A COONAWARRA winemaker is on cloud nine after taking out top honours at a national awards ceremony.
Penley Estate winemaker Kate Goodman made history when she became the first person from Coonawarra to win the Halliday Wine Companion Winemaker of the Year award.
Ms Goodman said the award was evidence that Penley is on the right track, with the winery also being shortlisted for Australian Winery of the Year.
“Since the beginning, Bec and Ang Tolley have given me the complete support and encouragement to turn things on their head, and push to the point of failure to really work out what our vineyards can do,” she said.
“That’s incredibly rare and offers me and our team the opportunity to create great things.
“winning this award and being shortlisted for Winery of the Year is recognition and confirmation that we are on the right path, and we don’t have to keep second guessing ourselves.”
Penley Estate co-owner Ang Tolley said the award was well-deserved, with Ms Goodman obviously looking to invest in the winery’s vision.
“Kate’s leadership, together with viticulturist, Hans Loder feels as though we have taken an almighty breath of fresh Coonawarra air and we are totally inspired to continue to push boundaries and create,” she said.
Halliday Wine Companion chief editor Campbell Mattinson said Ms Goodman’s achievements at Penley were “quite astonishing”.
“It’s rare – if not unheard of – that a winery do everything well,” he said.
“And yet somehow Kate is producing everything from the avant garde to the traditional to an exceptional standard.
“She’s obviously getting people excited about Penley but I’d also go so far as to say that she’s turning people on to Coonawarra itself.”
It was a good weekend for Limestone Coast wineries, with Padthaway’s Landaire Wines also winning two award for the estate’s 2021 Chardonnay, grown and bottled in the upper south east.
Carolyn and David Brown, of Landaire Wines, are celebrating with their team after their wine won the Chardonnay of the Year and the overall White Wine of the Year for the 2024 edition of the Halliday Wine Companion.
Mrs Brown is a former CSIRO research scientist and said the vineyard is well suited to producing a Chardonnay.
“The soil is our greatest asset, allowing us to manage the vines to produce a small crop of flavourful grapes,” she said.
We pick the grapes on flavour… I love the acidity in our wines.”
Mrs Brown said that the award was unexpected and a great surprise.
“Our wine brand is quite small, and we only make a certain amount of bottles but have a wide variety of what we produce,” she said.
Mrs Brown said that the vineyard and label has been in work since the space was purchased and she and her husband are very proud of where it is today.
The Halliday Wine Companion Award was the first for the vineyard.
“We recieved 98 points (out of 100) for the Chardonnay and won that category, and then the top white wines went against each other for the overall White Wine of the Year, which we were thankful to receive,” he said.
“Our wine from this little part of South Australia went up against wines from around Australia.”
