New South Wales – Hunter

The Hunter region is the premium wine region of New South Wales. There are about 120 wineries and cellar doors and no other wine region in Australia comes even remotely close to this. This region encompasses both the lower and upper Hunter Valley areas which have traditionally been regarded as quite separate. The majority of the vineyards are situated in the Lower Hunter between Cessnock and Branxton. Its main topographical features are the alluvial flats of the valleys and the gently undulating hills. The Hunter is famous for its white variety such as Semillon and Chardonnay. Shiraz is the Hunter’s premium red variety.

The region has a hot, humid summer and cool winter, with majority of the rainfall occurring between January and April, blanketing the harvest.

New South Wales – Mudgee

With a viticultural history that stretches back to 1858, Mudgee has played a role in Australian viticultural history. This region is well known for producing robust and deeply coloured red wines such as Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. The brownish coloured soils in Mudgee are typical of those found through the majority of the wine regions of eastern Australia; slightly acidic or sandy loam over neutral clay subsoils but both topsoil and subsoil have the advantage of being quite well drained.

Mudgee has a very different climate to that of its neighbour on the other side, the Hunter. Spring frosts and cold nights delay budburst; rainfall and humidity are lower and sunshine hours are greater.

This is a cool region. Its summer and autumn days are very warm and harvest is four weeks behind the Hunter.

While only encompassing just 4% of the state of South Australia, when it comes to its wine producing capacity, the Limestone Coast is a big region both in terms of the quantity and quality of its wine. The Limestone Coast produces nearly one third of all the fine quality wine produced in South Australia and it is the rocks and sediments that underlie the Limestone coast in making such quality wine possible. The Limestone Coast region is blessed with a moderate maritime climate so well suited for grape growing. The vineyards are fanned by westerly winds all summer and the cool, slow ripening conditions produce intensely flavoured grapes with unique complex qualities. Its harvest period is usually between March and April. To date, tens of millions of bottles of wine are produced every year by wineries in the Limestone Coast region which are then consumed within Australia and in dozens of countries around the world.