager since 2004 but also gets involved in winemaking. ‘As vine age increases, we see more tannin structure – to an unusual degree for New World Pinot Noir.’

The stately tannins are an authoritative but unshowy presence in all the Pinots – destemmed, apart from the Garden Vineyard cuvée. It is the only wine to undergo 100% whole-bunch fermentation because it is the only Pinot from a mono-clonal vineyard. The MV6 clone can produce quite foursquare wines, so whole-bunch fermentation brings ‘stemmy’ complexity, with a spiralling, dynamic tannin structure. It’s proof that McIntyre is still happy to flirt with ‘dangerous’ techniques. As is Kate, who describes Moorooduc’s Pinot Gris on Skins as ‘my baby’.

Since first falling in love with the wines of Burgundy more than 40 years ago, Richard McInryre’s intellectual curiosity, force of logic and touch of the maverick has tested and trounced the theory ‘that one was wasting one’s time planting Pinot Noir outside the Côte d’Or; that Pinot Noir ‘did not travel”.

The 2021 vintage

2021 at Moorooduc Estate was blessed with a mild, gentle season with rain events throughout, resulting in excellent fruit set, very little vine stress and a paced ripening of fruit.

The mild conditions highlighted the different microclimates in the Moorooduc vineyards, with vintage beginning at the normal time (around the 22nd February), but with little pressure on the winery, as different sites and varieties ripened slowly, extending harvest out to late March across our vineyards in the north of the peninsula.

The result: a calm harvest, a composed winery team and bright, vivid wines with beautiful natural acidity, and fine phenolics, weaving structure tightly together.

Lovers of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Burgundy and beyond will find much to admire in Moorooduc Estate’s wines.

Moorooduc Estate: a timeline

1982 Richard and Jill McIntyre buy property in Moorooduc (McIntyre vineyard)

1983 First vines planted: red Bordeaux varieties, Chardonnay and two rows of Pinot Noir

1986 First production: one barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon

1987 20-tonne winery completed; more Pinot Noir planted

1990 First commercial release of Pinot Noir

1994-2006 Rest of McIntyre vineyard planted to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Shiraz; in 2006 Bordeaux varieties grafted over to new Pinot Noir clones

1996 Wild yeast trials begin, following Burgundy trip the previous year

2000 Family moves full-time to Moorooduc from Melbourne, following completion of a family home (and restaurant/B&B accommodation, managed by Jill until 2010)

2001 New 200-tonne winery completed

2010 Single Vineyard range introduced; source of Estate range broadens beyond McIntyre vineyard

Moorooduc Estate: the facts

Owners Richard and Jill McIntyre

Founded 1982

Location Mornington Peninsula, Victoria

Annual production 6,000 cases

Vineyard sources McIntyre estate vineyard (5ha) and leased vineyards: Robinson (6ha), Garden (2ha), Osborn (3ha) and Dunns Creek (3ha)

Soils Volcanic (Dunns Creek); all others sandy loam/clay

Portfolio Estate range: Pinot Gris, Pinot Gris on Skins, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir

Single-Vineyard range The Moorooduc McIntyre Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; McIntyre Shiraz; Robinson Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; Garden Pinot Noir

Moorooduc Estate: latest releases and older vintages

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Melanie Chester cannot contain her excitement about the quality and purity of Giant Steps’ 2022 Pinot Noirs.

‘There’s nothing more delicious than young Pinot that has fruit flavour,’ she enthuses, as we taste her newly bottled single-vineyard wines from Victoria’s Yarra Valley as well as the Coal River Valley in Tasmania.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of seven new 2022 single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs from Giant Steps

Chester joined Giants Steps in November 2021 as its new head of winemaking and viticulture. The 2022 vintage was her first fully in charge – an exceptionally low-yielding year about 25% down on normal, with the weight of grape bunches up to 40% below average.

‘We ended up with caviar,’ she says of the thrice-selected grapes, adding that the ‘focus on delicacy and detail’ in both vineyard and winery produces ‘uniquely pure Pinot Noir’.

Giant Steps was acquired in 2020 by California-based multinational wine company Jackson Family Wines for an undisclosed sum.

They recruited Chester from Sutton Grange in Victoria’s Bendigo region, where she had been head winemaker for 6.5 years. Chester recalls being dropped in the deep end with no handover at Sutton Grange – a stark contrast to Giant Steps, where she describes her predecessor Steve Flamsteed and Giant Steps’ founder Phil Sexton as her ‘second spouses’.

Sexton, who founded Devil’s Lair in Margaret River in 1981, planted his eponymous vineyard in 1997 and released the first Giant Steps wine in 2001. He remains with the company today as general manager.

Flamsteed, who joined Giant Steps as chief winemaker in 2003 and was instrumental in cementing the winery’s reputation for cool-climate, single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, consults for half a day a week.

Chester says she and her ‘second spouses’ have walked the vineyards together and discussed the history, strengths and weaknesses of each block and how they perform in different seasons.

Awe-inspiring vineyards

In August 2022, Giant Steps acquired its second Upper Yarra vineyard, Bastard Hill, the region’s steepest, which has been a long-term contributor to Hardy’s flagship Chardonnay Eileen Hardy. It was planted by the region’s leading cool-climate viticulturalist, Ray Guerin, who also planted Giant Steps’ Applejack vineyard in 1997.

‘With no financial pressure, which is quite freeing,’ Chester has relished her move to Giant Steps. Though she admits she is still ‘in awe’ of the three estate vineyards, which are ‘humbling to make wine from’, her immediate goal is ‘to make every vine a winner’.

She is currently managing Chardonnay canopies at Applejack to reduce the grapes’ malic acid (thereby the degree of malolactic fermentation). Work is also underway to improve viticulture at Bastard Hill to the ‘immaculate standard’ of Sexton and Applejack, because Chester believes the latest acquisition has ‘incredible potential’ and scope for expansion.

Giant Steps has long-term relationships with several other Yarra Valley single vineyards: Tarraford (8.5ha, planted 1988), Gruyere Farm (1.6ha, 1995), Wombat Creek (16ha, 1988) and Primavera (12ha, 2001).

But with fierce competition for quality Yarra Valley fruit, Giant Steps is looking further afield. The winery has been buying grapes from the Nocton Vineyard in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley since 2017 but Chester reveals she has ‘a couple of irons in the fire and an eye on something permanent in Tasmania’.

Mainly known for its Kendall-Jackson brand, Jackson Family Estates is actually an umbrella company for 40 wineries in Napa Valley, Sonoma, Mendocino, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Oregon, plus Australia, South Africa, Chile, France and Italy.

It owns more than 5,500ha of vineyards worldwide, and recently announced its intention to produce still and sparkling wine in England.

Unique gravity winemaking

In the winery, it’s ‘embarrassingly simple’, says Chester, who is adopting an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to the handpicking, fastidious sorting and unique gravity-driven winemaking.

Chester knows of no one else who drains and returns by gravity as Giant Steps does with its Pinot Noir fermenters that stand three metres tall (they use a crane to return the juice). She is convinced it makes for fresher wines ‘which speak of the vineyard’; not fining or filtering helps too. All that’s required of her is ‘careful shepherding’.

She says she is engaged in ‘deep and meaningfuls’ with Flamsteed about replicating Giant Steps’ gravity-driven process and natural yeast cultures at a new winery being built at the Sexton vineyard, which she hopes will be completed by the end of 2024. All existing equipment will be transferred, including floors, drains, barrels and bungs, which host yeast strains.

However, before any new wineries, major investment interstate or implementing Jackson Family Wines’ sustainability goals (organic conversion by 2030 and becoming carbon positive by 2050), priority number one for Chester is clear: a massive fence.

When your grapes are like caviar, it pays to keep the wild deer away.

First taste: Giant Steps 2022 single-vineyard Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs

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It’s all a family affair now, chez Bass Phillip. When Burgundy luminary Jean-Marie Fourrier purchased the equally iconic Gippsland Pinot Noir estate in Victoria, Australia in April 2020, he lost no time in roping in family to help him manage his new project.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of five yet-to-be-released 2021 Bass Phillip Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays

In Gevrey-Chambertin, Fourrier runs his domaine with wife Vicki. Her brother Adam ‘Skip’ Francis had decamped from England numerous years ago to live and work in Australia. However, he was lured back several times to work vintage at Fourrier’s Faugères estate in Languedoc-Roussillon – even being left in charge of harvest – before it was sold in 2005. He followed this up with vintages in Burgundy.

‘We had a wonderful time, it was good fun,’ Francis recalls with much understatement. He has no formal training in viticulture and his sunny disposition and easy charm belie the skill, experience and sheer hard work vineyard management takes.

When Bass Phillip came up for sale, Fourrier saw the perfect constellation. ‘I’d had the chance to do some consulting in 2002 for Bass Phillip and have been connected with this domaine for 20 years,’ he told me.

Fourrier recalls that Bass Phillip would often turn up as an impressive mystery wine at high-rolling Burgundy tastings in Hong Kong, so ‘when the possibility to take over came, that historical link – and my brother-in-law and his wife living in Australia – all the stars aligned.’

Francis manages the estate, his wife Dimity looks after logistics and admin, while their Staffordshire terrier Penny greets the few lone visitors to the remote property near Leongatha in deepest Gippsland farming country.

Sales and marketing are handled from Singapore, where Fourrier’s two co-investors are located. ‘Because the brand is established,’ adds Dimity, ‘we don’t need a huge amount of marketing.’

More understatement

Dimity is underplaying it just a little. Bass Phillip Pinot Noirs are Australia’s most expensive. They sell on allocation, are hard to find on the secondary market and the wines have been showered with accolades by Australian and international critics alike.

In 2020, Australian wine writer Max Allen called Bass Phillip ‘the DRC of the southern hemisphere’. Fellow critic James Halliday called its Reserve 2010 ‘the greatest Australasian Pinot ever made’.

Bass Phillip – named after the 18th-century explorers George Bass and Arthur Phillip – was founded in 1979 by Phillip Jones, an electrical engineer who had fallen in love with wine.

‘He planted Bordeaux varieties and quickly discovered it was too cool for them,’ Francis recounts. ‘So he ripped them all out and planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

‘Phillip did an awful lot of research on site selection. When he started, he was the only one – there were no other producers here – so it was quite a brave move and a risk.’

Jones made his first Pinot Noir in 1984 and released his 1985 to 1989 vintages in 1991. Critics took note, but Francis adds that ‘what really put Bass Phillip on the map’ was that stellar 2010 review from James Halliday. ‘From that point onwards, the estate garnered a lot of attention.’

In late 2018, aged in his 70s, Jones decided to sell up and went looking for the right buyer. The 2019 vintage turned out to be his last, with Fourrier taking over in April 2020.

Bass Phillip at a glance

Founded Phillip Jones first planted vines at Bass Phillip in 1979. He released his first wines in 1991

Owner Jean-Marie Fourrier with two Singaporean investors

Vineyard area 14.3ha

Varieties Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, with much smaller plantings of Gamay, Nebbiolo and Gewürztraminer

Estate Vineyard The original home vineyard in Leongatha, planted in 1979, is 90% Pinot Noir, 2% Gamay and 8% Chardonnay. The second block, planted in 1996, is 80% Pinot Noir, 15% Chardonnay with 5% comprising Gamay, Nebbiolo and Gewürztraminer. The Reserve, Premium and Estate wines come from this vineyard.

Kardella Vineyard this site north of the Estate Vineyard, is slightly higher and cooler. Different owners planted it in the late 1990s but Fourrier grafted over to 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay.

Single-site wines The Reserve, Premium, Estate and Crown Prince Pinot Noirs as well as the Premium and Estate Chardonnays are from the Estate Vineyard.

Other wines: Gamay, Nebbiolo, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Rosé, Issan Vineyard Pinot Noir, Old Cellar Pinot Noir, Old Cellar Chardonnay.

Average production 50,000 bottles a year

The lay of the land

Dairy and beef farming dominates Southern Gippsland. You pass vast hillside pastures dotted with black Angus cattle and, as you arrive at Bass Phillip, the vineyard looks unremarkable – an almost flat piece of land, densely planted. It is what lies beneath that makes the difference.

‘The soils are silty loams and clay on volcanic bedrock,’ Francis tells me. ‘With the amount of rain here, and with the loamy clay soils, the vines have always been dry farmed.’

The low-lying site, at 25m, is a mere 20-minute drive from the Bass Strait, making for a temperate climate. ‘It is a touch cooler in summer and a degree or two warmer in winter,’ Francis notes.

Another defining factor is the dense planting of 8,000 vines/ha on the original 2.7ha/ site planted in 1979. Jones knew that he could achieve quality with low-yielding but densely planted vines. Vineyards in the region usually have a planting density of between 2,200 to 3,000 vines/ha.

Jones planted a second 8ha site in 1996, with the same density, close to Leongatha town, ‘on redder soil, a little higher and a little further from the coast, so it ripens a week earlier,’ Francis says.

Fourrier was in love with the conditions: ‘The climate of Gippsland, temperature and rain are perfectly appropriate for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay,’ he says. ‘There is no need for irrigation, and when you add old, ungrafted vines, it is a dream!’

With the ownership change, Fourrier bought a new 3.6ha vineyard in Kardella, higher-lying and cooler site, in October 2020. Formerly known as Clair de Lune vineyard, this had been planted at lesser density to Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc, which has since been grafted over to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

The blocks planted by Jones are mostly on their own roots with a big proportion of MV6, the Australian Pinot Noir clone known for its small berries and intense flavour. ‘But the plan is to plant more,’ says Francis, which means more Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Gamay, with some talk of Cabernet Franc, too.

Transition and future

Fourrier was in Gippsland in January 2020 just prior to the sale and met with Jones. ‘It was a rare opportunity for us all,’ says Francis.

‘The intention was for Jean-Marie to come two to three times a year, for harvest, bottling and all the key times, but Covid put a hold on everything. It all went on Skype and Zoom.’

Thankfully, John Durham, the winemaker taken on by Jones in latter years, was a constant. ‘We were so lucky to have him on board,’ says Francis. Durham will retire soon, and winemaking will be in the hands of Fourrier and Francis.

‘It was a big thing for Phillip to hand the reins over,’ says Francis. ‘For Bass Phillip to be where it was when it sold – that was a huge accomplishment. He made the wines himself for a long time.’

With travel restrictions lifted, Fourrier is free to come and work the 2023 vintage. And he does not plan any drastic changes. ‘I always said Bass Phillip would have evolution without revolution. I want to continue the legacy of Bass Phillip, I do not aim to make Burgundy wines here.’

Francis is confident, too. ‘Jean-Marie is a great teacher,’ he says. It is clear why Fourrier trusts him as he says in his understated way that his job is to be ‘observant and diligent, aware of everything around you, both in the vineyard throughout the season and in the cellar’.

Since the current winery and facilities are very basic, Fourrier has planning permission in place for a new and modern winery at the Kardella site in time for the 2024 harvest. He clearly loves this land. He trails off, thinking wistfully as he evokes his travels: ‘Arriving in Melbourne at 40°C, driving two hours to Bass Phillip, coming out of the car at 19°C… the smell of the air, the sunset, the smell of the soils after rain…’

If the new 2021 wines, made by Durham and Francis under remote direction from Fourrier, are anything to go by, we have a lot to look forward to.

