Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023

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2025 Pinot Noir of the Year – Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion 

2025 Winery of the Year – Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion  “It’s been an outstanding winery for a long time, but the combination of energy and expertise – and no doubt plenty more besides – that winemaker Melanie Chester has brought since she arrived at the winery in November 2021 has frankly been breathtaking. Melanie is a force in Australian wine.” Campbell Mattinson, 2025 Halliday Australian Wine Companion

“Giant Steps is firmly established among the Australian wine elite. It’s long been a quality-obsessed outfit, but if anything, its sale to Jackson Family Wines in ’20 only sharpened the emphasis on quality. Single-vineyard chardonnay and pinot noir from across the upper and lower Yarra Valley are the foundation for the winery’s reputation, but really every winemaking excursion this winery takes has a habit of turning to gold.” Campbell Mattinson, for Halliday Wine Companion.

Established in 1997 in the Yarra Valley, Giant Steps has built a reputation based on expressive wines with purity and finesse. The Giant Steps wines are a direct reflection of their individual vineyard sites, located across the Yarra Valley from Tarrawarra to Gladysdale. Giant Steps was founded by wine industry pioneer Phil Sexton, who ventured from Margaret River to Yarra Valley to find the ideal site to cultivate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir of purity and finesse.

Distinctive expressions of Yarra Valley chardonnay and pinot noir take centre stage at Giant Steps. Giant Steps produce wines with delicate restraint and focused energy with single vineyard wines from Applejack, Sexton, Primavera, Bastard Hill and Tarraford Vineyards reflecting the diversity of the region. The winemaking philosophy is simple: valuing vine and soil health, low yields, and growing the best possible grapes that express their varietal characteristics and sense of place. Triple sorted, minimal intervention, gravity flow winery and an unwavering attention to detail and quality.

About this wine from the winemaker: “Applejack Vineyard is a special site, located on a dramatic slope in the upper Yarra Valley. It was planted by respected viticulturist Ray Guerin in 1997. The basalt based underlying volcanic soil and rock produce a characteristically fine yet extended, spicy and firm palate. The higher altitude results in a cooler and extended growing season, ideally suited to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (3-4 weeks later than central Yarra Valley). This vineyard is a special location for Pinot Noir in the Yarra Valley – its eastern aspect means the sun rises to warm and dry out the vineyard in the morning, but the vines are sheltered from the afternoon heat from the temperate rainforest that surrounds it. We notice it produces the most earthen pinot noirs, that have the beautiful perfume and exotic red fruits that we love about Pinot, with complex notes of fresh turned earth, miso and mushroom. The flavours combined with wound tannins, intense flavour and texture on the palate shows us the quality of the site for world class Pinot Noir.

“2023 was a small, high-quality vintage in the Yarra Valley. The season was defined by a cool Spring, a mild growing season, cool nights, and medium to high rainfall. 2023 was one of the coolest and latest harvests on record, with our first pick starting two and a half weeks later than the previous average. The grapes in 2023 had lovely fruit concentration with bright natural acidities.

“Hand-picked, fermented in a combination of small oak fermenters and stainless-steel open vats. The Pommard clone parcels were fermented as whole bunches, while the remaining clones were destemmed to whole berries and cold soaked for four days before fermentation started naturally. The final blend is 40% whole bunch fermented. All parcels were matured in French oak 20% new, 80% seasoned – for ten months in 225L barriques, predominately Taransaud and Dargaud & Jaeglé. The wine was not moved and kept in contact with its lees before blending in December. Bottled by gravity. No fining. No filtration.”

2025 Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion –  Pinot Noir of the Year “Giant Steps’ Applejack Pinot Noir goes back-to-back in this category, having won here last year. That’s a feat. This year’s release is outstanding for its polish, poise and persistence.” Halliday Tasting Team.

98 points, Philip Rich,2025 Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion “Named after the Applejack eucalypts that surround the vineyard, which was planted at Gladysdale in 1997 by Ray Guerin. Seven clones comprising 114, 115, MV6, D2V5, D5V15, Pommard and Abel. Whole bunches (40%) and 20–25% new French barriques. 2022 was a hard act to follow, but this superb wine gives it a shake. Exotic, aromatic and pure with its bouquet of wild strawberries, dark cherries, quince, spices and flowers. Densley packed, this saturates the palate, but, as always, it’s light on its feet at the same time. Seamless tannins round out another benchmark for what’s already a benchmark wine.”

96 points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front  “I tasted this wine a few months ago and loved it from the first sip. I have it on the desk now and there it is again, a glimmer in the glass. This wine is no one’s fool. It’s a pure expression of its place in the world and that place happens to be complex. It’s a cool wine with straight trees of tannin, perfumed red and black berries, lines of spice and echoes of woodsmoke. It’s a forest of a wine, a bit lush, a bit wet, a bit woody; verdant. At all times, as you drink it, the fruit comes at you like a swell. When you swallow this wine it flares out like you’ve reached the lookout at the end of a long walk. It’s a good wine. And it’s more than that.” August 2024

RRP $106  Our Special Price $99.99 – MAXIMUM 6 per customer.  VERY LIMITED.