Yeringberg

Few Australian wine estates can trace an unbroken family line back to the 1860s. Yeringberg can, and it wears that history lightly: a small, quiet property on the Yarra Valley's north-eastern slopes, making restrained wines that rarely announce themselves and almost always reward a wait.

Two beginnings

In 1863 the Swiss-born Baron Frédéric-Guillaume de Pury bought land at Coldstream and planted vines. Yeringberg's wines found a market through the late nineteenth century — the winery building still standing on the property dates from the 1880s — but in 1921, with the market for Australian table wine collapsing after the First World War, production stopped.

It stayed that way for nearly fifty years. In 1969 the baron's grandson Guill de Pury and his wife Katherine replanted two acres on the same north-east-facing slopes his grandfather had chosen, and the first commercial wine of the new era followed in 1974. Today the fourth generation runs the estate: Sandra de Pury makes the wine and David de Pury, a plant physiologist by training, manages the vineyard and farm. The family describe themselves as custodians rather than owners, which is about as good a summary of the place as any.

A restrained hand

Yeringberg is a small producer — in the region of 1,500 dozen a year — and its style follows from that scale. Oak has never been obvious here; even the Pinot Noir sees only a modest proportion of new barrels so that, in the family's phrase, the fruit does the talking. The result is a set of wines that can seem quiet next to louder contemporaries in their youth and come into their own with time.

The wines

The flagship red is simply called Yeringberg: a Bordeaux-style blend led by Cabernet Sauvignon, with Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot. Alongside it sit a Marsanne Roussanne, a Viognier, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir and a Shiraz. The Rhône-variety whites are a quiet speciality of the house — textural, long-lived wines that make an argument for the Yarra beyond Chardonnay.

At Winetrust

We hold Yeringberg 2021 and Yeringberg 2022, and carry the Marsanne Roussanne and Viognier when we can get them. The reds are cellar wines in the old sense: good now, much better in ten years.