Alisdair Tulloch is as close to Hunter Valley royalty as it is possible to be without wearing a crown. His grandfather, Dr Harry Tulloch, conducted the viticultural trials that determined which shiraz clones would become most widely planted across Australia; his father Keith Tulloch owns and operates an eponymous winery that is one of the Hunter’s most respected. Alisdair grew up in the region, living and breathing grapevines and winemaking, before sharpening his focus through vintage experiences with some of the luminaries of the French wine world – Michel Chapoutier, Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Château Plaisance and Domaine Rostaing in the Rhône. He currently works as operations and sustainability manager at Keith Tulloch Wine, using the winery’s facilities and vineyard machinery for Aeon alongside his day job. He launched Aeon with wines from the 2023 vintage with Kenisha, who brings a background in finance and a shared conviction about what these sites are capable of.
The philosophy is distilled in a single sentence Alisdair uses to describe it: “For me, the variety is the language that the story is written in, but the geology and climate are the story itself.” It is a position that reframes the conventional hierarchy of winemaking – where variety is usually the headline – and puts the ground beneath the vines in its rightful place. The name Alluvium comes from the sandy alluvial soils at the Field of Mars Vineyard; Vertosol from the specific soil type at Tawarri in Merriwa. Both labels carry artwork that reflects the geological forces that shaped the site over millions of years. “It’s about more than just varieties and vintages,” says Alisdair. “For us, each vineyard has a story to tell that has taken place over aeons as rock has been weathered into soil.”
“The variety is the language that the story is written in, but the geology and climate are the story itself.”
The Alluvium is the wine that best captures what Aeon is doing. It draws from two blocks at Field of Mars split by a small stream, both on sandy alluvial soils: one planted in 1968 and significantly retrellised and reworked; the other planted by Alisdair, his father and his grandfather in 2016, using massale-selected syrah clones that Harry Tulloch handpicked over decades. Viognier and touriga nacional are grafted onto the respective blocks, each playing a specific practical role. “Viognier and touriga nacional are native to warmer climates and are later ripening, whilst pinot noir is early ripening and is therefore off the vine earlier and in the winery,” Alisdair says. “This spreads the risk across the season.” The blending philosophy runs deeper than risk management: “The Hunter Valley has always been a region affected by climatic variability – it’s inextricably linked to the style of wines that we make. Being able to make red wines that have intensity at low alcohols is key to having consistently expressive syrah from the region.”
“We spend a lifetime working with these vineyards, with these sites, and work our arses off all year. What’s the point of all that work if the nuance is hidden underneath the flavour and aroma of some French trees?”
All fruit for the single-vineyard wines is hand-managed by Alisdair personally – pruned, shoot-thinned and fruit-thinned block by block. “For me it’s extremely important that I am growing the fruit for the single vineyard wines, and I very specifically prune, shoot-thin and fruit-thin these blocks by hand in a way that balances each vine to create a consistent expression,” he says. Yields are limited selectively to bring full phenological ripeness at lower baumé – typically 12 to 13 – resulting in wines with lower alcohol but full, vibrant character. Across the vineyards, native garden beds and pollinating crops have been established in and around the vines over the past decade, creating a biome of beneficial insects that has allowed the team to eliminate synthetic pesticides entirely. “This program of biodiverse plantings and crops has also allowed us to feed the soil with our own green mulch, greatly improving vine health.” The vineyards are SWA-certified and carbon neutral through Keith Tulloch Wine, with Aeon operating to the same standards without separate certification.
In the winery, the approach is whole-bunch fermentation throughout – a deliberate stylistic choice, not a constraint. “I know that 100% whole-bunch wines aren’t for everyone,” Alisdair says, “but this is a style of wine that I really enjoy and by using something from the vineyard – the stem – to create brightness, freshness and texture, I believe it brings more of the terroir to the wine.” New oak is kept to an absolute minimum, with all wines spending 12 months in French oak but the proportion of new barrels held deliberately low. “We spend a lifetime working with these vineyards, with these sites, and work our arses off all year. What’s the point of all that work if the nuance is hidden underneath the flavour and aroma of some French trees?” The resulting style sits somewhere between the classic Hunter River burgundy tradition and the more savoury, nervy expressions of syrah from the northern Rhône – not the plush, extracted norm of Australian shiraz, but something more precise and place-specific.
The most significant recent development is the addition of two new vineyards under Aeon’s management, including a previously neglected property first established in 1923. The site carries semillon vines of more than 100 years old and shiraz planted in 1955 – extraordinary heritage material that had been badly abandoned by its previous manager. “We have been working with the new owner of the property to save these special vines and restore the vineyard to its former glory,” Alisdair says. The vines have responded: a tiny first crop came in from the 2026 vintage, and two new wines – made from fruit over a century old – will be released later this year. “We are very proud to work with vines more than 100 years old and the vines have rewarded us by responding with a very small high quality yield.”
The vision from here is deliberate restraint rather than expansion. “It is very important to us that Aeon Wines are 100% Hunter Valley and both grown and made by ourselves – that allows us to extract the very best from the vineyard sites and to craft things from the ground up, quite literally,” Alisdair says. The limiting factor is simple: there are only so many vineyards Alisdair can personally manage. “We plan on using our resources to focus on restoring these vineyards in the immediate future, to maximise both the health of these vines and the quality of wines that they create.” A very high-density vineyard planted in the Huon Valley, Tasmania in 2021 – owned by Alisdair and Kenisha – remains unreleased, a quiet signal that the story is still being written. “The Hunter has everything from small niche producers that are just emerging to some of the world’s oldest and most storied wine companies,” says Alisdair. “We’re lucky that there is a very close-knit community.” Aeon is, in the most meaningful sense, a product of that community – and an argument for where it can go next.
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