With Reg (now in his nineties) still keeping an eye on proceedings, Maryann produces wines that consistently illustrate the Yarra Valley’s greatest virtues. They are made in tiny quantities, then sold in a handful of restaurants, fine wine retailers and on two vineyard open days, the first of which is, fortuitously, this weekend. They are as beautiful as they are important, and they show why Wantirna Estate is both the foundation stone and the guiding light for the Yarra Valley of today.
Nick Ryan, The Australian
We are delighted to present a wine that epitomises this unique treasure of Australian wine: 2023 Wantirna Estate Amelia.
Reg Egan, who established this haven on the fringe of the Yarra Valley back in 1963, is pushing 94 and still drives a tractor and tends the vines a couple of days a week. He thought suburbia would swallow up the vineyard decades ago, and it would’ve, but for the Green Wedge policy of the 1970s. As the cacophony of modernity encroaches ever closer, Wantirna Estate remains its own Eden. So much has changed, but these old vines still eke out meagre volumes of their exquisite wines.
“This place is ideal for making wine, because of the soil, because of the clay underneath, because, although it’s getting a bit hotter, it’s still relatively cool,” Reg told us as he cast an eye over the gnarled trunks and their incipient shoots. “It’s a lovely place to make wine.”
The place can count itself lucky to have lovely people making said wine. “When you’ve got a single vineyard, your wines are just an expression of that block of land and those vines in that year,” says Reg’s daughter Maryann as we sit on the vineyard’s edge. “The vintage date might change and this and that, but I think that single-vineyard idea is nice. It’s not like you’ve got the tasting bench and 20 different wines, putting in 6% of this and 12% of that. Here, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”
And you will likely be deeply upset if you don’t manage to take advantage of this extremely limited offer to taste and share one of Australia’s best stories.
