Strathbogie Estate Vineyard

Through environmentally sound and sustainable practices the vineyard remains in balance with nature. Strathbogie Estate is committed to growing healthy and beautiful tasting grapes that produce exceptional wine.

We optimise the potential of terroir expression in the wine by ensuring every vine is hand pruned and grapes hand-picked. Due to its tendency to rupture the grape berry, machine harvesting is regarded as unkind on vines. Once a breach of the grape has occurred the skin phenolics leach into the juice. As a result, a loss of delicacy in the flavour occurs. This particularly recognised in the more delicate wines.

Strathbogie Estate is a non-tillage vineyard; preventing fertile top-soil from eroding. Only mowing twice annually, this allows perennial native grasses to grow in each row. The approach permits better moisture and organic matter retention, less irrigation and promotes the cycling of nutrients.

Insecticides kill good with the bad insects and mites. The Estate avoids using pesticides even if it means losing a small percentage of grapes and encourages spiders to thrive. As the image below shows spiders tangle webs around bunches creating natural pest control without synthetic insecticides. 

The trellising used in almost all non-organic Australian vineyards are treated pine posts that contain chemicals including arsenic; potentially leaching into the soil. Fortunately, our vineyard was established with recycled steel railway tracks and steel posts, with only a solitary pine post in each long row.

Limiting irrigation does mean smaller crops but allows for concentration of juice, resulting in intense fruit flavour. The vines also develop deeper and wider root systems that penetrate into the soil profile giving the grapes a greater expression of the terroir. Minimal water is used only during extreme dry periods, sourced entirely from our property's natural springs.