TOP DROPS

Victoria’s High Country has become one of the most dynamic winemaking regions in Australia. MICHAEL HARDEN heads north for a lesson in unusual drops.

- MICHAEL HARDEN

Fashion is rarely a plus when it comes to wine-making but right now it’s serving Victoria’s High Country well. Wine has been produced in this beautiful, fertile region of mountains, valleys and river flats in the state’s north-east for more than 150 years but the nature of the winemaking – mostly smaller-scale, family-owned enterprises best known for fortified wine – meant the region has often been slightly off-radar for all but dedicated wine geeks.

But now that small-scale, owner-operated and artisan are buzzwords at the height of vinous fashion, the region from Rutherglen to King Valley to Beechworth is garnering almost as much attention for its wine as it does for its snowfields and flashy autumn leaves. And deservedly so.

Over the last decade or so, a new generation of winemakers has been pushing the boundaries and challenging the stereotypes of what the High Country is capable of producing, pioneering Italian varieties and finding new ways of working with old school grapes like durif. It has become one of the most dynamic, original and interesting wine-making regions in the country.

“The beauty of the North-East is that there are so many small wine regions that are special for their own reasons, their unique differentiations,” says Raquel Jones, the winemaker at Weathercraft Wine in Beechworth and recently inducted Young Gun of Wine. “The variable climate and soil mean that there’s so much scope for people to try new things.”