The Wantirna Estate release is an absolute highlight of the CellarHand calendar. The icing on that cake used to be the annual visit from Reg and Maryann to taste the wines with us. These days, Reg doesn’t make it out, so we make do—and it’s a delightful consolation—with Maryann.
Reg Egan, who established this haven on the fringe of the Yarra Valley back in 1963, is pushing 94 and still drives a tractor and tends the vines a couple of days a week. He thought suburbia would swallow up the vineyard decades ago, and it would’ve, but for the Green Wedge policy of the 1970s. As the cacophony of modernity encroaches ever closer, Wantirna Estate remains its own Eden. So much has changed, but these old vines still eke out their exquisite quartet of wines.
“This place is ideal for making wine, because of the soil, because of the clay underneath, because, although it’s getting a bit hotter, it’s still relatively cool,” Reg told us last month as he cast an eye over the gnarled trunks and their incipient shoots. “It’s a lovely place to make wine.”
The place can count itself lucky to have lovely people making said wine. The intimate knowledge accrued by Reg and his younger daughter means these vines get precisely what they need to set them up for a perennially low-yielding, high-quality harvest. Picking dates are even more crucial when the entry-level and prestige cuvée are one and the same.
“When you’ve got a single vineyard, your wines are just an expression of that block of land and those vines in that year,” says Maryann as we sit on the vineyard’s edge. “The vintage date might change and this and that, but I think that single-vineyard idea is nice. It’s not like you’ve got the tasting bench and 20 different wines, putting in 6% of this and 12% of that. Here, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”
With Reg (now in his nineties) still keeping an eye on proceedings, Maryann produces wines that consistently illustrate the Yarra Valley’s greatest virtues. They are made in tiny quantities, then sold in a handful of restaurants, fine wine retailers and on two vineyard open days, the first of which is, fortuitously, this weekend. They are as beautiful as they are important, and they show why Wantirna Estate is both the foundation stone and the guiding light for the Yarra Valley of today.
Nick Ryan, The Australian
And people don’t get upset—quite the opposite. Reg is generally unwilling to accept praise for the pioneering spirit that sparked the resurgence of the Yarra Valley, and they’re both far too unassuming to dwell on the estate’s reputation.
But when the release rolls around, they can’t exactly ignore the emotions this place stirs among the general public. “People do love it, and they’re so proud to have our wine in their cellar going back,” says Maryann. “And you pick up new people, and some write on their order forms things like, ‘I feel so lucky to be able to be part of your wine family.’ People really do see it as something special.”
Fantastic wines are being made right across Australia, of course—something that couldn’t be said of the ’60s, when this place was getting started. As well as being world-class vignerons, Reg and Maryann are modest, appreciative wine-lovers with good taste. And as Maryann says, she likes to buy wines grown by people she likes and admires.
They both know, just as we do, that special glow you get when you drink a wine from people and a place you love. In a world of automation and expediency, the slow, hard way with no switch to flick or lever to pull—just the fruit the same old vines give you—is even more precious.
“And, of course, there aren’t many left doing what we do,” says Maryann, as the spring sunlight feathers out across their 10-acre patch, this finite source of infinite pleasure.
2024 Wantirna Estate Isabella Chardonnay RRP $112
White peach and dried pineapple, grapefruit pith and dried chamomile. Finesse and precision, but not afraid to lean into flavour. That’s what is really special here, the way the wine builds tension and how power is deployed with restraint. Neither skeletal like some, nor exaggerated like others. Just perfectly pitched.
