New Stonier Unturned: This is not Julian Grounds’ first rodeo
Julian Grounds, chief winemaker at Stonier on the Mornington Peninsula. “The wines have to have flavour. It’s not an ego exercise. I want the drinking of these wines to be an enjoyable exercise.” PICTURE: Campbell Mattinson.
The last time I worked in a real job with real staff, real hours and real superannuation there was a manager in the next office who bought and drank – when it came to wine – nothing other than the wines of Stonier. This was the mid-to-late 1990s. At this time the space under my bed was chocked full of wine, as was the space at the bottom of my wardrobe, as indeed was all the spare cupboard space in this work office. All I wanted to do at the time was talk, think, drink and collect wine. To help scratch this itch then I’d wander into the next office and talk to this bloke about Stonier. He loved Stonier Chardonnay. He loved Stonier Pinot Noir. But what he loved most of all was Stonier Cabernet Sauvignon – because, as he quite rightly pointed out, it tasted different to any other cabernet that he could find.
Stonier cabernet was pretty thin, as a general rule. It’s long disappeared from the Stonier stable, and from its vineyards. The thing is though, if you liked pinot noir back then, or indeed light-bodied reds, there weren’t a great deal of options, or not in general wine retail. In fact whenever I think of light-bodied reds from this era I think of two wineries mostly: Stonier and Scotchman’s Hill. In the wine shops that I frequented at least – which were not top-end outlets – they were the best of the widely-availables, so to speak.
All this is of no consequence save for one legacy fact: to certain people, above a certain age most probably, there’s a great deal of affection for the Stonier name, as a wine producer. Stonier introduced cool climate chardonnay and pinot noir to a great many. It either has a place in the history books, or in our hearts, as a result. Stonier was a gateway to the wonderful landscape that we now enjoy.
The star of Stonier – which is on a great site, on the Mornington Peninsula – has never stopped shining, though it’s probably wanted over the years for a bit of extra polish, or love. Despite the outstanding efforts of a long line of excellent winemakers, Stonier is no longer one of the first wineries mentioned when talk turns to the best producers of its region, or not routinely anyway, courtesy mostly of the fact that other or newer wineries in the region have performed so well. Quality-wise Stonier’s wines have always remained up there, though. Every day – just to peer behind the curtain for a second – winemakers email me to enquire whether I’d like to visit them. One of the first wineries I ever visited, with a wine writing hat on, was Stonier, over 20 years ago. Tod Dexter was the winemaker then. One of the joys of my current wine life is the opportunity to re-visit places with a lot of time elapsed in-between. Time is depth and depth is meaning. When Stonier’s new winemaker – Julian Grounds – emailed me about a visit, it was time to say yes. I haven’t been to the place since that Tuesday morning 20+ years ago when I tasted with Tod.
I’d never met Julian Grounds, or not properly, though I should have done so. In 2018, in one of the most shameful/embarrassing moments of my life, I was booked on a trip to visit the Craggy Range winery in New Zealand, where Julian was the winemaker. My house at the time was a 3.5 hour drive from the nearest international airport. I arrived at the airport for this trip, only to discover that I’d left my passport at home. There was no time and no way to recover the situation. Instead, then, I drove to the viewing carpark just outside the airport, and – at what should have been my departure time – watched the Qantas jet take off and disappear over my head.
That is one helluva hollow feeling.
Julian Grounds is an unusual winemaker for, likely, many reasons, though the two reasons that come to my mind are these: he went straight to winemaking direct out of school, which very few people do, and (partly) as a result ended up in senior winemaking roles at an unreasonably young age. As he says himself, “I was always much younger than everyone else”.
The other unusual thing about Julian Grounds is that he is unusually good.
Julian Grounds in the original Stonier vineyard in 2025. It’s a lyre-trellis. One of Julian’s first jobs was at Wignalls in WA, noted for its Pinot Noir, which was/is lyre as well.
He was dux of his winemaking class, and he was dux of the Len Evans Tutorial. He grew up in WA, and his first winemaking job was at Leeuwin Estate. The potted version of his resume makes for beautiful reading: Leeuwin, McHenry Hohnen, Wignalls, Medhurst, Giant Steps, Craggy Range, a stint in Oregon in the US, and now head winemaker at Stonier. He’s made a lot of top-end Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in his time. The journey wasn’t necessarily in that order and I’ve probably left details out, but basically he has worked at A Grade winery after A Grade winery, and generally with A Grade people as well. “I was fortunate enough to have Flamo (seminal winemaker Steve Flamsteed) as a mentor early on,” he says, “and he taught me that it’s all about the sum of the parts”.
I could have put all the above details together and drawn this conclusion a time ago. But the words that sat clear in my mind, as I tasted through Julian’s first batch of releases from Stonier, were these: this is not Julian Grounds’ first rodeo.
The Stonier wines taste as though they are being made by someone who knows exactly what they are doing and, more than that, by someone who knows – already – exactly what he has been put in charge of. He just seems to get Stonier. I drank, as I eluded to above, more than my fair share of Stonier Pinot Noir back in the day, and when I picked up the ‘standard’ 2024 Stonier Pinot Noir that Julian Grounds has produced, I was struck – unexpectedly – by how evocative it is. The main goal of wine is the same goal as the jumbo jet: it’s meant to transport. There are better wines in the Stonier range but this is the wine, as I tasted through them all, that excited me the most, because it told me that the winemaking hands in charge of Stonier now are not just sure, and safe, but they have a feeling for things beyond and behind the numbers. There are various vineyards – all now managed/controlled by Stonier – but Stonier should taste like Stonier.
Because, when a winery manages to taste of itself and like no one else, it provokes the opposite feeling to the one I felt on watching the jet disappear over my head: you do not feel hollow, you feel amplified.
Before Julian served me that standard 2024 Stonier Pinot Noir, he said, “This is the wine that will be people’s most common connection to Stonier.
“I don’t want it it be fragile, but the suggestion of fragility is important,” he said of Stonier Pinot Noir. “Pinot needs to have an air of vulnerability. It’s what makes people want to keep coming back because they want to know what’s going on.”
I don’t like to say a great deal when I’m tasting in the company of winemakers. Cards are best played close. But I probably gave my pleasure away, on hearing the above. Julian continued:
“There’s not a single part of this wine, even though it’s larger volume, that is homogenised. It’s 35 different ferments. It’s 2-3 tonne open fermenters. The end is larger, but everything is treated small.”
This, no doubt, is good news for all the old lovers of the wines of Stonier and, indeed, for all the new devotees these beautiful wines will attract. Indeed it’s not just a new winemaking regime; it’s new ownership. For the first time in a couple of decades, Stonier is out of “corporate” ownership and is back in the hands of individuals, where it belongs. To wit: the 2024 Stonier Reserve Chardonnay has a production of 220 dozen. It used to be 2000 dozen. There’s no reason why a 2000-dozen-make wine can’t be fantastic, as many producers annually prove. But the message in the shift of these numbers is pretty clear.
Julian: “I am making these wines to sell to people. They have to have flavour. It’s not an ego exercise. I want the drinking of these wines to be an enjoyable exercise.”
That, they most certainly are.
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Reviews and scores of the current Stonier wines are on The Winefront site.
Stonier Reserve Chardonnay 2024
Stonier KBS Vineyard Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Hillcrest Vineyard Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Merricks Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Merricks Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Reserve Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Hillcrest Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Pinot Noir 2024
