One of some blogs recording the visits I made during my study trip in January 2024.
It was at during my visit to the premises shared by the three that I got to grips with the at first (to me) crazy concept of transporting grapes from the far south of South Australia to the Hunter Valley (a distance of over 800 miles). Harvest was in full swing of course, but the winery was well equipped with presses and even were two rotofermenters which are used for fermentation of red wines (the rotation provides a more gentle exposure of grape skins to fermenting wine than pumping over or pushing down). Within a week the Hunter Valley grapes would be in, and within a month the fermentation vessels would be empty – so why not put grapes from Coonawarra or Wrattonbully into a temperature controlled truck and allow them a bit of skin contact over a 15 hour journey?

As is to be expected the wine makers were called Andrew. Andrew Duff makes the wine for Briar Ridge and Andrew Ling is winemaker for Carillion. Nick Kruger is the winemaker for Pepper Tree, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. As we tasted samples different tanks of fermenting Semillon, from different vineyards, different picking times within the same vineyard, and using different yeasts, I learnt about the key trade-off between grape sugars and acidity at picking. A bit more sugar (and therefore alcohol and flavour) is more desirable than too much acidity, but more sugar and less acidity means a wine will evolve faster, so fine judgements are key.



We drove up to the Briar Ridge vineyards which are in the Mount View district, and took a good look at the different soil types that can be found within a single vineyard. At the beautifully placed tasting room we tasted the wines, including a homage to Carl Stockhausen who consulted to the winery. Some Briar Ridge wines are available in the UK from The Wine Importers.


Mount Pleasant is one of the most iconic wineries in Australia. The home of legendary Maurice O’Shea who made wine in the Hunter Valley between the 1920s and 50s. Maurice was a gentleman who combined his French and Irish ancestry to make still table wines of great finesse (at a time when most wine was fortified) against the odds of climate and requiring a mammoth physical effort. I can recommend the book The Wine Hunter by Campbell Mattinson for the full story and as a great read in its own right (so far I’ve only been able to get hold of a Kindle version).
Adrian Sparks is the winemaker, and my morning with him was rather different. He was driving to the QT Hotel in Newcastle (the nearest city, on the coast) for the launch of a cocktail combining Semillon juice from the famous Lovedale Vineyard (planted by Maurice after the second world war), and a locally distilled gin.




During our journey Adrian described some of the current challenges of making wine in the Hunter Valley. As in many places urban development is threatening vineyard land, and while the world downturn in wine consumption justifies reducing vineyard area, this should not be of the most precious historic vineyards. In 2020 Mount Pleasant was bought by a family trust, and Adrian’s focus has been on getting back to the basics – removing non ‘heritage’ varieties (though he’s keeping the Fiano), and focussing on Semillon, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Pinot Noir, all of which were planted by O’Shea.
On the way back we drove into the Lovedale vineyard, which is on flat, sandy land right by the airport (it was requisitioned during the war), and he helped me to realise that the low yields the Hunter Valley is famed for is not least due to the incredibly wide spacing of the vine rows! Mount Pleasant wines are available in the UK, including from one fine independent wine merchant Tim Syrad Wines.





