The Clare Valley

First settled in 1840 by John Horrocks, the area was named shortly afterwards by Edward Gleeson after his home county in Ireland. Next to arrive were a group of families from Poland who settled the region in 1856 after fleeing religious persecution at home. The region progressed, due firstly to the efforts of the Jesuit priests, until the depression when it suffered the same way as most of Australia. The wine boom of the 1950s saw many companies return to the area and plant high quality varieties, particularly Riesling.

The emergence of Riesling as a great, long-lived white in Australia was linked to the spread of winemaking technology: refrigerated fermentation began to be widely used in the 1960s and ‘70s, and Clare Rieslings showed spectacular results.

There are five distinct sub-regions within the Clare Valley (from north to south) Clare, Sevenhill, Polish Hill River, Watervale and Auburn. The micro and mesoclimates within the valleys of the region are so diverse that there are also several distinct areas within the sub-regions (such as Leasingham, Skilly Valley and Stanley Flat).

The climate would indicate on paper that it was too hot to grow fine Riesling grapes here, but there are many microclimates which prove this wrong. The altitude, slope and aspect of many of the valleys and hills provide ideal sites for producing fine, long-lived Rieslings and increasingly Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Grenache, Malbec, Merlot, Mourvèdre, Sémillon and Shiraz too. There are even plantings of Cabernet Franc, Carmenère, Graciano, Nebbiolo, Petit Verdot, Pinot Gris, Primitivo, Sangiovese, Tempranillo and Viognier.

The Edwards Family Sean and Ashleigh Edwards are second generation Clare Valley grape growers. Sean’s parents first planted vines in the region in the 1960s and Sean planted 59 hectares of his own on his Ballingarry estate in 1997. His vineyards, to the north-west of Clare in the Armagh Valley, are planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Riesling and Shiraz. The vines were planted in a north south orientation on sandy, clay loam soils and are 450 metres above sea level.

The Stanway Family
Brothers Rob and Phil Stanway are second generation Clare Valley grape growers. Their parents, Brian and Raelene Stanway, planted their first vineyard in the region in the 1970s. The family has vineyard holdings throughout the Valley including the sub regions of Armagh Valley, Polish Hill River and Watervale. The renowned 25 hectare Slate Creek vineyard, in the sought-after Watervale sub region, is planted to Riesling with a small patch of Chardonnay. The vines were planted in a north-east south-west orientation on deep red clay loam over limestone soils with pockets of slate and are 350 metres above sea level.