Topper's Mountain

Winemaker, Mike Hayes says, “My philosophy is to express the terroir of the vineyard and not the barrel maker from the south of France. I feel that great wine comes from great vineyards, not great winemakers. I also feel that to capture the flavour of the earth and express it in the bottle is a far greater challenge than manufacturing wine in the lab.

Topper’s Mountain unique terroir arises from its high altitude location on the western edge of the Great Dividing Range and deep, volcanic (Krasnozem) soils. Over more than a decade, Mark Kirkby, in close collaboration with winemaker Mike Hayes, has established a vineyard packed with exciting alternative varieties that revel in their terroir.

New England is unlike any other wine producing region in Australia. In a country which NASA declared ‘the flattest in the world’ we find a wine producing region situated at over 1000m above sea level, putting them at a similar altitude to the peak of Mount Snowdon! This provides a cool climate, with soils and topography which work perfectly for the mostly Mediterranean grape varieties that the team at Topper’s Mountain focus on growing here.

Topper’s Mountain is our first, exclusive winery from New England which is an exciting, re-emerging wine region with a captivating history dating back as far as the first settlers, who began planting vineyards and making wine there due to the difficulties in transporting alcohol from other major centres.

The Topper’s vineyard was founded by Mark Kirkby in 1998 and sits at 900m ASL, meaning that despite sitting much closer to the equator than most of the world’s viticulture, they are still bestowed with cool nights, low maximum temperatures and a generally continental climate. These all combine to create wines of great elegance and fruit definition which are more comparable to wines grown a thousand kilometres or more from the equator.