The Vineyards

The site has been planted to vineyards for well over 100 years, with the first vineyards being planted in the 1880’s, though none of these original plantings exist today. Adolf Glaetzer and his sons were largely responsible for the planting of the vineyards as they exist today, with the remainder being largely Robert’s more recent plantings of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, and a little more Riesling. Although the original plantings have long since gone, most of our current vineyards are still quite mature, including 60+ year old Grenache, 50+ year old Shiraz, and 30+ year old Riesling vines. The greater part of our production, as for many of the Clare Valley wineries, revolves around Riesling, with this variety accounting for approximately 50% of our overall production. Second in production volume is Shiraz, and then Cabernet Sauvignon, with smaller amounts of Tempranillo, Grenache, and Semillon.

Traditional rod and spur hand pruning is used on all of our vineyards, and all of our grapes are handpicked. All of our fruit is estate grown for our dry white and dry red wines, with a very small percentage of high quality Muscat grapes from the Smith family in the North of Clare (from 140 year old vines) added to complement our own Muscat of Alexandria supply to make our sweeter Muscat and Zibibbo wines. Our vines are very low yielding and are essentially dry grown, although most of the vineyards do have drip irrigation lines to ensure the vines do not suffer from too much water stress.