This single-vineyard selection is a limited-release barrel selection based on the conditions of each season; the kind of wine a French producer might call a Tête de Cuvée. Handpicked parcels of fruit were whole bunch pressed, settled overnight, and racked to French oak hogsheads for wild yeast fermentation, with approximately 40% new oak. Malolactic fermentation occurred naturally on 75% of the blend, completing in spring, and the wine was left on lees—mostly unstirred—for 10 months prior to blending and bottling. The 2025 vintage was early, marked by a warm, dry growing season and favourable conditions through harvest, delivering outstanding generosity, concentration and clarity while preserving the freshness and site character of a classic Bannockburn vintage.

This is Bannockburn in a glass, combining ripe stone fruit, citrus and baked apple with savoury notes of straw, bread dough, petrichor and struck flint. Concentrated yet restrained, it is gently reductive and saline, with classy oak, wild honey and grilled peach adding texture and depth. Fresh citrus acidity drives the long, taut, grippy finish, making this a precise, site-expressive expression of the Moorabool Valley.

Lucas Grigsby is a Bannockburn legend. He has been the viticultural manager for the last 35 years and knows these vineyards like nobody ever has or likely ever will. The wine named in his honour comes from just 0.87-acres of close-planted vines that were grafted over from Shiraz in 2019. The clone is Bernard 76. Grigsby and Matt Holmes introduced the Bernard clone to Bannockburn to expand the vineyard's clonal palette, which, in the beginning, was mostly Penfolds clones.

Grigsby is broad and rich, offering ripe stone fruit, fennel, white chocolate and creamy oak on the nose. The palate brings ripe fruit, nougat and spiced yoghurt, with Clone 76 adding distinctive fruit character and the high-density planting contributing concentration and texture. Previously known as De la Roche, “of the rock”, it is expansive but not loose, with grip, power, saline freshness and bright acidity. Generous, delicious and deeply layered, this is the most complete expression of Grigsby to date.

Stuart Hooper planted Olive Tree Hill in 1976, making this block the oldest vineyard on the Bannockburn property. Alongside the Chardonnay vines, which produce the S.R.H Chardonnay, Hooper laid down a block of own-rooted MV6 Pinot, which are now approaching their 50th vintage. Bannockburn tells us that these old vines are consistently that last to ripen, producing small, concentrated berries which, in turn, yields their darkest and most structured Pinot Noir.

Across all single-vineyard Pinots, Matt Holme’s winemaking remains the same, give or take a new barrel or two. So, what you taste are the true colours of each parcel. Here, the wine is steeped in old-vine concentration with flavours oscillating between red fruit and black, with earthy spice and mulchy, forest floor complexity. There’s an assured calmness to the palate, which combines both powerful, spice-charged perfume and regal structure. It’s not hard to see why Bannockburn are now bottling these old vines sui generis: the wine has character to burn.

De La Terre is a beautiful, sloping vineyard that was planted in 2007 to 8,333 vines per hectare. Still quite rare in an Australian setting, the planting density results in very low natural yields of Burgundy Grand Cru levels. De La Terre lies beside the Serré vineyard, although it sits on the slope, whereas Serré is on a small plateau directly above. Despite this proximity, the wines are startlingly different. Along with the slope, the clonal selection (predominantly 777, with a portion of 114), and the mixed row orientation across the block's two sections — north-south on the flat top, east-west on the sloping section — contribute to the difference in personality.

Penned in 2012, James Halliday's "reminiscent of a young DRC," remark remains a ringing endorsement for this close-planted site. The 2025 serves as a powerful reminder of the heights this site can scale. Fruit was handpicked and fermented in open-top fermenters, with a portion of whole cluster layered through the ferments; the wine spent 13 days on skins before being pressed into French oak hogshead barrels, 30% of which were new.

The DNA of this site is becoming ever more prominent. Lighter and finer in structure than Serré, De La Terre is an elegant, high-toned Pinot Noir with lifted aromas of dried herbs, incense, red cherry, floral spice, cherry cola, bitter Campari and orange rind. The high-density planting brings concentration as detail and texture rather than weight, with fine tannins, fresh acidity and a persistent mineral finish. Filigreed, fragrant and distinctly savoury, this may be the finest expression yet from the site.