Description
2025 Winery of the Year – Halliday 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: “Our Yarra Valley range showcases the best of the Yarra Valley as a region. The row orientations and clonal selection within our vineyards, combined with influences from soil and terrain, give us an incredible palette to paint the best picture of our Yarra Valley vineyards year after year.”
“The 2024 vintage is a more classic Yarra season. A cool start to spring and ideal flowering conditions lead to good fruit set and moderate yields. December was cool and mild, with significant rainfall at New Years and during the first week of January giving the vines a good drink leading into the heat of February. Mid to late February was drier and warmer than is common in the Yarra, leading to great ripening conditions with no disease pressure and a quite fast vintage. In 2024, all of our Pinot and Chardonnay was ready in quick succession, leading to a compressed harvest – with the whole valley picked in the space of 3 weeks (where it normally spreads across 6 weeks). An exciting ride for our team but ultimately giving us wines with great flavour, bright acidity and balance.
“At Giant Steps, we hand pick 100% of our fruit and fastidiously hand sort in the vineyard. Pinot Noir has one of two processing pathways at Giant Steps – either fermented semi carbonic with 100% whole bunch or destemmed and fermented with whole berries. When the fruit arrives at the winery, we determine which direction to take the parcel depending on clone, vineyard, stem ripeness and flavour. Our whole bunch batches are fermented warm with minimal mixing for 14 days. The destemmed whole berry parcels are cold soaked for 3 days before we allow them to warm up and start fermentation naturally. All of our cap management is done using gravity drain and returns, allowing for gentle extraction before pressing. Each parcel is then transferred by gravity to French oak barriques for malolactic fermentation and is kept on those lees for the duration of its maturation. The parcels are blended together in Spring before bottling in December. This wine is bottled by gravity without fining or filtration. Parcels are matured in French oak (10% new, 90% older) for eight months. Blended in October and then bottled by gravity without fining or filtration in November.”
95 points, Phillip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion “A 50/50% mix of upper and lower Yarra estate and grower fruit. 30% whole bunches. A very bright crimson purple. Pretty and complex with aromas of red cherry skins and rhubarb together with some pink peppercorn spice and a light savoury edge. More approachable than the ’23. As a young wine, the medium-bodied palate is spicy, silky and long. It’ll probably age well but it’s so good to drink now that there’s no need to bother!”
93 points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “Classic styling here. Red and black cherried fruit flavour but with a dark, woodsy edge. Fragrant herb and wood spice top notes. Good fruit and fragrance but taut, finessed, almost filigreed. Balanced on a pinhead stuff. The aromatics here in particular feel incredibly pure and yet, at the same time, the nose is not simple and nor is it suggestive of sweetness. The control is high and yet the wine feels real. Quality wine. Beautifully turned out.”
RRP $45 *Our Special Price $37.99 when you buy 6 or more of this wine*
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