2022 Levantine Hill Estate Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley

Such beauty here, an assemblage of 17 individual parcels from the Estate vineyard. Cranberry and bright ripe red fruit, field mushroom, game too, roast quail, truffle, super indulgent. It sports a delicious umami broth backbone – the type that anchors and seasons. Metronomic balance with not a hair out of place and the palate bursting with fruit. Ripe red cherry, all parts dewy and plush. Middle Eastern spices keep pace through the velvety finish. Superbly done. Drink to 2034.

96 points Katrina Butler for Halliday Wine Companion, July 2025 

Light cherry red hue. Red cherry, capocollo and dried thyme aromatics. Medium bodied with dark cherry fruit at the base. A savoury style, with black tea, cured pork and thyme notes appearing at different stages. Tannins are supple yet sufficiently weighted to ensure precision and a very long finish. Drink to 2035.

93 points Stuart Knox for The Real Review, December 2025

The 2022 Levantine Hill Estate Pinot Noir is a 97/3 blend of Pinot clones MV6 and D2V5, the latter from the original 1994 plantings. The fruit was handpicked across seventeen parcels in the Maroondah Highway vineyard over eighteen days from the end of February.

Each parcel was vinified separately, and the fruit hand sorted at the winery before it was destemmed, or crushed, to small open vats, with stalks added back to select parcels for complexity. The ferments started with a mix of indigenous and cultivated yeasts, with ferments lasting from one to three weeks hand plunged or pumped-over a maximum of once per day for gentle extraction and integration of tannins.

The pressed wine was matured for nine months in a combination of French oak barriques, hogsheads and puncheons of which 10% were new, the final blend bottled in the last week of February 2023 with a small addition of sulphur dioxide.

About this producer

Levantine Hill was established in 2009 by the Jreissati family who remain its current owners. Based in the Coldstream subregion of Yarra Valley, their holdings encompass two vineyard sites, the lower Maroondah Highway site planted between 1995 and 2016, and the steep Hill Road site planted from 2009 to 2015.

Chief winemaker Paul Bridgeman is a well-regarded Yarra local who managed Yarra Yering following the passing of Dr. Bailey Carrodus. He has been guiding Levantine Hill’s wines since 2013 and today works closely with winemaker Peter Shore.