Photo credit: James Horan
Property developers have long been masters of embellishment, with a knack for spinning any dour patch of dirt into a utopian dream block with just a few lines of flowery prose. But when it comes to Pokolbin Estate, the sales pitch is devastatingly accurate. “A place like no other,” is the tagline from the developer’s website, spruiking land lots “set among the vines” with plans approved for a hotel, restaurant, retail precinct and 26 homes, designed to “reflect and complement the natural landscapes of the Hunter Valley”.
Pokolbin Estate is indeed a place like no other. The vineyard, comprising 7ha of shiraz and 3ha of riesling, sits in the heart of wine country. Grapes from its oldest vines, planted in 1969, produce some of the most acclaimed wine in the Hunter Valley. It’s from these vines that local winemaker Andrew Thomas buys fruit for his flagship Kiss Shiraz, the name a playful pun that becomes more pointed as the story continues. The wine has won many trophies and gold medals, is included in Nick Ryan’s Top 100 list in this issue, and has set the modern benchmark for exceptional Hunter Valley shiraz.
But it could be time to kiss it goodbye. In 2022, Pokolbin Estate was sold to Sydney-based developers DevCore, and work has begun transforming the site into a “luxury masterplanned estate”. A road now cuts through the middle of the old-vine shiraz block, with subdivisions plotted on either side. Earthworks are underway for drainage channels and other infrastructure. The vineyard is essentially a construction site. “We can’t get in there with a tractor to work the vineyard,” says Thomas, head winemaker at nearby Thomas Wines, a family business he founded in 1997. “There’s not going to be a 2025 vintage. It’s over. Instead, we’re going to end up with houses on land where old-vine shiraz used to grow and produce world class wine.”
Read the full story here
