Hunter Valley - NSW

Australia’s first wine region is the home of two of Australia’s most famous and uniquely beautiful wines: Hunter Valley Semillon and Hunter Valley Shiraz.

Hunter Valley Semillon is an extraordinary wine that with age can accompany rich main courses such as salmon, roast chicken and white-fleshed game. As a young wine it is very ‘shy’ – almost green-straw in colour with slightly grassy and acidic characters – but with ten to twenty years in the bottle it turns into a rich, honey-nutty-buttery wine: an absolute gem. No Aussie cellar should be without it.

Hunter Valley Shiraz is a real treasure of a wine. With age it is the softest of all Australian Shiraz – quite atypical – and can have some of those soft velvety characters of Pinot Noir. But that’s where the similarities end of course, because it starts off like most Shiraz – a densely coloured red wine with toughness and plenty of astringency. But as it ages, it turns into velvet with beautiful soft fruits and some quite leathery characters.

Apart from the iconic Semillon and Shiraz, the Lower Hunter produces excellent Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon that can both age well. The Upper Hunter on the other hand is Chardonnay country first and foremost with Semillon second. Both the Chardonnay and Semillon age more quickly than their Lower Hunter counterparts.

The Hunter Valley is a huge tourist destination for Sydneysiders as it is only a couple of hours north of the metropolis.