Bass Phillip: legendary Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays

The Bass Phillip 2021 vintage wines – the first fully under the new Fourrier ownership – will be released globally on allocation in September 2023

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Wine and finance are often neatly compartmentalised in our minds, but the cyclical nature of global money markets has made one Australian Pinot Noir icon come full circle – from family foundations through the churn of corporate ownership back into family hands.

As of December 2022, three local families are now the proud owners of Stonier, one of the great names of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of recent Pinot Noir and Chardonnay releases from Stonier

‘It was 20 years of family-ownership, then 20 years of corporate ownership and now it is owned by families again,’ says co-owner Aaron Drummond who describes himself as a ‘local boy’, having grown up in the Mornington Peninsula and even swum in the irrigation dam of the Stonier estate as a teenager.

‘My dad and grandfather weren’t vineyard owners,’ he explains. ‘But there is a reality of spending time in my youth at Stonier, growing up around it and developing an affinity for it.

‘I went off to do business degrees, not oenology, but I love farming, the business and the network. Spending time at Stonier was very formative.’

Indeed, he used his business degrees to have a career in wine, becoming brand manager for Mount Langi Ghiran in Victoria’s Grampians region. When the winery came under the ownership of the Rathbone Group he became sales and marketing director but insisted on working the vintage every year.

He was then hired to head up Craggy Range in New Zealand in 2015 – a post he only left in order to come home to run Stonier for this family syndicate. ‘I’ve worked for big companies,’ he says, ‘but there has always been an entrepreneurial streak and I have always loved farming.’

Putting Mornington Peninsula on the map

Stonier is the third-oldest winery in the Mornington Peninsula. It was founded by Kenneth Brian Stonier (known as Brian) then managing director of book publishers Penguin Australia. He bought the land in 1976 and planted Chardonnay in 1978, followed by Pinot Noir in 1982.

‘He wanted a little vineyard,’ explains Drummond, ‘so planted six hectares.’ By doing so, he became one of the first Pinot Noir producers in the Mornington Peninsula.

It is a paradisiacal region, about a one-hour, 80km drive south of Melbourne, with a breathtaking coastline on the Bass Strait, dreamy beaches on Port Phillip Bay and almost pastoral farm country in between. No winery is further than 7km from the ocean, and the volcanic soils and sunny but temperate climate are made for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

A few brave souls pioneered these varieties, with Brian Stonier releasing his first Pinot Noir in 1986. But, like Drummond says, he wanted more than a hobby horse: ‘He had the ambition of building a great winery.’

A few years after his first vintage, he commissioned the then foremost Australian architect Daryl Jackson to design a winery. It opened in 1991, when the world was still reeling from the Black Monday stock market crash of October 1987. A local politician speaking at the inauguration hailed the winery as ‘a beacon of hope, not just for the Mornington Peninsula, but for the youth and the country,’ notes Drummond.

Stonier’s vision proved true. His 1997 Reserve Pinot Noir won Decanter’s Best New World Red Wine of the Year, and the 1999 Reserve Chardonnay won the International Wine Challenge’s Best White Wine of Show. Stonier had put Mornington Peninsula on the world’s fine wine map.

Changing hands

By the late 1990s, however, Brian Stonier was getting on and had nobody to succeed him. ‘He did not want to sell to a beer company, so he looked for another suitor and found Brian Croser who had founded Petaluma, because that was focused on fine wine, despite being publicly listed,’ says Drummond.

At the time of sale in 1998, this was hailed as a win-win situation, which would ensure the continuing fine wine ethos of Stonier. But it did not last.

Petaluma itself was bought by brewery giant Lion Nathan in 2001, only for them in turn to be bought out by Kirin in 2009. Kirin sold off its wine arm to Accolade in 2016, which was then majority-owned by US private equity firm Champ. Champ was then bought in 2018 by another private equity firm, The Carlyle Group.

The sums involved climbed ever higher and, with another global crisis induced by the pandemic, Accolade entered into a fire-sale of its non-scalable assets. Naturally, a fine-wine business on a small peninsula by its very nature is not scalable.

Drummond sees the hurry to sell as a stroke of luck. The land had been lined up for sale as a property development opportunity with the neat lifestyle element of a winery – to be leased out – in the millionaire’s playground that is Mornington Peninsula.

Stonier at a glance

Early timeline Brian Stonier purchased land at Merricks on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 1976, planting both Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon in 1978. The Cabernet was not successful, so he planted Pinot Noir in 1982.

Current owners Circe Wines, a syndicate of the Drummond, McLeod and Thickins families, all from Mornington Peninsula.

Vineyard area 26ha of estate vineyards plus 40ha of leased vineyards across Mornington Peninsula.

Varieties Pinot Noir, Chardonnay

KBS Vineyard (named after the founder) is a classic cool-climate vineyard, planted to both Chardonnay (in 1978) and Pinot Noir (1982), about 1.5km from the sea with basalt-derived red ferrosols – an iron-rich clay – east-facing turning slightly north.

Windmill Vineyard, also on basalt, was planted purely to Pinot Noir in 1996, and is a very sheltered north-facing vineyard – ‘a real heat-trap’ – says Drummond, and seamed by ridges that protect it from the southerly winds that come off the Bass Strait.

The fact that this deal fell through allowed the family syndicate to afford the purchase. ‘That is the challenge: the lifestyle value of the land is much higher than the vineyard value,’ explains Drummond. ‘It is part of the drama and part of the fairy tale, and I guess the whole of the Mornington Peninsula is against that kind of property developer.’

A fine wine project

‘Stonier is not a rich man’s folly, it is a fine-wine project, with some of the best vineyards on the Peninsula,’ says Drummond who is keen to stress that the vineyard stood the test of time, despite lack of investment by Accolade.

‘There were people here who cared. I look at the wines [from that time] and they are superb. These old vines, even without a lot of investment in equipment, produced great wine.

‘Today, instead of making 35,000 cases, we will make 12,000 to 15,000 cases. We are essentially halving the volume, making better wine,’ says Drummond. ‘The ambition is for Stonier to be the fine wine benchmark on the Mornington Peninsula.’

Luckily, current winemaker Justin Purser was already in situ, having made the 2021 vintage still under the previous ownership, while viticulturist Tim Brown is a new hire with the expertise to convert the vineyards to organic farming.

‘We have got the right amount of resources now. It is the detail in the vineyard that is going to be the key in the wine moving forward.’

Being in a tourist hotspot means that Stonier could easily sell most of its wines at the cellar door. While that is profitable, it does not put the brand on the world map. ‘But that was Brian’s initial ambition,’ says Drummond. ‘So we have come full circle. I love the culture, history and ambition of fine wine and it is good to respect that. This is one of the great sites on the Peninsula and we need to farm it as such.’

Stonier: eight top wines to seek out

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Australia’s Giant Steps said that Melanie Chester joined the winery as head of winemaking and viticulture on 25 November.

It marks a new chapter for one of the leading wineries in Yarra Valley, Victoria.

Steve Flamsteed, who joined Giant Steps as chief winemaker in 2003, will step back from the cellar – although he is expected to continue working closely with the team.

Working alongside winery founder Phil Sexton, Flamsteed has played a major role in developing Giant Steps’ reputation for excellent, single-vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines.

Prior to her new role at Giant Steps, Chester was head winemaker at Sutton Grange Winery, also based in Victoria, for six-and-a-half years, and has been awarded several accolades since completing her studies in viticulture and oenology at the University of Adelaide.

She won the Wolf Blass prize for ‘excellence in winemaking’ in 2011 and, in 2014, she became the youngest ever scholar selected for the prestigious Len Evans Tutorial.

Flamsteed said, ‘I’ve known Mel for several years and her understanding of vineyards and wine is exceptional.

He added: ‘The detail and precision of the wines Mel produced at Sutton Grange tell her story. With such an incredible team in place in the winery and vineyards, the time for me to step away from the “tools” feels right.

‘Going forward, I’ll continue to work closely with Mel and the team as my focus shifts to seeking out new vineyard sites for our future.’

Chester, who has also worked at Seppelt Wines, as well as d’Arenberg in McLaren Vale, Charles Melton in Barossa and Quinta do Crasto in Portugal, said: ‘I’m thrilled to be joining the team at Giant Steps and have admired and enjoyed the wines for many years.’

She paid tribute to Sexton and Flamsteed’s achievements, adding: ‘Giant Steps has incredible viticultural resources, like its Sexton and Applejack vineyards, that grow some of the best Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the region.

‘I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the Yarra Valley to experience first-hand the great quality and potential of these vineyards.’

In 2020, California-based multinational wine company Jackson Family Wines bought Giant Steps for an undisclosed sum.

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Giant Steps founder Phil Sexton began his career as a brewmaster, first at Perth’s Swan Brewery, then co-founding both Matilda Bay and Little Creatures. The move into wine came through Devil’s Lair in Margaret River, which he founded in 1981.

After selling Devil’s Lair to Treasury Wine Estates in 1996, he arrived in Victoria’s Yarra Valley in 1997 ready for a new challenge. Buying land next to Yarra Yering and Coldstream Hills, he planted the Sexton Vineyard, and the first vintage of Giant Steps was released in 2001.

Scroll down for tasting notes of five new releases of Giant Steps Chardonnay and Pinot Noir

Meanwhile, Steve Flamsteed was juggling several potential professions. Following work as a circus performer, cheesemaker and chef in London and France, he ended up back in Australia to study winemaking at the University of Adelaide’s Roseworthy College. All because of a stint picking grapes in Beaujolais.

‘I didn’t even like wine much but I loved the process of seeing how it went from grape to glass,’ he explains.

Through his love of beer, Flamsteed had heard of Sexton and met him at a Pinot Noir workshop in 2003. ‘I told him I wanted to work with him – and four weeks later I was!’

The pair created the ‘lifestyle brand’ Innocent Bystander in 2004, which was sold to Brown Brothers in 2016. Thanks mainly to the sweet, fizzy, low-alcohol Moscato (‘our cash cow’, says Flamsteed) it created the revenue needed to build up Giant Steps.

In 2020, the California-based multinational wine company Jackson Family Wines bought Giant Steps for an undisclosed sum. One of the biggest wine producers in the US, it owns 40 wineries in seven countries, including Yangarra Estate and Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard in South Australia’s McLaren Vale.

Single-vineyard wines and the Yarra Valley range

Giant Steps works with six vineyards over 70ha: the estate-owned Sexton (30ha, planted 1997) and Applejack (12.5ha, 1997), plus four that the winery has long-term relationships with: Tarraford (8.5ha, 1988), Gruyere Farm (1.6ha, 1995), Wombat Creek (16ha, 1988) and Primavera (12ha, 2001).

‘We deliberately have several sites across the Yarra at different aspects, altitudes and soils,’ says Flamsteed. ‘But the initial intention wasn’t to create single-vineyard wines, it was a way for us to be risk averse; to protect against challenging vintages.’

‘Sexton and Tarraford are the great vineyards in cool vintages, while Applejack, Wombat Creek and Primavera are better in hot vintages,’ he explains. ‘The single-vineyard wines have great individual personalities but it’s great to have a footprint in each. Regardless of the vintage conditions we know we can make wines.’

After tasting about 10 parcels of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from each vineyard three times over, they then determine which wines will be made as single-vineyard wines. The parcels that just miss out are blended into the Yarra Valley range, and the rest is sold as bulk wine.

The Yarra Valley wines see less new oak – about 10% compared to 20% to 25% for the single-vineyard wines – and are released three to six months earlier. Flamsteed sees the range as an everyday or ‘bistro’ wine, or for by-the-glass pours. ‘The single-vineyard wines are for intellectuals, collectors and more serious wine buffs,’ he says.

‘Benchmark’ Yarra Valley Chardonnay

Sexton, Tarraford, Wombat Creek and Applejack are the current 2019 single-vineyard Chardonnay releases, along with the 2020 Yarra Valley Chardonnay.

‘It’s the best Yarra Valley Chardonnay we’ve ever made,’ exclaims Flamsteed. ‘Lots of lemon-curd richness and punchy minerality with a ski-jump kick of acidity on the finish.’

‘But our accountant hates us,’ he adds, saying that the crop was only a third of a normal harvest, thanks to the cool conditions and reduced fruit set.

‘To get this quality, there’s lots of manual labour in the vineyard: handpicking, strict selecting and then sorting. For Chardonnay, we use whole-bunch pressed fruit, wild yeasts and free-run juice only, which is gravity fed to neutral 500-litre French oak puncheons.

‘Sometimes we give them a stir to finish the fermentation but it’s normally not needed, and occasionally we use Champagne yeasts. If the wine naturally wants to go through malolactic fermentation we let it happen – about 20% did in the 2020 Yarra Chardonnay – but we don’t force anything.’

While the 2019 single-vineyard wines are not yet available in the UK or US, the 2018s are, and Flamsteed is particularly pleased with the Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay from this warmer vintage.

‘It was really yummy on release,’ he says. ‘The wine looked great off the bottling line and I’ll be interested to see how it ages. It has a secondary hazelnut complexity but still has that fine lemon-curd acidity, which is benchmark Yarra.

‘There’s almost a lavender note too, which I think is a combination of the Gin Gin clone in the Sexton Vineyard, which gives the Chardonnay a really unique waxy quality.’

Pinot Noir and the Applejack Vineyard

Unlike the Chardonnays, the 2019 single-vineyard Pinot Noirs are already available in the UK and US – in this vintage the Sexton, Primavera and Applejack.

And it’s Applejack that Flamsteed singles out as being world-class. ‘It’s one of Australia’s greatest Pinot Noir vineyards,’ he asserts.

‘It’s 12.5ha planted north-east-facing down a hill at 4,000 vines/ha, surrounded by temperate rainforests at the top of the slope at 320m. And very cool climate. The massive diurnal temperature difference extends the growing season by two weeks from our other Pinot vineyards.’

Flamsteed says he separately vinifies some 20 parcels each vintage, almost all of which makes it into the final blend. ‘It’s very much the whole is the sum of the parts: clones, altitude, aspect.’

Noted viticulturalist Ray Guerin planted Applejack in 1997 ‘as a kind of retirement project’ says Flamsteed. ‘He worked for Hardy’s for 18 years, and when I worked there too we bought his grapes, so I knew the quality.

‘When I joined Giant Steps, I told Phil we had to get some of Ray’s Applejack Pinot for Innocent Bystander. The stuff was so good, we did a single-vineyard selection for Giant Steps. Phil thought it was that good, he bought the vineyard from Ray in 2013.’

Vinification for Pinot at Giant Steps follows a similar hands-off approach as the Chardonnay – but don’t call it ‘low intervention’.

‘People who talk about low-intervention Pinot Noir winemaking are bullshitting you,’ says Flamsteed.

‘Pinot Noir is the most high-maintenance grape there is. In the vineyard, it likes the sun, but not too much; not too hot but not too cold; and just enough rain. It takes a lot of thought and hard work. So you don’t want to undo all that in the cellar.

