In 1993, four couples purchased a 200 hectare farm with the aim of establishing a vineyard capable of producing high quality grapes. Each person brings skills and ideas to the partnership, and participates in some way in the day-to-day running of the business (which now extends to wine production). Two couples reside on Kangaroo Island. The owners were: Graham and Jude Allison, Alan and Ann Byers, Wayne and Margaret Conaghty, Robin and Heather Moody. Chief winemaker Rob Moody brought his 40 years winemaking experience into our wine. He was employed at Penfold’s by Max Schubert, the ‘father’ of Penfolds Grange, when Penfolds was still a family owned company and continued working on iconic South Australian wines at Penfolds and Wynns until 2001. Our philosophy is to have super premium red wines of exceptional distinction with grapes grown in its region.We have a very strong belief that low yields produce the best wines. We are very careful to slow the growth of the vine between flowering/fruit set and veraison. This produces desirably small berries with very high skin area to juice ratio. After the devistating bush fire in 2009, we exopended our vinyard to renowned mainland wine region McLaren Vale, where we make our wines now.

The grapes are sent winery immediately after picking, and are processed at McLaren Vale. After about a week in stainless steel fermenters, the wine is transferred to oak hogsheads or barriques for the completion of fermentation. We use oak supplied by various manufacturers in order to achieve maximum flexibility and complexity in the blending programme. Ultra-premium producers such as Seguin Moreau, François Frères, Sirugue, Remond, Billon and Radoux are all used by Cape d’Estaing. Most of the oak is French, but we very much like the added lift provided by good American oak – especially for our shiraz. We use about 70% new barrels each year, with 30% of the blends being aged in once or twice-used barrels. Wines are racked at least four times during their maturation, and this helps to increase complexity and to soften and round off any of the harder tannins.