Tyrrells

Winemaker: Chris Tyrrell

Tyrrell’s is among the founding members of Australia’s First Families of Wine, an organisation that helps to build awareness of premium Australian wines and their heritage.

With a fifth generation now involved in the business, Tyrrell’s will continue to remain family run, with each generation focused on passing the business to the next in better condition than they received it, all the while being guided by Edward Tyrrell’s motto: “Nothing is great unless it is good.”

The Tyrrell’s estate, nestled in the foothills of the Brokenback Range in the Hunter Valley, is a unique patchwork of vineyards. Thriving in a diverse range of soils, from sandy loams lying on ancient creek beds to heavier red clays over limestone, these vineyards produce some of the most distinctive and refined wines in the world.

All of the estate parcels are well established, with many sites bearing vines that are more than 100 years old and still producing fine wines that embody the characteristics and style of Tyrrell’s and the Hunter Valley.

Over those 160-plus years, Tyrrell’s has been a constant in both the Hunter Valley and Australian wine industries. We helped to pioneer what are now two of Australia’s favourite wine varieties – Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – and have been instrumental in establishing Hunter Valley Semillon as one of the world’s iconic wine styles. Our Vat 1 Semillon is Australia’s most awarded white wine, having won almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies.

The long history in the Hunter Valley has enabled to identify the region’s best vineyards, 11 of them more than a century old; to ascertain the best blocks within those vineyards; and to craft wines from those blocks that clearly reflect their origins. The Tyrrell family owns eight of the 11 oldest vineyards in NSW and uses fruit from these ancient vines to craft the wines that make up our Tyrrell’s Sacred Sites. Among those wines is our Old Patch Shiraz, which has been awarded a perfect 100-point score for four releases in a row – 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019 – by influential US wine journalist James Suckling. (Note: Old Patch was not made in 2015 or 2016.)