Tolpuddle will become Australia’s most collected Pinot Noir

Tasmania’s Tolpuddle Pinot Noir will become, sometime in the next two years, Australia’s most collected pinot noir. It’s already Australia’s second most collected pinot noir, behind Mount Mary Pinot Noir, the latter of which has a few extra decades of production behind it. Given that 2012 was Tolpuddle’s first release, this has to be one of the fastest ever rises to the upper echelons of Australian wine in the history of Australian wine collecting.

This, I hasten to point out, is no slight on Mount Mary Pinot Noir, which itself is a remarkable story. Mount Mary Pinot Noir has never been made in large quantity and never you’d imagine will be. It has achieved its position as Australia’s most cellared pinot noir via the high road; by insisting on high quality standards over a long period of time.

This is just one of many fascinating insights provided by the release of Wineark’s Most Collected Wines of 2023 list. Wineark has almost two million bottles of Australian wine in its vaults across fifteen locations around Australia, which not only makes it Australia’s biggest cellarage but also, arguably, our most important. Every three years Wineark completes a full audit of the wines in its care, ranks them by total number and releases a list of the top 50. There are no judgement calls made, no favours, no nods or winks: it’s all pure numbers, and as a result it’s the best indication we have of what’s happening on the ground in the world of collectable Australian wine.

One of the interesting things about this endeavour is that all wines (in its cellarage) are tallied. If a wine comes in at, say, 250 for one of these audits, and then appears in the top 50 the next time around, the folks at Wineark know exactly how many places the wine has jumped, and therefore what kind of trajectory the wine is likely to be on (i.e. how hot it is in the market). And they can graph it.

This is how we know that Tolpuddle is likely to move to the number one Pinot Noir spot sometime soon. It’s also how we know that Standish The Standish Shiraz, grown in the Barossa Valley, is rising up the collectable charts with a bullet. It now appears at number 46 on the list, having risen 100 places in the past three years.

This is quite an achievement by Standish, given that the list – unavoidably – has an inherent bias towards wines made in larger quantity, and also to those made over a larger span of time. The more of a wine that is made, and the longer it’s been around, the more of it that can be cellared. Penfolds Grange, for instance, is made in sizeable volume every year, and has been produced since the 1950s. It’s no surprise then that it sits at the top of this Wineark’s list as Australia’s most collected wine.

That said, regardless of volume and time, Grange is always going to be up or near the top, thanks to both its general standing, and to its incredible quality. Indeed, given the asking price per bottle of Grange, it’s no mean feat that there are more bottles of it in storage than any other wine. If this list were compiled by estimated value rather than by volume, then Grange would presumably lap the field many times over.

There is a lot of talk about cool climate wines and of a general drift toward lighter styles, but when it comes to collecting, full-bodied South Australian red wine reigns fundamentally supreme. South Australia has as many wines on this top 50 list as all the other states combined (25 of the 50, with Victoria the next best represented with 10). It’s worth noting too that nine of the top most collected wines are either shiraz-based or cabernet-based, and that a whopping 34 of the top 50 wines on this list are made with these varieties.

Shiraz and cabernet are still far and away the champions of Australian wine collections.

That said, when you look at the list of the biggest movers up the list, five of the top ten are white wines. Chardonnay in fact has more representation on the “biggest movers” list than any other variety, red wines included. Tolpuddle Chardonnay is the biggest mover of all the chardonnays, and now appears on this list for the first time, having risen an impressive 66 places. The chardonnays of Giaconda, Pierro, Lake’s Folly and Mount Mary have also moved strongly up the list.

Top-flight chardonnay, as a category, is on fire in the wine collections of Australia.

There are many more interesting trends and insights to be gleaned by a perusal of this list, and by looking at what’s moved up and what’s moved down. Given that the wines of South Australia dominate the list, it’s no surprise that the Barossa Valley is the most represented individual wine region. But the number two best-represented region is the Hunter Valley, which may be more of a surprise to some, though of course it shouldn’t be.

One other thing to really shine through, looking at this list, is that Australian wine collectors clearly know what’s what. All the wines on this list are rock solid.

Full Winery List of Most Collected Australian Wines: https://wineark.com.au/most-collected-wines-of-2023/

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This article was first published in 2024.