The wine trade runs in Jacob’s family. His ancestor, Johann Stein, is credited with bringing the first riesling cuttings to Australia in 1838 – so it’s perhaps no surprise that riesling was a focus when Jacob’s grandparents, Robert and Lorna Stein, planted the Robert Stein vineyard in 1976. Mudgee itself had its first vines in the ground in 1858 – but, like many other Australian regions, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it suffered from a rapid shift in taste away from table wines and towards fortified ones. Robert and Lorna’s work was prescient, though, and the Robert Stein label became something of standard-bearer for the Mudgee region’s late ’70s renaissance as a wine region, with Jacob’s father Andrew taking over the reins in 2005. At this time, Jacob himself was busy finishing a double degree in winemaking and viticulture, before heading off to Germany, France, Italy and Canada to gain international experience, alongside working vintages in the Pyrenees and Margaret River, before returning to Mudgee to helm the family label in 2009.
While Jacob clearly reveres the work his family has put into their label, and into the development of Mudgee as a region more broadly, he’s made quite a few changes since taking over operations. “When I took over in 2009, our vineyard was in good shape but it needed a lot of love after it being conventionally run for its previous 30 years,” Jacob says. “I immediately started working on reviving it with a sustainable and regenerative approach, by adopting cover crops, composts, minimal synthetics and rejuvenating soil health. These days our whole farm, vineyard and winery adopts this approach by using less purchased inputs and trying to work with our land.” The approach was two-pronged: rejuvenate the best of what was already in the ground, and replace what wasn’t working with new varieties. “Whilst semillon grew well here and we made nice wines, it was always very hard to sell because of our neighbours being the Hunter Valley,” he adds. “So one of our best decisions was to rip it out and plant montepulciano!”
“Whilst semillon grew well here and we made nice wines, it was always very hard to sell because of our neighbours being the Hunter Valley. So one of our best decisions was to rip it out and plant montepulciano!”
It’s an approach that has seen results in a very short timeframe. “I believe the changing our of farm approach is one of the main reasons we have seen a massive improvement in our wines,” Jacob says. “We have lifted soil organic matter from 1% up to around 10% in all of the blocks, which has had a big positive effect on the health of our vines.” Perhaps appropriately given his family’s history, Jacob’s changes particularly favoured their riesling. “Our riesling site is exceptional, and was the first variety we started to see a massive reaction to our work,” he says. “In this riesling site we have grafted, re-worked, cane-pruned, replaced dead vines … our riesling is seen as the benchmark NSW riesling because of our work in the vineyard.”
The new plantings have been a hit, too: “The montepulciano was researched, planned and implemented solely by me as a passion project, which has succeeded beyond expectations and now has become our most favourite ‘alternate’ variety,” Jacob adds. “We now have one hectare of ‘monte’, and plan to put more in because we find it very much suits our Mediterranean climate, and the wines we are producing are very consumer-friendly.” While the winemaking approach for the Robert Stein wines remains relatively traditional, the Blü Hen wines fall, broadly speaking, within the natural or minimal-intervention camp. In Jacob’s words, they contain “no additions except sulphur, at a maximum of 20 parts per million free SO₂ … native yeasts, with no fining or filtration.”
In addition to pivoting the label’s operations towards more sustainable and regenerative practices – something he admits “took some time” given the length of time the family had been farming conventionally – Jacob is also looking towards making operations viable in a warmer future. “We have planted further more suitable varieties including sangiovese and barbera, and will be planting pecorino in 2025 to further buffer us due to the changing climate,” he says. “I believe Mudgee is getting warmer, and our storms more severe and frequent, as are drought conditions – so we are setting up our infrastructure to deal with the harsh conditions. In 2024 we installed a new bore and irrigation infrastructure which is fully self-sustaining, [with] off-grid electricity [from] installing solar panels and a battery system to run our water system and vineyard workshop.” While Mediterranean varieties are in the mix, riesling will remain a focus: “We have planted a new high-quality, high-density riesling vineyard with a focus on making world class riesling,” Jacob adds. “The clones planted are those which are related to the clones which our family brought to Australia as the first riesling vines in 1838.”
“Mudgee doesn’t do the glitz and glamour well. We are a family-oriented, salt-of-the-earth type of region which has one eye on our past and one eye on our future.”
The focus on sustainability isn’t just for the wine. The shift is, in Jacob’s words, “mostly because our family live and work on this land and we want to live a healthier life. We want to work towards handing over the land in better condition than when we took over. I also love being able to grow a product and have a positive impact on the land, and be able to make wines from this land and market and sell our brand is what drives me and us to keep getting better.” He makes no secret of his ambitions: “We have already cemented Robert Stein as the flagship Mudgee wine producer, but we want to focus on becoming a NSW flagship producer,” Jacob says. “Some of these goals are to expand into exporting of our wines into numerous markets, as well as being distributed in more states … We plan to drive this expansion through our flagship riesling variety, which seems to be able to open doors for us, given our reputation.”
It’s clear that he loves the Mudgee region, which is often misunderstood and overshadowed by its neighbours in the Hunter Valley. “We don’t do the glitz and glamour well,” he says. “We are a family-oriented, salt-of-the-earth type of region which has one eye on our past and one eye on our future – and I love that we seem to stay in our own lane and be happy doing what we do. I’m very lucky that my grandparents chose the Mudgee region, because we are so happy to be part of this vibrant community.”
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