The Hunter Valley is one of Australia's wine regions. Located in the state of New South Wales and first cultivated in the early 19th century, it was one of the first Australian wine regions.Johnson, Hugh, and Jancis Robinson. The World Atlas of Wine. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2005. Print. As well as Hunter Valley Sémillon, the region produces wine from a variety of grapes including Shiraz, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Verdelho.
Under Australia's wine appellation system, the Hunter Valley zone Australian Geographical Indication (GI) covers the entire catchment of the Hunter River and its tributaries. Within that, the Hunter region is almost as large, and includes most of the wine-producing areas, excluding the metropolitan area of Newcastle and nearby coastal areas, some national parks, and any land that was in the Mudgee Shire (at the western heights of the catchment). There are three named subregions in the Hunter region. These are the Upper Hunter Valley, Broke Fordwich and Pokolbin subregions. The Lower Hunter Valley is not strictly defined, but in general includes the Pokolbin subregion, along with the districts around Wollombi, Mount View, Cessnock and Lovedale. Much of the history of Hunter was played out in this area and it is generally what is referred as the Hunter Valley "wine country".
The majority of the Hunter Valley's most prestigious vineyards are located on the southern valley and foothills of the Brokenback Range (part of the Great Dividing Range). The topography of the Hunter includes mostly gently sloping hills with modest gradients. The one notable exception are the vineyards of Mount View just west of the town of Cessnock. The terrain of the Upper Hunter is noticeably flatter as the Goulburn River and other tributaries of the Hunter River dominate the area. The greater river system of the Hunter, which includes the Goulburn and important tributaries such as Giants Creek, do provide needed irrigation for areas such as the Upper Hunter that can be prone to drought condition.
The success of the Hunter Valley wine industry has been dominated by its proximity to Sydney with its settlement and plantings in the 19th century fuelled by the trade network that linked the valley to the city. The steady demand of consumers from Sydney continues to drive much of the Hunter Valley wine industry, including a factor in the economy by the tourism industry.
History The wine-making history of Hunter Valley begins with the European settlement of the Sydney and the New South Wales region of Australia in the late 18th century as a penal colony of the British Empire. The Hunter River itself was discovered, by accident, in 1797 by British Lieutenant John Shortland as he searched for escaped convicts. The region soon became a valuable source for timber and coal that fuelled the steamship trade coming out of Sydney."Hunter Valley Wine Country." Hunter Valley Wine Country Tourism 8 May 2010
Grapevines were planted in Sydney soon after its discovery in 1788 and as settlements fanned northward up towards the Hunter, government authorities actively encouraged plantings as a means of promoting both public sobriety and safety. The logic behind the promotion of viticulture and winemaking was that men tend to become more drunk and disorderly when under the influence of highly alcoholic spirits. If enough wine was provided, it was believed, it could be a moderate influence that could tame the "savagery".
It was under these auspices that the grapevine followed land prospector John Howe as he cut a path through the Australian wilderness from Sydney up to the overland area in what is now known as the (Lower) Hunter Valley proper in 1820. Today, the modern Putty Road between the cities of Windsor and Singleton follows Howe's exact path and is a major thoroughfare for wine tourists coming into the Hunter Valley from Sydney. As previous plantings in the coastal areas around Sydney succumbed to the humidity and wetness, and plantings to the west were limited by spring frost damage, northern reaches leading to the Hunter became, almost by default, the wine region of the new colony.Halliday, James. "Regional Spotlight – Hunter Valley" Wine Pros. 29 October 2001. Web. 25 May 2010.
Thomas Melville White Winder is credited with planting the first grapes in the region on arriving 1820 to the Hunter.The University of Newcastle (20 June 1992). "Windermere – A Gracious Reminder of Bygone Days" (PDF). UNINEWS. pp. 4–5 He built Windermere, the historic house in 1821 which was on the hunter and had a fleet of ships which sent Cedar timber and other supplies south to Sydney and overseas. He planted a vineyard on the estate prior to 1840.Mitchell, Cecily Joan (1973). Hunters River. Newcastle, NSW: The Administrator of the Estate of Cecily Joan Mitchell.
James Busby and further plantings
The first major planting in the Hunter Valley came in 1825 when James Busby, widely considered the father of Australian wine, purchased vineyard land between the settlements of Branxton and Singleton and named it Kirkton after his Scottish birthplace near Edinburgh. In 1831, Busby travelled extensively throughout Europe and South Africa, collected cuttings from over 500 vineyards, including six cuttings of Syrah from the Hermitage hill in the Rhône. When he returned, many of these cuttings were planted in the Hunter Valley at the Kirkton estate now owned by his brother-in-law William Kelman.
In the 1830s, several vineyards were planted in the Hunter Valley, including the first vineyards by George Wyndham of Wyndham Estate, many with cuttings directly provided by Busby at Kirkton. In 1847, the Hunter Valley Viticulture Society was founded with the mission of expanding viticultural knowledge and improving techniques in the region. By the end of the decade, plantings had expanded from to over . Between 1866 and 1876 the region saw further expansion as the acreage of planted vines topped 1800.Halliday, James. Wine Atlas of Australia. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. Print.
