Gil1
Wine Producers New South Wales
Thistle Hill Vineyards McDonalds Road, Mudgee 2850 Mudgee 28502
Wine Producers
Thistle Hill Vineyard McDonalds Road, Mudgee 28503
8 December 2002
Mudgee pair repay all the toil
AS with many who dream of starting their own label, only hard toil turned hills "full of thistles" into vineyards and wine for Thistle Hill.
This Mudgee vineyard was given the breath of life in the mid- 1970s by Dave Robertson and wife Lesley.
They were the midwives of the infant label which has grown steadily in stature year-by-year and which now is generally regarded as one of Mudgee's best.
Significantly it won two golds, three silvers and five bronzes at this year's Mudgee Wine Show and, more pertinently, is a posthumous recognition of Mr Robertson who died last year.
His family decided to press on and capture the best conditions Mudgee had seen for years.
With the help of friends they put the 2002 vintage into barrel.
A fitting memorial and a reflection of Mr Robertson's philosophy is the 1999 Thistle Hill cabernet sauvignon and the 2000 chardonnay - - both generous and robust in the best Mudgee tradition.
The cabernet sauvignon ($24) is deep red with aromas of plum, oak and a hint of spice, soft palate with velvety lingering fruit.
The chardonnay ($21) has a forward flavour with a full palate of refreshing lime, vanilla and peach4 .
__7 September 2020
American tech entrepreneur selling Australia's oldest organic vineyard: Winery__
US tech entrepreneur Rob Loughan has put Australia's oldest organic vineyard, Thistle Hill in Mudgee, north-west of Sydney, up for sale after more than a decade of ownership and investment.
The 80.5-hectare property on two titles at 72 and 74 McDonalds Road has been producing award-winning organic wines - those made without weedicides, insecticides or synthetic fertilisers - since it was founded by organic wine industry pioneers David and Lesley Robertson in 1976.
Mr Loughan, who co-founded Octane Software, the world's first cloud-based customer-relationship management application - which he sold for $US3.2 billion in 2000 at the height of the dotcom boom - took over Thistle Hill in 2009 with his wife, Mary.
They merged it with neighbouring property Erudgere, another renowned Mudgee vineyard that they bought in 2004. Erudgere was founded by the pioneering Roth family, which introduced wine to the Mudgee region in the 1890s. "The Roth family sold fortified wine to the gold diggers - the cement fermenters are still there," said Mr Loughan, who has been coming to Australia since the late 1990s.
"I've developed five to six tech companies and always launched them in the US and Australia at the same time, all the way back to 1997," he told The Australian Financial Review.
He said Mudgee came to his attention in the late 1990s as it was where his favourite Australian wine, the Rosemount Mountain Blue Shiraz Cabernet, was produced.
"I spent a lot of time in Mudgee, flying in and out between 2005 and 2009. In 2010 I moved onto the property at Thistle Hill and rebuilt it from the inside out," he said.
"The fruits of my labour was that the first vintage I managed became the No.1 organic wine in the southern hemisphere. We've constantly got very high scores - 92 and 95 - in the Halliday Wine Companion."
Mr Loughan said he had decided to sell Thistle Hill because he did not have the time to "give it the passion it deserves". He said he hoped the new owners would continue the tradition started by Leslie Robertson and her late husband Dave, who died in 2001.
The winery produces about 8000 cases a year and has long-standing supply contracts with Woolworths and Dan Murphy's. It includes a four-bedroom home, three-bedroom cottage and a modern winery and cellar door overlooking the vineyards.
Thistle Hill is being marketed by Trent Robertson of Ray White Mudgee with price expectations of between $3 million and $3.4 million for the land and winery.
"We're selling the property and infrastructure. If someone wants to buy the business as well we can go down that avenue," Mr Robertson said5 .