About Us

Our Vine­yards

Like many wine­mak­ers we sub­scribe to the view that great wines are made in the vine­yard not the win­ery. We look to the soils in our vine­yards to pro­vide the foun­da­tion for healthy vines, intensely flavoured fruit and wines that artic­u­late the dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of the envi­ron­ment in which they are grown.

Fran­k­land Estate draws on two dif­fer­ent sources of fruit for its wines. Fruit for our Iso­la­tion Ridge Vine­yard range of wines is grown in the evoca­tively named vine­yard sur­round­ing our win­ery. This vine­yard is man­aged by the Fran­k­land Estate team using organic grape grow­ing principles.

Fruit for our single-vineyard ries­lings and for our Rocky Gully range of wines is sourced from other grow­ers in the Fran­k­land River region who share our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and high qual­ity fruit.

The Iso­la­tion Ridge vine­yard sits high on an iron­stone ridge with ancient duplex soils of gravel and loam over a clay sub-soil. The first vines were planted in 1988 and the vine­yard has been pro­gres­sively expanded to the cur­rent 30-hectares.
Organic grape grow­ing prin­ci­ples pro­hibit the use of syn­thetic fer­tilis­ers, pes­ti­cides, fungi­cides and plant growth hor­mones. Instead we rely on mid-row cul­ti­va­tion, recy­cled win­ery waste, ani­mal manures and a range of com­post­ing and mulching tech­niques to increase soil fer­til­ity and encour­age bio-diversity within the vineyard.

Click here for more infor­ma­tion regard­ing our organic grape grow­ing principles.

Fun­gal dis­eases are kept under con­trol with sul­phur and cop­per sprays and our res­i­dent flock of guinea fowl keep a dili­gent watch over insect, aphid and mite activity.

We antic­i­pate gain­ing full ACO (Aus­tralian Cer­ti­fied Organ­ics) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Iso­la­tion Ridge vine­yard in 2009.

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