2026 Quealy Feri Maris Pinot Grigio, Mornington Peninsula

Kathleen Quealy and Kevin McCarthy wrote the manifesto on quality Pinot Grigio in Australia and Quealy is continuing it with the 2026 chapter. Taking its name from the Latin for ‘wild sea’, Feri Maris was Quealy’s first single-vineyard Grigio, continuing to be made from fruit grown in their certified organic and dry-grown 1982 Balnarring vineyard.

Now crafted by Kathleen and Kevin’s son Tom McCarthy, the Feri Maris presents in a clean, refreshing style, balancing bright pear fruit with textural, honeyed complexity, making it both approachable and a terrific partner for coastal fare at the table: grilled calamari with lemon, seafood linguine, prawn risotto, or a classic Caprese salad.

More about this wine

From the long, cool 2026 season with low to moderate crops lending the wine good concentration and power. The fruit was hand-picked in the latter half of March and whole bunch pressed, with the juice left to settle overnight before a rough racking with partial solids mostly to stainless steel, with a 30% component placed in oak hogshead barrels of which half were new. The ferments started with indigenous yeasts with no addition of sulphur, with the wine left on lees without any stirring, racking, filtering and bottling on September 2nd.

About this producer

Quealy is a Mornington Peninsula producer known especially for its Pinot Grigio wines.  Established in the early 1990s by Kathleen Quealy and Kevin McCarthy, their son Tom McCathy has been the chief winemaker since 2019, working the solid foundation his parents set up for him and continuing the house style which includes no pressings (and therefore no need for fining), no acidification, low and late sulphur additions and a reliance on old oak.

Four vineyards lie at the heart of the portfolio. The Home Block in Balnarring was planted in 1982 and has some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines on the Peninsula. This is also the home to Quealy’s oldest Pinot Grigio, and the aromatic varieties of Moscato Giallo, Friulano and Riesling, as well as some more recent plantings of Malvasia and Ribolla Gialla. A little Chardonnay from the original plantings also remains.

The Musk Creek vineyard in 1997. Perched atop Main Ridge, overlooking Westernport Bay and the heads, it’s the coolest site in the portfolio, bestowing exceptional late-ripening Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. On the red soils of Merricks North, there’s the Tussie Mussie vineyard, and back in Balnarring we have Campbell & Christine, again planted by Quealy (for the owners) in 1994.

Each of these sites is managed entirely by the Quealy team and, with the current exception of Musk Creek, all are farmed organically. Quealy’s full-time viticulturist Lucas Blanck (son of organic Alsace vigneron Frédéric Blanck) has overseen a major renovation of the Balnarring home vineyard that underpins the quality we’re seeing in today’s wines, including the implementation of organic certification, dryland farming, a rotational cover crop program and replanting nearly 20% of that vineyard.