2024 Winery of the Year
Bleasdale Vineyards – Langhorne Creek, South Australia
There’s an argument to say that the Bleasdale winery, both historically and most certainly at the hand of winemaker Paul Hotker, should be regarded as every Australian wine lover’s best friend. It’s probably best known as a value producer, thanks to the fact – as James Halliday so aptly puts it – that there’s ‘value across the board’, but it’s become abundantly apparent in recent years that Bleasdale is a whole lot more than that. This is best illustrated by the fact that we’ve thrown the full might of Australian cabernet sauvignon against Bleasdale’s Iron Duke in the past two years, and assessed them all blind, and in consecutive years, for consecutive vintages, it has come out on top. When we say ‘the full might’, we mean Margaret River royalty, and Coonawarra royalty, and Yarra Valley royalty. And it still won.
