Jasper Hill Emily's Paddock Shiraz/Cabernet Franc 2024

Ron Laughton was a CSIRO food scientist when he and his wife Elva established Jasper Hill in 1975, taking up an unfashionable corner of Heathcote 70 miles north of Melbourne. The choice was geological: Heathcote sits on a narrow north-south band of iron-rich Cambrian-era clay and volcanic basalt, the iron-red soils that give Heathcote Shiraz its mineral signature. The Laughtons planted what became Emily's Paddock and Georgia's Paddock — vineyards named after their two daughters — and produced their first commercial vintage in 1982.

The two paddocks total roughly 26 hectares between them. Emily's Paddock leans on Shiraz and Cabernet Franc; Georgia's Paddock has 13 hectares of Shiraz alongside Riesling, Nebbiolo and Fiano experimental blocks. The estate is dry-grown and biodynamically managed, with low yields and minimal-intervention winemaking — long ferments in open-top vessels, traditional basket pressing, no acid adjustment. The result is the dense, ferrous, age-worthy Heathcote style that Jasper Hill defined for the region in the 1990s.

Daughter Emily Laughton worked alongside Ron from 2001 until his last vintage in 2014; she now runs the estate with her husband Nick and her children Ella and Nate. The wine range is short and considered: the two single-vineyard Shiraz expressions (Emily's Paddock and Georgia's Paddock) anchor the cellar list; the alternative-varietal Riesling, Nebbiolo and Fiano work as expressions of the same terroir under different fruit. Jasper Hill is widely regarded as Heathcote's reference producer.