Croker followed his grandfather’s footsteps to study winemaking at The University of Adelaide, with an early interest in cooperative models for agriculture running in the family. His first vintage experience came while stewarding at the Rutherglen Wine Show – it was there, telling the judges of his ambitions, that the experienced heads around him offered their gentle scepticism. “Nobody laughed,” he says, “but a little teasing showed they thought it was unlikely.” He proved them wrong, though not without being tested. A hand-crank basket press bought from a gentleman in Unley, a couple of 44-gallon plastic drums sourced from a generous Jen Pfiffer, three ten-year-old American oak hogsheads traded for his salary from Andrew Drumm at Stanton & Killeen – and just like that, Croker was in business. Ben Haines at Mount Langi had warned him it would take ten years. It took ten years.
“I’m not trying to lock into a fixed style. Instead I’m responding to the season, the vineyard, and what feels right in the moment.”
That first vintage in 2017 was made in Rutherglen, and Croker continued working around Victoria while nursing the ambition to open a shared winery facility. In 2020, he made good on it, opening a co-operative winemaking shed in Bacchus Marsh, providing small producers with a place to start. It was a project as much about community as craft, and in 2026 he handed the reins to Mark Mathews at The Wine Creche – proud to watch someone else take it on.
The Little Brunswick range has always reflected the exploratory nature of the project. The current lineup spans Heathcote greco, sangiovese, teroldego, touriga nacional, trousseau and shiraz, Grampians syrah, Macedon ramato, Geelong chardonnay and a trio of entry-level wines under the Tidy Town sub-label. The willingness to range across varieties and regions isn’t whimsy – it’s a deliberate response to what each season and site demands. “I’m not trying to lock into a fixed style,” says Croker. “Instead I’m responding to the season, the vineyard, and what feels right in the moment.” The thread running through all of it, he says, is restraint: “wines with power through their posture rather than their outspokenness.”
His deep affection for Heathcote shiraz is part of that Central Victorian upbringing – he grew up picking grapes at Rush Brothers Vineyard in Malmsbury, walking those hills and swimming those rivers. “The places and people of Central Victoria are my stories,” he says. That connection is the foundation of the Alexander Direen label, and its debut wine, the 2022 Downing Estate Heathcote Shiraz, is a natural expression of it. “Direen is my future challenges,” he says of the label. “It is the first time that I have put my name to a wine that I have made, and it felt fitting to put it on a wine from my home wine region.” A 2024 Alexander Direen Trousseau has since followed, showing that even the more personal label isn’t immune to Croker’s curiosity.
Climate change has sharpened his thinking on blending. “Purity is still king, but a changing climate is throwing a lot of curve balls.” He’s become open-minded about unconventional combinations – arinto and greco, grenache with sangiovese, shiraz and touriga – blends that are, as he puts it, “extremely considered, just untraditional.”
He also explored what he calls a degustation of shiraz from a single Grampians site: pét-nat (a lightly sparkling wine bottled before fermentation is complete, trapping natural bubbles), rosé, syrah, shiraz, and an appassimento – a wine made from grapes that have been partially dried to concentrate sugar and flavour – all from the same ten tonnes of fruit. He’s that kind of maker.
The next chapter is Tasmania. Croker and his family have bought a property there, and he’s beginning a chardonnay-focused project – a deliberate narrowing of focus after years of deliberately broad exploration. “I’d love to bring my daughter up in our winery,” he says. “I want to make it hers, and I want to make chardonnay with her and just hang out in the garden.” Two labels, two temperaments, one maker – and somewhere in the future, a third act taking shape on a cool southern island.
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