Yarra Yering
Yarra Yering is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery — Campbell Mattinson's highest honour.
Yarra Valley.
Yarra Yering, at Gruyere in the Yarra Valley, was established in 1969 by Dr. Bailey Carrodus, and is both one of the founding wineries of the Yarra Valley, and one of its very best.
The case.
When Sarah Crowe applied for the job as winemaker at Yarra Yering, over a decade ago, she set herself apart from the other applicants for the job by emphasising her love of making shiraz. Yarra Yering is renowned for its cabernet and blends – and is in the Yarra Valley, famed for its chardonnay and pinot noir – and so emphasising the cabernet, chardonnay or pinot noir side of her craft would have been logical and standard. But Crowe had come from the Hunter Valley, and had an advanced appreciation of shiraz, and especially of how to enunciate the place of origin of the variety in clear terms. This was no doubt music to the ears of the people running the interviews. It has been music to the palates of wine lovers since.
What Crowe has done at Yarra Yering since she arrived in 2013 almost beggar’s belief; she has untied the shoelaces of the entire operation, vineyard and cellar both, and re-knotted everything for the better. Crowe and – as she herself would quickly emphasise – her team have taken the vineyards and the grapes they produce, and enabled them. She’s taken on the great power of a great Yarra Valley estate and treated it with great, empathetic, responsibility. As a result Yarra Yering finds itself now in a richer place. One of the best measurements of any endeavour is to ask the question: who or what has improved under the current management? In the case of Yarra Yering and Sarah Crowe, the answer is: everything.
Every wine in the Yarra Yering range – from cabernet blend (Dry Red No. 1) to chardonnay to shiraz (Dry Red No. 2 and Underhill) to the exquisite blend of Portuguese varieties (Dry Red No. 3) – is as good or better, now, than it has ever been.
Indeed, every wine in the Yarra Yering range, under Sarah Crowe’s guidance, is a benchmark.
The wines that carry the case.
Ninety-nine Yarra Yering wines have been reviewed on The Winefront site.
These reviews include:
35 vintages of Yarra Yering Underhill Shiraz spanning 1989–2023.
15 vintages of Yarra Yering Chardonnay 2008–2023
23 reviews of assorted Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 wines.
To single out a few:
Yarra Yering Dry Red No.1 2024 (Yarra Valley): Winefront.
Yarra Yering Carrodus Chardonnay 2024 (Yarra Valley): Rockstar chardonnay.
Yarra Yering Dry red No. 1 2017 (Yarra Valley): Winefront.
Yarra Yering Underhill 2019 (Yarra Valley): Winefront.
Yarra Yering is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery – the highest honour awarded by Australian wine critic Campbell Mattinson. 10-Star status recognises one thing: the quality of the wine in the glass, every glass, across the range. The full list of 10-Star Wineries constitutes Australia's Best Wineries.
