Jasper Hill

Our aim is to make great wine, with the preservation of nature’s flavours, complexities and balance in our wines by using minimal intervention in our vineyards and in the cellar – to allow the individual vineyard’s “terroir” or sense of place to express itself by ‘interfering’ as little as possible.

Our wines are grown, made and bottled entirely on the estate from our own grapes, using organic and biodynamic principles. We produce our own biodynamic composts and have never used synthetic chemicals on either the vines or the soils, since our vineyards were planted in 1975.

Viticultural practices are simple: own rooted vines (ie. not grafted on to American rootstocks to confer Phylloxera resistance), no irrigation whatsoever, minimal tillage, natural inter-row mulching leading to broad bio-diversity, very low yields giving depth and intensity to our wines. Only hand pruning of the vines and hand harvesting of the fruit can allow us the human connection to our living soil.

Established by Ron and Elva Laughton, ever since the first vintage in 1982 Jasper Hill has been a small, family business. The 2015 vintage was our 34th. As the vineyards and their two daughters have grown over the years, both Emily and Georgia continue to work within the business. Emily has been passionately growing grapes and making wine alongside her father since 2001, whilst Georgia enjoys doing most of the administrative work. Ron and Elva live amongst the vines on Emily’s Paddock; Emily lives on Georgia’s Paddock vineyard with her husband Nick, daughter Ella and son Nate. Nick is also a highly valued member of the team, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Only time will tell, if the next young generation will continue the wine making tradition of their grandfather and mother.

With more than three decades behind us and many accolades for our wines, Jasper Hill has become synonymous with Heathcote, shiraz wine in particular, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of this relatively new and exciting wine region.

Our soils are derived from Cambrian period basaltic rock of 500/600 million years age.

They are quite rare in the world because of their great age, particularly in Australia. Here in Heathcote they are unusually deep (up to 4 metres), rusty red coloured, well drained, gravelly loams on undulating hillsides, with good moisture retention capabilities.

Occurring in a narrow, non-contiguous strip between two North/South running faults, they are typically only a few hundred metres wide. The faults give rise to a complex mineralogy within the soils.

Soil organic matter is high, allowing great bio-diversity in micro flora and fauna, supporting large earthworm populations – highly beneficial for natural soil fertility. No synthetic chemicals have ever been applied to the soil or vines; the vineyards are totally organic; no insecticides, no herbicides, no synthetic fungicides and no artificial fertilisers. We produce our own organic compost for vineyard dressing.

The soil surface is either covered in mulch derived from vine prunings, leguminous cover crops and native grasses, or is lightly cultivated occasionally, with aeration, using lightweight 4WD tractors to minimise soil compaction.

Emily’s Paddock: three hectares of Shiraz including around five percent Cabernet Franc, yielding about two tonnes per hectare (14hL per hectare). Planted in 1975/76.

Georgia’s Paddock: twelve hectares of Shiraz yielding about three tonnes per hectare (20hL per hectare). Three hectares of Riesling giving about three tonnes per hectare (20 hL per hectare). Both of these varieties were planted in 1975/76 with further small plantings completed after the vineyard was ravaged by bushfire in 1987. One hectare each of similarly low yielding Semillon planted in 1992, Nebbiolo planted in 1993, and Viognier planted in 2001.

Cornella Vineyard: four hectares of Grenache planted in 1998 with yields of around three tonnes per hectare (20hL per hectare)

All vineyards are planted on their own roots, to retain purity of style, rather than grafted on to Phylloxera-resistant American non-vinifera root stock.

The vines have a sunny, open, balanced canopy that keeps fungal diseases at bay and eliminates the need for summer pruning, leaf plucking and crop reduction. All picking and pruning is carried out by hand.

All vineyards are unirrigated and rely on natural rainfall only.

Both Emily’s and Georgia’s Paddocks are on elevated hillsides at an altitude of 320 metres (1000 feet) and are approximately 1 km apart. Emily’s Paddock has a NE aspect and shallower soil, while Georgia’s Paddock has a NW aspect and the classic deep soil. The ‘new’ vineyard at Cornella, 20km north of Emily’s Paddock, is within the Heathcote Region on deep Cambrian soil also, and has a NE aspect and similar elevation to Emily’s Paddock.

All wines are produced with the same minimal intervention during fermentation and maturation, allowing the terroir of each individual vineyard to be highlighted. Underscoring the quality of the soils, at vintage the grapes retain high levels of natural acidity. Acid adjustment is rarely ever needed, even when sugar levels reach 14 Baume or higher.

All fermentations are carried out by the indigenous (native or wild) yeasts present on the grape skins. All pressings are returned for completeness of the wine. The red wines are then racked off gross lees into small French oak barriques (20 percent new each year) for oak maturation of about 15 months with no racking or fining. Spontaneous malolactic fermentation occurs naturally in the barrel without any inducement during late spring. After blending, they are given only a coarse filtration just prior to bottling on our own state-of-the-art equipment.