‘I favour whole-bunch ferment if the stems are good enough,’ he explains. ‘The Yarra is low in tannins, so whole-bunch fermentation gives a glycerol mouthfeel, perfume and much more bramble fruit instead of tannins.

‘And no crushing or plunging the cap. We keep the berry intact the whole way through. It’s less carbonic maceration than is done in Beaujolais, but there are some elements there – lots of practices that I’ve learned over the years!’

He says not fining or filtering, and bottling by gravity, helps to retain Pinot Noir’s ‘delicate body and soul’. ‘Yarra Valley Pinot is fragile and at the last part of the winemaking process it is at its most fragile and susceptible to oxidation.

‘So it feels counterintuitive to me to fine and filter. If you have to extract something at the end of making a wine, then you’ve made it wrong.’

Looking ahead

While Giant Steps is not certified organic or biodynamic, Flamsteed is committed to adopting more practices throughout the vineyards.

‘About five years ago I dabbled in biodynamics in the Tarraford Vineyard as we had lots of mildew,’ he says. ‘We’ve now removed pesticides altogether and are removing herbicides, using biological sprays not systemic sprays.

‘Yes, it does mean more tilling and growing cover crops, and I’d say we need three more years to get it properly going, but then we will work towards organic certification. And maybe biodynamic certification too. It will take 10 years to get there, but we’re on our way.’

Along the way, he’d like to do more blends with the Rhône grapes planted on their various vineyards. ‘We have some amazing sites for Grenache, Syrah and Carignan in bony, north-facing soils. And Cinsault!

‘And I’d like to talk Phil into Mencía and Gamay,’ he continues. ‘I love Gamay, thanks to my time in Beaujolais. It’s honest. And it ages well – people don’t realise that. The best can last for decades, like Burgundy.’

Can Giant Steps wines last too? While he says 15-year-old wines are still drinking well, he finds it a shame that most Australians open wines too young – as soon as a new vintage is released – missing out on the joys of mature Pinot and Chardonnay.

But more important, he says, is the age of the vineyards, all now 20 to 25 years old. ‘The next 10 years will be the best 10 years for us,’ he asserts. ‘It takes time to get to know your vineyards and our viticulturalist has now got his head around them. I’ve been at Giant Steps 17 years and I’m still learning!

‘Over time, Sexton will become more Sexton-like and we’ll continue to understand it better. It’s only just hitting its stride now, so imagine what it will be like in 50 years! Our vineyards will outlive all of us; we’re just the guardians, to pass it on to the next person to take care of them.’

Steve Flamsteed of Giant Steps: a few producers I admire

Stéphane Tissot [biodynamic producer from Arbois in the French region of Jura] – he’s one of the best producers in the whole world.

Taras Ochota [from Ochota Barrels in the Adelaide Hills] was one of Australian wine’s great minds and the wine world’s great losses. He brought together the concepts of natural wine and conventional wine.

In the Yarra I love the wines of Timo Meyer, David Bicknell of Oakridge Wines and Franco D’Anna of Hoddles Creek Estate. When you look at the price-quality comparison of Australia’s cool-climate Chardonnays against premier cru white Burgundy, Yarra Valley wines really do stack up.

In Western Australia I like Xanadu, Vasse Felix, Deep Woods, Flametree and of course Leeuwin Estate [Flamsteed worked there 1999-2002].

Tasmania is the great frontier for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Tolpuddle Vineyard showed us the way – that if you’re serious, you’ve got to get to the Coal River Valley [Giant Steps makes its Fatal Shore Pinot Noir from here].

Giant Steps: tasting the latest releases of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir

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When Garry Crittenden planted 2ha of vines in 1982, he doubled Mornington Peninsula’s vineyard area. He initially bet on Bordeaux grapes, led the charge on Italian and Iberian varieties and even had a short-lived fling with Muscadet’s Melon de Bourgogne.

Inevitably, since Pinot Noir and Chardonnay today account for about 50% and 25% respectively of Mornington Peninsula’s plantings, wines from these varieties were well represented in the tasting, which spanned 21 wines from 1987 to 2019.

Early, simpler expressions bottled under the original Dromana Estate brand (which Crittenden sold, retaining only the vineyard) stolidly held onto their fruit – as did the Melon de Bourgogne.

Greater clonal diversity, organic viticulture, wild ferments, whole-bunch ferments, much reduced malolactic fermentation for Chardonnay and, with vine age, less reliance on oak as a crutch has improved complexity, structure and balance immeasurably, reflecting a huge leap in sophistication.

Much to everyone’s surprise, the Bordeaux varieties shone. Crittenden originally planted predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon because, he explained, ‘no way would you plant anything else in a maritime climate’.

Based near low-lying Dromana, on well-drained sandy loam over grey clay, the Crittenden Estate vineyard is relatively warm. However, the elevated, exposed southerly sites on moisture-retentive volcanic soils produced green, leafy Cabernets. Crittenden replaced those vines with Pinot Noir in 2009. Similarly, the Piedmontese grape Arneis (Australia’s first plantings, in 1995) was replaced by Chardonnay following indifferent sales.

Named after Crittenden’s children Rollo and Zoe, who now manage the business, the Los Hermanos label (meaning siblings in Spanish) focuses on Iberian varieties made in a breezy but interesting, food-friendly style.

It transpired that the Albariño planted for Los Hermanos was actually Savagnin (a countrywide problem). Rollo now vinifies it in an exciting, flor-driven, Jura-like style under the estate’s Cri de Coeur label. Introduced in 2012, the boundary-pushing range features a Chardonnay and Pinot Noir whose bare-boned structure comes mainly from the grape and terroir rather than oak.

Tasting Crittenden and Dromana wines

Mornington Peninsula pioneer Stonier provided my introduction to the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay-focussed Victoria region and, 15 years on, Victoria's cool, maritime wines have become strikingly finer, with greater nuance.

With barely-there oak and lower alcohol levels, Stonier’s first UK pre-release single-vineyard tasting rang the changes loud and clear.

Founded by Brian and Noel Stonier in 1978 (and now owned by Accolade), the Merricks-based estate rolled out its first single-vineyard wines in 2000: KBS Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.Windmill Pinot Noir came along in 2003, followed by Lyncroft Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and Stonier Family Vineyard Pinot Noir (2009), Merron’s Vineyard Pinot Noir (2010), Thompson Vineyard Chardonnay, Jack’s Ridge Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (2012), Jimjoca Pinot Noir (2013) and Jimjoca Chardonnay (2015).

It was a flurry in which leading Oregon winemaker and co-founder of Argyle, Rollin Soles, had a hand. Although chief winemaker Mike Symons noted that vineyard individuality had always been apparent when blending the Reserve wines, ‘it really stood out’ when Soles confirmed the differences.

Fruit vs oak

Aiming to highlight these differences, Symons deploys much less new oak and large-format puncheons.

Whilst the first vintage of KBS Chardonnay and Pinot Noir spent 14 months in oak, 50% new for the Pinot Noir, 100% new (for the first nine months) for the Chardonnay, the most recent vintages are matured for between eight to ten months in used oak.

Only the Reserve wines and Merrons Vineyard are aged in new oak (15-25%), as these are wines ‘where we don’t mind a bit more winemaking artefact,’ explains Symons.

‘We were maybe trying too hard to make Chardonnay and Pinot to old-world recipes,’ he says, adding that reducing the oak influence has also been about ‘playing more to our fruit’s strengths – highlighting the brighter flavours through less time in barrel.’

The upshot is a range of single-vineyard wines which, though all grown in red basalt soils (and, for the Pinot, all MV6 clone), are highly individual but distinctly Australian, with delicious vibrancy and purity of fruit. But that’s not to say these ultra-charming wines lack staying power: sophisticated for the money, these exceptionally limited-release Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs delivered much pleasure over the course of three days, the reds especially growing in stature and depth.

SIPNOT

Stonier has hosted SIPNOT – the Stonier International Pinot Noir Tasting- since 2000. A blind tasting of 12 international Pinot Noirs, it usually alternates between Sydney and Melbourne but has also been held in Hong Kong and London, and is to be held in the UK for the third time this year.

Stonier factbox:

Founded 1978

Vineyard resource 95ha of which 17ha are owned

Average yields 5.6 t/ha Chardonnay; 4.5t/ha Pinot Noir

Vintage overview

2017 A very wet and relatively cool spring reduced yields. A cool to mild growing season produced exceptional citrus-driven Chardonnays with elevated acidities and lifted aromatics, and delicate, spicy Pinot Noirs with a savoury edge.

2018 a warm winter and spring with a quick, complete flowering and fruit-set resulted in the largest vintage on record. Slighter warmer, but with no extremes during vintage, the season produced generous Chardonnays and vibrantly fruited, well-structured Pinot Noirs.

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Top Australian multi-regional blends

Fine wine is virtually synonymous with single vineyards, estates and individual regions. But not in Australia, whose winemakers are famously free of constraints.

Take the iconic Penfolds multi-regional blend Grange. Creator Max Schubert attributed a visit to Bordeaux with sparking ‘the idea of producing an Australian red wine capable of staying alive for a minimum of 20 years’.

During the plane journey home, Schubert reasoned: ‘If I was careful enough in the choice of area and vineyard… I’d be able to make the type and style of wine I wanted.’

Scroll down for Sarah’s top 18 Australian blends

His rationale still informs Penfolds’ approach today, no matter how improbable the logistics. Take Penfolds Bin 311 Chardonnay 2017, made with grapes from three states – New South Wales (Tumbarumba), South Australia (Adelaide Hills) and Tasmania. While all the source vineyards were cool climate, distance-wise this equates to blending grapes from Bordeaux, Jerez and Emilia-Romagna!

At the other end of the price spectrum, multi-regional blending provides the consistency of quality and style, and economies of scale, that underpin volume brands.

Invariably labelled ‘South Eastern Australia’, big players have considerable latitude with these wines, given that this zone encompasses New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and parts of Queensland and South Australia.

My brief for this tasting was to explore the middle ground (£8-£40) which, if London’s annual Australia Trade Tasting is a guide, seems to be diminishing. Multi-regional blends represented just 15% of the wines shown this year, reflecting the rise of single-vineyard, estate and regional wines – sometimes directly at the expense of multi-regional blends.

The usual suspects – big, established companies with huge networks of vineyards and growers – produce polished mid-priced blends aplenty, if not always fireworks.

Cherry-picking on a smaller scale, Wakefield’s smart, relatively new Jaraman range limits itself to local Clare Valley fruit and grapes from another stellar region.

Meanwhile, boutique producers sometimes find fruit from elsewhere irresistible – my recommendation from Gundog Estate draws on Canberra District to flesh out the mid-palate and leaven the savouriness of its Hunter Valley Shiraz.

How to buy

Generally speaking, it pays to seek out examples from regions and/or producers reputed for the varieties in question, though judicious blending from less salubrious regions can produce great bang for buck.

New-wave Australian multi-regional blends might feature Iberian and Italian grapes.

Another fresh approach focusses on drinkability. Wild & Wilder’s co-founder Giles Cooke MW makes ‘seasonal wines’ from ‘experimental batches and excess barrels of premium stuff’.

Lethbridge Wine’s Ray Nadeson makes 47 different wines and enjoys being creative in the moment for his Between Five Bells range, ‘playing around with unconventional flavour and textural combinations as each component evolves’. Let the brainwaves keep coming!

Sarah’s top Australian multi-regional blends:

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Time to try cool-climate Australian Shiraz

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Mornington Peninsula has rapidly become a cherished source of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for those in-the-know. Here are several wines to look for from this cool climate, Australian region, including the Paringa Shiraz which is worthy of mention. All tasted by Decanter's Tina Gellie.

Tasting notes below by Tina Gellie. Introduction by Chris Mercer following a meeting with several Mornington Peninsula wine producers at Australia House in London in October 2018. 

Mornington Peninsula’s emergence in the last 20 years, and especially the last decade, goes hand-in-hand with the rise to prominence of cooler-climate Australian wine regions.

Andrew Jefford wrote on Decanter.com in 2014, ‘This hilly maritime finger of land just beyond the Melbourne suburbs is making an ever-more convincing case for being one of the great Southern Hemisphere Pinot locations.’

Close connections to Melbourne have also given many wineries a strong ‘cellar door’ dimension to their businesses via tasting rooms and restaurants.

There is, too, a sense of collective learning, alongside a joint-understanding of marketing fundamentals, among several winemakers in this area; two ingredients that, when backed by quality wines, can create a so-called ‘cluster effect’ that has been shown to significantly improve a region’s development.

This doesn’t necessarily translate to homogeneity in the vineyard and the cellar.

For example, winemakers still differ on a range of methods, such as the extent to which whole bunch fermentation should be employed on Pinot. And, for a relatively small region, weather patterns can vary strongly.

Mornington Pinot Noir

It could be argued that a signature style for Mornington Peninsula Pinot is still a work-in-progress to some extent.

That said, a number of tasters have commented on the complexity achieved in the best wines, helped on in recent years by a greater diversity of vine age. Plus, an increasingly granular understanding of vineyard land, the prioritising of fresh red fruit flavours and the natural acidity driven by the climate have certainly helped to gain plaudits.

Burgundy has been mooted as a reference point, but no one wants to merely be a tribute act. Martin Spedding, owner of Ten Minutes by Tractor winery, admitted to ‘a bit of a cringe factor’ whenever the ‘B’-word comparison comes up, despite its flattering connotations – although he spoke of ‘shared values’ between the two regions in terms of focus on the vineyard and sense of place.

Kate McIntyre MW, of Moorooduc Estate and second generation of the owning family, added, ‘People associate our wines with Burgundy, so we all make sure that we understand Burgundy. But we benchmark to Pinots all around the world. It’s important to understand what Oregon, New Zealand, Yarra Valley and Tasmania are doing.

‘Having that level of knowledge of Pinot around the world, and for Chardonnay as well, allows us to define our own [wines].’

As a maritime climate, vintage variation can be more of a prominent factor in Mornington. Harvest dates vary, with 2016 seeing the earliest on record and 2017 proving a slower ripening year, with grapes not picked until late March in some cases.

As you would expect, use of oak is relatively restrained.

For Pinot, the general consensus around the briefing table at Australia House in London is that wine matured in new French oak tends to sit in lightly toasted barrels and makes up between 20% and 25% of the final blend on average. New oak can be a lot less on some wines, however.

The point of which, as you will no doubt have read about other regions, is to draw out the fruit and sense of place in the wines, plus emphasise the natural acidity that this climate provides.

If you haven’t chosen your Christmas dinner wine yet, then Mornington could be a worthy contender.

Great Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines to try:

You’ll also find two Paringa Shiraz wines in this list, sampled at the same tasting and considered worthy of mention. In addition, we’ve included Tina Gellie’s note on Crittenden Estate Pinot Noir 2016, which she tasted earlier this year. 

Factfile

Climate: Maritime

Main varieties: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. Pockets of Semillon, Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc, also.

Altitude: Between 25 and 250 metres above sea level

Number of vineyards: Around 200

Number of wineries: Around 50

Based on figures from the Mornington Peninsula Vignerons Association

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Sarah Ahmed tastes the latest releases from luxury estate Levantine Hill, an ambitious fine wine project in Australia's Yarra Valley.

