Estate release 2025 - Newsletter

Greetings from Bannockburn,

Vintage 2026 is now complete. After the warmth of 2024 and 2025, it marked a cooler, slower season, with gradual ripening and a later harvest. Early signs point to a finer, more restrained expression, with bright fruit, strong natural acidity and good structure.

We now turn our attention to the impending release of our 2025 Estate wines, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Gamay. This is a vintage we feel really strongly about, with a clear sense of energy and definition across the range.

The 2025 Estate wines are available from now. See below for the full 2025 release and review notes.

We’re also offering a mailing list special on two 2024 single vineyard releases: Winery Block Chardonnay and Olive Tree Hill Pinot Noir. New labels, not new sites, both long central to Bannockburn and now expressed in their own right. They offer a distinct angle to the range, complementing our existing single vineyard wines. 

Thanks for your continued interest in the wines. We very much look forward to getting them out into the world.

Cheers,
The team at Bannockburn Vineyards

The Wine Front Reviews

Chardonnay 2025
96 points. There are yellow stone fruits characters here, and an array of sweet spice notes, but it’s the flesh, the rush and the juice of grapefruit and ripe pear flavours that both dominate and seduce. This wine really does make you dive quickly in for more. There’s a subtle smokiness, some tonic and mineral-like notes, and an especially noticeable (extra) linger to the finish. This is one of those wines where the acidity itself feels flushed with flavour. The aftertaste then adds some pebble-stone characters, just because it can. What a wine. Campbell Mattinson, winefront.com.au.

Pinot Noir 2025
95 points. The first word that came to mind was unsweet. I’m not even sure that’s a word. This is a particularly earthen Pinot Noir with root vegetable characters running through black cherry, chicory, woodsmoke and fistfuls of roasted spices. I’m tempted to call this Pinot Noir for grown-ups but that’s a silly phrase so I’ll refrain. We get beautiful, fine-meshed, grapey tannin here, and sinewy characters, and a genuine, savoury push of flavour through the finish. I’m as certain as I can be that this wine will mature well. Campbell Mattinson, winefront.com.au.

Gamay 2025
94 points. Bannockburn makes such good gamay. It’s grown on a 1.4 acre block planted in 2014. Absolutely pitch perfect. I mean, come on. It’s so bright and yet, at the same time, so well fruited; it has freshness and substance and luminance in equal and harmonious measure. Cherry-berry flavours, some blueberry, some blood orange and ferrous notes, and intricate stitchings of spice. Trace elements of herbs and smoked, roasted meats. A bit of gloss but a liveliness at the same time. Everything here is exactly the ticket. Campbell Mattinson, winefront.com.au.