Aphelion is one of the most exciting grenache producers in Australia. Rob and Louise Mack have a sixth sense for the grape, working with the top vineyards, making astute farming and picking decisions, and transmitting site through simple winemaking in a lithe, ethereal and expressive way.

Rob has a background in accounting and management, but after a bottle of Barolo changed his life, he spent six years studying wine science at Charles Sturt, one of Australia’s top wine programs. He is now partway through his MW studies. Louise developed a career in corporate sustainability before joining Rob on the wine journey, partnering equally in all the tasks that Aphelion presents, from the making to the marketing to the selling.

Aphelion saw its first vintage in 2014, and has since made waves in the Australian wine scene, with critics calling the grenaches “at the cutting edge of the modern McLaren Vale style” and “sensational… highly/warmly/fervently recommended”. And though credit is due to Aphelion for their intuitive and scholarly approach to the grenache grape, for them, it always comes back to the quality of the fruit and their relationships with local growers.

Aphelion works “hand in glove” with their growers to ensure the quality of the fruit and the sustainability of methodology (for more on that, click that red button to the right). These parcels, often 80+ year old bush-vine grenache, are hand tended using modern equipment and time old methods to create low intervention wines that speak and taste of the land they are from.