The Australian winemaking industry is grateful to Leontine O'Shea, instrumental in the establishment of Mount Pleasant wines, she sent her son Maurice to France for an education in viticulture right at the outbreak of World War I, gifting him his first Hunter Valley vineyard in 1921. Mount Pleasant are now custodians of some grand old sites, a canon of small, elite blocks of vine that yield a precious range of icon wines, which represent peerless value and readily disappear before release of the following vintage... The legacy of grand old hunter valley vineyards»

Halls Gap Vineyard was planted 1969, along the steep eastern slopes and parched rocky crags of Grampians Ranges, at the very beginning of a renaissance in Victorian viticulture. Since early establishment in the 1860s by the noble Houses of Seppelt and Bests, the region had earned the most elite peerage, a provenance of extraordinary red wines, bursting with bramble opulence and lined with limousin tannins. The Halls Gap property had long been respected as a venerable supplier to the nation's most illustrious brands. Seppelt and Penfolds called on harvests from Halls Gap for their finest vintages. Until 1996, when it was acquired by the late, great Trevor.. Land of the fallen giants»

Lured to Australia by Alfred Deakin in 1887, the Chaffey Brothers were American irrigation engineers who took up a challenge to develop the dust bowls ofRenmark and Mildura into fruit growing wonderlands. They left our nation an extraordinary legacy and their progeny continue to make good wine. Several generations later, the Chaffey Bros are focused on the fruit of some grand old Barossa and Eden Valley sites. Chosen harvests of extraordinary grapes are the ticket for admission into the exclusive club of Chaffey vineyards. Shiraz is made in several different styles and there's a penchant for obscure white varietals in the Mosel River way. They make wine.. A splendour of salient sites»

Established 1908, Redman's Coonawarra are still made by the Redman brothers from fruit grown to the original family parcels. The tradition began 1901 when Bill Redman, at the tender age of fourteen, made the journey to take up an apprenticeship at the John Riddoch wineworks and to labour amongst Coonawarra's founding vineyards. Bill Redman's earliest vintages were sold off to other companies but it was not until 1952 that the Redman family released their own wines under the moniker Rouge Homme. Redman was finally branded under its own label in 1966, it remains one of the most enduring marques in Coonawarra. Husbanded by the 4th generation, parcels from.. The velvet virtue of old coonawarra vines»

Airline pilots make surprisingly good wine. Their appreciation of the sciences, a respect for the weather and a bird's eye view of the land, all invaluable to the winemaker's art. John Ellis would take every opportune weekend away from his regular New York Paris route, to pursue a passion for viticulture. He planted the first commercial Cabernet Merlot vines in the Hamptons and found time between trans atlantic flights to work vintages amongst the Grand Cru vineyards of La Bourgogne. Ellis ultimately made the great lifelong sea change in favour of our land downunder. He settled on a farmstead outside Leongatha, amongst the slow ripening pastures of Gippsland and established a vineyard called Bellvale... Placing pinot amongst the pastures»

Right around the time that Frank Potts was planting his nascent Bleasdale Vineyards during the 1850s, an eccentric Prussian named Herman Daenke established a homestead along the banks of Bremer River, which he called Metala. The site was planted to viticulture by Arthur Formby in 1891 and became one of Langhorne Creek's most productive vineyards, it continues to supply fruit for a number of prestigious national brands. Legendary winemaker Brian Dolan took the radical step of bottling Metala under its own label in 1959 and won the inaugural Jimmy Watson Trophy in 1962. Two generations later, the brothers Tom and Guy Adams took a similar leap of faith and branded their Metala fruit as Brothers In Arms... The goodly farms of brothers in arms»

An Irish cobbler named Reilly settled into the tiny Clare Valley township of Mintaro circa 1856. He converted a stone barn into a homestead cottage. Reilly's Cottage served as the local cobbler's shop in the centre of the bustling town, which had boomed after the establishment of salubrious slate quarries. Almost 140 years later, the cottage has been restored to its former glory by relatives of Reilly, the family Ardill, once again it is a hive of activity, home to the eminent and award winning range of Reilly.. There once was a man named reilly»

Old Richmond Gaol was one of Diemen Land's first prisons, built by the convicts themselves, of good old fashioned granite blocks, laboriously hauled in wooden hand carts and quarried from the ominously monikered Butchers Hill. Today, Butchers Hill is the site of the steepest sloping vineyard in Coal River Valley, invigorated by afternoon sea breezes and prevailing winds from the roaring forties, its highly auspicious, self mulching black Vertosols, yield extraordinary wines. Established by founding members of the Hobart Beefsteak & Burgundy Club, Butchers Hill represents three generations of passion amongst the nether vineyards of the Apple Isle. Not just a purveyor of pretty Pinot Noir, Pooley Estate.. Princely parcels of pooley»