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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.

Tobias Ansted – Chief Winemaker

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.

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.

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

Tobias Ansted – Chief Winemaker

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.

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.

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

Ian Hopkins - Principal

In 2002 some colleagues asked me to join them in a vineyard venture. Initially I said no, but finding the site was Heathcote I was intrigued. Two weeks later, standing on the ridge looking at the spectacular view, I was sold. My friends thought I was crazy when I told them I’d suddenly bought 200 acres on the slopes of the Mount Camel range. When I stand on the ridge and look out over spectacular view of vines and grasslands and blue skies, I’m happy to live with the crazy title. This land speaks to me. The name Tellurian meaning ‘of the earth’ relates this sense of connection, as well as a reference to Heathcote’s famed red Cambrian soils.

As a young man during summer vacations I worked at Lindemans vineyards near my family home in Corowa. Wrangling vigorous shiraz vines onto wires, I never dreamt one day I would own my own vineyards. After completing my Aeronautical Engineering Masters, I joined Australian-owned Consulting Engineer services firm Norman Disney Young (NDY), eventually becoming CEO and Chairman with offices in every capital city in Australia and an office in London.

My work travel allowed me to visit wineries and as a growing wine enthusiast, company entertaining usually involved wine. I started seriously collecting Australian and imported wines in the mid-80s, discovering Heathcote at the Victorian Winegrowers Exhibition. Ron Laughton’s Jasper Hill wines were a benchmark for me.

As it transpired the original partners and I decided to go our separate ways fairly quickly and we split the landholdings into two blocks. I set about planting a second site of 5 ha in 2003.

Coming from an engineering background makes me very quality-focused; if you’re going to do it, do it bloody well, be methodical: get the basics right and build on them along the way.

One of my smartest moves was reaching out to local winemaker Tobias Ansted. After some convincing he made our first vintages, 2007 and 2008 at Balgownie. He agreed to join us, provided we worked with viticulturist Tim Browne to get the best out of our vineyards. This was a great step forward in our evolution. Tim helped us to source deep bore water, which allowed us to buy back the original Shiraz vineyard and plant additional varieties in 2011.

Rhone varieties, particularly Shiraz, do well in Heathcote. This variety brought me into the wine industry, and my ambition is to make benchmark Heathcote Shiraz—contemporary, elegant wines that are wonderful expressions of our vineyards. We are also excited about the quality of our grenache, mourvèdre, marsanne and viognier and planning plantings of roussanne, carignan and possibly cinsault.

After a trip to Sicily, we were struck by the parallels of our climate. We loved the local Fiano and Nero d’Avola and planted Nero at our vineyards in 2011 and Fiano in 2014. Both varieties have already proven themselves brilliant additions to our range. My folly was planting riesling, inspired by Ron Laughton. Despite some naysayers outside our region, the first vintage was terrific!

As an agricultural endeavour, you are at the mercy of the elements. You can engineer the risk levels down, but the elements throw up intrigue and challenges.

The joy is when everything comes together, and it all works beautifully.