The 2025 vintage was our biggest to date. We processed just shy of 46 tonnes when it was all said and done which was a real feat in our modest winery space.
Due to a warm and sunny ripening period, many of the grapes were neck and neck in ripeness. Many of the whites were harvested with incredible quality and yields- and the early reds much the same albeit in rapid fire sequencing. The onslaught was bookended by a 80mm of rain due to fall in 24 hrs in a prevailing ‘cyclone’ just before many of the reds grapes were at peak ripeness. We made a snap decision to harvest all of our thinner skinned Shiraz grapes which typically don’t stand up to severe rain events slightly earlier than we would have liked to for the cyclone to fizzle out in to obscurity- not a drop of rain falling in the end.
At that point in the harvest, we had picked 80% of our fruit in a 2 week window. Sam had ridiculously travelled to Melbourne to do sales and we held an event at the cellar door with Emmanuelle Leftick cooking Mexican food in the middle of it all.
It was bonkers to say the least.
Further, 2025 was our final vintage managing the Mt Panorama Estate Vineyard in the middle of the famous race track. After 14 years looking after this site, we made the difficult decision to let it go and to start putting that energy in to our own sites. It’s been a great run in there at the Mt Panorama Estate Vineyard with some incredible wines produced from its 2.5 hectares of vineyard. Most notably the 2018 Mt Panorama Estate single vineyard wines which delivered us the Dark Horse Winery of the Year award in the 2022 Halliday Wine Companion. A special thank you to the Baxter Family for your support over our tenure of this site, it was a pleasure working with you.
To surmise, 2025 was an incredible year for us. In a contracting market, there was a lot of very high quality fruit available to purchase, and we backed ourselves in. When the sun shines, so on and so forth. We also had considerable yields off our own vineyards as the new plantings produced their first meaningful crops.
Particular standouts from 2025 are the just bottled 2025 Bella Luna Chardonnay and 2025 Winooka Park Single Vineyard Red Blend. As well as the Wambuul Cabernet Sauvignon and Central Ranges Pinot Gris.