I was glad that a low-key tasting in London with down-to-earth winemaker, Paul Bridgeman, provided my introduction to Levantine Hill Estate, as I could be sure it was just the wines that dazzled.

Only afterwards did I see a figure in excess of AUS$100m put on Lebanon-born property magnate, Elias Jreissati’s Yarra Valley investment – reputedly the wine region’s biggest in living memory.

Scroll down to see Sarah’s tasting notes & scores

The new vineyard of Hill Road was only complete once diamond-tipped drills had worked through the steep rocky outcrops, opening up the soil to enable the planting of vines. In between the low yielding Hill Road and Maroondah Highway vineyards, a truffiére was established to produce French black truffles.Additionally, an on-site fine dining restaurant and super-luxury accommodation go some way to explaining Levantine Hill’s ambitiously priced range of wines.

Launched with the 2012 vintage, the estate cannot lay claim to the lengthy back catalogue of great vintages so intrinsically associated with ‘fine wine’, however Bridgeman’s track record is reassuring, as are his efforts to meet Jreissati’s brief of serious ageing capacity married to approachability.

The winemaking

Borrowing from renowned former employer, Yarra Yering’s Bailey Carrodus, Bridgeman is re-introducing stalks in perforated infusion cylinders for red wine ferments, including the Cabernets. This, and extracting no more than once a day, helps produce tannins of exceptional quality – a stand out of this tasting.

‘Home-grown tannins, built for the long haul,’ said Bridgeman, adding ‘it’s about slowly building tannins on top of each other to carry flavours across the palate, not just leading first with fruit; rather projecting everything together.’

Another ‘slow build’ technique – assemblage – was influenced by his time at acclaimed Rhône producer Chave. ‘Why make one wine when you can make 10?’ says Bridgeman, who assembles each wine from many different batches. Different plots are vinified separately, based on block, paddock and clone, using an uncommon range of oak formats for complexity and structure.

Investment and technique is nothing without terroir, however. My top scoring variety in the range, Syrah, comes from Maroondah Highway – the mature, proven vineyard. It’s alluringly spicy, mineral and very distinctive. However, I was struck by the precocity of the Hill Road vineyard. Established between 2009 and 2015, the Chardonnays and top tier ‘Paddock’ Pinot Noir and Cabernet blend already provide ample evidence that planting this steep, rocky site – against experts’ advice – was worth the $100m gamble.

Levantine Hill: Fact file

Founded 2009

Location Coldstream, Yarra Valley, Victoria

Hectares under vine/soil type Maroondah Highway vineyard: 25ha (planted 1995-2016) on predominantly clay loam; Hill Road vineyard: 5.8ha (planted 2009-2015) on clay loam over mudstone

Annual production 125,000-200,000 bottles

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New twists on Australian classics

Already the country’s most widely planted grape, increased stylistic diversity and an expansion into new terroirs point to an even brighter future, says Anthony Rose...

• 165 wines tasted with two rated Exceptional and eight Outstanding

• The panel tasters were: Tina Gellie, Roger Jones and Anthony Rose

Accounting for nearly half of Australia’s red wine harvest, Shiraz is the country’s signature grape variety. With a crush of half a million tonnes last year – more than both Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon – Shiraz throws sand in the faces of its closest rivals. But it’s not just about size; Shiraz also impresses with the expanding spread of regions where it is able to flourish.

From a French perspective, Syrah is at its best in the marginal climate of the cool northern Rhône. In the southern Rhône, it needs Grenache and Mourvèdre to bolster it. If that were true of Australia, Shiraz should only by rights flourish in the cool climates of South Australia’s Coonawarra and Eden Valley, or the Grampians and Yarra Valley in Victoria.

The fact that it flourishes elsewhere is down to unique circumstances in Australia. As Brian Croser says: ‘In the benign climate belt between 32° and 38° south, on the oldest geology and soils on the globe, Australia’s unique latitudinal 5,000km southern coastal interface with the globe’s coldest ocean… provides unique growing circumstances for this most adaptable of varieties.’

Scroll down to see the top wines from this panel tasting

On the right path

In this way, Shiraz is capable of retaining the acidity, aroma, generosity of fruit and fine texture required to produce different styles from a broad diversity of terroirs. Styles divide broadly between the powerful opulence of hot Barossa Valley (and to an extent the inland regions); the more restrained, spicy reds of warm McLaren Vale, Clare Valley and Heathcote, as well as milder Yarra Valley, Eden Valley, Coonawarra and Great Western; then the intensely perfumed, elegant wines of the cooler Adelaide Hills, Canberra and Grampians.

Quick link: View all 165 wines from this panel tasting

In tandem with the opening-up of new terroirs, there’s been a trend away from power and oak to a more refreshing style. Better vineyard management to reduce vigour and yield, balance leaf canopy and harvest more intelligently make a contribution, along with cellar techniques such as small batch fermentation, hand-plunging, whole bunches and better use of oak.

Thanks to the adaptability of the Aussies, there’s an ongoing redraft of the viticultural map of Australia in general – and Shiraz in particular. Even if radical shifts occur due to climate change, over a third of Australia’s vineyards are as cool as Bordeaux and can benefit in the short term from warmer temperatures. So Shiraz seems set to flourish as the growing territorial diversity manifests itself across an equal diversity of wine styles.

The scores

165 wines tasted

Entry criteria: Producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release Australian Shiraz (85% minimum), priced at £15 or more. One wine per producer was permitted.

Exceptional 2

Outstanding 8

Highly Recommended 84

Recommended 67

Commended 4

Fair 0

Poor 0

Faulty 0

Continue reading below

Exceptional & Outstanding wines from the panel tasting:

See all 165 wines from the panel tasting

The results

The Shiraz landscape is shifting and there are many excellent wines at the premium level – especially if you wait a few years before opening them, says Amy Wislocki.

After two days tasting their way through 165 Australian Shiraz priced at £15 and above, our experts emerged ebullient. ‘Delighted!’ exclaimed Roger Jones. ‘On this showing, I’m impressed by where Australia is going in terms of its premium Shiraz,’ agreed Tina Gellie.

The competition from other global wine regions is stiff. ‘There’s Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand, for example,’ said Jones, ‘and South Africa is on the up.’ Anthony Rose concurred: ‘Many countries and regions are doing a fantastic job with Shiraz, but Australia is still at the forefront of that variety and breadth of regionality.’

In the discussion around specific regions, there were clear front-runners. Gellie pronounced Adelaide Hills ‘by far the standout region’ for its purity and vibrancy.

For Jones, it was Adelaide Hills too, with Clare Valley hot on its heels. ‘Adelaide Hills was absolutely stunning: fresh, focused, exciting and linear. It’s Syrah to me, not Shiraz. You sip these wines and it’s perfection. Clare is another exciting area – I like the perfumed restraint and elegance. I think it will take over from Barossa,’ he said.

‘In a sense, Adelaide Hills is a newcomer and it did brilliantly in the tasting,’ added Rose, who also loved the Clare wines. He also tipped Frankland River in Western Australia as a promising source of premium Shiraz.

As Rose pointed out, however, winemaking styles are so varied that it would be misleading to attribute a single style to each region. ‘The region is a guideline, but what’s more important – and more interesting ultimately – is the producer, the brand and the winemaker,’ he said. ‘Within each region there’s a massive variation in winemaking styles, from the almost medium-bodied to the very full-bodied to the overly full-bodied, super-ripe, Porty styles that are traditional.’

He added that the best wines were those that have ‘human input in the vineyard; where the winemaker has made sure to have raw material which constitutes 90% of the quality and character of the wine. The quality in the vineyard really shone through.’

The main message to come through was that these are, in the main, wines that need time to show at their best. ‘Please buy these young wines, but give them time in the cellar,’ urged Rose, ‘in particular the Barossa and McLaren Vale wines. Eight, 10 or even 12 years makes all the difference when it comes to complexity.’

‘We worked out quite quickly that you can’t taste Barossa wines for at least three or four years – and I’d hold off drinking them for at least 10,’ agreed Jones. ‘Lower-priced wines don’t need as much cellar time, but I’m concerned that producers are releasing £60 bottles of 2016 Shiraz now.’ Gellie agreed. ‘I know it’s expensive to keep wines back, but these are being released too early,’ she said. ‘The best wines were those with three or four years of bottle age, and unfortunately most consumers aren’t getting to see or appreciate them.’

‘Overall, 2014 seemed to be the point at which we could taste the maturing style of wine people would want to buy – savoury wines with more nuance and interest,’ she added. ‘The 2016s and 2015s were pretty closed,’ agreed Jones. ‘Once you got to the 2014s you suddenly saw excitement.’

Buy these premium wines, our tasters agreed, be patient and lay them down – even for just a few years, though ideally longer – and you’ll be rewarded.

Our tasters each pick their top 3 wines from the tasting:

Tina Gellie

Gellie is Decanter’s associate editor and has worked for the brand since 2008. An awarded wine writer and editor, she won several scholarships on the way to getting her WSET Diploma. She has more than 15 years’ experience in wine publishing, including as acting editor of Wine International. Before her wine career she was a newspaper journalist in London and Australia.

Vinteloper, SH/14, Adelaide Hills 2014

I’ve always loved David Bowley’s wines, and the move to sourcing Shiraz grapes from Adelaide Hills over McLaren Vale shows in its bright acidity and fresh fruit purity. Lifted and balanced; the 18 months of oak are well integrated. 98 Drink 2018-2026

Castagna, Genesis, McLaren Vale 2013

Julian Castagna’s lifted, vital Shiraz-Viognier blend from a 4ha biodynamic vineyard was a joy after so many over-oaked, high-alcohol examples. Violets and leathery blackcurrants on a silky palate with dusty, sappy elegance. 97 Drink 2018-2025

Payten & Jones, Major Kong, Yarra Valley 2015

A lighter, more quaffable style of Shiraz from 50% whole bunch and 50% whole berry fruit, bottled unfined and unfiltered with just nine months of oak to keep the bacony blue fruits to the fore. 95 Drink 2018-2024

Roger Jones

Jones and his wife Sue own Michelin-starred restaurant The Harrow at Little Bedwyn. His combined talents as a wine critic and chef have seen him set up Restaurant Australia for Wine Australia and The Tri Nations Wine Challenge to promote the wines of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. He is wine consultant to The Caterer and contributing editor for The-Buyer.net.

Sidewood, Mappinga, Adelaide Hills 2015

This sustainable Adelaide Hills winery was founded in 2004 by Owen and Cassandra Inglis. Winemaker is Darryl Catlin, previously of Shaw + Smith. A beautiful, complete wine, which also shows great value. 98 Drink 2018-2025

Kilikanoon, Attinga 1865, Clare Valley 2013

This has stepped up a level since we judged it a Gold at last year’s DWWA. Hand-picked fruit from 150-yearold vines give this Clare Valley wine deep intensity but while still keeping a youthful feel. 98 Drink 2018-2028

Rolf Binder, Heyson, Barossa Valley 2013

An opulent wine that’s still youthful, made from dry-grown Barossa Shiraz planted in 1972, with a touch of Cabernet (4%). Balanced perfectly, with immense purity. 98 Drink 2018-2025

Anthony Rose

Rose is a wine critic who contributes to a variety of publications, including Decanter and The World of Fine Wine. He has won a number of awards, among them three Glenfiddich Wine Writer of the Year Awards and a Louis Roederer International Wine Columnist of the Year Award. A founding member of The Wine Gang, his own blog is anthonyrosewine.com.

Sidewood, Mappinga, Adelaide Hills 2015

The elegantly perfumed Adelaide Hills Shiraz is sourced from Ashwood estate. Marked by a spine of cool-climate acidity that balances the rich blackberry fruit. 98 Drink 2018-2025

Savaterre, Beechworth, Victoria 2014

The Beechworth region is clearly no one-trick pony as winemaker Keppell Smith’s delicious, Côte-Rôtie-like Shiraz from the Victorian Alps attests, with its pepper and spice notes and silky texture. 96 Drink 2019-2026

Schild Estate, Ben Schild Reserve, Barossa Valley 2014

When the Barossa Valley gets it right, it’s capable of producing some of the best-value Shiraz in the world. This excellent value red has succulently dark fruit and smoked meat notes. 95 Drink 2018-2025

Australian Shiraz: the facts

Area planted 39,893ha in 2017 (Australia’s most widely planted variety, 46% of plantings); peaked at about 45,000ha in 2009

Production More than 500,000 tonnes in 2017 (47% of red crush; national average purchase price per tonne up by 12%)

Top regions by volume Riverland (26%), Murray Darling-Swan Hill (15%), Riverina (14%) Top ‘cooler’ climate regions Barossa Valley (11%), McLaren Vale (6%) Top export destination China

Australian Shiraz: vintages

2017 Volumes were 15% up on 2016. A later harvest meant good overall quality.

2016 Started out warm, with a cool growing season. Early harvest for structured, well-balanced fruit.

2015 Warm year with rapid ripening: generosity, perfume and silky textures.

2014 Cool and late season after a warm summer. Good ripening gave intense aromatics and flavours.

2013 Hot and dry. Forward and generous wines, but aromatics are subdued on occasion.

2012 Cool and dry summer led to a fine, concentrated vintage.

2011 Cold, wet and late; a vintage to forget for many. Yet good in Western Australia.

2010 Mild, with a long growing season. This was a classic year.

2009 Reduced volumes but wines were generously textured.

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A Burgundian-style Tasmanian Pinot Noir and a Victorian Chardonnay stole the show at annual The Mamba Awards tasting last night - designed to highlight the most interesting Australian wines on offer in the UK. Tina Gellie reports for Decanter, which co-sponsors the tasting alongside glass maker Riedel...

Dalrymple’s 2013 Cottage Block from Pipers River (recommended retail price £39.99) was named the best of 35 Australian Pinot Noirs at the annual Mamba Awards tasting, helping Négociants UK to win the Decanter Perpetual Trophy for best agent/importer.

The Mamba Awards have been co-sponsored by Decanter since they began nine years ago.

The competition is designed to highlight the quality and value of Australian wine in the UK market, judged non-blind and with prices revealed, by about 70 members of the wine trade. Decanter’s consultant editor, Steven Spurrier, was head judge.

• RELATED: Where Cabernet is ‘a swear word’ – Jane Anson

The awards are hosted and sponsored by Roger and Sue Jones – chef/proprietor and front of house respectively, of the Michelin-starred The Harrow at Little Bedwyn in Wiltshire. Other supporters include glassware maker Riedel (which donates a Mamba decanter to each of the wine category winners), drinks charity The Benevolent, Wine Australia, Jansz sparkling wine and wine trade newsletter The Buyer.

Giaconda’s 2012 Estate Vineyard Chardonnay from Beechworth in Victoria – the most expensive wine of the competition at £95 from importer Fields Morris & Verdin – trumped the other 68 wines in its category, ahead of Tyrrell’s 2007 Vat 47 from Hunter Valley in New South Wales (Fells, £38.49) and Tournon’s Landsborough 2013 from Victoria’s Pyrenees Region (Mentzendorff, £22).

