Thomas Wines put Sweetwater Vineyard on the map. Unfortunately, in 2016, the vineyard was sold, and in 2021, Thomas decided not to renew his contract with the new owners. Fortunately, he had a contingency plan; in 2017, he had begun purchasing fruit from the adjacent, independently owned and operated Ridgeview Estate. “It’s a fantastic vineyard,” he told us. “The fruit has a lovely floral complexity among the red and blue fruits.” The fruit went into Thomas’s mailing list-exclusive Belford Shiraz until 2022, when Thomas felt ready to siphon it off to the Sweetwater label. In recognition, the wine’s name has been updated to Sweetwater Ridge.
Located at the very end of Sweetwater Road in the Belford subregion of the Lower Hunter Valley, the old vines were planted in 1998 and are deep-rooted in the signature red/brown loam over limestone soils of the region. Thomas’s steeply sloped block faces east, providing some protection from the hot afternoon sun. Despite the relatively late vintage in 2023, this vineyard is always one of the earlier blocks to ripen. In 2023, the grapes were picked by hand on 21st February. They were destemmed but not crushed, and whole-berry fermentation kicked off after a 24-hour cold soak. At the end of a cool, 11-day fermentation on skins, the wine was pressed into a selection of new, one-, two- and three-year-old premium French oak hogsheads for maturation. The wine spent 13 months in oak before the final blending decisions, with only the best barrels going to this wine (plus a few to the 2023 Elenay Shiraz). The wine was bottled in June 2024 and rested for 11 months before release.