The Real top wineries of Australia

We have recently been told that the Number of Australians drinking wine has gone up significantly in 2021 (it is now 46%). Most of them drink Australian wine, for obvious reasons, with a reasonable number of imports from New Zealand. There is also, of course, considerable international interest (Why Australia’s latest wines are making waves). It therefore seems reasonable to ask whether we can work out which are the top wineries in Australia.

Well, we could at least try.

About 70% of all Australian wine by volume comes from the three big inland irrigated wine regions: Murray Darling, Riverina, and Riverland. In my youth, these were treated as environmental disasters, as the routine flood irrigation of the well-leached semi-desert soils simply brought all of the salts back up to the surface, making agriculture difficult. They are usually mentioned just in passing in wine books. However, the winemakers recently announced that they were forming a new association, Australian Commercial Wine Producers Limited (ACWP), to lobby for more of a say in Australia’s wine policy.

At the other extreme, the Canberra District has less than 500 ha of vineyards, with 34 wine producers (although only a dozen are well-known). Needless to say, all of these cool-climate wines are of premium quality. Obviously, it is likely to be these sorts of wineries that appear in any list of the best.

The method I will use in this post is to look at the winery rankings from The Real Review, a web site run by Huon Hooke and Bob Campbell, along with their collaborators (listed here).

Each year since 2018, they have presented a ranking of the wineries from New Zealand (by Bob Campbell) and from Australia (by Huon Hooke). The rankings are based on the average scores for all of the wines they have tasted during that year, from each of the wineries.

Many wine commentators seem to see their job as encouragement, and thus present optimistic wine ratings, for example. The Real Review, on the other hand, prides itself on being much more realistic. In this sense, their wine scores and winery rankings might well be a very good place for me to start.

However, it is important at the outset to emphasize that only a subset of the wines of Australia and New Zealand get tasted in any given year. In this sense, it is entirely possible for a winery to not be ranked in any given year, even if it has scored highly in other years, simply because insufficient wines were rated that year (the minimum necessary appears to be 2).

So, what I have done is download the winery lists for each of the four years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). These simply list the wineries in rank order of their wine scores, with a different number of wineries each year. I then pooled the yearly lists for each country, giving me a combined list of 690 wineries for Australia, which I will report here.

From these combined lists I extracted the data for only those wineries that appeared in all four yearly lists, which is 197 (29%) of them. (Number of wineries that appeared three times: 117, appeared twice: 153, appeared once: 223.) These consistent wineries were then given a new rank, within each year, based solely on this subset of the wineries. I then averaged these rankings, thus producing a list, showing those wineries that rated consistently well across all fours years. (Note: Neal Hulkower has recently noted that this approach is called the Borda Count.)

This final list is included at the bottom of the post.

This list is not too bad, given the limitations of the original data. While we cannot say that all of the top wineries are included, or that they have necessarily risen to the top of the list, those wineries that are listed at the top are definitely among Australia's top wineries.

I could, of course, argue with some of the rankings. For example, based on my own recent experience, some wineries do seem to be a bit low down the list; for instance: Lark Hill, Tim Adam, Margan, Leconfield, O'Leary Walker, Stanton & Killeen, and Baileys of Glenrowan.

There are also wineries that scored well on those few occasions when they appeared in a list, including: Bindi Wines, Silkman Wines, Houghton, Bekkers Wine, Poonawatta, and Wendouree. I can also think of a few good wineries whose wines I drink, but that are not present in the lists in all years, or are missing entirely, including: Peel Estate, Knight Granite Hills, FireBlock, Paracombe, Delatite, Pauletts, Tahbilk, Brand's Laira, Dandelion, Josef Chromy, and Logan Weemala.

I know of no alternative list of wineries; so this one is what we have. If you want to learn a bit more about some of the Australian wineries, then James Halliday’s Wine Companion site has notes about more than 2,000 of them (not all still extant). There are, of course, ranked lists of individual wines, such as the Langton Classification of Australian Wine (based on auction prices), but not of the wineries themselves.

So, we could compare this list with one alternative, which produced somewhat different results. This is the Wine & Spirits Top 100 Wineries of 2021, “as determined by their performance in the magazine’s two-step blind-tasting process, and celebrated for their exceptional wines”. This lists only three Australian wineries, which is one less than the number listed for Greece! These are: d’Arenberg, Penfolds, and Woodlands.

