Helen and Joey’s Wayward Child project is growing and still straying from the beaten track.

Vintage 2018 Wayward Child Wines –the family grows.

Helen and Joey’s Wayward Child project is growing and still straying from the beaten track. The first three were bottled in the last week of January and ready to order for delivery in the second half of this month. These wines are small batch productions and have previously sold out fast, so get in quick

Wayward Child wines are about exploring our vineyard and looking for alternative ways to achieve unique expressions of our vineyard in each vintage. And they definitely add extra interest for visitors as we strive to become the best Yarra Valley cellar door experience.

2016 was our first vintage. We made two wines: an, red field blend (three varieties fermented together) and a Pinot Gris with extended skin contact. In 2018, we made four wines; the skins Gris remains, the red has morphed (to be released later in the year) and we introduce a white blend, as well as a sweet fortified wine, all 100% grown and produced on our property.

Please pop up to cellar door for your share of the excitement and to taste the wines before buying. Otherwise see our descriptions below and follow the links to shop.

A big cheers from the cellar door crew.

2018 Wayward Child Ilion – The white wine

Our vineyard contains just a couple of rows of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, two blending varieties that have a history in the Yarra Valley for producing long aging, ultra-premium white wines, far removed from the fruit forward Classic Dry White / SSB styles that our mates in WA make.

Wayward Child Ilion is our attempt at producing one of the best of these Yarra Valley wine blends. Unlike the red blend (Serendip), the white blend sees the varieties kept separately through fermentation and maturation. Ferments are wild; the Semillon component, citrus, lean and clean; the Sauvignon funky and nectar ripe.

2018 Wayward Child Pinot Gris – the orange wine

Skins fermented with substantial post fermentation maceration makes for a wine that deviates from anything resembling normal (what is normal anyway?). You can see from the colour that it is well outside a standard white wine, and indeed see why this style of wine has become known as orange wine.

Previous releases have been quirky enough but 2018 Wayward Child Pinot Gris seriously “ups the ante” on over the top funk – think cloudy copper colour, savoury ferment smells and flavours with lots of texture and richness, with a dry astringency threaded throughout.

Tasting the wine requires a suspension of pre-conceived ideas of the possible and is worth the journey to cellar door as a stand alone experience.

Wayward Child Bastion – the sweet fortified

A blend of four red and white grape varieties left on the vine longer to achieve ultra-ripeness and selected to represent a broad cross section of the vineyard.

We have no Australian context for this wine style what-so-ever. It’s a sweet fortified that is not heavy, in fact it resonates with what we think makes Yarra Valley wines distinct from the wines of other warmer regions; namely, elegance, restraint, aromatics and bright fruit flavours.

As it was hand bottled from barrel we have been able to start showing this wine straight away and it has already become a best cellar door performer. Definitely get in early if you want some.

Picked at such a super-high sugar level the wine was pretty slow to ferment. Before too much sugar was converted to alcohol a high strength grape spirit was added to boost the alcohol level to 19% and stop fermentation. The wine has hand bottled without any filtering or fining. Varieties included are Pinot Gris, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Merlot.

WARNING: