drink

‘In Daylesford it made sense to have this multifunctional space that could be many things for many people.’

“We wanted to take the distilling back to the core basics and make products that were made with the same focus as I saw in those distilleries in Scotland.” 

“I first started drinking Anushka Chai at Mister, a café in Macedon,” says Zoë. “Then my older daughter started working at a café in Woodend called Fox in the Chamber which we discovered was owned by the same people behind the chai we loved so much. When my daughter told me that the owners were selling the chai business because the café had become so busy, I saw it as a really cool opportunity to own something we’d fallen in love with years before.”

Though he and Claire were aware of the region’s reputation for high quality farming, they were blown away by “the number of small artisan producers of every kind from people making tiny amounts of brilliant sparkling wine to livestock farmers raising rare-breed cattle to veggie growers producing the most amazing stuff on just a couple of acres of land”.

“I’ve never been one for formal business plans but I realised my philosophy is to create products with integrity that have a positive impact on as many chai sippers out there as possible. It’s about the chai and never about the buck.”

“Most of what we learned about making wine was self-taught, a mixture of reading, researching and talking to people who we respected and who knew what they were doing,” says Renata. “I’ve recently finished a PhD and Ollie is always willing to jump in and learn on the go, so I guess we’re both just really interested in self-learning.”

Renata and Ollie decided to divide the wine-making between them. He looks after the chardonnay and pinot noir, she the gamay and riesling.

“One of the advantages of being around for 50 years is that you get to know the region really well and the varieties tend to sort themselves out,” he says. “In the early days in Australia every region tried to do everything but now with the kind of gathered knowledge we have, it means that regions like the Macedon Ranges reveal themselves as ideal for particular varieties and become distinctive for those.”

For fans of delicious, beautifully crafted Victorian cool climate wines, Granite Hill’s pioneering hard work deserves heartfelt and grateful thanks.