de salis wines
A favourite spot to while away some time and taste some brilliant wines, is De Salis Wines. Charlie will be able to tell you everything about his wines, while you taste some of Australia's best cool climate wine.
De Salis, a small, family winery, located at 1,050m on the northern slope of Mt Canobolas. Their minimalist winemaking philosophy aims to capture the seasonal ebb and flow, the intersection of the vines with their microenvironment and create wines that challenge the ‘industrial’ wine culture.
Lofty Vineyard was first planted in 1993 to Chardonnay and Merlot by renowned Orange horticulturalist, David Gartrell. Subsequent plantings have increased the vineyard to 9Ha.
De Salis was established in 1999 as a ‘garagister’ winery located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches by research scientist Charlie Svenson. Whilst researching the production of renewable fuel ethanol at the University of New South Wales, Charlie spent many vintages learning the dark art of minimalist wine crafting from the eclectic Murray Smith. An eight-year search resulted in Charlie and wife Loretta, acquiring one of Australia’s stunningly beautiful and highest wine grape growing locations, Lofty Vineyard.
De Salis is named in honour of Charlie’s original Australian ancestor and great, great grandfather, Leopold Fabius Count Fane De Salis, an Englishman, born in Florence in the early 1800’s who emigrated to Australia and establish a colonial home in the Cotter District, close to what is now Canberra in the mid 1800’s.
The blocks of Lofty Vineyard bear the matriarchal names of the De Salis family.
How to find them on Google Maps