The New England Australia area was one of the pioneering wine regions of the country, with George Wyndham planting vines there in 1845 after an economic crisis hit his Hunter Valley property, Dalwood – with considerable success, though the industry did not ultimately survive into the mid-twentieth century. When Mark Kirkby planted there in 2000, he named his property – which was part of Wyndham’s original holding – after the local Topper brothers who were employed at the property in Wyndham’s time.
“We have deep, free-draining ochre soils of volcanic origin at high altitude. This intersection of soil type in cool climate areas at this altitude is very rare in Australia. We believe that the less we intervene in the winemaking, the more likely it is that the core attributes of wines from our little bit of terroir heaven will become more obvious and shine through from vintage to vintage.”
At 880–915 metres above sea level, Topper’s Mountain is amongst the highest vineyards in the country. The New England Australia wine region runs from the NSW-Queensland border south to around the latitude of Port Macquarie, and while so far north it might not immediately suggest cool-climate viticulture, the elevation on the edge of the Great Dividing Range tells a different story. “We’ve never had a 40-degree Celsius day recorded,” says Kirkby. The soils are distinctly red and punctuated by granite boulders. “Toppers is an iron ore and bauxite-rich volcanic cap in a landscape of granite,” he describes – technically a Red Ferrosol soil, deep and free-draining, with warm days and cool nights producing a high diurnal range that maximises anthocyanins and aroma compounds in the fruit.
Before planting in 2000 and 2002, Kirkby consulted Dr Richard Smart, who conducted a homoclime analysis – calculating the core climatic variables of the Topper’s site and matching them against established wine regions around the world to identify which grape varieties were most likely to succeed. That process led to initial plantings of tempranillo, riesling, gewürztraminer and chardonnay, alongside a 15-row “fruit salad” block of 15 different varieties used as a living trial. The results have been iterative and ongoing ever since. Riesling produced tight bunches prone to botrytis and was grafted to nebbiolo. Half the chardonnay was grafted to tannat and gros manseng when they proved themselves in the fruit salad block. Malbec and pinot gris – neither performing well – were grafted to viognier. More recently, touriga, tinta cão and viognier have been grafted onto riesling. And the experimentation continues.
The current variety list across the 10-hectare site – which comprises the Hill of Dreams and The Flat – runs to tempranillo, tempranillo blanco (the only such planting in Australia), nebbiolo, gewürztraminer, tannat, gros manseng, chardonnay, pinotage, touriga nacional, chenin blanc, pinot blanc, pinot noir, shiraz, viognier, sauvignon blanc, verdejo and grüner veltliner. “In New England, and I think more generally in Australia, varieties from south of the European Alps – from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece – are generally better suited to our climates,” says Kirkby. Tempranillo blanco has now moved from experiment to mainstream, appearing as a regular Keeper tier release alongside the Keeper Viognier and Keeper Nebbiolo ($40–$55). The Finder tier ($37) includes the gewürztraminer, gros manseng, the Touriga and Tintas field blend, and the Nebbiolo Extra Brut sparkling – which itself came from a creative response to crisis, when a forecast of 190mm of rain over a weekend in late March 2021 forced an early pick and the decision to make a traditional-method sparkling rather than lose the crop to botrytis. The traditional-method sparkling now draws on the entire pinot noir, pinot blanc and chenin blanc production.
Cane pruning is being introduced for nebbiolo, tempranillo and gewürztraminer from the next vintage – a shift driven by yields beginning to drop as the vineyard matures. Row orientation for the Hill of Dreams is north-south; The Flat was planted east-west, which Kirkby regards as the more sensible option for the Australian context, providing natural shading of the fruit zone in afternoon heat. The Hill of Dreams has been farmed organically for the last five vintages as a trial; The Flat is managed conventionally.
Pest management relies primarily on the diversity of the ground sward, which supports local insect predators. No pesticides have been used since the year of planting – with the narrow exception of cut worms during the critical first weeks of establishment in 2002. More recently, Kirkby has begun releasing Trichogramma wasps and green lacewings to address grapevine moth, with successful results. Disease management remains the greater challenge: botrytis is the constant adversary in the high-rainfall, cool conditions, and a sour rot complex has been building through recent wet vintages, addressed through removing bunch-thinning offcuts from the vineyard and using vinegar fly traps.
The soil health evidence is striking. Five sampling sites across the vineyard, measured from 2002 to 2021, show an average 88 per cent increase in carbon levels, with around 200 per cent increase recorded at one location – a direct result of the continuous mid-row and undervine grass sward that has been maintained since planting. University of New England Rural Science undergraduates visit annually as part of the ‘Soil your Undies’ programme, burying cotton undies to measure soil microbial activity by decomposition rate. At Topper’s Mountain, the cotton is gone within six to eight weeks – placing the vineyard in the top 25 per cent of results nationally.
UNE and Local Land Services researchers are also working on microbat populations in the area – research that should allow artificial hollows to be installed in trees around the vineyard to boost bat numbers as natural predators of moths. A new 80kW solar system with battery storage is being installed across two sites – the vineyard and the Sydney warehouse – to move toward carbon neutrality, with excess power exported to the grid. A new cellar door has been built, and the homestead is being upgraded to five-star short-stay accommodation.
In the winery, wild ferments, no fining, no filtration and no acid adjustments have been Kirkby’s consistent approach – acidity managed through picking decisions rather than additions, with more acid-present varieties blended with less acidic ones to find a natural equilibrium. Most wines are bottled unfiltered and unfined, with minimal sulphur. There is also skin contact on some whites and extended maceration on reds, including a blend of touriga, tinta cão and tempranillo that spent 180 days on skins in qvevri, first released in 2020.
“Our family has been living off the land in northern NSW since the 1870s,” says Kirkby. “One of the things that my generation was taught by our parents is that it is an obligation of each generation to pass the land onto the next generation in better condition than it was received in.” Beyond the vineyard fence, Kirkby holds an ambitious vision: a feral-proof reserve combining the northern part of Topper’s Mountain with the adjacent Tingha Plateau Conservation Area – around 1,800 hectares in total – that would protect and restore habitat for quolls, bilbies, bandicoots, wallabies, possums, gliders, frogs, birds and Tasmanian devils, which have been reintroduced to elevated areas of NSW with similar climate to Tasmania. It is still early days, but it is the kind of vision that runs on the same logic as everything else Kirkby does at Topper’s Mountain: think in longer arcs, listen carefully to what the land is telling you, and act accordingly
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