2025 Bellvale Pinot Noir, Gippsland

This is very promising. It’s also very good buying. There’s often something about Gippsland Pinot Noir that just has that extra in-built hard-to-put-your-finger-on complexity. This smells the goods and backs the promise up on the palate. It’s a light-and-insistent style but there’s plenty going on and it’s beautifully well sustained. Flavour-wise this wine is built on fruit and undergrowth with spice, orange rind and earth-like notes studded within. It has (fine) tannin, it has texture, it has X-factor. Tasted: Jun 26. 13% alc. $39 Screwcap. Drink: 2026 - 2033

94 points Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front. 

Medium-full, intense ruby with a rim of purple, and a bouquet that shows depth and detail, the dark-cherry aromas intertwined with foresty touches, while the palate has focused intensity and freshening acidity. A pinot of delicious flavour and penetrating intensity. It really sings on the tongue. Drink to 2034.

93 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, June 2026

Fine-boned and red-fruited with vibrant aromas of strawberry, raspberry, red cherry, cranberry, lead pencil and a herbal floral lift. The palate is light-bodied with fine-grained tannins, bright acidity and a focused, refreshing fruit-driven finish. Drink now.

92 points Ryan Montgomery for James Suckling, September 2026

The integration of a powerful signature of regional style drives this Pinot. On the bouquet, it makes its intentions known, an earthiness set among dried herbs and dark cherry notes. On the palate, it provides a real sense of place, in this case South Gippsland, with a strong thread of Aussie bush, earth and bay leaf joined by red fruits, integrated oak, oregano and a mix of dried herbs.  Adding its voice is an intriguing earthy savouriness, a bitters-like quality, that becomes quite a feature on the finish. Drink to 2030.

92 points Jeni Port for Wine Pilot, June 2026

Bellvale is a South Gippsland vineyard established by John Ellis in 1998 and purchased by the Gjergja family of Kooyong and Port Phillip Estate note in early 2025. All fruit is handpicked and transported to Kooyong, where the winemaking centres on preserving the vineyard’s inherent character.

The dry-grown high-density site is in the lush, cool and maritime influenced Tarwin River Valley on a north-facing hillside, its 19 hectares of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir vines standing in deep red volcanic loam at an elevation of 165 to 195 metres.

From an almost picture perfect 2025 vintage, the modest yield of grapes for this wine were harvested over a twelve-day period in the latter half of March. The fruit was mostly de-stemmed, with a small amount of whole bunches included in some of the stainless steel fermenters. Fermentation started spontaneously with indigenous yeasts and lasted 14-16 days after which the parcels were pressed into a combination of French oak puncheons, hogsheads and barriques, with 8-15% across the three sizes new for this season. The wine underwent malolactic conversion just ahead of the winter months and rested in the barrels for a total of twelve months before it was bottled without fining or filtration.