One of the great challenges in modern winemaking is to consistently produce Burgundian-style Pinot Noir at an affordable price. This is the determination of the Austin family, from the Moorabool Valley, within the cool climate Victorian region of Geelong.
Pam and Richard Austin planted their first vines in the Barrabool Hills, south west of Geelong, in the early 1980s. The soil they turned was the same worked by the pioneering Swiss more than a century before. In that heyday, the Geelong region was recognised as producing some of the finest red wines made in Australia's first one hundred years.
This was at a time when the Victorian wine industry out-produced the sum of the South Australian and New South wales industries by a factor of two.
Recognition of that link has played a major part in the Austin family's affair with wine and the move to Sutherlands Creek.
Richard Austin propagated the business plan and planted the vines. Pam Austin drove sales and, more recently, their son Scott Austin assumed control of the company and took Austins to the rest of the world.
The success of that determination, in achieving a pinot noir for the people, comes down to the acumen and persistence of the Austins family, an expertise well-honed in the corporate world and a love and understanding of the wine and food.