Terroir & Time: Tellurian x L'Hotel Gitan

Tobias Ansted – Chief Winemaker

When Ian first approached me to join Tellurian as a winemaker, I said no. Luckily, Philip Moraghan from Curly Flat gave me a nudge. He said, "You should meet up with him — he wants to make benchmark Heathcote wines."

That idea stuck with me. My dream has always been to make expressive wines from beautiful vineyards — so I came on board in 2006 as a consulting winemaker, and officially took on the winemaking role in 2008.

More than a decade later, I’m still deepening my understanding of our vineyard — how each variety behaves through different seasons and across the various blocks. It takes time, commitment, and a bit of experimentation to make wines with personality, wines that are clearly of a place.

One of my first steps was bringing in viticulturist and longtime friend Tim Brown to help us manage the vineyard for optimal fruit quality. In 2009, we began making wines in a small rented winery in Taradale. By 2011, we had built our own winery at Toolleen — from the ground up. That clean slate gave us the freedom to create a beautifully simple, highly flexible setup.

If we want to whole-bunch press 100% of a parcel — no problem. If we want to destem everything, we can. It’s designed to move with the style of each wine.

My journey into wine started straight out of school. I didn’t come from a wine-drinking family — Chestnut Teal and Ben Ean Moselle were about the extent of it. I just wanted to work outdoors. During my final year of school, I spent time at Lark Hill Winery, where the family encouraged my curiosity and introduced me to a world rooted in land, flavour, and diversity.

I also worked at Farmer Bros Wine & Spirit Merchants in Canberra — an independent retailer with shelves full of local and European wines that expanded my palate and wine awareness.

After graduating from Charles Sturt University, I became a 'flying winemaker’ for Cellarworld International, consulting to wineries in Romania, Argentina, and France.

The experience that shaped me most was working as a stagiaire at Domaine Vincent Girardin in the Côte de Beaune. Vincent was incredibly generous — he shared not just his own wines but many great bottles of Burgundy. I’d come off a few tough vintages in a large commercial winery in Cowra, processing 3,000 tonnes with no trained cellar hands, and I was close to leaving the industry. Vincent brought back my enthusiasm. He reminded me that winemaking is about more than logistics. It’s about place.

I returned to Australia determined to make wines from small domains where the vineyard leads, and the wines speak for themselves. Before Tellurian, I spent eight years as chief winemaker at Balgownie Estate in Victoria.

Today, we grow and make wine from 23 hectares of our own vineyard. Our focus is on Rhone varieties — Shiraz, Mourvèdre, Grenache, Marsanne, Roussanne, and Viognier — along with Italian varieties like Fiano and Nero d’Avola, which have proven beautifully suited to Heathcote’s warm climate.

Shiraz was, and still is, the backbone of Heathcote. But the future is bright for alternative varieties.

Personally, I have a deep love for Rhone grapes (reinforced after a vintage at Cave Yves Cuilleron), and I may be one of the few people in Australia who genuinely enjoys both making and drinking Viognier.