Paringa Estate

Paringa Estate began in 1984, when Lindsay McCall, then a schoolteacher, bought a derelict orchard on Paringa Road at Red Hill South on the Mornington Peninsula and started planting vines the following year. He was told shiraz would not ripen in the Peninsula's cool maritime climate and planted it in the warmest corner anyway; the producer tells that gamble as its founding story. The first vintage, in 1987, came to 140 kg and was fermented in an old fish tank; the first commercial one followed in 1988. A proper winery went up in 1998 on the site of the original shed, and the estate grew from 78 tonnes in 2000 to 380 tonnes in 2018. Lindsay's son Jamie joined as assistant winemaker in 2012, after graduating from Adelaide's Waite campus and a stint at Domaine Drouhin in Oregon, and has led the winemaking since 2017.

The range runs in three tiers. Peninsula draws on leased and other selected sites around the region; Estate comes off the low-yielding home vineyards, some of them over thirty years old; and the Single Vineyard wines are made from the oldest blocks on Paringa Road only in years that justify them, and go back into Estate when they do not. MV6 is the backbone of the pinot plantings, with Abel and clone 667 in newer blocks. The top pinot and shiraz ferment in three 3,500 litre French oak foudres before going to barrel; the estate names Francois Freres, Saint Martin, D'Aquitaine and Ramond as its coopers for pinot.