The Hunter Valley’s enviable heritage of trailblazing viticulturists, winemaking dynasties and iconic wines, is where great Australian grape growing and winemaking all began. The valley’s first small vineyard plots of about 20 acres were planted on the Northern banks of the Hunter River trade route in the early 1820’s. Australia’s first families of wine soon branched out into the surrounding hill country with more than 500 acres of vines and by the roaring ‘20s, had become the bastion of premium wine production.

Nearly 200 years down that winding country road and the pioneering spirit of Hunter Valley Wine Country lives on in an unrivalled class of skilled viticulturists and their winemaking counterparts who are unafraid of pushing boundaries to achieve distinctive wines that are rich in character and regional authenticity, vintage after vintage.

To this day, a handful of Hunter Valley estates are privileged to still produce sublime wines from 11 historic blocks of the original plantings, on ancient European root stocks that came over with the First Fleet. These vineyards are all the more rare for having remained unscathed by an outbreak of phylloxera in the late 1800’s which decimated 70% of Europe’s vineyards, making the vines some of the oldest in the world. You can get your hands on coveted, old vine Hunter Valley Shiraz, Semillon and Chardonnay wines, straight from the source, at Drayton’s Wines, Mount Pleasant, Poole’s Rock and Tyrrell’s.

The more you discover about Hunter Valley wine, the more you’ll appreciate our torchbearers’ legacy of great Australian winemaking, in every satisfying glass of Hunter Valley wine.