Henry Best was a highly industrious merchant and butcher who serviced Ararat miners during the Victorian gold rush. He planted thirty hectares of vine along Concongella Creek in 1866 and constructed a commercial cellar wineworks which continue to process the most spectacular vintages until the present day. The heirloom plantings of Henry Best remain productive, as some of the most historically significant rootstock in the world. Home of the Jimmy Watson 2012 Trophy, Royal Sydney 2013 Australian Wine Of Year, James Halliday 2014 Wine of Year, Distinguished and Outstanding Langtons Classifications. Remarkable for a style that's all their own, chiselled, brooding and black. Best's Great Western endures as one of the new world's most preeminent, yet bewilderingly soft spoken viticultural estates. Just quietly, the wines are conspicuously under priced and of.. Carn the concongella cabernet»

An ongoing resurrection of some fabulous old vines, a distinguished Blewitt Springs site and a range of the most spectacular McLaren Vale wines. When Kelly and Bondar acquired Rayner Vineyard in 2013, they knew that everything depended on the management of site and soil to achieve the excellence of wine they had in mind. The most fastidious husbanding regimens and a tightly scheduled evolution towards organic viticulture, the propitious Rayner vines have never yielded finer harvests, all translating into a tour de force across the entire Bondar range. Salient quality and penurious pricing make for a compelling mix. Old vines grown to salubrious soils, the harvest timed to perfection, a precision picking of fruit at just the right hour of day, aimed at capturing and bottling the exquisite expression of place. Bondar's graceful Grenache releases are brimming with.. Model mclaren macerations»

There are four tiny patches of vine at Scotchman's Hill, which have been mollycoddled by Robin Brockett, since the start of his tenure as chief winemaker in the 1980s. Excruciatingly limited after a strict pruning and rigorous sorting of fruit, they each yield a mere hundred cases of wine. Brockett has set aside the precious harvests of these superior blocks for his own label, a personal project to hand craft the finest of vintage, an exclusive range of the Bellarine's most elite single vineyard efforts. So besotted is Brockett by the spectacular quality of fruit from these four regal parcels, he has imported two 800 Litre Tuscan vinification Amphora from the Brunello commune of Montalcino. Whole bunches and wild ferments in the like of ancient clay urns, hand plunged in the old world way, appreciatively unfiltered for a tasteful measure of sauvage. Aficianados of.. Brockett begets the best of bellarine»

Just outside the Gippsland town of Leongatha, a few minutes down the road from the hallowed grounds at Bass Phillip estate, ten precious acres of exceptional terroir were planted in 1990, to artisanal clones of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah. The propitious easterly aspects make the most of morning sun, an auspicious bequeath of fertile Ferrosols oblige the rootstock and infuse the fruit, while reducing the vigor and rationing the harvest. Lucinda Estate was never established as a producer of scale, its scant yields were always destined to be in pursuit of stunning Syrah and the perfect Pinot. Victoria's Gippsland is a place of paradise for vintages in the Burgundy style, a oenological wonderland.. A glimpse of the gippsland grail»

Just a few kilometres north of Lowburn, near the windswept shores of frigid Lake Dunstan, atop the parched and laborious terroirs of Central Otago, a high country merino stud between the Amisfield and Parkburn streams was sown to vineyards two decades ago. Grazing country makes magnificent viticulture, the austere alluvial and glacial schist soils now yield the quality of Pinot Noir which has defined Central Otago as the world's most demonstrable marque in full bodied, intensely complex, yet beguilingly seamless Pinot Noir. The challenging terraces which spiral around the fractious knolls of Amisfield Vineyard, sire a sensational range of wines defined by their affable excellence, sound structure.. Satiations from the nethermost regions»

Rockbare are raiders of precious but wayward vineyards, planted to outdated standards of viticulture, sadly unviable for large scale winemaking. These are however, precisely the nature of site that Rockbare choose to retain. Winemaker Tim Burvill worked at Wynns and Penfolds, where he refined his style alongside some of the best winemakers in the nation's history. Establishing his own label, he embarked upon a secret project to acquire parcels of prodigal Barossa vine. With a backbone of fruit grown to some of the oldest sites in Australia, much of Rockbare's fruit comes off vines a century or more of age. The intense power and complexity of Rockbare's resplendent range of wines are complimented.. Precious & prodigal parcels of the barossa»

Giovanni Tait mastered the family tradition of coopering wine barrels before migrating to Australia in 1957. He took up work in the Barossa and ultimately settled in for a lengthy engagement at B Seppelts and Sons, where he played a significant role in the vinification and maturation of some of the most memorable vintages in Australian viticulture. Tait's boys grew up to be winemakers, their attention to detail and close relationship with the Barossa's finest growers have earned the highest accolades from the international wine industry press. Generously proportioned yet exquisitely balanced, famously praised, perennially by savant Robert Parker as the most consistently outstanding quality,.. Bespoke parcels of old vineyard fruit»