Perhaps fortuitously for someone who focuses on chardonnay, Alex Beckett grew up in the Hunter Valley – the home of Australia’s first varietal chardonnay wine, Tyrrell’s Bin 47. A post high school job at Drayton Family Wines lead to cellar door work with Tyrrell’s, which led to him being bitten by the wine bug. Formal winemaking training shortly followed, alongside stints in Germany and a lengthy tenure as head winemaker at Hunter Valley rising star Briar Ridge. Although he’s now the head winemaker at Sunbury newcomer Marnong Estate (since 2023), he started Origines as a side-hustle prior, in 2021, after meeting fellow Master of Wine student Jan Taborsky and bonding over a shared love of Chardonnay.
The Origines project is deceptively simple in concept. All of the wines are single-vineyard wines made from chardonnay only, and are made via identical processes each year – eliminating the variables between different cuvées so their distinctive terroirs shine through. “Ideally the wines are simply defined as a reflection of the time and place they came from,” Beckett says. “Wines that aim to add to the conversation, offering clarity, character, and a sense of place that reflects the quality that can be achieved from high altitude sites in this state.”
For Beckett, his home state offers the perfect starting point to explore the nuances of different terroirs. “New South Wales is home to some of Australia’s most compelling vineyard sites – elevated, expressive, and full of quiet potential,” he says. “While much of the state’s identity has been shaped by approachable, well-loved styles and vibrant tourism, there’s also space for another story.” Searching for that other story led him and Taborsky to high-altitude sites across New South Wales – which, in Beckett’s words, “offer something quietly compelling. They produce wines that are mineral, detailed, and full of character. Despite the challenges, the idea of exploring and expressing these landscapes through chardonnay felt both natural and necessary.” His overall ambition is, as he puts it, “to highlight a different expression of New South Wales chardonnay – wines that speak with clarity, nuance, and a strong sense of place and time.”
“New South Wales is home to some of Australia’s most compelling vineyard sites – elevated, expressive, and full of quiet potential.”
In order to craft these wines, Beckett and Taborsky take a relatively minimalist approach in the winery. “Nothing added and nothing taken away,” Beckett says of the Origines approach. “A belief in whole bunch pressing, full solids retention and ambient yeast fermentations – both primary and secondary – to achieve complex and detailed wines. A zero-sulphur policy through maturation to allow natural wine development without inhibiting structural or flavour development. Bottling with natural clarification and zero filtration to avoid the removal of any flavours or textures that might distract from the character of the site in that season.”
Working within this fixed template poses its fair share of challenges, as it means that the character of the wines can’t be altered through winemaking decisions. “Each season brings change –weather, light, rhythm,” Beckett says. “Styles shift. No vintage is the same. The challenge is to accept that. To lean in. To trust the site, the season, and the subtlety of expression.” In order to create balanced and compelling wines without the benefit of additives or overt use of winemaking techniques, Beckett and Taborsky have to nail their picking dates. “For us, the harvest is everything – timing it just right to capture fruit at its peak, where ripeness meets restraint,” Beckett says. “It’s a delicate balance: chasing concentration without losing the vibrancy that comes from natural acidity and phenolic structure. In those fleeting windows, the balance, integrity and character of the vintage is defined.”
Nailing these picking dates isn’t always easy, and Beckett admits to a few early missteps for Origines. “The near-misses were a result of the season – when nature throws its curveballs, and the wine carries flavours or textures that drift from the clarity we seek,” he reflects. “In those moments, purity of place feels just out of reach. But there’s a lesson in it: that with careful harvest timing, and an unrelenting attention to detail from vineyard to bottle, the essence of place can still shine through, even in a difficult year. And then there are those perfect moments, like the 2023 harvest, when both New England and Orange arrived in the winery with precise balance in chemistry, flavour, and fruit in perfect health. In years like that, our role becomes simple: custodianship to bottle.”
“Each season brings change –weather, light, rhythm. Styles shift. No vintage is the same. The challenge is to accept that.”
Having successfully stewarded that fruit to bottle, Beckett is now something of an expert in the precise differences between New South Wales’s terroirs when it comes to chardonnay. “Each landscape tells its own quiet story,” he says. “New England is wild and distinctive – its wines carry savoury tones and herbal complexity that speak of untamed beauty. Orange is all clarity and energy – crisp lines, vivid fruit, and a cool precision to its structure that feels effortless. The Canberra District brings weight and depth – a layered and textural character that unfolds slowly. Tumbarumba is the mountain whisper – fine-boned, pure, and crystalline, like light through glass, absolute clarity of site and time.”
That clarity requires patience to coax out. “The guiding principle or rule with our cool-climate chardonnay is restraint,” Beckett says. “These wines begin subtle, almost austere. We have a zero-sulphur maturation policy to ensure unfettered development and as a result with time and extended elevage, they reveal their character. Textures build, acidity settles and integrates, and the mineral nature of place begins to reveal itself. We have learnt that that these wine styles demand absolute patience in the cellar.”
The project’s future aims are suitably modest – perhaps appropriate, given Beckett’s admiration for the soft-spoken aspects of New South Wales’s wine community. “What I admire most about the New South Wales wine scene is the quiet innovation,” he says, “small producers creating wines that are thoughtful, expressive, and rooted in place. The elevated, cool-climate regions continue to show incredible potential.” There are no immediate plans to widen the scope of the project. “The plan is to continue expanding our range to explore more high-altitude sites in New South Wales,” Beckett says. They haven’t yet ruled out a move to source fruit from beyond New South Wales, or even beyond Australia. Likewise, “We have discussed the possibility of working with Pinot Noir as well in coming years,” Beckett says. However broad their focus, though, their approach will remain as simple as a zen koan: “Nothing added. Nothing taken away. Just transparency of site.”
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