Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery — Campbell Mattinson's highest honour.
Its history as the birthplace of fine Australian table wine makes it, arguably, Australia's most important wine estate.

Mount Pleasant is the name on the label of many of the greatest Australian wines ever made, and it remains a legend of both the past and the present. Since Maurice O'Shea first walked onto the property in 1921, its legendary vineyards — Old Hill, Rosehill and Lovedale — have stayed in the estate's care for over a century, tended in turn by O'Shea himself, and later Phil Ryan, Jim Chatto and current winemaker Adrian Sparks. Shiraz and Semillon rule supreme here, though Pinot Noir, in its own distinctive way, has its grand moments too. If you'd visited in the 1940s, you'd have been spellbound; the experience today is far more luxurious, but the wines in the glass are every bit as stellar.

Mount Pleasant is where O'Shea built the foundations of fine Australian table wine, working without electricity and often without profit, in pursuit of a wine style Australia had never really had before. His story — and the night his memory came full circle over a shared bottle with James Halliday — is told in [Halliday's Last O'Shea] and in Campbell Mattinson's biography, [The Wine Hunter].

See also [The Vineyard Maurice O'Shea Planted, Reborn in the Glass] for more on Mount Pleasant.
See also [Mount Pleasant Lovedale Vineyard Cellar Aged Semillon 2021] review.
See also [Mount Pleasant Mountain A Shiraz 2024]

Mount Pleasant 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.

Campbell Mattinson

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.

More about Campbell Mattinson

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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