Dean Hewitson was a winemaker at Petaluma for 10 years, during which time he managed to do three vintages in France and one in Oregon as well as undertaking his Masters at UC Davis, California. It is hardly surprising that the wines are immaculately made from a technical viewpoint. Dean has managed to source 30-year-old riesling from the Eden Valley and 70-year-old shiraz from McLaren Vale; he also makes a Barossa Valley Mourvedre from vines planted in 1853 at Rowland Flat and a Barossa Valley Shiraz and Grenache from 60-year-old vines at Tanunda.
JAMES HALLIDAY, Wine Companion

In 1998 when Dean Hewitson started his eponymously named business, he was a winemaker without a winery, a vigneron without a vineyard. However, what he did have was a great knowledge of South Australia’s best vineyard regions and more specifically the old-vine, dry grown vineyards that lay largely uncelebrated across the Barossa, Eden and McLaren Vale.

Seeing his opportunity he set about securing old vines plots (via long-term contracts with growers) across the premier wine growing regions, making the wines at ‘friendly’ wineries within the region where the grapes were grown. While there is nothing out of the ordinary in the story where he did depart from the norm was in winemaking style.

At a time when the more “high-octane” examples of Barossa and McLaren Vale reds were being lauded by Robert Parker, causing some other winemakers to formularise their wines to suit the preferred style, Hewitson took a different path.

Informed by his years in the south of France and under the tutelage of Brian Croser his wines offered more subtle extraction and use of oak, showcasing the vineyard place and the purity of the old vine fruit. Amongst his many excellent wines it’s his superb Old Garden Mouvedre from a vineyard planted in 1853 that is most impressive. It is both earthy and ferrous and stubbornly of its variety but also speaks of where its grown. The real talent from Hewitson’s point of view was to understand what he had and bottle it as a mono-varietal. We should all be glad he did!

The range is impeccably made, well-priced and delicious drinking across all varieties. We highly recommend them to you.

Cheers

The Team at the Prince