The Tournon Chardonnay, made by celebrated Rhône winemaker Michel Chapoutier, also won the Yvonne May Memorial Decanter for the best-value wine of the evening as chosen by the tasters. Wines ranged from £6.86 to £95.

In the Pinot category, Tapanappa’s Foggy Hill 2010 from South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula (Mentzendorff, £30) was runner up, followed by Ten Minutes by Tractor’s Wallis Vineyard 2013 from Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula (Bancroft, £42).

The Harrow’s wine list of 1,100 labels is more than a third Australian.

• Click to see Mamba Awards results for 2015, 2014 and 2013

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Jane Anson takes a break from Bordeaux to explore the rising reputation of cool climate wines in Australia's Victoria region, and finds several wines to recommend.

‘Cabernet Sauvignon has pretty much become a swear word in Victoria now,’ importer and MW student Victoria Sharples is telling a small group of sommeliers and journalists in London.

‘There are some wonderful old vine Cabs still going strong, but producers all over the state are field-grafting to get away from the image of the swaggering Ozzie cab’.

We’re here for a cool climate tasting of mainly Rieslings and Pinot Noirs from Victoria, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that poor old Cabernet Sauvignon is getting a mauling from winemakers who are frustrated with the one-dimensional image of Australia internationally.

Lined up in front of us are examples of family-owned, artisan wineries that are starting to make an impact back in Victoria, and are keen to get a stronger audience in Europe. As proof of how serious they are, this tasting was held twice over recent weeks in Spain’s San Sebastian in a bar owned by Melbourne bar owner Gerald Diffey.

I had wanted to drive down to San Sebastian from Bordeaux, as it’s only a few hours away, but the dates didn’t work out. So I’m here instead at the beautiful Levin Hotel in Knightsbridge, owned by David and Lynne Levin who are both Victoria and Loire winemakers. Less unusual to be drinking Australian wine in London of course, but I’ll take what I can.

‘The major challenge for these cool climate wines is navigating the regulatory complexities of Australian exports to the EU,’ says Lynne Levin. ‘This is one of the reasons why most of these bottles never make it out of Australia. There is also a lot of work to be done to reposition top quality Australian wines within the UK market, and it is a challenge for them to be knowledgably represented once they are here’.

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There’s cool climate and there’s cool climate, of course. But nobody should be surprised that nuanced, balanced and decidedly exhilarating wines can be produced in Victoria. This is, after all, the state with the highest number of ski resorts in Australia, and of the major wine regions in Victoria, six are classified as cool (Geelong, Sunbury, Macedon Ranges, Mornington Peninsula, Gippsland, Yarra Valley) and one cold (Beechworth) – in total sub-divided into 21 smaller Geographic Indicators (GIs).

Across the wines that we are tasting in London, nothing goes higher than 14% abv, with most coming in at 13% (not accounting for the 1.5% allowable variation in labeling and reality, something that they would have to address to fit with EU regulations – although maybe that won’t be a problem in the British market soon).

‘Most are these estates make only a few hundred cases per year, and are conscious of combatting the usual perception of Australian wine’, Sharples says. ‘They are anti big-business, and usually organic, something that is pretty easy in the Victorian climate. Certainly they are all conscious of the environment, of being close to the land, looking for purity of fruit and experimenting with new varieties’.

Victoria is about half the size of Spain, and while not exactly as diverse in terms of climate, its numerous mountains and valleys gives plenty of options for growers, as well as day-night temperature variations that can be marked by up to 20 degrees centrigrade. You’ll find pockets of interesting European varieties here, including a renaissance in Italian grapes from nebbiolo to glera up in northeast Victoria where there is a large community with Italian ancestry who were once tobacco farmers and are now moving into grapes. Australia’s strict quarantine system is slowing down the import of certain vines and clones, but experimentation is still going on. This is helped, according to Sharples, by the fact that Victoria is also the state with the most individual growers in Australia – of the 2,500-or-so across Australia, around 800 of them are in Victoria.

Of the wines we tasted, there were some excellent aromatic whites, but it was the pinots that impressed me the most. More New Zealand or Oregon than Burgundy in style, with beautiful fruit integrity, a gourmet edge and mouth-watering freshness. Only 5% of plantings across Australia are Pinot Noir, and much of that is used for sparkling wines, but recent years have seen the establishment of movements such as Pinot Massive, a group based out of Daylseford in the (cool-climate) Macedon Ranges but within easy reach of Melbourne.

‘Pinot Massive brings together Pinot producers across Victoria,’ says French winemaker Gilles Lapalus, born in Cluny and now a full-time Victorian. ‘It’s not publicised much but once a year they meet up for a three-day conference to share research and taste their wines alongside legendary pinot producers from France and other countries. It has really pushed the way Pinot is being farmed and vinified across the State, and Pinot has a great future here’.

Jane Anson’s wines from Victoria to try:

Paradigm Hill, Riesling, Mornington Peninsula 2015

From iron rich soils, this is fermented in stainless steel tanks and left on the lees for six months. A steely, lean Riesling, with no residual sugar, this is clean citrus and slate, fresh, aromatic and utterly delicious. Just 450 cases made. 91 points (/100)

Yeringberg Marianne Roussanne Yarra Valley 2013

Roussanne is barely seen in Australia except for a few plantings in Victoria. This one is tank fermented then aged in 300 litre barrels for 10 months. It doesn’t quite have the noble bitterness of the Rhône versions and starts out almost neutral. But grip comes in through the mid-palate, as the hand of savoury herbs tinged with apricot closes around you and the structure of the wine starts to exert itself. Give it time in the glass. 90

Moorooduc Estate, McIntyre Chardonnay Mornington Peninsula 2013

The winemaker here is MW Kate McIntrye. From sandy loam soils, natural fermented with all wild yeasts, 20% new oak, with the rest in older oak barrels. This is rich and round fruit on the first attack, with luscious citrus that narrows and heads upwards through the palate, finishing with a clean flourish – a lovely example of how Australian Chardonnay is changing. 92

Paradigm Hill Pinot Noir l’Ami Sage Mornington Peninsula 2013

Another excellent wine from Ruth and George Mihaly. The Pinot grows on volcanic soils, with natural yeasts for the tank fermentation then aged on 30% new oak. The whole thing is done with minimum intervention, and held back when bottled until they feel it is ready to drink. This has a beautifully toasted, gourmet edge balanced by juicy cherry and redcurrant. Lean structure overall but with juicy fruit, excellent. 94

Eastern Peake Intrinsic Pinot Noir 2013

From an interesting winemaker called Owen Latta who is concentrating on several single-site plots to grow his range. This pinot is from mountain fruit grown at 400m altitude on the Great Dividing Range, whole bunch vinification that is then filtered but not fined. A lovely lean, fresh dark cherry fruit, with a eucalyptus note and gorgeous spicy cinnamon and pepper pulsing underneath. 92

Luke Lambert Crudo Syrah 2015 Yarra Valley 2015

You’ll see a lot more Australian wineries using syrah instead of Shiraz when naming this grape on their label; another sign of how things are changing. Luke Lambert has long been a leading proponent of hand-crafted, terroir-driven wines from Australia (his Nebbiolo is pretty infamous at this point), and here you get a true expression of the wilder side of Syrah in all its intense, red-blooded perfume. I can feel the wind whipping through the vines, keeping the acidity high and emphasising both the balance and the soaring personality in the glass. 91

More Jane Anson columns:

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Visiting an area with a rich agricultural tradition, Nina Caplan maps out a route to find the best food and wine, with stunning scenery along the way.

FACT FILE

Planted area 1,535ha

Production (2012) 85,000hl

Main grapes White: Prosecco (or Glera), Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Arneis, Riesling

Red: Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Graciano, Pinot Meunier

Aside from the fact that it is, without question, a valley – one that ascends into the foothills of the Victorian Alps and benefits greatly in winter from eager and thirsty skiers heading up the Snow Road – the King Valley isn’t terribly well named. Most winemakers here come from very different stock to Governor Philip Gidley King, who sailed in with the First Fleet; they are Italians who arrived to plant tobacco after World War II, and their surnames and their grapes suggest that this part of northeast Victoria should really have been called La Valle del Re, rather than being named for an Englishman at all.

So plentiful are these winemakers, and so keen on the grapes of the old country, that several have banded together to form a 50km-long wine and food trail called the Prosecco Road. To prevent the road limiting our enjoyment of the Prosecco, we hired a Maui campervan, complete with tiny shower, and, this being Australia, a pull-out barbecue.

• Spend 24 hours in King Valley
• King Valley: Hotels, restaurants and shops

At Brown Brothers, we tasted through a vast array of wines at the gigantic cellar door. Brown Brothers doesn’t do minimalism: by far the largest of the King Valley wineries, it produces about a million cases a year from around 45 grape varieties. Many pay homage to Italy, and the roll-call of Italian grapes includes Arneis, Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Vermentino – and, of course, Prosecco, or Glera. Its Pinot Grigio comes from a single vineyard in the upper valley and has a sea-breeziness that makes an interesting contrast to its yeastier, fruitier Pinot Gris style, picked later from the same vineyard and left on lees for two months.

The Browns aren’t Italians: the winery was founded by Scots immigrants back in 1889. And they don’t focus exclusively on Italian varieties, offering Spanish grapes Graciano and Tempranillo, international varieties such as Chardonnay and Shiraz – and even Tarrango, an Australian variety that makes a light, low-tannin red.

• See more Decanter travel guides to Australia

Wine is the third wave of agriculture on these fertile slopes, following on from tobacco, which supplanted the market gardens of the 19th-century Chinese who came to work in the gold mines. Thanks to varying altitude, well-drained sandy clay and clay-loam soils, and warm, sometimes too warm, weather (it’s cooler at sea level in Tasmania, for instance, than at 800m here), this patch of northeast Victoria can grow practically any kind of grape – and does, from Marzemino to Muscat.

Regional accents

We pedalled slightly woozily a half-hour down the Snow Road, which does not, at this altitude, live up to its name: certainly not in late summer, when it is streaked with sun, except where the cycle track crosses a shady, gum tree-fringed creek. Sam Miranda winery, folded gently into the hillside, was designed by ‘starchitect’ Alex Popov, but there’s nothing high-maintenance about Sam. ‘Prosecco’s great; it’s just not complicated,’ he says, as we sip his very dry incarnation, which tastes of pear and toasted breadcrumbs. ‘You don’t have to think the way you do when you crack a [Penfolds] Grange.’ Sam also finds it hard to say no to a grape he likes: he offers Saperavi and Petit Manseng, neither as convincing as that Prosecco, or as his Pinot Grigio, the grape that’s the main bait in Australia’s attempt to lure drinkers away from the outrageously popular New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Miranda is also trying to make a top-tier Nebbiolo, explaining that the snowmelt that flows into the King River resembles the Alpine water in Piedmont’s Tanaro river. I am not so sure. It’s not just differences in soil and climate, although those are substantial, or the wispiness of Miranda’s Nebbiolo. It seems contradictory to laud one’s own region while simultaneously comparing it to the Langhe, 10,000 miles away in northwest Italy. And I’ve never yet seen a gum tree in Piedmont.

In Pizzini’s gorgeous repurposed tobacco shed, 50km and 300m of altitude up the road, Fred Pizzini takes us through his wines. He is a Nebbiolo obsessive, and here, that mania is paying off: his 2011 tastes nothing like its Italian cousins (there’s a definite whiff of eucalyptus), but its prune and mulling spice flavours are lovely. Christian Dal Zotto concentrates more on Prosecco: his father Otto, Fred’s brother-inlaw and the region’s Prosecco pioneer, came from Valdobbiadene. His NV is good but it’s the L’Immigrante 2014 that grabs me: it’s richer, jasmine-scented and delicious.

These Aussies can’t export anything called Prosecco to Europe, but that’s all right, they tell me: the distance means they couldn’t compete with their distant cousins on price, anyway. At our last stop, Chrismont, owned by another Pizzini cousin, I watch the sun sink softly past vine-covered slopes after a day tasting the most Italian wines never to come out of Italy, and conclude that it’s not such a great hardship to try them here.

How to get there

By plane to Melbourne, then by car via the Hume Highway, a drive that takes between 2.5 and 3 hours. Alternatively you can fly into Canberra; the drive from there takes 4 to 5 hours.

Nina Caplan writes on travel, food, art and film, and has an award-winning wine column in the New Statesman.

Nina Caplan plans out the perfect day in King Valley, Australia, exploring the Prosecco Road.

24 hours in King Valley

The King Valley is a straight line. In theory you could cycle from beginning to end of the Prosecco Road, but I prefer to avoid the long, straight stretch in the middle – especially in hot weather. My perfect day would need to be a Friday, as that’s the only day that Dal Zotto opens for dinner, although it serves lunch Thursday to Sunday.

• Decanter travel guide: King Valley
• King Valley: Restaurants, hotels and shops

Morning

Start with fresh juice and excellent coffee at Snow Road Produce, then a pleasant half-hour cycle to Sam Miranda Winery for a tasting. Cycle back to Brown Brothers.

Lunch

Return your bike and take lunch at The Epicurean Centre, the excellent Brown Brothers restaurant, with perhaps a post-prandial game of chess, followed by a wander five minutes down the road to the Milawa Cheese factory for a few samples.

Afternoon

Drive to Pizzini for a tasting and a stroll past the rose beds to the river – you can hire fishing rods, as well as bikes (more my line). Cycle around, seeing a bit of the area, which is spectacularly scenic, but make sure to make it to Dal Zotto while it’s still light, for a game of bocce (Italian bowls) – and, of course, a tasting.

Evening and overnight

A lazy dinner in Dal Zotto’s Trattoria – formerly the kiln for drying tobacco – is followed by the six-minute cycle back to Pizzini, and a bed in its Lana Trento guest house (A$130 for a single, A$175 a couple), which sleeps four. The price includes a breakfast hamper, although after this day of tasting, eating and minimal exercise, I may not be all that hungry!

Nina Caplan picks out the King Valley restaurants, hotels and shops to include in your trip.

King Valley hotels

Chrismont Guest House

A comfy guest house with its own kitchen, in the grounds of the beautiful Chrismont winery. The owners are in the process of building a restaurant with superb views. www.chrismont.com.au

Jessie’s Creek Cottage

A well laid-out, three-bedroom cottage that sleeps six, with two bathrooms. Situated in Whitfield, walking distance from restaurants, wineries and a local spa. www.jessiescreekcottage.com

Lindenwarrah Hotel

A mid-sized hotel (40 rooms) opposite Brown Brothers with an outdoor pool and lovely views over vineyards and gardens via full-length windows and shared verandas. Restaurant Merlot makes good use of local produce, too. www.lancemore.com.au/lindenwarrah

• Decanter travel guide: King Valley

King Valley restaurants

Mountain View Hotel

This charming boutique hotel beside Jessie’s Creek in Whitfield is also a restaurant, with fine dining and gastropub options, both taking advantage of the mass of locally grown produce. www.mvhotel.com.au

Sam Miranda winery

Dreamed up by Alex Popov, son-in-law of Jorn Utzon, who designed Sydney Opera House. Excellent Italian food is served on the veranda, along with Sam’s wines. www.sammiranda.com.au

The Whitty Café

Also in Whitfield sits this informal eaterie, with armchairs and café-style grub although, being Australian, this is a café that serves wine, too. 4905 Wangaratta-Whitfield Road, Whitfield, Victoria 3733; +61 3 5729 8388

• Spend 24 hours in King Valley

King Valley shops

Snow Road Produce

This tiny shop and café on the edge of Milawa is decorated with cookbooks and sells home-made cakes and good coffee – and wine and produce to take home. www.snowroadproduce.com

The Produce Store

A cheery caff in Mansfield serving pies and salads during the day – and offering local wines, beers and ciders for sale, too. www.theproducestore.com.au

King Valley places to visit

Lake William Hovell

At the valley’s south end, a beautiful spot for walking, picnicking and canoeing.

