Andrew and Louise, a husband and wife team who moved back to Mount Gambier / Berrin (Andrew’s childhood town) to start a family, a wine label and build our winery, welcoming both our daughter Frankie and our first vintage in 2014. 

 

With Andrew’s family background of farming and gardening Mount Gambier, he was well aware of its unique volcanic soils and growing capabilities, and wanted to apply our knowledge in organic farming and viticulture and creating our own wine label. 

 

We wanted to create a place where we could be proud to raise our daughter Frankie. Our dream was to inspire home grown eating, drinking and music that comes from our home and property and reflects who we are and what we are capable of and to share it with our community.

 

We own and farm organically two vineyard sites, both located in Moorak on the outskirts of the township. One site is planted to Chardonnay and known as ‘Volcanic Lakes’. This vineyard is located at the foot of Mount Gambier / Berrin's famous volcanic crater, the Blue Lake / Warwar and is planted on volcanic ash and what some consider the most fertile soils in the country. Planted in 1997 the vineyard was a run down mess when we took it on. Years of hard work and persistence has seen this site flourish into a strong and healthy vineyard producing high quality Chardonnay grapes.

 

The second site is on our home farm and winery site known as ‘Lake of Fire’; this site lies on the southern base of the volcanic crater and is a high density planted vineyard (6600 vines per hectare) with a cordon height of 53cm. It is planted to  the varieties Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz, Riesling and Pinot Gris. Planted in 2018 no chemicals have been used in the establishment of this vineyard. The fertile soils mean a lot of grass grows and we have had many challenges of the years with competition. 2023 vintage saw the first estate white come from this site and it is truly unique. Something we are excited to see expand into more wines in the near future. 

 

Our winery, vineyards and farm are located on the south and south west side of one of Australia’s two youngest volcanos. Erupting less than 6000 years ago, Warwar is filled with water that changes colour with the seasons. Arising from an ancient inland sea made into limestone and now receiving water from underground caves added with our generous rainfall all contributes to the abundance of water stored in underground limestone caves. There are pockets of flint rock spread below the nearby soils. The limestone filters the water naturally and the result is a pure water thriving with minerality. All of this makes for incredible soil complexity and combined with our cool climate, creates perfect growing conditions and in turn beautiful, elegant and totally unique Australian wines like no other.

 

In addition to our estate wines, we find ourselves very lucky to be able to work with a number of amazing growers throughout the Limestone Coast wine region; an exciting and diverse region creating equally diverse and exciting wines.

 

We make wines that reflect us as people and what we believe in. We want to make wines that taste of place and terroir with a minimalistic approach. We take an old world approach to our winemaking; barrel fermenting all white wines and lees stirring and open top fermenting all red wines. We strive to make wines of extreme purity and complexity.  Our wines are grown, made and bottled on site in our winery. 

 

Our intention is to produce great tasting unique wines, expressing the unique terroir of Mount Gambier / Berrin above anything else. This is at the heart of Good Intentions Wine Co.