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It’s no shock to study, then, that Rhys and Garth have all the time been impressed by the very fact they will hint their household’s involvement in wine within the area again to the 1860s – and their household’s presence in Australia again to 1790.
Twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Heather arrived that yr on the Second Fleet, transported for the crime of freeway theft. Someplace alongside the best way, he misplaced the “H” in his title as a result of by 1797, when he was granted 30 acres at Windsor, he named the property Eather Farm. His son, one other Thomas, took up 1000 acres at Bulga, close to Singleton, in 1831, and in 1910, Reginald Eather – Rhys and Garth’s grandfather – married Harriet Cousins, the granddaughter of Alexander Munro.
Former convict Alexander Munro was a extremely profitable businessman and philanthropist. His Bebeah winery was the biggest and most awarded wine property in NSW.
Munro arrived in Sydney in 1831, convicted of theft on the age of 17. Regardless of this inauspicious starting, he grew to become a rich and influential man. In addition to being elected the primary mayor of Singleton, within the 1860s he established the Bebeah winery, which at one stage was the biggest and most awarded wine property in NSW.
All of which makes the previous 30 years, as rugged as they’ve been at instances, appear merely a warm-up session for Garth and Rhys Eather.
Tasting Meerea Park
In addition to a number of younger, current-release wines, Meerea Park was additionally on the time of writing providing plenty of older vintages from its museum by its web site, together with the aged-release semillon reviewed right here, plus again vintages of the Alexander Munro shiraz such because the 2014 ($125) and the first-release 1997 ($200). It’s a fantastic alternative to purchase basic Hunter wines which can be approaching their peak of maturity.
2019 Meerea Park Indie Marsanne Roussanne [Hunter Valley]
Winemaker Rhys Eather’s trip to the northern Rhone Valley in France in the late 1990s was memorable. Not only did he get to taste great old bottles of Hermitage and Cote-Rotie dating back to the 1940s, but he was introduced to the region’s gloriously perfumed, textural, long-loved white wines made from marsanne and roussanne grapes. This is a blend of those two varieties, grown a little closer to home on the Lochleven Estate vineyard in the Hunter, and it’s delicious: really tangy and lively, with flavours of crunchy yellow fruit, fragrant honey and a sprinkling of woody herbs. $30
2011 Meerea Park Alexander Munro Aged Release Semillon [Hunter Valley]
I know it’s 10 years old, but this aged-release of Meerea Park’s top semillon is really only beginning to hit its stride, with the lean citrussy freshness of youth easing into the lemon-oil richness of middle age. At the 30th-anniversary tasting, the Eather brothers also opened a 1999 Alexander Munro Aged Release Semillon and it was gorgeous: at 22 years of age, it has become exactly what you want a mature Hunter semillon to be, all toasty complexity and green-gold fruit and a delicious creamy savoury quality. $80
2018 Meerea Park Alexander Munro Shiraz [Hunter Valley]
We need to talk about the word “earthy” as applied to wine. To some people, it sounds pejorative, as though this drink, made from fermented fruit, somehow tastes muddy or dirty. For me, “earthy” has more evocative, positive connotations, especially when I encounter it in classic Hunter reds like this: it conjures up the smell of walking across dusty soil in the warm violet light of dusk – the same soil, perhaps, that nurtured the rich, sweet, dark-purple grapes used to make this wine. A great shiraz that will mature beautifully for two decades or more. $110
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