Paradise Falls

Here you can sit beneath a series of fabulous U-shaped waterfalls on Stony Creek, a tributary of the King River.

Powers Lookout

Great views. A few kilometres off the Mansfield-Whitfield Road lies this lookout, named for the bushranger (that is, outlaw) Harry Power, who apparently kept watch for the police from here.

Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) is to sell three of its wineries in Australia and close down another in California as part of continued plans to cut overheads.

The Penfolds and Wolf Blass producer announced a raft of changes to its US and Australian operations, designed to optimise its supply chain and help it to separate production of its ‘luxury and masstige’ wines from lower-priced commercial bottlings.

Under the plans announced this week, TWE is to sell off its recently closed Ryecroft winery in McLaren Vale, as well as the T’Gallant facility in Mornington Peninsula and the Bailey’s winery in Glenrowan.

The company is also to transfer current packaging and warehousing operations at Karadoc, near Mildura in Victoria, to the core Wolf Blass facility in Barossa.

Meanwhile, commercial wines currently processed at TWE’s Great Western and Wynn’s Coonawarra bases will be transferred to Karadoc, making it exclusively focused on the production of TWE’s Australian commercial wine products.

At the same time, ‘Masstige’ wine processing undertaken at Great Western and Wynn’s will move to Wolf Blass, leaving the two facilities to focus on luxury wine processing and warehousing.

In California, TWE will close its Asti winery in Sonoma County, transferring its production to other wineries, mostly in Paso Robles and at Beringer’s Napa Valley facility.

Also in Napa, the company is consolidating packaging lines at its Napa Bottling Centre (NBC) to increase efficiency.

TWE did not reveal details of the financial implications of the announcements, or their impact on jobs.

The news comes after the company announced a 60% slump in net profits to A$42.6m in the six months to 31 December, with chief executive Michael Clarke saying that TWE was in the midst of a ‘re-set year’.

Written by Richard Woodard

Anyone seeking dental refuge from the searching acidity which will have been on display at London's recent 2013 burgundy tastings could have done worse than made their way south this weekend. All the way south, as far as you can go: to South Africa’s Hemel-en-Aarde Pinot Noir Celebration, which unfolded over the last two days of January. I pre-tasted the event, as it were, with a day of visits last November.

Hemel-en-Aarde valley

It reminded me that the one grape variety with which the three Anglophone Southern Hemisphere wine nations jointly excel is — against all expectations — Pinot Noir. The latitudes may look unpromising, but by judiciously conjoining altitude, wind and ocean influence, a new sort of global Pinot beauty has come into being: juicy yet elegant, often fine-grained and perfumed, marked by tempered richness. I still miss Burgundy’s purposeful tannins in leading Southern Hemisphere examples, but the draughtsmanship with which their fruit is sketched can be irresistible, and their balances are easier on the non-aligned palate than that of burgundy after a cold, rainy summer.

You can’t ignore the human factor, either. Those deciding on Cabernet, Merlot or Shiraz want to run a sound business; those planting Pinot usually hope to make the best wine in the world. Their faces are lit by the gleam of the grail, and their actions marked by a purity of spirit which often underwrites great winemaking.

I remember meeting Tim Hamilton Russell, the Hemel-en-Aarde valley pioneer, two decades ago when his vineyard was a muddy and lonely one, and when he was engaged in the inevitable battles with the KWV over planting rights and vine material. By the time he died in July 2013, his foresight had been paid the greatest complement of all: the valley was waving with vines. According to his son Anthony, it was “the vineyard which chose Pinot Noir and Chardonnay” as key varieties for the family estate; there were eight planted when Anthony took over. Economic evolution has left these two.

These are not South Africa’s most southerly plantings, but they’re close, and (like those of the Mornington Peninsula in Australia’s Victoria) they’re highly maritime. As always in the Cape, you have to look at the mountain context and calibrate it against wind direction to understand the climate. The physical valley’s opening to the sea is suitably angled for the prevailing south-easterlies to shear directly off the cold Benguela current, and the high Babylonstoren mountains curtain the zone from the warmth inland.

Hamilton Russell planted in the lower part of the valley; most of the expansion subsequently has come further up, in the separate wine wards of Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley and the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge. There’s no limestone but plenty of clay in the subsoils, particularly lower down in the valley, with the parent material being ancient decomposed shale, sandstone and granite. There are problems, too. Gourmet, Pinot-loving baboons are one. Leaf-roll-virus affected vines, as so often in South Africa, is another.

Or is it? “Michael Brajkovich of Kumeu River in New Zealand,” says Anthony Hamilton Russell, “says a little leaf-roll in his Chardonnay makes his wines much less New Worldly and that people love it I honestly believe that one of the hallmarks of Hamilton Russell wines comes from a degree of leaf-roll, but you do have to accept 33 per cent crop reduction. It suits some varieties more than others. You have to want the held-back style, the restraint.” He says he has replanted the entire vineyard one and a half times.

“There’s no good news on virus for me,” ripostes Gerhard Smith of La Vierge, up on the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge. He suggests that the whole of the Ridge is virus-free at present. Leaf-roll will have to be conquered, of course, if there are ever to be any ‘old vine’ bottlings from Hemel-en-Aarde.

Don’t assume that I’m taking a stand on this question (I know too little to do that), but the Hamilton Russell Pinots are exceptionally accomplished wines: the 2013 had impressive architecture of fruit, with plenty of lithe thrust to it; light but palpable tannins; freshness; and a peppery, pungent finish.

Other outstanding Hemel-en-Aarde Pinots include the two 2013 bottlings from Storm: Vrede from a Valley site (stocky, rounded and chunky, Pommard-style) and Moya’s from the Upper Valley (sappy, mouth-coating red fruits, Volnay-style). Look out, too, for the 2013 Newton Johnson Family Vineyards (fresh, poised and charming, with gathered folds of sappy plum fruit) from the Upper Valley; and Creation’s 2013 Reserve Pinot (meaty, spicy, dense, almost peaty) from the Ridge.

It’s early days, of course: Kevin Grant, a former winemaker for Hamilton Russell, now has his own estate up on the Ridge called Ataraxia, but the only Pinot he has released so far has gone to market with ‘Declassified’ on the label, and without an origin other than Western Cape. “It quickly became obvious that the thing I like most in Pinot Noir, which is texture, you can’t get in very young vines. So I’m waiting for the texture.”

Oh, and one last thing. Anthony Hamilton Russell’s great-great aunt once shot Mussolini on the nose. It’s not strictly relevant, I agree, but since Anthony saw fit to mention it, I thought I’d pass it on: one last little reason to head south.

Written by Andrew Jefford

Steve Webber, chief winemaker at De Bortoli Wines, picks the best wine bars to visit in Melbourne.

Best Melbourne wine bars

The wine and food scene in Melbourne has blossomed over the past 20 years. See these 11 top Melbourne wine bars:

1. Gerald’s Bar

The bar that the locals cross town for. Choose any wine from the list to have by the glass. Gerald and his right-and-left- hand man Mario, are Melbourne institutions. geraldsbar.com.au

2. Rydges, Exhibition Street

Not a glam luxury hotel or a boutique hotel. Not even an ‘art’ hotel, but a conveniently located one, and with good staff. From the lobby, five minutes’ walk will take you to bars and eateries like City Wine Shop, Longrain, Ombra, Bar Lourinhã, Lily Blacks, Flower Drum, Bottega, The Mess Hall, Hu Tong, and Leanne’s favourite bookstore, Hill of Content. rydges.com

3. City Wine Shop & Siglo

City Wine Shop is also a bar. Choose a bottle and drink it with a plate of food. Then head upstairs (through the Melbourne Supper Club) to Siglo, a rooftop bar where you can have a whisky with a cigar while gazing over at Parliament House. citywineshop.net.au

4. Ombra

Excellent pizza and crispy lamb ribs, plus an excellent selection of Aussie wines, including a decent range of made-for-the-house wines. Part of the Grossi empire, so service is spot-on. ombrabar.com.au

• My Melbourne by Steve Webber

5. Bar Lourinhã

Primarily Iberian, this also embraces the broader Mediterranean and Levantine. Always fun and noisy with something delicious to eat and drink. Classics include spiced chickpeas and spinach, and yellow tail kingfish ‘pancetta’ with lemon oil. barlourinha.com.au

6. Pei Modern

Located at the drop-off area of the Sofitel Hotel in the famous, tree-lined Collins Street, this has both a casual as well as a marginally more formal area. The lovely wine list is well-priced, the tapas and shared plates are all fantastic. My current favourite. peimodern.com.au

7. Cumulus Inc & Cumulus Up

Modern Melbourne cuisine, showcasing chef Andrew McConnell’s vision. Excellent place for breakfast – if you can get in. Cumulus Up is a smart Melbourne wine bar. cumulusinc.com.au

8. MoVida Next Door

The second phase in the life of MoVida sits alongside the original (there’s also a third, Aqui, on the Law Courts side of town). Sit at the bar and watch them prepare delightful fish and seafood. Or watch passers-by on the historic, mile-long Flinders Street. movida.com.au

9. MCG

The G, one of the great sporting stadiums of the world. Football rules in autumn and winter; cricket rules in spring and summer. Adjacent to the Rod Laver Arena for the tennis, it’s just a 15-minute walk to MoVida Next Door, Bar Lourinhã and Cumulus. mcg.org.au

10. The National Gallery of Victoria

There’s always something of interest here. Australia’s oldest public art museum is within easy walking distance of the Melbourne business district, and is the perfect place to go to lose yourself for a few hours, particularly on a rainy day. ngv.vic.gov.au

11. Bellota & Prince Wine Store

The experts at the Prince Wine Store sell lots of fine wine of all origins, while the owners’ adjacent new bar, Bellota, offers great value and style. You can eat very well and choose wine from the list, or grab a bottle from the store to enjoy. Wines over AU$80 (£44) are sold at bottle-shop prices, while those below incur a far from princely AU$15 (£8.30) corkage. bellota.com.au

Steve Webber is chief winemaker and manager at De Bortoli Wines

Innovation and passion recently presented themselves to me in two opposing guises. Which one do you most relate to?

Vineyards at Ataraxia in South Africa. Image credit: Ataraxia

Katherine Brown, the third generation of family-run Brown Brothers wine group based in Victoria, Australia, is known for experimenting with grape varieties. If you’ve had Mondeuse, Tarrango, Cienna or Durif, or tried an Australian Graciano, Glera, Moscato or Dolcetto, then it’s likely been from Brown Brothers.

The family makes more than 70 wines from dozens of varieties, many first conceived in its ‘Kindergarten’ research winery. It also explores new vineyard sites, of which the family has four in Victoria and two in Tasmania, totaling 852ha.

The six sites span altitudes from 5m to 450m, rainfall from 345mm to 920mm and average January temperatures from 17°C to 23.5°C, with, naturally, a host of soils.

It’s a big operation, and with a big fanbase – for a key reason. The Brown Brothers philosophy is to make a wine to suit ‘your preferences, your palate, not our winemaker’s’.

For them, that means constantly bringing out wines of varying styles to appeal to evolving tastes, but not forgetting about loyal consumers who still want their old favourites.

It’s not an approach that all subscribe to. Kevin Grant, of Ataraxia in South Africa’s Hemel-en-Aarde Valley in Walker Bay, explained during a recent lunch that he makes just four wines from his 48ha (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, a Shiraz-based blend and a yet-to-be-released Pinot Noir) which, if you do the maths, is the same ratio as the 70 wines made from Brown Brothers 850ha.

His is a boutique operation – on the Skyfields, one of the area’s highest, coolest spots – and this ‘terroiriste’ knows every inch.

Many South African winemakers say they find more parallels with Old World Europe than the New World, and Grant adheres to the idea of specific grapes for specific terroirs.

‘The concept of one producer making eight reds and seven whites just in one area is alarming,’ he told me. ‘You can’t possibly have ideal conditions for that many different varietals.’

He said that giving consumers what they wanted was impossible, unless they wanted what you already had. And that means starting with the soil, not the grape.

‘You can’t enter the Queen’s Plate on a donkey and expect to win, even if you are the best jockey in the world. Ok, you might win one year if you pump the donkey full of steroids, but how long is it going to survive being treated like that?

Why not start with a thoroughbred to begin with – the best terroir you can buy? ‘There’s no need to do alchemy in the cellar if you are confident in what you have planted where.’

This isn’t intended to be a direct comparison of these wineries. But, it does highlight two very different winemaking philosophies, both intended to make consumers happy.

There’s no right or wrong, but which approach do you identify with?

Written by Tina Gellie

Kooyong Estate's Faultline Chardonnay 2010 from the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria and Yalumba's The Signature Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 from the Barossa Valley in South Australia took the top prizes in the annual Mamba Awards last night.

Yvonne May (Wine Australia), Sue Jones (The Harrow) and Emma Crowther (Negociants) collecting the award for best Shiraz

Supported by Decanter and Wine Australia, the awards were set up in 2006 by Roger and Sue Jones, chef/proprietor and front of house respectively of the Michelin-starred The Harrow at Little Bedwyn in Wiltshire, along with glassware maker Riedel.

The awards highlight the quality and value of latest-release Australian wines in the UK market and are judged (non-blind, with prices revealed) by 100 consumers and wine trade members.

This year the focus was on Chardonnay (41 entries) and Shiraz/Shiraz blends (54 entries), with the winners of each category receiving a Mamba decanter from Riedel and dinner at The Harrow.

Roger Jones is one of the judges on the Australia panel at the Decanter World Wine Awards and regularly judges Australian wines at Decanter panel tastings. The Harrow’s wine list of 1,000 bins is more than a third Australian.

