Clarendon Hills

Clarendon Hills is an Australian winery, founded in 1989 by Roman Bratasiuk.BackgroundIn 1990 Roman Bratasiuk founded Clarendon Hills winery in Clarendon 40km south of Adelaide, part of the McLaren Vale Wine Region in South Australia. Clarendon was selected as a base because of the significant number of old vineyards (50 to 90 years). The township of Clarendon was established in 1880 by European migrants, who brought with them pre-clonal, original French vine cuttings and propagated vineyards across the surrounding hilltops. Clarendon is home to hugely varied terrain with sandy, clay based soils in the lower elevated regions and contrasted with shattered shale and ironstone rich, quartz ridden soils in the highest areas. Grenache, Syrah Merlot, Mourvedre and Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards are sourced by Clarendon Hills within the Clarendon, Blewitt Springs and Kangarilla districts. Seeking to express the imprint a vineyard and its terroir stamps on varietal expression, Roman exclusively produces single vineyard wines. Today there is lots of single vine yard wines in Australia, but when Roman started in 1990, he was a virtual pioneer. In the early 90's, Roman started becoming known for his Grenache, but today it is his impressive collection of ultra high quality wines spread across his 19 single vineyard cuvee portfolio. In Wine Advocate issue #173 it comments "Clarendon Hills is one of the worlds elite wine estates". Clarendon Hills is most highly regarded for its Syrah wine, named Astralis. In 1996 wine critic Robert Parker tasted the 1994 Astralis and wrote in issue 110 of his newsletter: