Yarra Yering

Yarra Yering is a Mattinson Ten Star Winery.
Only the best of Australia’s best are ranked as a Mattinson Ten Star Winery.

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 so emphasising the cabernet 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. And 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. The vineyards and the wines, both, are riches. 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.

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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, and 23 reviews of assorted Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 wines.