Godfrey Wines Update February 2016

Lisa and I started Godfrey Wines in 2008. Since then we have purchased a winery site in the Barossa and made wines from both the Barossa and the Clare Valley. Since the GFC we have been travelling around the country, my wife practicing law while I pedal our wines. We have been in Brisbane and Melbourne and now we have decided to make Sydney our home.

From 2008 we knew that in order to be a competitive small wine business in Australia we would need to create a new model that maintained low capital intensity and versatility of production. As such we have never owned any vineyards and we were able to purchase fruit from well-established grape growers to make the wines we wanted. We built a winery in the small town of Springton in Eden Valley, South Australia and since then have been making wines there. We are very proud of the wines we produced and if you have not yet had a chance to try the range – send us an email and we will put together a mixed dozen for you. Some of those wines will never appear again, so this is your last chance to sample them. Don’t worry – some will continue to be made and will be as appealing as ever.

This year we have decided to sell our Barossa winery and move our winemaking operation to Bathurst, NSW. Bathurst is a fast growing regional centre with close access to Orange and Mudgee. My mother Christine and her partner William Lewis will be the custodians of the new winery and no doubt you will all have a chance to meet them and see their wonderful property in the years to come. We will be making a selection of wines from the Clare and Barossa Valleys but we are very excited to be able to commence making NSW Wines in the 2016 vintage. We have chosen a site for the winery and we will break ground once it thaws! Here is a photo of the site – the view alone is spectacular and this is going to be a very special place for us to make wine and for you all to visit.

We are also very excited to announce that we are planting our first vineyard in Spring 2016. After some careful analysis and site selection we have chosen four varieties to plant on our Bathurst property. I will save the details until they are in the ground and happily growing, but rest assured they are cool climate gems!

To celebrate our new winery and also to give you all a chance to see some of what we achieved in the Barossa, we have decided to release some of our cellared wines for you all to enjoy and at some very smart prices. Of particular note is the 2010 Godfrey Edward I Shiraz which is just starting to come into its own and the 2010 Godfrey Alexander I Shiraz which has evolved beautifully into a world class Barossa Shiraz. The 2011 POLISHED Chardonnay, which was bright and powerful when it was young has softened slightly now to expose its hidden minerality and a complexity from oak maturation that is seldom seen in Australian Chardonnay.

Thank you all for your continued support and we look forward to sharing our new wines with you in the year ahead.

Sandy, Lisa, Edward & Charlotte Godfrey