About Us : Genesis, Adolescence and Maturity

    
In the beginning, Laanecoorie was a 30 hectare block next to a pristine state forest at Betley, just north of Maryborough towards Bendigo.  The year was 1976, when we set about turning our newly built house into a home for ourselves and our first child.

Over the next couple of years we experimented with a few crops and later considered sheep and beef cattle but the various complications of crutching, shearing and new fencing for inexperienced farmers were somewhat daunting.

One day in the 1980, we were pondering the future of our property over a bottle of 1977 Warrenmang cabernet, grown and made not far away in the region now known as The Pyrenees.  Over bread and cheese on the patio, looking out over the gentle slopes, we were at first charmed and subsequently seduced by this delicious dry red and the thought occurred: Why can’t we do this too?

After seeking advice from those who should know, we began preparing a small block for vines and our inaugural plantings began in 1982.  Four years later, with the help of family and friends, we harvested our first vintage, a Bordeaux blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc.  Over the next year or so, were so gratified by our debut wine that further plantings were made, most recently including a block of shiraz.  The vineyard now amounts to nearly 8 hectares.

While we have often had to contend with frost and drought severely reducing yields, we are now successfully battling the former with a recently installed automatic air circulation propeller while the now mature vines have sent their roots deep into the ground in search of moisture and nutrition.  They are now, as adults, less dependent upon surface water then they were in their youth.

Our Bordeaux blend, the Laanecoorie remains our mainstay wine but since 2002 we have also produced an ultra-premium Reserve Shiraz in very limited quantities, a superb regional expression of the grape, which has in the past earned a five star rating in James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion.

Earlier this year while were shared one of our very last bottles of that inaugural 1986 vintage with the respected wine consultant Roy Moorfield, we all agreed it was in fine fettle with another five years of life in it.

Our original decision to grow grapes for high quality wine has been vindicated many times over the last twenty years.  It sure beats crutching sheep and grazing cattle.