As our reputation for producing wines of the highest quality from the Hunter Valley grew, our customers started asking us to make a range of red wines. The Hunter is famous for its earthy soft Shiraz but, with a few notable exceptions like Lakes Folly Cabernets, it doesn't produce any other high quality red wines.  It was our goal to restrict our grape sources to NSW if possible. We ended up in an emerging wine region, Orange, some 250kms west of Mount Vincent. A volcanic region, the grapes are grown at 650 metres above sea level on Mt Canobolas. From one vineyard we sourced small quantities of Shiraz, Merlot, Cabernet and an Italian variety, Sangiovese.

When a small parcel of wonderful Pinot Noir from Tasmania and an equally small parcel of exquisite Riesling from Canberra was offered to our winemaker through his personal network, we couldn't resist. As you will discover, all 6 of these wines turned out to be gems. With exception of the Sangiovese (89), the other 5 were all rated 90 points and above by James Halliday in his 2007 Australian Wine Companion. The Shiraz went on to be voted Top 40 Wines of NSW and Top 8 Young reds.