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Background Centennial Vineyards has 80 acres under vine consisting of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Verdelho, and Tempranillo. Centennial Vineyards produce both estate grown wine as well as wine made from small parcels of premium fruit including Rondinella and Corvina, sourced from other regions. This enhances their range and allows for better continuity of wine quality from year to year. All wines are crafted on site in their state-of-the-art winery allowing them to harness maximum aroma and flavor. The winemaking philosophy is to create wines which best express the inherent flavors and qualities of the grape and present them at optimum bottle age. The winery is owned John Large, a former director of Liquorland and founding shareholder in Cellarmasters, and investor Mark Dowling. The winemaker, Tony Cosgriff, trained at Lincoln University in New Zealand. He has worked in a number of wine regions including stints at Peter Lehmann in the Barossa and at Geyser Peak in California. Tony believes you cannot beat small wineries for the sheer joy of hands-on winemaking. “I just about know the contents of each individual barrel”, he says, with only slight exaggeration. The Southern Highlands is a super premium wine region in New South Wales. To encourage fruit ripeness Centennial Vineyards crops in the order of 1.5 tons per acre and spends a great deal of time and energy tending the vines with measures such as hand pruning, crop thinning and leaf plucking to allow more sunlight into the fruit to achieve optimal fruit condition. As the Southern Highlands most awarded wine producer Centennial Vineyards have won over 235 medals at Australian wine shows in the past three years. As winemaker Tony Cosgriff said “It is not sufficient to be making average wines in today’s market, you have to stand out from the crowd and go that extra distance. We believe that the path of quality is the only one and as we refine viticultural and winemaking techniques we know that the best is yet to come.”
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