OUR STORY

Jason Brown’s passion for wine was ignited in his family’s fine wine retail business. Growing up surrounded by some of Australia’s finest wines and winemakers, he developed a love for wines of elegance, brightness, and finesse. This was at a time when the market favored big, bruising, “blockbuster” styles. However, Jason believed that as consumers became more sophisticated, there would be a growing interest in more expressive, medium-bodied, elegant wines.

By 2002, Jason was ready to break away from the family business and follow his heart into winemaking. He and his wife, Alecia, wanted to make a mark by bringing something new to the already rich landscape of Australian winemaking. They embarked on an Australia-wide journey to find the perfect vineyard, seeking mature vines, a cool climate, or high elevation, and most importantly, uncharted waters with untapped potential.

In 2004, their search led them to the little-known region of Hilltops, home of the established but neglected Moppity Vineyard. Despite the challenges, they were convinced they could make wines that they loved and that could also challenge the wine establishment.

“We referred to the vineyard as a sleeping giant. There was so much untapped potential when we purchased Moppity Vineyard in 2004. Look in any textbook and in chapter 1, paragraph 1, it will tell you that site selection is the key. I agree, but I also don’t think it’s enough. What we’ve done demonstrates the value and benefit in stopping, listening, and paying attention to your site. Because if you understand the specific challenges, then little changes in viticulture can have a profound effect on fruit quality and flavor. Maybe it’s not just site, maybe it’s about responding to site, to allow the fruit to express itself. For us, that has been our biggest challenge and our greatest breakthrough,” Jason Brown

Moppity Vineyard shares many similarities with the Canberra Wineries, its nearest neighbours, but dig a little deeper, and you’ll see strong parallels between the soil at Moppity and that of Coté Rôtie in Northern Rhone. Apart from the atypical soil, it’s especially rare to find vineyards at Moppity’s altitude of 600m. In Australia, less than 1% of viticultural land is at such an elevation. This high altitude provides a unique combination of warm days and cool nights, resulting in greater flavor concentration with lower sugar/alcohol and higher natural acid levels, creating wines with more balance and refinement.

“The vines will madly produce sugar, flavor, and color during the warmth of the day, but then with a significant drop in overnight temperature, the vines will get that ‘shut down’ period. This slows the vine down and allows it to retain natural acidity and produce vibrant flavor profiles. If the nights and days were equally warm, the vines would produce heavy, jammy, flabby wines,” explains Jason Brown.

We now oversee one of the largest and most diverse collections of vineyards in Southern NSW. With the original 170-acre Moppity Vineyard, the 175-acre Coppabella Vineyard in Tumbarumba, the 25-acre Kerralee Vineyard in Murrumbateman, along with the expanded 50-acre acquisition of the Werrington Vineyard in Hilltops, we manage a total of 420 acres or approximately 400,000 individual vines of premium vineyard land. Each vineyard contributes its unique terroir to our wines, enhancing the regional and varietal diversity of our portfolio.

Through hard work and strategic investments, JB and Alecia have unlocked their vineyard’s true potential, revealing a harmonious union of power and elegance in their wines. Over the past decade, they have garnered numerous trophies and medals for Shiraz, Cabernet, Merlot, Riesling, and Chardonnay. They embrace the belief that Australia, as a young winemaking nation, has only scratched the surface of which varieties should be grown and where.

“We’re lucky in Hilltops, we have a kind of balance where we can bring together the best of both warm and cold climate wine styles. You’re getting a richness and generosity of the warmer styles but seeing restraint and savory characters, finesse, and elegance of the cooler climates. And because of this, we’ve been able to undertake a very exciting evolutionary process, where we can experiment and push the boundaries of diversity rather than continue to only focus on the same handful of classic varieties as other regions. That‘s what excites me about being here,” says Jason Brown.