About Battely

The Battely vineyard is located on Beechworth-Wangaratta Road,
Beechworth, Victoria. It is a part of the Beechworth Wine Region of North East Victoria and is around two-and-a-half hour’s drive from Melbourne.

The Beechworth region is in the foothills of the Victorian Alps and lies at an altitude of about 550 metres above sea level.

Russell Bourne, an anaesthetist by profession, is the proprietor of the Battely vineyard. He completed an Oenology degree at Charles Sturt University in 2002 as a stage in his great interest in wine and winemaking. He still works as an anaesthetist, but is still able to run the vineyard at the same time.

Russell has an affinity with North East Victoria, having spent quite some time sampling the fine wines, its great food and the skiing after he completed his specialist anaesthetic training. He had also been a GP in Mount Beauty and is very familiar with the area.

He saw that such vineyards as Giaconda and Sorrenberg were producing exceptional wines in the region and decided that he, too, should set up here. The terroir was just what he was looking for: it had high elevation, cool breezes to keep disease away, it was on a slope with shade from the burning sun and had good drainage.

The site of the vineyard had in fact been the old Brown Brothers Everton Hills property, on which great reds had been produced under their Family Reserve label. Now it was available and overgrown. Russell jumped at the chance to purchase such a marvellous site as this, which had formerly been so successful.

The vineyard was first planted to four acres of Durif, Marsanne, Shiraz and Viognier. These varieties were selected because of the terroir’s conditions being very similar to the Rhone Valley in France where these varietals were popular. He planted another four acres of Shiraz and Viognier 2001.

Marsanne, Durif, Shiraz and Viognier are available on their web site.