THE HUNTER VALLEY: NEW SOUTH WALES A taste of history
Australia's wine industry was born in the Hunter Valley, a scenic region of rolling landscapes that is still tempting visitors to its cellar doors and superb restaurants, says Steve Hartridge
surely the Hunter Valley. In terms of production, the tiny New
T
South Wales region makes just four per cent of Australia’s wine but it regularly picks up around a third of the country’s annual industry awards. For clients heading to Sydney, the Hunter Valley is an easy add-on. Just 170km after crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and then following the Pacific Highway north-west, you arrive
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here are 61 separate regions in Australia that make wine, but the biggest ‘overachiever’ is
in an area of fertile rolling landscapes dotted by charming, mainly boutique- style, wineries. Yet unlike some other wine-producing
areas, this is not a region dominated by huge estates with tidy rows of vines stretching as far as the eye can see. Although there are around 140 ‘cellar doors’ that offer visitors ‘tastings’ – as recently as 1975 there were just six – only around 5,000 acres are planted with vines. Here you are just as likely to see horses, sheep and cattle, cultivated farmland, road-side stalls – selling
cheese and olives – and the odd incongruous sign saying ‘Ferrets for Sale’. The region was named after John Hunter, the first governor of a colony established in the late 18th century, who quickly set about extracting the region's rich seams of coal. A harbour was built at Newcastle, to
ship the black stuff around the world, and Sydney’s own growth was cemented. Today large coal trains, up to 100 carriages long, still pull Hunter Valley coal to Newcastle. Next came the loggers, who cleared
the valley, and then the farmers, whose livestock grazed on the newly-opened lands, before two other English settlers, father and son John and James Busby, arrived in the 1820s. The son, James, brought with him
books on wine-growing and vines from France and the 1820s saw the tentative beginnings of the commercial wine
Clockwise from left-top: Audrey Wilkinson is one of the Hunter Valley's longest-established wineries – and offers some of its best views; Brokenwood, a boutique winery that puts out the welcome mat for visitors; Generous wine tasting at Audrey Wilkinson
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