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Australia's top wineries, as consistently ranked by The Real Review

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197

Average score 192.0 191.5 190.8 190.3 188.0 186.5 185.3 184.5 182.8 180.3 179.8 178.8 177.0 174.8 173.3 171.5 171.0 170.5 170.3 169.0 167.3 164.0 162.8 161.5 160.3 159.5 158.8 158.3 158.3 157.0 156.5 155.0 153.5 153.3 152.8 152.5 152.3 150.3 150.3 149.5 148.5 148.3 148.0 146.3 144.5 144.5 142.8 140.3 138.8 137.0 136.8 136.5 136.0 133.8 132.8 132.5 131.5 130.8 130.8 130.0 129.5 128.5 126.3 124.8 123.8 122.3 121.3 120.8 120.8 118.5 117.5 117.3 117.0 115.8 115.8 114.3 113.8 113.5 112.5 112.3 112.0 112.0 111.0 111.0 110.5 110.5 110.3 109.3 108.0 107.3 103.3 103.0 100.8 100.8 100.5 100.0 99.5 99.3 98.0 98.0 97.5 97.0 96.8 96.0 95.3 94.5 93.5 89.8 89.0 89.0 88.0 87.5 86.3 85.5 84.8 84.3 84.0 82.8 82.5 79.5 78.3 78.3 75.0 73.5 73.5 72.8 72.5 72.3 71.3 71.0 70.5 70.5 69.0 68.3 67.3 65.5 64.3 63.5 62.3 60.0 60.0 59.5 59.5 59.3 58.8 58.3 58.0 57.0 56.5 53.5 52.8 52.5 52.0 51.5 51.0 50.8 49.0 48.3 47.8 46.5 46.3 45.5 44.8 44.5 44.0 44.0 43.8 43.5 43.3 41.5 41.3 39.5 39.3 38.8 38.5 38.3 37.8 36.0 35.5 33.8 33.0 32.8 32.5 32.0 30.8 29.0 24.8 24.5 24.3 23.0 22.5 21.8 18.8 18.0 17.3 16.5 16.3

Winery Hardys Cullen Wines Penfolds Yarra Yering Wine By Farr Wynns Coonawarra Estate Henschke Mount Pleasant Yering Station Oakridge Wines Château Tanunda Yalumba Best's Great Western Lake's Folly Clonakilla Giant Steps Howard Park Wines Pooley Wines Mount Mary Vineyard Torbreck Brokenwood Wines Stonier Tyrrell's Wines Tolpuddle Vineyard Hentley Farm Wines Vasse Felix Moss Wood Head Wines Taylors Morris Frankland Estate Yangarra Estate Vineyard Woodlands Yeringberg Langmeil Winery Robert Stein Vineyard Handpicked Wines Cape Mentelle Pewsey Vale Grosset Xanadu Vinden Estate Levantine Hill TarraWarra Estate Balgownie Estate Wolf Blass Yabby Lake Vineyard Jim Barry Wines Moorilla Estate Crawford River Wines Stella Bella Wines St Hallett Tapanappa Voyager Estate Thompson Estate Hayes Family Wines Mount Langi Ghiran Vineyards Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard John Duval Wines Pepper Tree Wines Fraser Gallop Estate Devil's Lair Terre À Terre Polperro & Even Keel Wines Bellwether Quealy Brown Brothers Shaw + Smith Ten Minutes by Tractor d'Arenberg Leeuwin Estate Petaluma Seppeltsfield Bird in Hand Dr Edge Seppelt Hoddles Creek Estate Gundog Estate Sittella Wines Mayer Eldorado Road Fighting Gully Road Aphelion Freycinet Vineyard Crittenden Estate Wirra Wirra De Bortoli Flametree Domaine Naturaliste Coriole Hurley Vineyard Ross Hill Keith Tulloch Wine McHenry Hohnen Vintners Delamere Mount Majura Vineyard Huntington Estate Michael Hall L.A.S Vino Stefano Lubiana Wines Soumah St Hugo House of Arras Singlefile S.C. Pannell Peter Lehmann Montalto Vineyards Mewstone Wines Evans & Tate Wantirna Estate Mount Horrocks Home Hill Stargazer Thistledown Wines Curly Flat Kreglinger Wine Estates Glaetzer Wines Elderton Sidewood Sons Of Eden Cloudburst Samuel's Gorge Chaffey Bros. Wine Co De Salis Longview Vineyard Allegiance Wines Baileys of Glenrowan Gemtree Vineyards Port Phillip Estate Bream Creek Eldridge Estate Primo Estate Balnaves of Coonawarra Z Wine First Drop Wines Bremerton Wines Schmölzer & Brown Artisans of Barossa Gala Estate Deviation Road Stanton & Killeen Domaine Chandon Pressing Matters Tertini Wines Lake Breeze Wines Juniper Estate Windows Estate Karrawatta Jacob's Creek Clyde Park Vineyard Flowstone Pikes Chapel Hill O'Leary Walker Wines Derwent Estate Helm Meerea Park Robert Oatley Vineyards Two Hands Wines Geoff Weaver UMAMU Estate Kalleske Schwarz Wine Company Bay of Fires Wines Calabria Family Wines Leconfield Foxeys Hangout Philip Shaw Grace Farm Castle Rock Estate Margan Family Shingleback Prancing Horse Estate The Lane Vineyard Snake + Herring Craiglee Tim Adams Kilikanoon Massena Vineyards Alkoomi Higher Plane Wines Lark Hill David Hook Wines Tim Smith Wines Geoff Merrill Wines Moppity Vineyards Pike & Joyce Lou Miranda Estate Vinea Marson Oliver's Taranga Vineyards Sandalford Thorn-Clarke Tenafeate Creek Wines Bleasdale Vineyards Brown Magpie Wines Catlin Wines Heroes Wines