West of the old town of Narrikup is where you’ll find Poacher’s Ridge. This is a fertile, prehistoric country; a land that bends backs, but gives back ten-fold – if you listen closely.
The history of this landscape dates back to a time when the Australian and Antarctic landmasses collided to create a rolling, Proterozoic terrain, rich with ancient soils, dark clays and granodiorites - seasoning our wine with a unique minerality only found through countless years of geological wayfaring. As the years have slowly shaped the environment, deep weathering has ground the granite into a mineral-rich soil perfect for fruitful vine growth.
The elevated position of the vineyard’s ridge forges a natural rambling path for the cooling, salted winds to whip in over the weathered landscape and scent the warmed vines. Our close proximity to the Southern Ocean ensures variable rainfall throughout the year. The generally wet winter months, warm summer days and cool evenings provide a climate mirroring the finest Bordeaux regions.
To best reflect what we call the ‘Poacher’s Style’, we shape and position the canopies to foster fruit varietals with deep structure and complexity. This allows us to craft wines we love to drink - elegant, expressive, cool climate, medium-bodied wines. Planting our vines in a north-south direction bathes the vines in maximum sunlight, which filters through the canopy to gently ripen the fruit. We hand-prune the vines, hand-pick the grapes and intervene as little as possible, before ageing the reds in premium French oak before bottling.
The history of this exceptional land is the story of Poacher’s Ridge. They are honest echoes of an earlier time - a microclimate dated in a bottle of wine. We invite you to pour yourself a glass, to breathe in deep and to lose yourself amongst the ancient soils, the weathered landscape and the decades of winemaking traditions that led to this single glass of wine.
