Macedon Ranges Archives - Young Gun of Wine

Patrick Wood & Greta Darling-Filby

Patrick Wood and Greta Darling-Filby run three things at once from Kyneton Ridge Estate in the Macedon Ranges: the estate wines for Pat’s family business, a contract winemaking operation serving labels across the region, and their own label Harbinger – a roving single-vineyard project that follows them across Victoria’s most compelling growing regions. The Harbinger range spans a Heathcote fiano, chardonnay, grenache nouveau, GSM, syrah, cabernet franc rosé and pinot gris, made with flexible, low-intervention winemaking and a curiosity about what Victoria’s less-championed varieties can do in the right places. The Kyneton Ridge estate wines, anchored by the Skipping Rabbit pinot noir from a 25-year-old organically farmed vineyard, sit alongside. Together the two labels cover a lot of Victorian ground – and that’s entirely the point.

2023 North by Etienne Mangier ‘Crémant Rosé’

A seriously sophisticated sparkling rosé that joins the ranks of top-notch Australian pink bubbles looking to challenge preconceptions about the category.

Jarrod Kiven

It’s a long way from the high-rises of Wall Street to an urban winery in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, especially if you take a detour via Provence. This is the journey that financier-turned-winemaker Jarrod Kiven has undertaken, launching his eponymous label in 2022 with a just two wines – a Pyrenees syrah and Beechworth viognier. Since then he’s kept the label small-scale, resisting the temptation to expand the range in favour of keeping production strictly hands-on. Kiven produces a compact collection of wines – just two wines per annual release thus far – from cool-climate vineyards, using traditional methods to craft wines of serious intent.

Micah Hewitt

Many winemakers dream of one day running their own wine estate, but few have managed to make the leap from purchaser of fruit to vigneron in such a short period of time as Micah Hewitt. His label Defialy made its debut in 2020 – and two short years later it was followed by Domaine Defialy, a home for the wines made from his own Macedon Ranges estate, Candlebark Hill. Here he crafts estate wines from pinot noir, chardonnay, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and malbec under the Domaine Defialy name, alongside more esoteric offerings from varieties such as carménère and zibbibo for the Defialy label. Making his wines with the least possible amount of intervention in the cellar – “minimal fuckery,” as he puts it – and effortlessly threading the needle between natural cool and conventional polish, Hewitt has set Defialy and Domaine Defialy on a meteoric trajectory. Strap yourselves in.

2021 Dilworth & Allain ‘Franklinford’ Pinot Gris

This take on pinot gris employs judicious skin contact to pull out a blush of rosy colour while knitting in spice and blood orange over classic pear notes, texture and grip completing the picture.

Jordan & Lauren Barham

Travail Wine Co. is the fledgling family wine business of Jordan and Lauren Barham. That label began in the 2021 vintage, with a piquette made from Macedon Ranges pinot noir pomace and a fiano from Heathcote. The following vintage will introduce new wines from a leased vineyard in Carlsruhe, which Lauren will be making with the aid of the local wine community after Jordan’s untimely death.

Phoebe Grant

Phoebe Grant launched Nature of the Beast barely out of here teens, unveiling a compact but serenely mature suite of wines from the 2020 vintage. Those wines were made from chardonnay and nebbiolo, a rosé, which are varieties that are the cornerstones of her family’s Beechworth vineyard, Traviarti, though grant sources fruit from the Macedon Ranges and North East Victoria. A barbera joined the ranks in 2021, with all wines made with texture and savoury interest as the mainstays.

Etienne Mangier

After having travelled the world making wine, Etienne Mangier settled in the Macedon Ranges, a place that he likens to the Jura region of France, where he grew up. Now with two small vineyards under his management, and without recourse to any chemical treatments, he makes both still and sparkling wines under his North label. The wines, working with chardonnay, pinot noir and shiraz, are made without any additions – including no sulphur.

Patrick Wood & Greta Darling-Filby Kyneton Ridge & Harbinger Wines