About
The World's oldest Mourvèdre vineyard with a coveted secret. A masterful winemaker in the Barossa Valley of South Australia who discovered it and shared it with the world. Meet Dean Hewitson, owner and winemaker of Hewitson Winery with an unmatched passion for old, ancestor vineyards and letting them tell their stories through the wine. The vineyards were planted by the first settlers from Europe back in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Hewitson is located in the heart of the Barossa Valley and has made exceptional wines with international acclaim, not only because of their intensely flavorful, yet elegant quality but also because of the story behind these wines… including the spell that is casted by this coveted secret he discovered.
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People
Passion, intense, and ‘leave nothing to chance’. That is how we experienced Dean Hewitson when we got to spend several days with him. He was generous in the time he spent with us and genuinely cared. Dean’s life story has been driven by his intrigue for wine. As a young student, he enrolled at a nearby Agricultural College in Adelaide to get a degree in winemaking. Over the next decade, he worked in wine regions around the world and ended up at UC-Davis, California, where he obtained his master’s degree. He then went back to Australia and ultimately established his own winery in 1988. “To stand in some of the greatest vineyards of the world with their proprietors and they tell you about what makes these vineyards great…has given me a deep understanding of what is important in wine”. That experience formed the foundation for his pursuit of developing great wines right at home.
Place
Dean Hewitson: “A great wine comes from a great vineyard that is grown on a great site”. The grapes are sourced from both his own estate vineyards next to the winery and from long standing relationships with growers in the heart of the Barossa Valley of South Australia. The estate vineyards, including the Monopole Shiraz vineyard, are located on a very special strip of soil called the Golden Mile. A perfect terroir of iron rich red loam over deep brown clay over limestone, located right next to the North Para River and along the historic Seppeltsfield road. The Old Garden Vineyard is located just 10 minutes south from the winery, also along the North Para River, on deep layers of loamy sand over limestone. Temperatures get hot during the summer but fortunately nights cool down, supported by cool drafts from the river, resulting in nice diurnal temperature changes. In the fall, temperatures cool down allowing the fruit to fully ripen and creating expressive, vibrant wines.
Culture
“We have minimal intervention in the vineyard. We let the vineyard speak for itself each season and that record gets captured and expressed in the bottle. We do not want to interrupt what the vineyard will give and show us for that year”. Crop levels are not managed in these vineyards that are grown under dryland conditions without supplemental irrigation. “We prune them back every year and let the growing season determine their fate”. That minimalistic approach is also followed in the winemaking process. The key is to pick the grapes at the absolute right time and, because winemaking is a natural process, it is super critical to check off all the boxes of good management practices of winemaking. “Don’t leave it to chance”. Hewitson is a member of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia.
