Best Small Producer.
Clare Valley Wine Show 2026.
Cristy and I bought Crabtree in February 2022. This week, our home show named us the Clare Valley's Best Small Producer – and that was only the start of the good news.
Cristy Willmott, Jason Cane, Andrew Kenny, Richard Cane and Leanne Cane
Best Small Producer. For the whole range.
This award looks at the whole range, not a single bottle. For a winery our size, that's the one that counts. Our Rieslings come from our own vineyard in Watervale, our Regolith Grenaches from three sites chosen for what lies beneath them, and we add nothing to any of them. No shortcuts. To be recognised as the best small producer in the Clare Valley – a region full of producers we admire – is humbling.
A huge thank you to our winemaker, Andrew Kenny. These results are his as much as anyone's.
Our 2026 medal winners.
Source: 2026 Clare Valley Wine Show results
2025 Ironstone Grenache. Best Grenache of Show.
The Ironstone is one of the three Grenaches in our Regolith Series, alongside the Limestone and the Quartzite. It had already caught Erin Larkin's attention at The Wine Advocate, who scored it 93 points. Now it's won a Gold medal, been judged the best Grenache of the 2025 vintage at the show, and the best Grenache of the show overall.
Its Regolith siblings did us proud too: the 2025 Limestone Grenache and 2025 Quartzite Grenache both won Silver. Seven wines were entered in the class, and all three of ours were among the medals.
Clare is famous for Riesling, and rightly so. But Grenache here has something special to say, and I think this result proves it. If you haven't tried the Regolith trio side by side yet, now's the time.
2025 RC Riesling. Gold.
The 2025 Riesling class drew 26 entries from across the valley, and only three wines took Gold. The 2025 RC Riesling was one of them. Terra rossa over limestone gives Watervale Riesling that tight line of lime and lemon, and the RC shows it beautifully.
Wine of Provenance. Gold across twelve years.
We entered our Estate Riesling from 2026, 2017 and 2014, and the set won Gold. Only three producers took Gold in this category this year: Jim Barry, Pikes and us. On its own, the 2026 Estate Riesling also won Silver in a class of 42.
What is Wine of Provenance? Producers enter the same wine from three vintages: the current release, one between five and nine years old, and one ten years or older. The judges are asking a simple question – does the site keep speaking, year after year?
Twelve years separate the oldest and youngest of our three wines. Different seasons, different conditions – and the same Watervale character running through all three. For Riesling grown on our own Watervale vineyard, I can't think of a better endorsement of what we do.
Best Cellar Door Experience. 2nd of 22.
Twenty-two cellar doors were in the running for Best Cellar Door Experience, and ours came second. Great wine is only half of a visit to Watervale. The other half is the welcome, the stories and the time we take with every guest, and that's down to Cristy and our cellar door team. Thank you to everyone who has sat in the tasting room or the courtyard with us.
"From Riesling off our own Watervale vineyard to Grenache from the growers and sites behind the Regolith Series, we do things the hard way. To be named Best Small Producer tells us the fruit, the winemaking and the welcome are all where we hoped they'd be." — Jason Cane, Co-owner, Crabtree Watervale Wines
Thank you to everyone who drinks our wine, visits the cellar door and tells their friends about us. This one's for you.
Jason & Cristy
Medal results sourced from the official 2026 Clare Valley Wine Show exhibitor catalogue.
Taste the award winners.
Our show-winning wines are available now – online, or at our cellar door at 4 North Tce, Watervale, open every day from 10:30am to 5:00pm. Dogs always welcome.