Finalist Archives - Page 18 of 25 - Young Gun of Wine

Lacey Vineyards – Branson Road, McLaren Vale

Ben Lacey’s Branson Road Vineyard in the McLaren Vale subregion of Tatachilla supplies fruit to makers both big and small, from Treasury Wine Estates to new stars like Bondar and Sherrah. With just under 14 hectares of vines, Lacey grows four varieties – shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, fiano and grenache – across four distinct geologies and a range of soil types, with sea breezes (the vineyard is 3km from the ocean) cooling the site in the afternoons. With a focus on soil health and revegetating non-vineyard land, the vineyard has gone from growing average fruit to achieving consistently premium results across the blocks.

Kalleske Farm Vineyard, Barossa Valley

Kym Kalleske is the current custodian of the vines on his family’s near 170-year-old Barossa property. With the oldest vines some 147 years old, the vineyard has been biodynamically certified for over two decades, with the celebrated eponymous wine label – from classic Moppa Shiraz and Clarry’s GSM to the vibrantly fresh Parallax and Zeitgeist wines and up to the flagship Johann Georg Shiraz – just on 20 years old this year. Kym works with his parents and two brothers to ensure a rich family legacy will stretch long into the future through a focus on sustainability and regenerative agriculture.

Inkwell Vineyard, McLaren Vale

In McLaren Vale’s Tatachilla subregion, Dudley Brown and Irina Santiago-Brown’s Inkwell Vineyard is a model vineyard operation with sustainability as a driving principal. Certified organic since 2017, the vineyard has been managed with strict organics since 2008. Furthermore, in 2023 they achieved ‘Regenerative’ certification (ROC) – one of the first 15 vineyards in the world, and the first in Australia to do so. From an existing young vineyard planted solely to shiraz, the varietal mix has been tweaked since 2011 to include climate-apt grapes like primitivo, grillo and arinto, while the viticulture has been continually tweaked to improve soil health and reduce water usage. The property also houses an off-grid luxury hotel and significant biodiversity corridors. All wines are made onsite and range from varietal expressions of regional hero varieties to orange wines and preservative-free offerings.

Henschke – Hill of Grace, Eden Valley

Home to Australia’s most respected and expensive single vineyard wine, there is perhaps no more famous or revered vineyard in Australia than Henschke’s Hill of Grace. It is also home to some of this country’s oldest vines, planted by Nicolaus Stanitzki around 1860. That’s the year when the Gnadenberg Lutheran Church was built, which overlooks the vineyard and gives it its name –a region in Silesia, Gnadenberg roughly translates as ‘Hill of Grace’. With biodynamics, ancestral organic practices and an eye to regenerative agriculture, Prue Henschke is both nurturing the past and building resilience in the vineyard and enhanced native environment for the long-term future.

Grosset – Watervale, Clare Valley

Jeffrey Grosset started in the wine game young, with a bottle of riesling tasted at the family dinner table propelling him to study agriculture and oenology at the age of 16, graduating by the time he was 21. Establishing Grosset Wines in 1981, he has become one of Australia’s most lauded winemakers – with riesling a notable specialty – but the heart of the Grosset operation has always been in evolving the work in the vineyard to make vital, pure wine that is intensely expressive of site. His Watervale Vineyard is comprised of two sections planted to quite different soils, with both underpinned by certified biodynamic farming overseen by vineyard manager Matthew O’Rourke.

Land of Tomorrow – Grindstone Vineyard, Wrattonbully

Susie Harris started the Land of Tomorrow wine brand with grapes from her family’s Wrattonbully property, which they have farmed for four generations. Beginning in the 1970s, the property has been steadily revegetated from bare grazing land to re-establish woodland and wetlands, with vines first planted for the Grindstone Vineyard in 1995. Harris has sped up the process of restoring the land, with as much attention to the vineyard as the surrounding land, building biodiversity from microbes in the soil to native grasses between the rows and fauna in the re-established scrub. She is also focused on communicating that message to consumers, with an ecotourism hut hosting visitors to understand the broader environmental goals while appreciating the wines and their connection with the land that Harris is seeking to protect. The Grindstone Vineyard is responsible for a chardonnay, shiraz and cabernet shiraz under the Land of Tomorrow label.

Coriole, McLaren Vale

Hugh and Molly Lloyd bought the Chaffeys Road vineyard that would become Coriole in 1967, producing the first estate wine in 1969, which was labelled ‘Claret’, though it was all shiraz from the 1919-planted vines on the property. Today, Coriole is run by Hugh and Molly’s son Mark Lloyd along with his sons, Duncan and Peter. Shiraz is still a mainstay, along with cabernet sauvignon, but those regional heroes are joined by climate-apt varieties like fiano and nero d’avola, while Coriole has been continuously growing and making sangiovese longer than anyone else in this country. The vineyard is managed by Mark Bates, who farms organically (not certified) with a strong focus on biodiversity and employs technology to target areas through precision agriculture.

Alkina Vineyard, Barossa Valley

Alkina is a relatively new project on an old farm. First planted to vines by Les Kalleske in 1955 in the Barossa subregion of Greenock, the site boasts stone buildings dating back to the 1850s. When Argentinian vigneron Alejandro Bulgheroni bought the property in 2015, he planted new vines and embarked on a process of examining the site’s geology in microscopic detail over a five-year project. With general manager Amelia Nolan and vineyard manager Johnny Schuster both overseeing the certified biodynamic vineyard, the ongoing quest is to grow terroir-reflective fruit from Barossa heritage varieties and elaborate them with simple and transparent winemaking, both as blends of blocks and micro-parcels called ‘Polygons’.

Lacey Vineyards – Branson Road, McLaren Vale Ben Lacey

Lacey Vineyards – Branson Road, McLaren Vale

Kalleske Farm Vineyard, Barossa Valley

Inkwell Vineyard, McLaren Vale

Henschke – Hill of Grace, Eden Valley

Grosset – Watervale, Clare Valley

Land of Tomorrow – Grindstone Vineyard, Wrattonbully

Coriole, McLaren Vale

Alkina Vineyard, Barossa Valley

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