Hewitson Winery is located in South Australia’s Barossa Valley and is one of Australia’s most (if not the most) famous viticultural regions. The Barossa Valley sub-region is especially known for the quality of its dry-farmed, often very old Shiraz, Mourvedre and Grenache vines and the inky dark wines they yield.Dean Hewitson founded his eponymous winery in 1998. He is a highly respected winemaker with an oenology degree in 1986 from Roseworthy Agricultural College, located in north of Adelaide, South Australia. Over the next deCade, Hewitson worked at wineries in Australia, France, Italy and Oregon. Hewitson then moved to the U.S. where he earned a Masters from UC-Davis. On his return home, Dean brought a wealth of knowledge, practical experience and a driving passion to produce wines not only from Barossa Valley, but also from the McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills regions.Hewitson fundamentally believes great wines are the expression of the soils they are grown in and the season in which they are grown. With his longstanding focus on terroir—specific terroir plots in fact—many of Hewitson’s wines are single vineyard. He sources grapes from not only his own vineyards, but also from long standing grower contracts including a few sourced from some of the oldest living, still productive vines on plots that date back to the mid-19th century and are pre-phylloxera. His ‘Old Garden’ Mourvedre is a single-vineyard wine, whose vines were planted in 1853 in Barossa Valley and are reputed to be the oldest Mourvedre vines in the world. Hewitson’s ‘Miss Harry’ is sourced from a Grenache vineyard planted in 1880, also thought to be the oldest Grenache in existence.Due to Hewitson’s education and experience in Australia, California and France, Hewitson wines combine Old-World traditions with New-World fruit purity. And while he clearly excels with Rhone Valley grape varieties, Hewitson also produces award-winning Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. With a “Sustainable Winegrowing Australia” certification, he is a practitioner in solar energy, water recycling and encouraging natural biodiversity and is proud to produce these wines in an environmentally sustainable fashion.
