About Grosset Wines

Grosset Wines is an independent privately owned winery set in the Clare Valley producing just six highly regarded premium wines each vintage.

Grosset Wines’ annual production is approximately 9,500 cases (dozen). Seven people are employed in the winemaking and operation of the 20 hectares of estate vineyards.

Established in 1981 by Jeffrey Grosset in the historic township of Auburn at the southern tip of the Clare Valley 100 kilometres north of Adelaide, the Winery is stylish but functional and reflects the attention to detail that extends to the Grosset estate-owned Clare Valley vineyards and to the winemaking.

Leading Australian wine authority James Halliday wrote in 2008 of the range of six Grosset wines, 'these are all benchmarks'.

 

About Jeffrey Grosset

Stuart Pigott, a world authority on riesling, wrote after a visit to Grosset Wines that Grosset's wines, are interfused not only with that sense of place and season, but with something he calls ‘the spirit of Jeff Grosset', a phenomenon that occurs by a means that ‘science has yet to explain'.

These words evoke the drama of the journey that Jeffrey Grosset has made in the past almost three decades. Unremitting dedication to a process that is for him a combination of the creative – often beyond explanation – and the application of technique, experience and technology has brought him to the top of his profession. His immensely disciplined approach to winemaking involves meticulous attention at every stage, from the choice of the very earth itself, as in his selection of the famous windswept site for the Gaia, to the fine tuning during pressing and fermentation.

Similarly, his leading role in the quest to improve the closure of wine bottles was part of his recognition that technology and tradition had to meet and be reconciled. But none of his openness to technology and innovation has been at the expense of tradition or of his most deeply held convictions about his craft.

All of which helps you to understand how thoroughly deserved have been his many accolades, from Jeffrey's being voted the Inaugural Wine Magazine Australian Winemaker of the Year and International Riesling Winemaker of the Year at the Riesling Summit II, Hamburg, both in 1998 to being included as one of the world’s Top Ten White Winemakers in Decanter, UK (2006) and one of the fifty most influential winemakers in Wine and Spirits, USA (2005). More recently, in Decanter (UK) December 2009, he and his partner Stephanie Toole (of Mount Horrocks Wines) have been listed in the World's 'Famous Five' Wine Power Couples.

Grosset has also contributed to the debate on terroir in Australia by, as Max Allen has described it ‘suggesting a new, profound and unique way of thinking about the concept…’
This intellectual reach wedded to experience, intuition, and an indefinable touch of genius has brought Jeffrey Grosset to the peak of his art and profession. Already his achievements for Grosset Wines have been translated into advantages for Australian wine producers generally. As an acknowledged winemaker par excellence, he can – and unquestionably will – devote himself to the continuing challenge of seeking perfection for the wine lover.

 

About The Grosset Wines Cellar Door Experience

Every spring for the past 29 years, Grosset Wines has opened its cellar door on the first weekend in September, and closed again when the new release stocks sell out, usually 6 to 8 weeks later. This means that most Grosset cellar door customers tend to plan a visit to the Clare Valley to coincide with this time. (Have you planned this year’s visit to taste the Grosset range?) Either Jeffrey Grosset or one of the four well informed winery staff will be there to greet you.

To whet your appetite, here is a précis by Chris Plummer which appeared in The Australian Wine Journal, a new blog website dedicated to 100% coverage of Australian Wine:

Even though it's only open for a couple of weeks a year, Grosset offers the best cellar door experience I know. This is largely because Jeffrey Grosset hosts the tastings himself, but the consistently exceptional, seductive and sexual to the point of almost being feminine, wine quality helps. Quite frankly Grosset guarantees my visit to the Clare Valley every September.

(Read the full review at http://australianwinejournal.blogspot.com/2009/09grosset.html

Monday 21 September 21,2009)