About Gentle Annie Wines

Gentle Annie Wines is located on land that was once occupied by the Yerran-Yillam tribe, who belonged to the Thagungwurru language group. It was taken over by squatters in the early 1800s who wanted the water for grazing.

The new state of Victoria enacted laws that allowed European settlers to select smaller tracts for agriculture. These people, known as ‘selectors’, were in the main German and Irish immigrants. It was they who cleared the land and tilled the red soil to plant their crops. Cord Heinrich Feldtmann was the first land selector in the district and began farming his land in 1861.

Michael Ryan, an occasional associate of the most famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, had a daughter whose name was Anne. She was known to be ‘of gentle temperament and extraordinary beauty and was known far and wide as ‘Gentle Annie’. She used to walk along the tracks through the bush near her home and there is a hill opposite her original home that still bears her name to this day.

Phylloxera and recession saw the end of winemaking in the vineyards, at which at its peak in 1950 ran to 37 and was responsible for a third of the wine production of Victoria. It was not until around 1977 that the vines were re-planted on the southern slope of Mt Major. Now it has twenty hectares planted to vine and forms a major part of the campus of the University of Melbourne's Institute of Land and Food Resources. The campus also has a model winery with a capacity of a hundred tonnes that runs its operations in an historic building dating back to 1896.

Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Verdelho are the wines available on their website. So, for those whose predilection is for superb wines from the great Golburn Valley, there is no better winery than Gentle Annie Wines to make your purchases.