14% alcohol, 96 points. Nick Ryan, The Australian Oct 2025
This is always a complex and beautifully crafted wine. On the nose you’ll find aromas of white peach, just-ripened apricot, crushed stone and a little praline. On the palate, I really like the interplay between the wine’s flavour and texture and the fine thread of acidity, giving the wine both structure and length. It’s good now but will be even better in four to six years, if not longer from now. Lovely wine. As good, if not better than, the ’23. Just 85 dozen bottles made. 97 points. Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion Sep 2025
It’s a richer expression in 2024 offering plenty of Chardonnay flavour, though it’s still bright and focussed. I’m thinking white nectarine and yellow peach, grapefruit, a little lemon zest and aniseed, almond meal, with spicy cedar oak in support. It has some gloss combined with intense acidity, a light chalkiness, feels concentrated and pulls a little toasty and savoury on a finish of excellent length, and a bit of lemon zest. Give it a year to settle I’d say. Very nice. 94+ points. Gary Walsh, The Winefront Sep 2025
2023 Wantirna Estate Lily Pinot Noir RRP $112
A wine of ethereal beauty and balletic poise. Forest berries, sour cherry, rhubarb, a little rubbed herb and soft spice. Silky and graceful, a soft, satiny sensuousness in the mouth with gently grippy, fine tannins embroidering the edges. 13.6% alcohol, 96 points. Nick Ryan, The Australian Oct 2025
A deep and brightly coloured crimson purple. Both to look at and smell, this is a concentrated and complex Wantirna pinot that’s going to need some time. Aromas of black cherry, damson plum and dried red rose petals lead onto the palate, which is densely packed, structured and very long. Have it with food now, for sure, but those who still have some five to ten years from now will be very well rewarded. 96 points. Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion Sep 2025
Raspberry, red cherry, mint, cedar, pencils and spice, something of a potpourri perfume too. It’s medium-bodied, all red fruits, a little spicy and autumnal, fresh raspberry crunch to acidity, with a firmness to tannin that offers grainy grip, finishing a little sappy with lively acidity, savoury flavours, and excellent length. Oak still shows a little too much as at now, but this is a strong release, and I like the ‘mineral’ character it offers too. 95 points. Gary Walsh, The Winefront Sep 2025
2023 Wantirna Estate Amelia Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot RRP $112
Cabernet as drawn by MC Escher, exquisitely etched, scrawling volumes into the tiny details. Mulberry and cassis, fennel seed and bay leaf, violets pressed between dusty tissue paper. A diaphanous sheath of fruit deftly draped over a compact and composed framework. Lovely fine acid line and microfine tannins that sit effortlessly in the wine. 13% alcohol, 97 points. Nick Ryan, The Australian Oct 2025
A 45/45/10% cabernet sauvignon/merlot and cabernet franc/petit verdot blend with the majority coming off the original dry-grown 1963 plantings. A fabulous, bright crimson/purple. A touch riper and richer than the ’22. There’s a sumptuous core of dark fruits, violets, cedar and fresh pencil shavings on the nose. It’s just as enticing on the perfectly pitched, medium bodied, elegant and very persistent palate. Everything is in place for a long and productive life! 97 points. Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion Sep 2025
Blackcurrant, raspberry, redcurrant, lots of pencils, a dusty spicy almost peppery top note, roast red capsicum, some menthol, violets too. It’s medium-bodied, very tight with cool glassy acidity, again those pencils and dark tobacco, a fine grainy grip to tannin, with a crunchy cranberry finish of excellent length. It’s a vintage where the Cabernet Franc perfume and brightness seems to ride quite high, and I like that sort of thing very much. And the pencils. I love pencils in my Cabernets. It’s finely-etched and classic in its Yarra Valley restraint. I reckon it’s tops. 96 points. Gary Walsh, The Winefront Sep 2025
2023 Wantirna Estate Hannah Cabernet Franc / Merlot RRP $199
A cabernet franc/merlot blend matured in one new French barrique for 11 months. A deep-ish dark cherry red. Discreet with aromas of black cherry, licorice, iodine and a little hedgerow. A touch more compact and firmly structured than the last couple of Hannahs; there’s a gentle earthiness that carries through onto the well-balanced and persistent finish. A wine that will continue to come into its own as it slowly unfurls over the next decade, if not longer. 95 points. Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion Sep 2025
