Clonakilla Wines
Canberra District , NSW & ACT
Winery Overview
At Clonakilla, we understand that our task as winemakers is simple: capture what is good and true in the landscape and bottle it for people to enjoy. It is a task we take seriously.
We work to craft beautiful, evocative wines from the ancient granitic soils of the hills around Murrumbateman and the red volcanic soils in the Hilltops region around Young. We celebrate the continental climate of inland New South Wales and delight in the warm days and cool nights. Our cool evenings in particular are a powerful quality driver that frame the development of our fruit flavours with elegance, freshness and purity.
We pride ourselves on our crisp, fresh, aromatic whites and perfumed, spice-laden, medium-bodied reds.
Compelling, complex aromas and fine palate texture are the Clonakilla hallmarks, and while we work with a range of varieties, Clonakilla is best known for “shiraz viogniers, and pure shirazs, that are at the very top of the Australian tree.” - James Halliday
Available in
Canada, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, UK, USA
Winemaker Bio
Tim Kirk is the Chief Winemaker and CEO of Clonakilla Wines.
1991 saw Tim travel to the Northern Rhone. The highlight of the trip was at the Guigal family winery where he tasted 1988 single vineyard Cote Roties from barrel, and caught a vision for a Shiraz Viognier blend. This was a turning point Tim remembers well. “I thought…that if I was ever able to produce wine from our humble vineyard in Murrumbateman that got close to that level of complexity, refinement and beauty, I would be a very happy man… from the 1992 vintage onwards we set about making a Shiraz Viognier blend from our Murrumbateman vineyard.” In 1996 Tim moved his young family to Murrumbateman to work fulltime at Clonakilla. Since then the family business has gone from strength to strength, with Clonakilla now widely regarded as one of the top wineries in the country. Three times a finalist for Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine Australian Winemaker of the Year, he was awarded the title in September 2013 where Andrew Caillard of Langton’s described the Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier as “Kirk’s Allegris Miserere in a glass – beauty and perfection.”