Wendouree
Wendouree is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery — Campbell Mattinson's highest honour.
With no cellar door and a mailing list some wait years to join, it remains one of Australian wine's most secretive cult labels.
The case.
There was a time in the early 1970s when the Wendouree vineyard was not only overgrown but essentially lay abandoned. The property had been sold but had not yet been re-sold, and in the whistle of these intervening years some of the trellising broke, the vines left to wander wild. Since this moment we have come a long way. The Wendouree winery now and for the past 50 years (Tony and Lita Brady bought Wendouree in 1974) has effectively been everything that every other winery is not. It’s humble, it’s human and it's quiet, the wines and their general mystique allowed to speak for themselves.
Wendouree has no cellar door, does not receive appointments, and has almost no retail or media presence. We know more about the day-to-day running of the KGB than we do of Wendouree.
Love, we do know, has been known to be blind, but the love of Clare Valley producer Wendouree as a place, as a people, and as a producer of Australian wine is clear-sighted and true. You can love Wendouree, but you can’t replicate it, or replace it. Wendouree makes wines of historical stature, quality and importance more or less every year, its idiosyncracy both unchallenged and adored. Its red wines, famously, present as firm sheets of velvet.
A subscriber to The Winefront site* spoke for many when he wrote, “If I were suddenly to find myself on Centrelink (unemployment) benefits, Wendouree would be the only annual subscription I would die in a ditch to maintain.”
The reply to this comment, by another subscriber to The Winefront, was “when I lost my job at Ansett I still bought Wendouree.”
Wendouree walks where no one else does. Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, and blends of these varieties. Old vines, swinging in the breeze. All the wines, effectively, are sold direct from the winery, via a mailing list that is near-impossible to get on (or at least, you have to write and then physically mail in your expression of interest, and then wait/hope for five years). If you are lucky enough to be on this mailing list, you sent an order form each year, and each of these order forms is marked with a different colour of Crayon, the colour related to how long you’ve been on the Wendouree list or, in other words, according to the length of your loyalty.
Crayon. In 2025. There’s only one Wendouree. As James Halliday once wrote, “this is in every sense a treasure beyond price”.
The wines that carry the case.
Pretty much everything but we’ll divert from the standard 10-Star template here because it’s, well, Wendouree.
Vertical tastings of Wendouree’s wines are rarer than rare. In 2022 Mike Bennie and Gary Walsh attended one of these rare events and wrote notes under the title Wendouree Shiraz Retrospective: Wendouree Shiraz 1983-2000. This is both an invaluable and essential resource for lovers of Wendouree Shiraz.
For the past 16 years Gary Walsh has [reviewed the wines of Wendouree] on The Winefront.
Wendouree Shiraz 24b 2022 (Clare Valley): Winefront.
Wendouree Shiraz 24b 2023 (Clare Valley): Winefront.
Wendouree Shiraz 24b 2024 (Clare Valley): Winefront.
Wendouree Cabernet Malbec 2024 (Clare Valley): Winefront.
Wendouree Cabernet Malbec 2016 (Clare Valley): Winefront.
Wendouree Cabernet Malbec 2013 (Clare Valley) Winefront.
The Wendouree Timeline:
Wendouree (A.P. Birks' Wendouree Cellars) was founded by the Birks brothers in 1892.
The first Wendouree wines were released in 1895.
Wendouree’s cellars were built in 1914.
1974. Lita and Tony Brady took ownership of Wendouree cellars.
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How to get yourself onto the Wendouree Mailing List
I’m ashamed to admit that I have had my time on the Wendouree mailing list, but that I am no longer on it. That’s a lapse that I regret. I got onto the Wendouree list by hand-writing a letter, putting it in an envelop, sticking on a stamp, and mailing it to the Wendouree winery, addressed to the owners Tony and Lita Brady. There was a waiting list at the time of this letter-sending but I still managed to get onto the list pretty quickly. I suspect that the waiting list, while still maintaining its inherent quirks, now involves a longer period of wait-time.
I mentioned Winefront subscribers above. There are few better resources in wine than Winefront subscribers, and on the subject of Wendouree, Winefront subscribers do not let you down. The crayon system is mentioned above; the colour (or lack of) a crayon marking on your order form (if you get to that stage) is a key part of the determination of what you do or don’t receive of your order. Below is the order of crayon importance. Hand-written initials are the promised land. “No crayon mark” is the start of your Wendouree journey. Credit of this info (and other details) goes to the subscriber in the Winefront thread here.
1. No mark
2. Red
3. Blue
4. Black
5. Handwritten initials of Tony or Lita (Promised Land).
Wendouree 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.
