Photo credit: Ricky French
It’s the last weekend of August, and in the hills of Heathcote in central Victoria, Jasper Hill is holding its annual release celebration. Cars clog the red dirt driveway and crowds cram inside the cottage-like cellar door to get their hands on new vintages from one of Australia’s most acclaimed boutique labels. As 14-year-old Ella McNally punches sales into an EFTPOS machine, her 11-year-old brother Nate hands out a winery quiz he wrote the night before.
Q: Who were Jasper Hill’s original founders? Answer: Nate and Ella’s grandparents, Ron and Elva Laughton.
Q: What year was our first vintage? Answer: 1982.
Q: Who are the vineyards named after? Answer: Nate and Ella’s mother, Emily, and their aunty Georgia.
Q: How often do we water our vineyards? Answer: Never.
The “never” part was Ron’s idea from day one. The food scientist turned self-taught wine whisperer figured that by stressing the vines they’d produce small grapes with intense concentration of flavour and colour. His simple philosophy: let the terroir do the talking. Or as Ron puts it, “Get as much flavour of the vineyard as you possibly can into the wine, without stuffing it up.”
When Ron and Elva drove past a “For sale” sign on their way home from a cow cocky’s dinner dance in 1978, Heathcote as a wine region didn’t exist. Ron put it on the map, popularising the unmistakable style of shiraz the region soon became famous for: dark and inky, earthy and rich, born of fruit grown in a slender vein of ancient red Cambrian soil…
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