Mudgee, NSW

Standing on the small hill behind the Montrose Winery it can readily be understood why the original Aboriginal inhabitants named this New South Wales region Mudgee, meaning Nest in the Hills.

With a viticultural history that stretches back to 1858, Mudgee, 260km north-west of Sydney, has played a key role in Australian viticultural history. Although primarily a producer of robust and deeply coloured red wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, Mudgee was the cradle in which a particularly good clone of Chardonnay lay unrecognised for over 50 years, a clone which some believe may have been a descendant of the Chardonnay introduced to Australia in 1832 by James Busby.

Mudgee is the largest town with the majority of vineyards and wineries located just to its north. Wineries and vineyards also appear to the west of the town and near the town of Illford.

The first white settlers started arriving in the early 1820s. By the late 1860s commercial plantings of vines were well established with much of the expertise coming from German immigrants.

The modern era of grape and wine production began in the 1970s. A number of small wineries and vineyards were established along with the expansion of large companies such as Orlando/Wyndham and Rosemount Estate. This trend has continued through the 1990s and 2000s, with wine icons like Robert Oatley being drawn to the region.

The beautifully soft and intimate nature of much of the countryside is fashioned by the outer rim of hills which create the "nest " and the smaller hills within that perimeter that give rise to a panorama of mini vistas with ever more valleys nesting in their midst. Overall, however, though the slopes are gentle, all this beauty does have its limitations, particularly in the form of frost-prone pockets and hollows.

Being situated on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, Mudgee has a very different climate to that of its neighbour on the coastal side, the Hunter Valley. Spring frosts and cold nights delay budburst; rainfall and humidity are lower; sunshine hours are greater; and irrigation is essential on all but the most favoured sites. The summer and autumn days are very warm, and harvest is four weeks behind the Hunter. Nevertheless, Mudgee’s altitude of around 450 metres shelters it from the heat that would normally be associated with a latitude of 32 degrees south (Bordeaux’s is 45 degrees north and Champagne’s 50).

- Incorporates material from the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation

- Image courtesy of Tourism New South Wales