About Val d’Or Wines

With a passion for botrytis wines, Kevin decided that they should set the goal of producing a great botrytis wine. Kevin was the principal of a rural K-12 school situated 85km from their small farm and Sally worked as an administrative assistant to teaching staff in the school. Older son Matthew ran out our water lines but discarded his jeans when a rash developed…A sight to behold!!Planting took place in October 1997 and by January 1998 the vines had reached the topwire and were beginning to be trained along the wires. Friends were amazed!

February 14, 1998 saw the first major drama in Kevin and Sally’s challenge. A tornado-like storm swept across the land along the low range on which the farm sits. When Kevin, Sally and their two children, Kim and Kirilly, drove up to the gate the next morning the small shed containing their computerised irrigation controls, fertilizer tank, and other equipment was scattered across the vineyard, in the tops of trees on neighbouring bushland and as far a two kilometres away across nearby rice farms. The family was lucky.  If they had been at the farm the day before, they would probably have sheltered in the shed and perhaps been killed or seriously injured.

The farm developed and in 1999 the first crop large enough to harvest ripened.  Then came the birds; black clouds of starlings which started eating the grapes at the ends of each row and worked towards the middle until literally every grape was gone.In 2000 Kevin took leave from his job and protected the grapes from the birds, trying every known trick- toy snakes, shiny objects and plastic bags hung from vines, shotgun, and waving arms.  It worked and most of the grapes were harvested and became “Autumn Blessing” 2000, awarded a Bronze Medal in the Griffith (Riverina) Wine Show in 2001.

We lost our entire 2001 bottling to a wild yeast in the bottling line in the winery that made our wine for us; major disaster #2!  In 2002 the family began netting the grapes to protect the grapes from the birds and this has proven successful each year since. When a UK winebuyer tasted the 2002 wine, he said, “You have a beautiful wine”. The drought has continued and the incredible heat of 2003 and 2005 again reduced output of our wine to a non-commercial level.  We picked our 2006 in May or June.

The family’s first export order , a pallet of our Silver Medal-winning “Autumn Blessing” 2002, was received in 2004 and repeat orders have continued since. We are very proud of this achievement in working with a major Japanese importer.  We also now export to “Harvest Vintage” in Alberta in Canada.

Our challenges have included the storm, the birds, wild yeasts, the worst drought in Australian history and doubts of people who have told us it couldn’t be done.

The Silver Medal-winning “Autumn Blessing” 2004 vintage is now available. Only two wines outscored this wine in the prestigious Riverina Wine Show, Australia’s top botrytis show.