Lots of wines have their particularly good years. Sometimes, so do the regions that make them. France has the 1850s, when railroads enabled cheap exporting. California has the 1970s, when serious-minded wineries broke the grip of European wine. And as for Australia, the moment is here and now.

From its humble beginnings in the 1820s—when simply figuring out how to grow European grapes in an alien climate was a challenge—the Australian wine industry has exploded into the world’s fourth largest wine exporter. The country has become famous for quality, fruit-forward wines that manage to be both rich and supple at an affordable price.

America first learned about Australian wine through the Shiraz that came out of the country in the mid-1980s. Few U.S. drinkers were familiar with this robust fruit, and they could get no better introduction than wines like Rosemount Diamond Label Shiraz. As Rosemount Estates was about to show the world, Shiraz was only the beginning of what Australia had to offer.

A Continent of Grapes
Carrying on the name of the original 19th-Century Rosemount, the first vineyard and winery in Upper Hunter Valley, Rosemount’s modern incarnation was founded in the late 1960s by former coffee trader Bob Oately. Though Oatley only meant to grow grapes for other wineries, a grape glut in 1974 forced him to crush his own fruit and label it under the Rosemount name. His pioneering effort, the 1974 Hunter Valley Semillon and Hermitage, won 69 medals at shows around the country. Oately steadily grew the winery from there, learning to capitalize on a key advantage of Australian geography: an entire continent’s worth of grapegrowing areas. Expanding beyond Upper Hunter Valley, he bought vineyards in seven diverse regions throughout New South Wales and South Australia to add to his repertoire of fruit.

South Australia
McLaren Vale:With a climate similar to the Southern Rhone Valley, this region is perfect for growing Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. Rosemount’s Balmoral Vineyard makes its home here.

Adelaide Hills: The vineyards in this high-altitude region are planted in valleys and slopes, giving it a wide range of slope and soil. The southern tip houses Rosemount’s Range vineyard, a cool-climate site developed specifically for Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

Langhorne Creek: Shiraz, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon come from this region south of Adelaide Hills; winds from the Southern Ocean keep the grapes cool, and Lake Alexandrina regulates the temperature.

Coonawarra: A red wine specialist, this region produces Rosemount’s Cabernet Sauvignon for the Show Reserve label.

New South Wales
Upper Hunter Valley: Low rainfall and late summer cloud cover help the Semillon and Chardonnay thrive here for the benefit of Rosemount Estate Roxburgh Chardonnay.

Mudgee: Rosemount’s Mountain Blue Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon come out of this region, where the cool nights and warm days of the Great Dividing Range bring out the best in the grapes.

Orange: In this other highaltitude region, Rosemount’s vineyard near the town of Orange (off the western slopes of the Blue Mountains) creates crisp grapes from the cool temperatures.

A Winning Team
As Rosemount established the footholds to access all this distinct fruit, it also hired the expertise to turn it into wine. Winemaker Charles Whish, a second generation winemaker, joined the enterprise in 1986 and now heads the company’s South Australian vineyard regions. Whish’s creation of Rosemount Traditional—a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot —won the best-blended red wine category at The International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2000. In 2002, it snagged Australia’s most prestigious wine award, the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy.

Matt Koch joined Rosemount in 1995 and recently relocated to direct the company’s wineries in New South Wales. Early in his career, he almost became a beer brewer, but decided he preferred the challenge of crafting more complex creations. He’s made some of Rosemount Estate’s most awarded wines, including the 2001 Rosemount Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Petit Verdot, which won another Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy for Rosemount.

These two distinct craftsmen share a philosophy. “We like to let the fruit be the hero,” says Whish. The regions where the company has vineyards “give us fruit which really suits Rosemount,” he adds. “Wonderful fruit character, balanced with a softness on the palate, are the qualities which represent the renowned Rosemount style. We’re committed to getting the best from the fruit so that Rosemount wines continue to display these hallmarks.”

Whish and Koch treat their large palate of grapes like a valuable storehouse, picking the fruits at the peak of their ripeness to express their best character. The result is a wide selection of single vineyard, premium regional, and classic varietal wines. The company groups these offerings into three categories:

Flagship: Rosemount Estate Roxburgh Chardonnay, Rosemount Estate Mountain Blue Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon, and Rosemount Estate Balmoral Syrah all come from old vines, making these wines rich and flavorful.

Show Reserve: This line presents the best of some of the regions in which Rosemount has a presence. It includes Show Reserve Hunter Valley Chardonnay, Show Reserve Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, and Show Reserve McLaren Vale Shiraz.

Diamond Label: Rosemount winemakers pull fruit from several regions to craft wines with several complex layers. Their efforts have turned this label into Rosemount’s most popular product.

Old World Meets New
Rosemount uses the latest winemaking equipment to nurture each of these wines so that they reflect the character of the grapes and the regions that produced them. Despite all the rotary fermenters and computer-monitored temperature controls at their disposal, Rosemount’s winemakers rely chiefly on traditional techniques. Natural yeast fermentation, barrel maturation, and “battonage” lees stirring all play an important role in creating every bottle. For instance, the McLaren Vale winery in South Australia uses 100-year-old open vats to extract tannins from its fermenting ultra-premium red wines.

Young Rosemount wines mature in barrels and are regularly racked and topped, and Whish or Koch has the final say on the finished blends. But when it comes to bottling, Rosemount returns to the modern world to assure it’s taking advantage of the best quality standards available. The winery’s bottling line technology is primed and calibrated to ensure the flavors developed with such care over so many months end up intact in each bottle.

In a sense, this embrace of the old world and the new couldn’t be more Australian, and it imbues every detail of Rosemount’s loving approach to crafting its products. Recently, the company redesigned its Diamond line packaging, updating the look while maintaining traditional elements like the recognizable Rosemount crest. With a horse silhouette to represent the stud farms of the Upper Hunter Valley, a rose for the rose gardens on Rosemount’s Denman Vineyard, and a bunch of grapes, the label attests to the fact that Rosemount is a winery that knows where it’s been, where it’s headed, and what its loyal customers want.

So what do people want from Rosemount? That answer is simple, says Koch: “Rosemount has found an audience with people who are looking for dependable quality at an affordable price.”

By Steve Wilson
Photography courtesy of Rosemount Wines