Most of the early vineyards of the Hunter were located in the northeast section of the valley in the fertile alluvial plains along the Hunter River. The river provided easy transport of the wine down to the seaside port of Newcastle and onto Sydney. By the 1860s, plantings began to move further south and west towards the foothills of the Brokenback range near Pokolbin and Rothbury where many of the most highly esteemed vineyards of the Hunter are now found.
Mid-19th century to early 20th century In the mid 19th century, wines from the Hunter Valley began to garner international acclaim. In 1855, at the Paris Exhibition (notable in wine history for the unveiling of the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification), Hunter Valley wines won numerous awards from tasting panel judges. In the official report for the exhibition, the judges wrote "The [Hunter Valley's] wines included white wine akin to those of the Rhone; red light wines like those of Burgundy; Mousseux varieties with a bouquet, body and flavor equal to the first Champagnes; Muscat and other sweet wines, rivaling the Montignac of the Cape."Johnson, Hugh. Vintage: the Story of Wine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. Print. A Hunter Valley sparkling wine made from James King of Irrawang Vineyard bested the French Champagnes to win the honour of being served at the table of Emperor Napoleon III during the exhibition's closing ceremonies.
The expansive growth of the Hunter Valley in the mid to late 19th century came directly from its monopoly position of the lucrative Sydney market. The provincial government of New South Wales had enacted regulations that placed prohibitive duties on wines from other areas such as Victoria and South Australia. This had the effect of limiting any competition for Hunter Valley winemakers in Sydney. But the turn of the 20th century brought a shifting dynamic to the Hunter Valley wine industry as the provinces on the Australian continent became federated into states and a new constitution was drafted that banned such interstate trade barriers. The opening of the Sydney market to the flux of out of state wine, as well as the changing public tastes from dry wines to sweet, fortified ports, muscats and sherry signalled a period of steep decline for the Hunter Valley.
Following World War I, many returning Australian veterans were given land grants in the Hunter Valley. This temporarily produced an up-tick in plantings but the global Great Depression as well as a series of devastating hail storms between 1929 and 1930 caused many growers to abandon their vineyards. Some of the land was bought up by the growing wine estates of Tyrrell, Elliotts and Wyndham that would later become driving forces behind the Hunter Valley's next boom period."Hunter Valley – Australian Wine Regions " Wine Diva Australia." Wine Diva. 1 June 2010
Another pivotal figure during this period was Maurice O'Shea of Mount Pleasant vines in the Pokolbin area. While many producers in Australia were focusing on fortified wine, O'Shea continued to espouse the virtue of Australian dry table wines. O'Shea's foresight would pay off as consumer taste shifted towards drier styles of wine in the 1950s and 1960s. A flurry of plantings began in the Hunter, including 1963 establishment of Lake's Folly by a Sydney surgeon, Dr. Max Lake. Along with Rudy Komon, Johnny Walker and wine columnist Len Evans, who all believed in the future of the Australian wine industry, Lake begin to extensively plant red wine varietals, including the reintroduction of Cabernet Sauvignon to the Hunter Valley.
1960s to present-day
In the 1960s, a Sydney wine merchant named Leo Buring began marketing the first commercially successful Hunter Valley Semillon under the label "Rhine Gold". In 1971, Murray Tyrrell released Australia's first commercial bottling of Chardonnay which signalled the beginning of the Australian Chardonnay craze. According to wine experts Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, Tyrrell's Vat 47 Hunter Valley Chardonnay was the wine that "launched a million bottles." From 1956 to 1976, plantings in the Hunter Valley grew from to over . Despite a slight reduction during the global recession of the 1980s, the Australian wine boom of the 1990s pushed plantings even further to over .
While the Hunter Valley has been supplanted by the massive Riverina wine region as the largest producer of New South Wales wine, it still accounts for around 3% of Australia's total wine production and is one of the country's most recognisable regions. Today there are over 150 wineries in the Hunter, producing a wide range of wine.
Climate While the Hunter Valley is usually grouped in with the rest of Australia as having a Mediterranean climate,MacNeil, Karen. The Wine Bible. New York: Workman Pub., 2001. Print. the climate is actually humid subtropical, with distinctive maritime influences from the Pacific Ocean. With its northerly latitude and close oceanic influences, the Hunter Valley is one of Australia's hottest and wettest wine regions. Flanked by mountains to the west and north the Hunter Valley acts as a funnel, pulling cool ocean breezes into the area. This effect is similar to the cooling that Napa Valley receives from San Pablo Bay in California. Without these cooling breezes, quality wine grape production would be nearly impossible. However, with those cooling breezes also comes heavy rainfall and periodic cyclonic storms in the summer and autumn months.