Understanding our labels (and our ambition)

What’s in a wine label? Actually, when it comes to Colmar Estate it’s quite a lot. Each of our three labels provides some insight into not just the wine in the bottle but also the way we think, our focus on quality and our drive to produce wines that are distinctive and very special.

Estate Label

Wines appearing under our Estate label start where the wines from other producers tend to finish. Every wine appearing under this label is made from fruit lovingly grown on our Colmar Estate vineyard perched at 980 metres above sea level in the highlands of Orange. We don’t buy fruit from other growers. And we don’t harvest our fruit mechanically – all our grapes are carefully hand- picked and sorted ensuring that only pristine fruit finds its way to the winery. Finally, we don’t stretch our production by blending in wines from other producers. Wine under this label is 100% from Colmar Estate.

Block Label

Now we are getting serious. In a good year we go through the young wines emerging in the winery and select small, high-quality batches for separate bottling. Typically, these will come from small picks of fruit from single blocks of vines and are then labelled according to their block, hence Block 2 Chardonnay and Block 6 Riesling. Wines under the Block label usually are usually made from the classic varieties that excel in our vineyard – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir – though this may not always be the case. It’s all based on quality. If another variety produces a really special wine it may well be promoted to the Block label. Currently there is a 2022 gewurztraminer in the winery that is knocking on the door.

Tulip Label

We rarely use this reserve label. In fact, it has appeared on just three of our wines in the last nine years, all of them trophy-winners at Australian wine shows. Of course, we don’t know the wines will please the wine judges when we label them; we just know that they please us. Such wines provide insight into what we are trying to achieve at Colmar Estate – wines of superb quality that speak of our beautiful little vineyard and realise the boundless potential of the Orange wine region. Outstanding wines only come from outstanding vintages. And here’s a tip – 2022 was an outstanding vintage. Watch this space.