In January of 2024 I undertook a study visit to the Hunter Valley, having been awarded a bursary by The Vintners’ Company for my success in the WSET Level 4 (Diploma) exams. I chose to visit the Hunter Valley during vintage as my Diploma education had been very specific about the challenging environment, particularly at harvest time. At Latitude 32°S the region is virtually in the tropics, and summer tropical storms can create extremely unhelpful humidity and inundations just as the grapes are ready for harvesting.
I didn’t experience an inundation, but the evening I arrived the sun was blazing with temperatures over 40°C, and boy I was glad of the air conditioning in my Airbnb. I had driven from Mudgee, which took me through the Upper Hunter, though I saw more open cast mines than vineyards – a reminder of the history of the region where coal has been a huge source of wealth, more reliable than the vagaries of wine production.


Next day temperatures were in the mid-20s, as sea breezes rolled in and clouds gave some cover from the sun. I learnt quickly from the people I met how unpredictable harvest conditions are, and what acute judgements winemakers have to make on an almost daily basis. Not that other wine regions don’t have such challenges, but the Hunter Valley does seem to experience an extreme range. 2024 as a vintage was looking to be high in quality, but low in quantity as conditions during the growing season had been largely warm and dry (though some areas had hail on Christmas Day!). By comparison, the 2021, 2022 and 2023 growing seasons had been cooler and wetter, the grapes ripened much more slowly and finished wines would have lower alcohol levels and more restrained flavours. In most of the vineyards I visited pretty much everything was harvested well before the end of January, whereas in 2023 harvesting hadn’t started until after Australia Day (January 26th). So effectively two vintages in 12 months!
In 2020 not only was the region affected by Covid restrictions, but bush fires caused massive amounts of smoke taint, and there were virtually no wines made that year.
Back to 2024 vintage. Throughout my visit temperatures and sunshine intensity varied significantly by the day, and everyone was keeping a very close eye on the ripeness of the grapes still on the vines – and on acidity levels. I learnt that acidity was as important as grape sugars in determining when to harvest – and explains why Hunter Valley wines, red and white, are relatively light in body and fresh in character despite the fierce temperatures. Australia Day (a national holiday) fell unhelpfully on a Friday in the middle of harvest in 2024, and for some growers this long weekend holiday made a huge difference in the style of wine they would make – after 3 more days ripening they were going to be dealing with grapes with higher sugars, different flavour profiles and lower acidities. A lot was being spent on the phone to the picking crews while I was there.


I did a couple of short stints in the vineyards, I hope not bringing the quality or quantity of the harvest down too much. Picking Semillon was much easier than picking Chardonnay as the Semillon obligingly grows towards the outer parts of the canopy, whereas Chardonnay bunches seem determined to hide from sight as much as possible.


In the wineries I was struck by another contrast between the Semillon and Chardonnay grapes – the former much bigger, thinner skinned and ready to give up their juice. Most of the pressing I saw were of destemmed grapes, some grapes may be whole bunch pressed. It was fascinating to taste how the character of the juice changed with higher levels of pressure.
Once clarified the Semillon must was generally inoculated with a neutral yeast and kept at a reasonably cool temperature (unless the cooling plate in the tank was faulty!), while the yeasts did their work. Because the grape sugar levels are low by comparison with Chardonnay, fermentation of Semillon is predictable, “stuck” fermentations are rare because the yeasts don’t encounter high levels of alcohol. I was very struck by how many fermentation vessels there were in each winery – there’s a big focus on terroir in the Hunter Valley, and grapes from different plots are kept separate throughout the whole process of vinification.
Most wineries I visited make a number of wines made from grapes from specific vineyards, and as a Semillon novice I was amazed at the contrasts. I was anticipating contrasts tasting vertically (tasting through sequential vintages of the same wine), given Hunter Valley Semillon’s reputation is for a distinct evolution of flavours from relatively neutral when young to fabulously rich and complex after a few years. The wines are bottled within a few months of fermentation without any oak, and pretty minimal lees, contact, and the reason I was visiting the region was to find out more about the how and the why of this evolution.


However the contrast between wines made from grapes from different vineyards (and made by different wine makers) was a revelation. Many vineyards are planted to reflect a broad rule that Semillon does best on lighter, free draining sandy soils, found on the alluvial flats of the old sea bed, but many wines I tasted had been grown on loamy or even clay soils and I felt I was only scratching the surface of the complexity of soil types, position in the vineyard and of course vine age. To explore this glorious diversity it seems one must visit the region, sadly not much Hunter Valley Semillon reaches the UK (or indeed other parts of the world).

Probably my other big take out from my visit was the palpable sense of history in the Hunter Valley. New South Wales vies with Western Australia for being the first place in Australia to grow wine grapes, but during the 19th Century the Hunter Valley led the development of the wine industry. The Dalwood estate is the oldest in Australia to have continuously grown vines.
A series of booms and busts at both national and local scale, and the rise of the huge wine growing areas further south, with more benign weather and (until now) widespread irrigation, has resulted in the Hunter Valley becoming relatively small in terms of wine production but with significantly more history per litre than any other region. Not just the names of wineries I visited, but some of the people I met can trace back their antecedents nearly two centuries. Some of the vineyards are planted with vines that are more than 100 years old, some are even dry-farmed, and many vines are ungrafted – the dreaded Phylloxera louse that requires vitis vinifera to be grafted onto resistant rootstocks in most of the world has not managed to gain a foothold in the Hunter Valley – yet.

So I have returned from my visit, incredibly grateful to the Vintner’s Company for their generous bursary, and to the amazing people I met while I was in this magical place, and very much determined to return. I have yet to write up my ‘formal’ report of my visit, and hope to share that when it has been accepted, but over the following posts I share some snapshots of the places I visited and people I met.