Close your eyes and imagine an Australian vineyard: red dusty soil underscores vast, flat swaths of vine rows baking beneath the blinding sun, kangaroos hopping along. Now throw that image away. (Except for the kangaroos; you can keep them.) Most of Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria is the exact opposite of that image: It’s filled with small vineyards dotting verdant, rolling hills that tumble toward the sea; 400-million-year-old mountains are accented with granite boulders; the climate shifts from misty mornings to windy afternoons and downright frigid evenings.
It is in this landscape that some of the nation’s smallest inland wine regions, including Macedon Ranges, Beechworth, Grampians and Heathcote, have achieved global renown. Acclaim hasn’t come because of corporate investment–there’s very little of that in these parts–but due to a handful of small-scale, multigenerational wine families who carry with them a deep love for and connection to their land.
Macedon Ranges
Welcome to Australia’s coolest mainland wine growing region. Despite its location just 30 miles north of Melbourne, Macedon feels like
