Hunter Valley's Krinklewood Biodynamic Vineyard tipped to fetch about $10m
Winemakers and investors may have heard it on the grapevine but now it’s official – one of the country’s top boutique wineries is on the market.
The Krinklewood Biodynamic Vineyard in NSW’s Hunter Valley could be a thriving business to extend and expand, an excellent commercial investment or a quiet place to live among rows of vines and olive trees against the Brokenback ranges.
“We’ll be very sad to leave it but we just feel the time is right to move on,” says Pete Windrim, whose father Rod bought the 59-hectare property in 1998, planted it the same year and started implementing biodynamic practices in 2002.
“There’s so much potential here. We’ve had a lot of offers in the last two years, but we turned them down as we were building the new winery and we weren’t quite ready to sell. But a big restaurant group wanted to set up here, and others wanted to add new layers to it, so there’s lots of opportunities for the future.”
The property includes 19 hectares of vines, state-of-the-art winemaking equipment, as well as an orchard and vegetable garden. Photo: Supplied
The estate, two hours north of Sydney and 20 minutes west of Pokolbin, includes the 19-hectare vineyard, the state-of-the-art winery and cellar door set among gardens and animal life. There’s also a three-bedroom, architecturally-designed homestead, with a tennis court, saltwater pool, vegetable garden and orchard.
It’s selling for expressions of interest, expected to be around the $10 million mark.
“I think the buyer will be someone doing something else professionally but who has always dreamt of owning their own winery,” says agent Alan Jurd, of Jurds Real Estate.
“It could be someone locally, someone from overseas who’d like it as almost a trophy investment, or someone from Sydney who’d live there part of the time, and live the rest of the time in the city. The home is really hand-built as the owner is a very good builder, and it has an exceptional level of detail.”
Rod Windrim first came to the Hunter Valley in 1977, planting his first vineyard in Pokolbin before moving on to establish Krinklewood. Soon becoming fully accredited as organic and biodynamic, the expertise he accumulated has seen him, and now his son too, educating others on biodynamic viticulture.
The operation was started by Rod Windrim, right, and is now run by his children Pete and Michaela. Photo: Supplied
These days the vineyard produces classic Hunter Valley semillon, verdelho and chardonnay, as well as gewurztraminer, viognier, shiraz, Francesca Rosa and tempranillo. With an annual turnover of $1.4 million, the property has the capacity to produce more than 10,000 cases a year.
“Mum and dad started here 20 years ago and everything they created and planted here became an amazing nucleus for us to get together as a family,” says Pete, 39, who now runs the vineyard with his sister Michaela Curtin, 45, while Rod, 69, acts as chief financial officer.
“But after Mum passed away a couple of years ago, Dad found it a little bit more difficult to keep everything up. But now we’ve got the new winery built and everything is running smoothly, with the business really, really strong, the brand well recognised and with demand from the suppliers so high, we could easily double capacity, it feels like a positive and proud time to go.”
The property also keeps pigs, cattle, sheep and chickens, while there are bees in the orchard and fish in the dam.
Agent Alan Jurd says it’s the perfect set-up. “It’s beautifully ready for a paddock-to-plate operation as well as the fabulous wine,” he says. “I had a glass of basket-pressed organic chardonnay when I went over today. It was fantastic!”
