2022 Bannockburn De La Terre Pinot Noir

Stuart Hooper started Bannockburn Vineyards with a vision.

After flying Lancaster bombers in WWII and building a grocery business in Geelong, he decided to retire and follow his dream to craft wines that would emulate those from the great regions of France.

In 1974 he selected a plot of land in the Moorabool Valley that was perfect - it had the ideal combination of soil and aspect, and a reputation for producing some of Australia's finest wines back in the 1870s before phylloxera hit.

From the start, Bannockburn was uncompromised. Vines were planted close, like in the ideal French plots. The wines were decidedly terroir-driven and Burgundian, which was rare for this era in Australian wine history.

While Hooper passed in 1997, a succession of incredible talent - including legend Gary Farr, Michael Glover and now gun Matt Holmes - has only served to heighten the unrivalled Bannockburn legacy. Couple that with a meticulous, mature, famously well-kept vineyard (featuring Australia's oldest close-planted Pinot Noir vines) and it is little wonder that these are some of the finest Shiraz, Pinot Noir & Chardonnay wines in the country.

Famously, an earlier vintage of De La Terre was once likened to young DRC by James Halliday, charting the wine for a long-lineage at the top of Australia's Pinot Noir apex. It's a serious wine, earthen, brambly, brooding and unmistakable. Expect the beguiling charm of Grand Burgundy to shine through, with the unmistakable bush essence and savoury fleck of a close-planted vineyard in one of Geelong's most prestigious addresses.