Stargazer Tupelo 2025

This is the first year that Tupelo has included a small portion of fruit from the 2021 plantings of Gris, Pinot Blanc, Riesling and Gewurztraminer at their Palisander vineyard in the Coal River Valley sub-region of Tea Tree. The remaining fruit is from other small holdings in the Coal River Valley, the Gewurztraminer from a vineyard just outside of Richmond, the Pinot Gris also from just outside Richmond, and a little bit of Riesling from Campania.

Stargazer vineyards are located in the Tea Tree subregion at the northern end of the Coal River Valley, the original 1ha vineyard on Back Tea Tree Road was planted by Norm and Jan Gangell in 2004. Pretty much half and half riesling and pinot noir, the property (eleven hectares in total) is also home to an olive grove. Samantha took over in 2016 and in late 2017 expanded the vineyard to include an additional two hectares of vines: more pinot noir (four clones), some chardonnay (another four clones) and more riesling. Stage two of the expansion was planted in October 2021: more pinot noir (two clones), gamay, pinot blanc, riesling, pinot gris and gewurztraminer.

Whilst still very new to the whole grape grower caper, Samantha and her new vineyard manager Guy Young are fervent believers in sustainable farming, biodiversity and regenerative agriculture. As part of this approach, they use sheep in the vineyard during winter for weed control, chickens free range throughout the year and scratch around for  bugs, bees contribute their pollination magic (and honey) and since 2020 we have planted over 1000 native species on the property.