As you may know, a slow confident stride always takes place when growing & producing wines at our domaine. Guided by 2 generations for over 40 years, Eastern Peake is such a unique & distinctive site on the Australian wine landscape. We’ve been favoured by not being in a wine region to dictate a certain wine style, thus this has enabled us to set our own vision & ethos that is directly influenced by our own topography, terroir & strict organic farming practices. In the cellar there’s always been strong belief of producing everything with a minimal interference approach, this has always been a generational vision. Post harvest the vintage is deeply reflected on to work out what techniques to apply the following year achieve less from our cellar and to capture more from our vineyard. The unique continental cool climate & the year that was dealt. A philosophy of doing less to give more runs deep in the cellar & doing more good things in the vineyard to provide healthier productive vines for another four decades.

Reflecting on the 2023 season still gives me goosebumps, the harvest was spread out nicely over a few weeks in April due to the cooler classic 90s season. Something reminiscent of the 1996 vintage, yet with a difference of vine age on our side. Things were looking very promising with a nice long ripening period to develop great flavour & structure profiles.

This was our third harvest in a row of cooler damper conditions, which certainly did provide its challenges during the growing season, somehow we managed to keep a strict organic program in the vineyard (Some long hours in the tractors spraying & keeping weeds a bay.. even a couple of bogged ones) at times I thought we were going to loose the battle with mother nature as the weather kept presenting all the challenges it could via La Niña… we were wondering if the sun was going to ever appear. Mid December it did for a few months with some nice mild summer temperatures, dragging out the season to mid April when the weather began to turn cooler & damp again. The vines & the grapes held up unbelievably well with all the pressures of the weather to produce some exceptional wines. It’s been such an exciting journey with these cuvées patiently waiting in the cellar for their release to the world, I can’t wait to share them with you all. 

Such a huge effort by all the team during the growing season & throughout the vintage, many, many hours of manual hard work in the vineyards & in the cellar during the harvest. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do, as we release these our family, friends & colleagues across Australia & Internationally.

Owen & Family.