The Standish Wine Company

 Winemaker: Dan Standish

Small batch, beautifully crafted wines with an insatiable cult following

You've got to be quick and determined to get your hands on The Standish Wine Company creations. They are rare, coveted works of art. Winemaker Dan and his wife Nicole send one email a year to their mailing list.....just one. Despite the ongoing devotion, the couple was surprised at how quickly their 2019 vintage releases were snapped up. "One of the wines sold out in 52 minutes". We were flabbergasted.

The Standish Wine Company is a strikingly beautiful winery located in Barossa Valley, South Australia. The winery and vineyards are family owned by Dan and Nicole Standish. Dan was first introduced to the art of pruning grape vines by his grandfather at the young age of six in their ancestral vineyard. Dan founded The Standish Wine Company in 1999 after securing a section of his family vineyard in the Barossa Valley. The same ancient plants that Dan carefully hand pruned are now used to produce his exclusive old vine shiraz collection, fittingly titled “The Relic.”

Dan and Nicole work side by side at their modern, cavernous winery. The large stone and brick building is framed by lavender bushes and grand old vines. They purchased the site in 2013 a decade after it was built by French-managed company The Colonial Estate. The structure is like something straight out of France's Rhone Valley or Spain's Rioja, both parts of the world that Dan has worked in. He also made wine in California's Napa and Sonoma Valleys, before working for Torbreck.

In 1999 he was able to negotiate a small parcel of 96-year-old shiraz from his parents' vineyard in the Vine Vale subregion of the Barossa Valley. This produces 300 dozen of The Standish, a wild yeast, open-fermented and basket-pressed shiraz matured in French oak for 30 months. The Standish, which uses his Rhone Valley experience led to the creation of The Relic, Shiraz (93%)/Viognier (7%) co-fermented, otherwise made with similar techniques