Adelaide Hills: regional overview and top-scoring wines

The Adelaide Hills wine region shocks everyone who takes the effortless 20-minute drive east from downtown Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia.

Wine professionals and punters alike find a wildly undulating terrain they didn’t expect. It’s a crazy patchwork quilt of untouched bushland, urban homes, farm plots and manicured vineyards.

There’s no simple pattern to these sites, which range greatly in topography and microclimate, producing a huge range of grape varieties, from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir on elevated plots of dizzying steepness, to less-familiar Mediterranean varieties in the more open, sunny areas.

Read Adelaide Hills analysis by grape variety:

Chardonnay | Sauvignon Blanc | Shiraz | Pinot Noir | Sparkling

Plus: Adelaide Hills value – the best wines to buy

Scroll down for David Sly’s top-scoring Adelaide Hills wines

It adds up to a wine region that defies easy definition. This is a territory that winemakers have taken many years to accurately understand and draw the best results from.

Now, though, its best wines stand as a signpost for the future direction of Australian wine styles – especially Chardonnay and cool-climate Shiraz. There is real confidence in presenting these idiosyncratic Adelaide Hills styles of Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, bravely showing restraint, nuance and quiet poise.

There are also great surprises, namely the raft of new plantings that have found a natural home in the Hills (Arneis, Fiano, Grüner Veltliner, Mencía, Montepulciano, Nebbiolo, Tempranillo and more) and that show great potential to become new regional signature varieties.

Small numbers of specialised sparkling wines represent a very impressive leap by many micro-producers in recent years, and then there are unexpected gems such as outstanding Rieslings and a few patches of brilliant Cabernet Sauvignon.

Much has changed quite quickly – producers have addressed shortcomings in order to harness and realise true strengths. An era of greatness is dawning, and this has come through hard graft.

Triumph over tragedy

Bushfires have swept through this region many times. They tragically claimed many lives in 1983, but also with frightening speed and ferocity in January 2020, when fire raced from Cudlee Creek and tore through Lenswood, razing vineyards.

Veteran winemaker Geoff Weaver jumped into his dam with the kangaroos as his beloved Chardonnay vines burned. Nearby, Henschke’s 35-year-old vines that produce its esteemed Croft Chardonnay and Giles Pinot Noir were burned to the stump.

Thankfully, early winter rains saw shoots emerge from 90% of the trunks that had been trained onto new trellis wires. Viticulturist Prue Henschke is confident they will bear small crops again from next year.

In many ways, the Adelaide Hills’ wine history has frequently been rewritten. The original grape-growers of the 1850s never prospered; the region planted instead to mostly apples, pears, stone fruits and cherries. The widespread 1983 bushfire saw many of these orchards destroyed, replaced by vineyards and heralding a new era.

Many private growers on small sites began selling their fruit to big companies. But as grape prices and vintage contracts waxed and waned, smaller grower labels emerged, initially at a trickle, then in a surge from the 2010s.

Younger independent winemakers saw an opportunity to buy fruit as well. This resulted in pockets of the Hills becoming home to a hipster generation, experimenting with lean styles and minimal intervention.

Meeting the challenge

Such diversity has made this region fascinating to observe as it continues to change. As a relatively young wine region, it has the energy and will to strike out in new directions and set high standards.

This is demonstrated by trophies awarded at its 2020 regional wine show to best small winery (Murdoch Hill, where the winemaker is Michael Downer) and best large winery (Shaw & Smith, which also won the Wine of Provenance trophy for multiple vintages of its M3 Chardonnay).

To have prevailed through an extremely difficult year in 2020 (fires in January, two Covid-19 lockdowns closing cellar doors, now Chinese export woes) and present such strong wines says much about the belief and resilience of the winemakers in this region.

Such confidence is built from the soil up. The incredible diversity of microclimates, topography, elevation and soil types within the region is amplified by how strikingly different the sub-regions of Piccadilly, Gumeracha, Lenswood, Macclesfield and Kuitpo are, just for starters.

Subsequently, varieties planted in these neighbouring areas show significantly different characteristics. And the emergence of more single-vineyard wines proves there are many sides to any variety hailing from the Hills.

Thriving community

Like the landscape, the patchwork of wine producers – more than 60 notable names – is equally diverse. These span big companies and reputable prestige labels based in other regions that release branded Adelaide Hills wines (d’Arenberg, Grosset, Penfolds, Wolf Blass), through a growing league of established Hills brands, to hipsters creating edgy natural wines.

They each form a part of this regional picture, especially as all these different-scale operators exist side by side. Among them, a new generation of winemakers are showing the most exciting new possibilities, boldly pursuing lean, expressive styles. Michael Downer of Murdoch Hill, Brendon Keys of BK Wines and Gareth Belton of Gentle Folk are at the forefront.

Tragically, beloved winemaker Taras Ochota, the shining light of this gentle-hearted band of mavericks, died during 2020. His widow Amber is continuing their Ochota Barrels brand, with help from Taras’ mentor Peter Leske (La Linea winemaker) and sidekick Louis Schofield (co-owner of Adelaide wine bar Hellbound).

Others carry the flame too. Belton continues the Father’s Milk Pinot Noir collaboration he started with Taras, now made in conjunction with his father Yari Ochota. It’s a fitting metaphor for the Adelaide Hills region. They learn and persevere through adversity; they adapt, get stronger and overcome. And their wines are impressive monuments as a result.

Adelaide Hills: the top-scoring wines

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