Still a Dark Horse at Sandhurst Ridge

The blackboard at Sandhurst Ridge lists a 2017 Shiraz at thirty dollars. That wine is nine years old, and it is neither a library release nor old stock being cleared out. It is simply what they are selling this month. The Cabernet listed above it is also a 2017, and it also costs thirty dollars.

Wineries do not usually do this. Stock costs money every year it sits in a shed, so the standard move is to sell the wine young and let the customer carry the storage, the risk and the wait. Sandhurst Ridge carries all three itself, holds the estate reds until they are actually ready, and then asks the same thirty dollars everyone else asks for a wine bottled eighteen months ago.

A winery that changed hands and did not change

I first came here several years ago and was shown around by Paul Greblo, who made the wine. He was one of four brothers who founded the place in 1990, and he farmed it with Karen for three decades, continuing a family tradition that goes back generations in northern Italy. That is also why there is Nebbiolo growing in Bendigo.

The winery sold in early 2025 to a single family who moved up from the Yarra Valley and now run it between them: Stacey and her husband Andrew, her parents Joanne and David Barnden, and her sister Rachel with Matthew Carnell. I went back half expecting the usual signs of a handover, a tidied-up range or a few young releases pushed out early to get the cash moving, and I found none of it. The site out at Myers Flat is as picturesque as it was, the thirty acres still carry eighteen under vine, the cabins are still there to rent, the production is still tiny, and the wine still comes out when it is ready rather than when the cash flow needs it. Andrew showed me round, and told me the wine is now made under contract by a winemaker based in Daylesford.

Continuity like that is rarer than it sounds. A change of ownership is usually where a small winery's quirks get optimised away, because the quirks are the expensive part. None of that had happened here. Whether the winemaking had come through the handover as intact as the buildings had was a different question, and not one the place itself could answer.

What Halliday noticed

In 2020 the Halliday Wine Companion rated Sandhurst Ridge five stars and named it one of ten Australian dark horses for the year. Campbell Mattinson picked out the depth and power of the estate reds. That is the sort of recognition most wineries convert into a price rise, and this one did not.

Seven wines

Sauvignon Blanc 2025, $25

This was the least interesting wine of the day for me. It is a straightforward Sauvignon Blanc, and it is not a profile I reach for.

Sauvignon Blanc 2022, $22

This is the same variety again, three years older and aged in oak, which the 2025 never sees at all. It is an entirely different proposition. It has texture, it has weight, and it has something to say. It is a genuinely interesting expression of a grape I usually walk past. It also costs three dollars less than the 2025, which by my palate is the wrong way round.

Rosé 2025, $25

It is big and flavoursome, and well made for the style. Rosé is not what I drink and I was not converted, which is a limit of mine more than of the wine.

Nebbiolo 2021, $30

This is not the biggest or the smoothest Nebbiolo I have had, but it drinks well and it wants food. It is a solid middle-of-the-road bottle.

Cabernet Sauvignon 2017, $30

It shows good varietal expression, it is well rounded, and it has more time still ahead of it. You are buying a nine-year-old wine for thirty dollars with the development already done for you, and that combination is the whole case for this place.

Fringe Shiraz 2017, $24

This one is made from contract fruit rather than the estate vineyard, which the label will tell you if you look. The estate wines say estate-grown and bottled, and this one does not. It is simpler than the estate reds, it shows good varietal expression, and it is very hard to argue with at the price.

Shiraz 2017, $30

This was the best wine of the day. It is smooth and complex, it finishes long, and it has years of ageing still in front of it. I asked to try the Reserve alongside it and was told there was too little of it to pour for tasting.

The arithmetic of a nine-year wait

It is worth working out what that actually costs them. Every year a pallet sits in a shed it earns nothing, insures for something, and ties up capital a normal business would have recycled three times over. Three thousand dozen a year across the entire range, or around thirty-six thousand bottles, so there is no volume to hide the cost in. Then the wine comes out at thirty dollars, and the best thing I tasted all day was one of them.

Those numbers only work if somebody has decided that getting the wine right matters more than getting paid early. That is not really a business decision. It is an act of love with a business attached to it.

The wines that prove this place are not theirs yet

There is a split in that list of seven that I did not notice until afterwards. The 2025 Sauvignon Blanc and the 2025 Rosé are the new family's first releases. The 2022 Sauvignon Blanc, the Nebbiolo and both 2017 reds are Paul Greblo's. His final vintage, the 2024, has been bottled and put out as a tribute.

The two wines I was least taken with are the two that are theirs.

I want to be careful about what that does and does not mean. A Sauvignon Blanc and a rosé released within months of picking are the hardest wines to make a mark with and the least revealing about where a winery is heading. And this place more than most is built on the idea that you cannot judge a wine before it is ready. The same variety that got a shrug out of me as a 2025 was the surprise of the day as a 2022, and the difference is mostly the oak the younger wine never sees.

So the honest answer is that I do not know yet, and the argument this winery makes about its own wines is precisely why. The verdict on the new owners is sitting in a shed at Myers Flat, and it will be ready in about nine years.

I have been drinking these wines for years, and seven of them are already on the site, including their Cabernet Sauvignon and Reserve Shiraz. If you want to know whether they would suit you, my 60-second quiz works out your palate from what you already drink and matches you to bottles I have tasted myself.