Mosquito Hill Wines

Glyn and Elizabeth Jamieson purchased their farm of just over 200 acres, in 1994.The farm is in the Mt Jagged region of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, about 20 kms south of the McLaren Vale region and lies in the lower reaches of the Mt Lofty Ranges at about 250metres above sea level. Although they had both had a long term interest in wine, it had been fanned by their year in France in 1990 when Glyn took study leave there, working in the Hospital Pontchaillou in Rennes.. (He was the Dorothy Mortlock Professor of Surgery at the University of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital from 1983-2012).

In 1996, a 6 acre Chardonnay vineyard was planted and then in 1998 a 4 acre Pinot Noir vineyard was also established. The vineyards were established using drip irrigation but have been dry grown sice 2005. Whilst working in the vineyards one of the most notable features is the carrolling of the many magpies on the farm and so the first vineyard was named "Magpies Song". The second vineyard was established with the involvement of a group of Glyn's tennis playing mates who call themselves " The Hawthorns" and so that name was given to the Pinot Noir vineyard.In spite of the fact that the Magpies Song vineyard consistently produced very high quality chardonnay grapes it proved increasingly difficult to sell them in the first decade of this century. This resulted in two changes. First, an acre of Chardonnay was grafted to Pinot Blanc and a half acre was grafted to Savagnin . And second, commencing in 2004, instead of selling the grapes, we sent them to the very highly regarded winemaker, Peter Leske to have wine made under our own label . As the vineyard is on Mosquito Hill Rd we named our wines "Mosquito Hill".

In 2011 Peter Leske helped us build our own small winery just above the Magpies Song vineyard and Mike Waller, who is the winemaker at one of the most prestigious wineries in California ( Calera) came out and made the first vintage for us. Since then Glyn has made all of the wines ( he has a winemaking degree from Charles Sturt University), with Peter Leske acting as consultant. Quite obviously our major interest is in the grapes of Burgundy and Champagne and our aim is to make wines which don't necessarily taste the same as wines from those two regions but have a stylistic similarity, i.e. powerful flavours without weight.