The top six wines from each category in this year’s awards were:

Chardonnay

1. Kooyong Estate, Faultline Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria 2010 (£37.50 via UK agent Enotria)

2. Ocean Eight, Verve Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria 2011 (£28.95 via UK agent Hallowed Ground)

=3. Harewood Estate, Reserve Chardonnay, Great Southern, Western Australia 2012 (£16.25 – for basic Chardonnay – Christopher Keiller)

=3. Vasse Felix, Heytesbury Chardonnay, Margaret River, Western Australia 2011 (£45.70 via UK agent Negociants)

=5. Petaluma, Chardonnay, Piccadilly Valley, South Australia 2011 (£17.50 via UK agent Bibendum)

=5. Shaw & Smith, Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills, South Australia 2011 (£24.99 via UK agent Liberty Wines)

Shiraz/Shiraz blends

1. Yalumba, The Signature (Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon), Barossa Valley, South Australia 2008 (£32.50 via UK agent Negociants)

2. Harewood Estate, Reserve Shiraz, Great Southern, Western Australia 2010 (£15.83 – for basic Shiraz – Christopher Keiller)

3. Henschke, Keyneton Euphonium (Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot-Cabernet-Franc) Barossa Valley, South Australia 2009 (£27.50 via UK agent Enotria)

4. Wakefield, St Andrews, Shiraz, Clare Valley, South Australia 2009 (£29.99 via UK agent Louis Latour)

5. Peter Lehmann, Stonewell Shiraz, Barossa Valley, South Australia 2008 (£34.99 via UK agent Hallgarten)

6. Yalumba, Reserve Shiraz, Barossa Valley, South Australia 2004 (£57.99 via UK agent Negociants)

See the pictures from the evening here

Written by Tina Gellie

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Ian Hopkins, owner of Tellurian wines in Heathcote, Victoria spoke to Decanter about the challenges of setting up a winery and the future potential for the wines of Heathcote.

Written by John Abbott

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Leading Victorian winery, Brown Brothers, has acquired Tasmanian producer Tamar Ridge Estates.

The deal is believed to be worth A$32.5 million (£18.6m) and includes all of the Tasmanian company’s vineyards, wineries and brands including Tamar Ridge, Pirie and Devil’s Corner.

Ross Brown, CEO Brown Brothers, said: ‘The Brown Brothers Board has been carefully considering how global warming may impact our vineyards through drought and high temperatures and recently adopted a strategy to source grapes from cooler areas.

‘This is a very sound business that ticks all our strategic objectives for growth in pinot and sparkling, and at the same time reduces the risk of drought and associated high temperatures and scarcity of water,’ he added.

Dr Andrew Pirie, the chief executive and chief winemaker at Tamar Ridge Estates, is set to retire when Brown Brothers take over.

He told ABC News: ‘I hope to have some kind of guiding role in the future, but it will be up to Brown Brothers to work out the next stage on management.’

Brown Bros is a family-owned company based in the King Valley, north-eastern Victoria and is one of the Asutralian First Families of Wine.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

Forget spicy Shiraz from Victoria and blockbuster reds from Barossa. Australia's Adelaide Hills is the most talked about region, with producers discovering its cool, moist climate is great for fresh, elegant wines. By JAMES LAWTHER MW.

Head east from the city and within half an hour you’ll have left scorched plain and suburban sprawl for the green, wooded hills of the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges. Viticulturally, this is home to Australia’s Adelaide Hills, a region defined by its minimum 400m altitude and bounded to the north by the Barossa Valley and to the west by McLaren Vale.

Despite living in the shadow of such august neighbours, Australia’s Adelaide Hills is presently on a roll. Cool-climate viticulture and ‘region-specific styles’ are the new mantra in the Australian wine industry and both can be found in the Hills. A relatively cool, moist climate leads to wines, particularly whites, with a leaner, crystalline, ‘bright fruit’ edge and a dab of elegance. New investors, undaunted by the rising price of land, have made it – in recent years – one of Australia’s fastest growing wine regions, with 3,338ha (hectares) under vine compared with 1,035 pre-1997.

Vines were planted in Australia’s Adelaide Hills as far back as 1839 but the modern era dates from 1978, when Brian Croser selected the Piccadilly Valley – at 500–600m the highest and wettest (average rainfall 1,145mm) valley in the Adelaide Hills – for premium Chardonnay and Pinot Noir plantings, for wines under his Petaluma label. He was followed by a trickle of high-profile names in the early 1980s, among them Stephen and Prue Henschke, Tim Knappstein and Geoff Weaver, all of whom established vineyards in the Lenswood sub-region. The boom in planting followed in the 1990s and has just begun to plateau out. Initially, errors were made with unsuitable grape varieties (generally the more robust red varieties) grown in potentially good sites, but this is steadily being ironed out.

https://www.decanter.com/features/croser-man-of-the-year-248151/

Australia’s Adelaide Hills, 80km north–south by 30km east–west, is more complicated than seen at first glance. Variations in altitude and the influence of rain shadow and aspect mean careful deliberation has to be given to site selection and variety.

Away from the epicentres of the Piccadilly Valley and Lenswood, moving north towards the Barossa and Eden Valleys or south, nearer McLaren Vale, temperatures increase and rainfall drops.

‘In terms of growing conditions, Australia’s Adelaide Hills is like a mini Europe going from Burgundy and the Loire through Bordeaux to the Rhône,’ explains Brian Croser. Yields need to be tempered (emphasising the demand for quality, premium wines) as this is not a region conducive to bulk production.

If Australia’s Adelaide Hills region is still strongly associated with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for both still and sparkling wines, a host of other varieties can now be found. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz are the principal reds with a smattering of others such as Tempranillo and Sangiovese, while Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Semillon, Pinot Gris and Viognier tail Chardonnay in terms of plantings of whites.

It is the crisp, focused whites that have so far secured the reputation of the region. This looks set to persist, with plantings now more significant than for reds. Chardonnay has 815ha under vine; Petaluma’s Tiers Chardonnay and Penfolds’ Yattarna, much of it sourced from the Hills, are as good as Chardonnay gets in Australia.

The big surprise, though, has been Sauvignon Blanc, soon to overtake Pinot Noir as the region’s second most important variety and now very much the commercial engine of the Hills. Few areas in Australia are as well adapted to the production of this variety and the Adelaide Hills is capitalising on this fact. In a long-term forecast to 2009 by the Phylloxera and Grape Industry Board of South Australia, it is the only major variety not to show a decline in intake.

Flavour wise it has the lively, fresh stamp of the variety with a grassy-citrus nuance. ‘Our Sauvignon Blanc sits somewhere between Marlborough and Sancerre,’ says Michael Hill Smith, one of the leading exponents at his Shaw and Smith winery.

https://www.decanter.com/features/interview-michael-hill-smith-246645/

Other great whites are Riesling, Viognier and Pinot Gris. The Riesling has something of the taut, restrained style of nearby Eden Valley. ‘It’s the sleeper among whites,’ says Nepenthe winemaker Peter Leske. A particularly fine, apricot-scented Viognier from Longview Vineyard showed the potential of this variety, while plantings of Pinot Gris – or Grigio – doubled in 2003 to 80ha, indicating the interest.

ONTO THE REDS

The red wine scene is a little more confused. Pinot Noir is still the major variety, with 532ha planted in Australia’s Adelaide Hills. Much is destined for sparkling blends, of which only Petaluma’s Croser (blended with Chardonnay) has clear Adelaide Hills visibility. Pinot purists can find still versions with a lifted, aromatic vibrancy and length of flavour at Ashton Hills and in a more powerful mould at TK Wines (Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards) but the region has yet to stamp its authority over other Pinot-producing areas in Australia.

Curiously, Shiraz is beginning to emerge in a definitive style from certain selected sites. In the south of the district around Mount Barker and Macclesfield temperatures are warmer but there’s a good diurnal range. The wines appear to have a generous ripeness of fruit but more restraint and freshness than the powerful blockbusters of the Barossa and McLaren Vale. The 2003 and 2004 vintages – both warm years – were good for Shiraz here whereas the cooler 2002 was a top year for Pinot Noir and whites.

Otherwise there are experiments with Italian varieties and Tempranillo, as yet without great conviction. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot remain important but plantings have all but ceased and, barring a few examples, have failed to truly excite either as mono-varieties or in a Bordeaux-style blend.

Further growth of Australia’s Adelaide Hills ‘brand’ will continue to be hampered by two constraints. Much of the fruit produced in the region is sourced by the big companies (Hardys, Mildara Blass, Orlando, Penfolds) and finds its way into multiple blends leaving only 20% to bear the Adelaide Hills label. Secondly, there are tough restrictions on development due to the fact that the region is a water catchment area for Adelaide. Pollution from winery waste is seen as a constant threat, and estates are also only allowed to crush up to 2,000 tonnes of grapes. Despite the 60-odd labels that now exist there are only a dozen licensed wineries in the region and of these just four of major consequence, Petaluma, Nepenthe, Shaw and Smith and TK Wines (Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards).

The majority of wines are, therefore, either made under contract by these four wineries or processed outside Australia’s Adelaide Hills. If the regulations soften for certain ‘merited’ claims, as muted, the Hills will move on another step.

KEY PLAYERS

The pioneering winemakers who have given Adelaide Hills its reputation for quality.

Ashton Hills

A boutique winery in European mould, Ashton Hills is an important estate in terms of style, quality and authenticity. An early pioneer, Stephen George established his dry grown vineyard (now 3ha) on a ridge overlooking the Piccadilly Valley in 1981 producing his first wines in 1987. ‘This is the Burgundy of the Adelaide Hills,’ he proclaims. Along the way there’s been plenty of experimentation with clones (there are presently 15 Pinot Noir) and trellising. Top of the line are the estate-grown Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, all of a fine, precise nature. The Galah range is a second label made from bought in fruit. Stephen George also acts as a consultant to icon estate Wendouree in the Clare Valley.

Chain of Ponds

Chain of Ponds was recently purchased by Honi Dolling and business associates. Much of the fruit is still sourced from vineyards belonging to the original owners, the Amadio family, who first planted in the Hills in 1985 and now own extensive holdings around warmer Gumeracha and Kersbrook to the north. A wide range of wines is produced at the winery, including a number from Italian varieties, all in the good value rather than premium range. Personal preferences were the recent edition Pinot Grigio, clean, fresh Black Thursday Sauvignon Blanc and rich, juicy Ledge Shiraz. An attractively sited restaurant also makes this a local destination.

Nepenthe Vineyards

The Tweddle family established Nepenthe Vineyards in 1994 and there are now 85ha located at Lenswood and further east at Charleston. A winery was added in 1996. This has been one of the most exciting ventures in the region with staggeringly good wines across the range. Much of the credit for this goes to winemaker Peter Leske, formerly of the Australian Wine Research Institute and with vintage experience in France (Domaines Dujac and l’Arlot in Burgundy and Alain Graillot in Crozes-Hermitage). Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir are all of note, as are the ageworthy Fugue (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot) and powerful but pricy Zinfandel.

Petaluma

Petaluma pioneered viticulture in the Adelaide Hills (1978). Prime mover Brian Croser remains at the helm but the winery (along with others in the Petaluma group) is now owned by New Zealand brewer Lion Nathan. Matching variety to site has always been one of the keys hence the selection of cool, wet Piccadilly Valley for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The Croser traditional-method sparkling wine, always in need of a little bottle age, is sourced from here as are the finely textured Chardonnay and Tiers Chardonnay, the latter grown on Calcsilicate soils that are 1,800 million years old. More recently Mount Barker with its sandy loams and warmer climes was chosen for Viognier and Shiraz. Bridgewater Mill is both a second label and one of South Australia’s top restaurants.

Shaw and Smith

Shaw and Smith is the brainchild of cousins Martin Shaw (winemaker) and Michael Hill Smith MW. White wines are their forte but reds have been recently added to the list. A brand new, hi-tech winery was completed for the 2000 vintage. Previously the wines were made at Petaluma (first vintage 1990). The M3 vineyard (28ha) planted in 1994, supplies the well-crafted single vineyard Chardonnay of the same name and provides a component part for the market-leading Sauvignon Blanc. Another 25ha was planted to Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Pinot Noir in 1999. Shaw and Smith have followed the present trend by sourcing their Shiraz (first vintage 2002) from further south in warmer Macclesfield.

TK Wines (Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards)

Tim Knappstein is a legend in the Australian wine industry. He created his own label in the Clare Valley in the 1970s and then sold out to Petaluma in 1992. By then he’d already started planting Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir in Lenswood (from 1981) and producing classic wines from the fruit. In 2004 he sold the Lenswood vineyards but retains access to the grapes, making the wines at a new hi-tech, contract winery he manages for investors. TK Wines is the new label from the 2004 vintage with Gewürztraminer an interesting addition.

Geoff Weaver

Former Hardy’s winemaker Geoff Weaver planted his first vineyard at Stafford Ridge near Lenswood in 1982. There are now 14ha of low-yielding Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Pinot Noir. The wines, produced by Geoff Weaver at Petaluma, all have keen precision and length and a crisp, vibrant quality, the Chardonnay and Riesling showing good ageing potential. If ever a label exemplified the true character of the Adelaide Hills, this is it.

NEW FACES

As the Adelaide Hills starts to make a name for itself, new investment is pouring in. These are some of the best.

Bird in Hand

This relatively new label is worth keeping an eye on. The Nugent family bought the property on the site of the 1879 Bird in Hand gold mine in 1997, producing their first wine in 1999. About 30ha have been planted to Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and a former dairy turned into a winery. There are three labels, Bird in Hand (varietal wines), Two In The Bush (blends) and the high-end Nest Egg (special selection) as well as a production of olive oil. The Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc showed good value and flavour. I was less convinced by the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon but winemaking consultant and Kym Milne MW is now involved here so there should be improvements down the line. www.OlivesOilWine.com

The Lane

John Edwards is the genial and garrulous magician behind The Lane. The vineyard, near the German settlement village of Hahndorf, was first planted in 1992 and now includes Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Semillon, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Most of the fruit goes to Hardys to be used with other Hills fruit in the joint venture, value-end Starvedog Lane brand. The pick of the rest goes to the premium The Lane label, owned by Edwards but produced at present at Hardys Tintarra. ‘We’re 30% of the way towards realising a dream which is to make our own wine on site,’ he exclaims. Highlights are an expressive Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon, peppery Reunion Shiraz and ageworthy 19th Meeting Cabernet Sauvignon. www.thelane.com.au

Leabrook Estate

Civil engineer Colin Best has dabbled in wine for a number of years but made his first commercial vintage of Leabrook Estate in 1998. A closely planted, low-yielding, 3ha vineyard provides the core of the fruit, with the rest being bought in. The wines are made in a converted wool manufacturing plant. This is a small, hands-on operation, very much in the European mould, producing harmonious wines with a real textural quality. Traditional methods are preferred (there is no acidification, for example). Top of the line are the Cabernet-Merlot, Pinot Noir and Three Regions Shiraz (Adelaide Hills, Langhorne Creek, Adelaide Plains). www.leabrookestate.com

Longview Vineyard

Longview is probably the most ambitious of the newer labels with a convincing range of single-vineyard wines. The sale of his Two Dogs alcoholic lemonade brand to Pernod Ricard in 1995 helped Duncan MacGillivray realise the new project which is based in beautiful hilly terrain near Macclesfield in a warmer sector of the Adelaide Hills. The first vineyards were planted in 1997 and there are now 70ha of 11 different varieties including Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Chardonnay and Viognier. The winemaking is presently contracted to Shaw and Smith. Personal highlights were the finely scented Beau Sea Viognier, citrusy Iron Knob Riesling, and spicy, black pepper Yakka Shiraz. www.longviewvineyard.com.au

Pike & Joyce

There’s a lot of experience behind this partnership label. The Pikes, winemaker Neil and viticulturalist brother Andrew (formerly with Southcorp), produce wines in the Clare Valley while the Joyce family have been successfully growing fruit (apples, pears and cherries) in Lenswood for several generations. A family connection and decision to diversify led to the first vine plantings in Lenswood in 1998. There are now 18ha of former orchard converted to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris. The wines are made at the Pikes Clare Valley winery. Best to date are the full, grassy Sauvignon Blanc and rich, oaky Chardonnay.

www.pikeswines.com.au

Setanta Wines

Setanta, named after a famous Irish mythological hero, is family owned and run by Sheilagh and Tony Sullivan and Bernard Kierns. The latter is a former biochemist who now looks after the viticultural side and plans to do the winemaking when a licence is granted. At present four wines are produced under contract in Lyndock and Langhorne Creek from fruit grown on the Setanta vineyard located at Forreston on the edge of the Adelaide Hills and Barossa. The first plantings were in 1996 and first vintage in 2001. A set of truly striking labels depicting Irish mythological scenes have been created for the Speckled House Riesling, Emer Chardonnay, Cuchulain Shiraz and Black Sanglain Cabernet Sauvignon. True to the location, perhaps, the Riesling and Shiraz were my favourites. www.setantawines.com.au

BEST NEW RELEASES FROM AUSTRALIA’S ADELAIDE HILLS

Petaluma, Tiers Chardonnay 2002

Beautifully balanced wine. Subtle melon and peach aromas with a wisp of quality oak. Smooth, layered texture. Bright and harmonious. Sophisticated winemaking. Up to 2010 £39.99 (2001); Bib

Ashton Hills, Chardonnay 2002

Fine, taut, fresh, almost Chablis-esque in style. Stone fruit with a honeyed edge. Great balance and length. Up to 2009. (The 2003 is a softer, fuller wine but again elegant in style). Au$27.50.

N/A UK; +61 883 901 243

Ashton Hills, Estate Pinot Noir 2003

Stephen George makes the best Pinot Noir in the Adelaide Hills (the 2002 was outstanding but is now out of stock). Garnet hue. Spicy, dark cherry and violet nose. Explosive flavours on the palate. Intense, persistent and with great length. 2006–2012. Au$45. N/A UK +61 883 901 243

Geoff Weaver, Riesling 2004

Great precision and flavour. Linear in style. Limey nuance. Palate crisp, delicate with good middle fruit and a bone-dry finish. Will fill out with time. Up to 2010. £10.99; BoC

Leabrook Estate, Cabernet-Merlot 2002

Majority Cabernet Sauvignon with Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc. Medium bodied, harmonious. Blueberry/blackcurrant fruit with a eucalyptus note. Palate ripe but fresh. Touch of tannic bite on the finish. Up to 2010. £17.99; Rac

Longview Vineyard, Beau Sea Viognier 2004

Shows great finesse. Delicate floral, apricot nose. Soft, round, caressing fruit on the palate with a long, clean fresh finish. Just delicious. Up to 2007. £11.99; Rac

Nepenthe Vineyards, Pinot Noir 2002

Dark cherry and plum fruit. Ripe sweetness on the palate but acidity and structure behind. Clean, digestible finish. Up to 2007 £13.99; Stf

Petaluma, Mount Barker Shiraz 2002

Includes 7% Viognier. Ripe, plummy fruit with a lift of spice and orange zest. A touch of toasted oak behind. Rich, smooth texture with fine, rounded tannins. A New World Guigal. 2006–2012. £19.99; Bib

Shaw and Smith, M3 Vineyard Chardonnay 2003

Elegant honeysuckle and almond nose. Palate rich and full, showing tropical fruit flavours and restrained buttery oak. Crisp, bright finish. Best in another year. Up to 2009. £15.95; Lib

TK Wines (Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards), Pinot Noir 2002

A robust example of Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir. Complex dark cherry, mocha and earthy aromas. Rich, powerful palate loaded with fruit. Crisp, assertive finish. Up to 2010. £17.99; McK

Chain of Ponds, Ledge Shiraz

Built in quite a powerful mould. Plenty of creamy, dark fruit with a hint of liquorice and black pepper. Warm, full and rich on the palate. Up to 2008. £12.99; D&D

Longview Vineyard, Yakka Shiraz 2003

Has a dash of Viognier. Succulent, ripe plummy fruit on the nose and palate. Nutmeg and peppery spice. Lots of charm. Fresh, minerally finish. Up to 2010. £11.99; Rac

Geoff Weaver, Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Delicately fragrant tropical fruit nose with a grassy undertone. Subtle fruit flavour with a mineral note. Pure, precise and crystalline. Drink now. £10.99; BoC

Setanta, Speckled House Riesling 2003

Fuller style, drinking well now. Affirmed lime character on the nose. Ripe fruit gives a roundness on the palate but there’s a bone-dry finish. Up to 2007. £13; Nov

BEST VALUES

Nepenthe, Unoaked Chardonnay 2004

Just the ticket for summer drinking. Simple, direct style. Ripe, citrus tone. Bright fruit character. Mouthwateringly refreshing. Delicate but ripe flavours. Drink now. £9.49 (2003); Odd

Shaw and Smith, Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Citrus-apple nose. Good depth and flavour on the palate. A certain ripe fruit sweetness followed by a clean, fresh finish. A benchmark for the region. Drink now. £9.95; Lib

Chain of Ponds, Black Thursday Sauvignon Blanc 2004

The name makes reference to a bush fire that swept the area in 1990. Crisp citrus aroma with a leafy note. Clean and fresh with middle palate ripeness. An easy quaffer. Drink now. £7.99; D&D

Chain of Ponds, Pinot Grigio 2004

Green apple with a touch of herb on the nose. Soft, round palate. Good volume, a little neutral in flavour but clean, dry finish. Drink now. £8.99; D&D

Longview Vineyard, Iron Knob Riesling 2004

Expressive citrus-lime aroma and flavour. Crisp, fresh and linear. Should develop.

Up to 2009. £9.99; Rac

Nepenthe Vineyards, Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Expressive, aromatic nose. Citrus and melon notes. Fresh but with a hint of ripe fruit sweetness. Drink now. £7.99; Wai

Starvedog Lane, Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Melon-citrus aroma and flavour. Soft middle palate. Average acidity and lift. Fresh finish. Competent. Drink now.

£9.99; BoW

TK Wines (Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards), Gewürztraminer 2004

A bit of a rarity in the Hills but this example shows the potential for the variety. Light to medium bodied, dry, fresh style.

Rose petal aroma and flavour. Crisp and precise. Drink now. £10.99; McK

Forget the big-name wines of the Barossa or Hunter Valley – JAMES LAWTHER MW believes that Australia's best Shiraz comes from the smaller estates in Victoria.

Shiraz isn’t just a wine, it’s a statement that reads ‘big, bold and Australian’. So far the ripe, full-on flavours of the Barossa, Eden and Clare Valleys, and McLaren Vale in South Australia have been the pundits’ and people’s choice, but another state has the measure in terms of quality and the ability to offer a more refined style. Apologies to New South Wales and the Hunter Valley but Victoria is the place in mind.

It’s difficult to say precisely when the first cuttings of Syrah or Shiraz arrived in Victoria, but there are several pieces of factual information that provide a reliable indicator. On the show circuit, wines made from ‘Hermitage’ (Shiraz), emanating from Bendigo, were praised by European judges at the 1873 Vienna Exhibition. While at Best’s Great Western in the Grampians there is a vineyard known as the Nursery Block that was planted in the latter part of the 1860s with 40 different grape varieties including Shiraz. Likewise, at Château Tahbilk in the Goulburn Valley, the limited edition 1860 Vines Shiraz is made from plantings of that epoch.

Apart from these genuinely old vines and a few centenarian parcels in the northeast, Victoria’s modern viticultural scene dates from the 1960s, phylloxera having put paid to much of the state’s wine industry in the 1880s. At that time vineyard development owed more to the discovery of gold than any intense research programme, but today it’s the range of climate that holds the key. As far as Shiraz is concerned, the very hot but irrigated Murray Darling and Swan Hill regions in the northwest corner of the state provide good commercial fodder. As a generalisation, the hot Goulburn Valley and northeast Victoria offer the same big, sweet, powerful style found in the Barossa Valley, while in the cooler areas of the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula the wines are leaner and fresher, but the sites are better adapted to other varieties.

https://www.decanter.com/wine/wine-regions/barossa_valley/

The real interest, finally, lies to the west and centre in the Grampians, Pyrenees and Heathcote, formerly a sub-region of Bendigo. In terms of heat degree days (HDD) and rainfall these are warm, relatively dry regions (500–600mm annually), ideal for ripening Shiraz. But what is of most significance is the difference in day and nighttime temperatures where there can be a swing of as much as 20°C during the growing season.

The night coolness allows for a better retention of acidity (low pH) leading to improved balance and structure in the wines and a greater complexity of flavour. This means there is little or no need for acidification or the addition of tannin, and the potential for wines of character and ageability that also go well with food.

Making the best

There are, of course, other factors linked to the top wines in these regions and most of these are viticultural. Yields are kept low (35 hectolitres per hectare), attention is given to good canopy management, and variations in site and clone provide other subtle differences.

Back at Best’s in the Grampians, the limited release Thomson Family Shiraz is produced from a block of 100-year-old Shiraz from a clone introduced into Great Western by Swiss colonials in the 1860s. Best’s Bin 0 is also made from cuttings of the Swiss clone from vineyards planted in 1966 and 1976.

The same clone is used at another of the Grampians’ top Shiraz estates, Mount Langi Ghiran, where it constitutes the main Shiraz block, planted in 1969. The soils here are granite sands over red clay loams and the climate is cooler than at Best’s Great Western vineyard due to the cooling effect of gully winds produced by the surrounding forested mountains. A portion of the vineyard is even protected from the icy southwesterly blasts by a giant wind net. Otherwise the benefits of this cooler meso-climate are an extended ripening season, which again helps with acid retention and flavour, allowing more pepper and spice character into the wine.

Trevor Mast is the guiding light behind Mount Langi Ghiran and the blue label Langi Shiraz. ‘Our main focus is the vineyard,’ he explains. ‘An open canopy is essential for the development of fruit flavours and tannins, and to help reduce the occurrence of fungal disease.’ As for the winemaking, the grapes are given a cold soak then fermented in open-top fermentors with regular punching down of the cap. There is no post-fermentation maceration – the wine is run off warm into a mix of French and American oak barrels (35% new), where it spends a year maturing.

In 2001 the Mount Langi facilities were also used to process grapes from Dalwhinnie, the reference estate in the Pyrenees region, to the northeast of the Grampians. Previously the wines had been made at Mitchelton in the Goulbourn Valley.

Dalwhinnie was established by architect Ewan Jones in the 1970s and is now owned and managed by his son David. The particularity of Dalwhinnie is that the vineyards are planted along the contours of the hills at an altitude of 360–460 metres, giving cool evenings and a long dormant period in winter, but are protected by the surrounding ranges which rise to 600 metres, creating a heat trap. The grapes are harvested two to three weeks earlier than in the Grampians and the fruit character is a little more accentuated. The soils are quartz clay, which David Jones believes imparts a dryness to the wines. Dalwhinnie Victoria Shiraz is the classic cuvée from this estate with the limited edition Eagle Series produced only in exceptional years and made at the domaine.

Further east in Heathcote the climate is warmer than in the Pyrenees and Grampians (but cooler than Bendigo) and the nights are cool, allowing for a fuller style of wine but again with balancing acidity. The other important factor is the swathe of deep, red Cambrian soil that is propitious to producing intensely coloured, firmly structured red wines.

It was this that struck food scientist Ron Laughton and his wife Elva when they purchased a 3ha (hectare) parcel of Shiraz and Cabernet Franc in 1979 and another parcel of 8ha of Shiraz in 1982. On launching the Jasper Hill label, the wines from each plot were named after their daughters, so Emily’s Paddock and Georgia’s Paddock.

The power, density and concentration of these wines may be linked to the terroir but it also has much to do with viticultural and winemaking practices. The vineyards are dry farmed in a biodynamic manner and yields cut to a bare 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The grapes are fermented in stainless steel and, contrary to Australian practice, given an extended six weeks’ maceration to soften the tannins. The press wine is then added to the free-run and the wines aged in a mix of French and American oak casks (25% new oak) for 15 months with limited racking.

A taste of history

In another vein and not to be omitted from a line-up of Victoria’s best Shiraz are the wines from Sunbury, and more precisely those of Craiglee. Wines were made at this estate back in the late 19th century when it was owned by the Hon James S Johnston, but the vines were pulled out in the 1940s and the present vineyard dates from 1976. Sunbury is a cooler region just north of Melbourne, with a maritime rather than continental influence. ‘We’re on the limit for ripening Shiraz,’ says Craiglee’s owner and winemaker Pat Carmody, who takes the wines of the Northern Rhône as his point of reference. The region is drier than the Yarra Valley with an annual rainfall of 600mm, and the sandy-stony river-flat soils are low in fertility. The wines are leaner and more restrained with a delicacy and freshness on the palate and an ageing potential of at least 10 to 15 years.

Victoria has a wonderful range of sites for producing outstanding Shiraz and this could just be the beginning. Brown Brothers has already succeeded with vineyards at altitude in the King Valley in the northeast, while at Castagna Vineyards at Beechworth, in the foothills of the Australian Alps, Julian Castagna is cultivating six clones of Shiraz at 500m altitude and producing exciting fruit from young four-year-old vines. What’s even more encouraging is that in Australia’s highly structured, corporate industry it’s individual enterprise that is placing Victorian Shiraz on the map.

https://www.decanter.com/sponsored/shiraz-story-australian-legend-427784/

James Lawther MW is a contributing editor to Decanter.

drink now

An uneven year but good in Victoria

2/5

Weather Conditions

With only a few exceptions, 1985 was a forgettable season for Australian red wine. Following on from the largely cool season of 1984, the South Australian regions near and north of Adelaide experienced a hot and dry summer of sufficent extreme to cause defoliation, before a wet March put the kibosh on any real chances of growing quality reds. However the southern regions of this state and much of Victoria encountered a far cooler summer than ideal, although it remained exceptionally dry. Despite a hailstorm which caused localised damage to certain Hunter vineyards in late January, warm and dry conditions helped the season finish as bounteous as it was ripe. Mudgees season was affected by serious frost, although quality was good.

Best Appellations

Other than the occasional shiraz or cabernet sauvignon from central Victoria or even the Hunter Valley, youd perhaps rather not have too many Australian reds from the summer of 85 left in your cellar, unless for emotional reasons. Only a small number of reds of any real quality came from South Australia, some from Coonawarra and the Eden Valley saving the day.

Best Producers

Leading reds from central Victoria included the Taltarni Shiraz (Pyrenees), Chateau Tahbilk Cabernet Sauvignon (Goulburn Valley)and the two shirazes from Jasper Hill (Heathcote), namely Georgias Paddock and Emilys Paddock. Mount Mary (Yarra Valley) also turned out a restrained and classy Pinot Noir. It was thin pickings in Coonawarra, but Rosemount Estate made a fine and elegant Show Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. Henschkes Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon (Eden Valley) performed well and of the Hunter Valley reds, the best was perhaps the Tyrrells Vat 9 Shiraz.