Topper’s Mountain wines in New England
The only Tempranillo Blanco in Australia
The origin story
Tempranillo Blanco’s wine origin story is like a minor miracle witnessed in a vineyard by a man named Jesús Galilea Esteban. So not THE Jesus. There was no beam of light, three startled sheep or a heavenly choir humming flamenco.
The story begins in 1988 in Rioja, Spain, when local winegrower Jesús Galilea Esteban was tending his vines in Murillo de Río Leza. Among the deep, dark berries of traditional red Tempranillo, he noticed something deeply odd. One shoot had gone rogue. Instead of producing the usual blue-black grapes, it had grown yellow-green clusters, as if the vine had woken up one morning and decided it was tired of red wine’s emotional intensity and wanted to become a crisp white with a more Mediterranean social life.
Tempranillo Blanco was born from a spontaneous natural bud mutation of red Tempranillo. Scientists at La Rioja’s agricultural research centre took cuttings from the strange shoot, propagated them and confirmed the variety was stable by the early 1990s. The grape was eventually authorised for use in Rioja in 2007, making it quite possibly one of the youngest and most dramatic white wine varieties in the world. Red Tempranillo may have centuries of brooding Spanish nobility behind it, but Tempranillo Blanco arrived like the unexpected younger cousin at a family wedding: dazzling, aromatic and causing everyone to whisper, “Well, where did she come from?”
Topper’s Mountain Keeper Tempranillo Blanco 2023
And now, in a delicious twist, this rare Spanish curiosity has found an Australian home high on the Great Dividing Range in northern New South Wales. Topper’s Mountain, in the New England wine region near Tingha, has released Australia’s first known commercial Tempranillo Blanco, the Topper’s Mountain Keeper Tempranillo Blanco 2023. It is not merely rare. It is rare with a numbered bottle and a small-batch swagger.
Topper’s Mountain is well suited to such vinous eccentricity. Founded by vigneron Mark Kirkby, the vineyard sits in one of Australia’s youngest wine regions, where high altitude, cool climate and rich red volcanic ash soils create the sort of conditions that alternative varieties find extremely agreeable. If mainstream grapes are the people who arrive at dinner parties with a reliable bottle of Chardonnay and sensible shoes, Topper’s Mountain is where the more intriguing guests gather in the kitchen: Manseng, Nebbiolo, Gewürztraminer, Touriga, Tinta Cão, Tinta Roriz and now, the Spanish oddity with the almost biblical backstory.
The Kirkby family initially planted 22 varieties, including 15 in a mixed “Fruit Salad” block to see what would thrive in the particular combination of site, soil, climate and topography. It is a wonderfully Australian sort of experiment and what happened, in the case of Tempranillo Blanco, is a wine of freshness, texture and quietly thrilling difference. This is not your standard zippy white designed to be poured fridge-cold and knocked back before anyone has found the good crackers. Topper’s Mountain’s Tempranillo Blanco is aromatic and layered, revealing floral, citrus and stone-fruit notes, with a saline complexity that gives it a savoury edge. There is freshness and juicy acidity, yes, but also weight and intrigue. It has the manners of a white wine but the backstory of a Spanish telenovela.
How to serve Tempranillo Blanco
Serve it slightly warmer than a standard crisp white, around 10–12°C, and it opens up beautifully. Too cold, and you risk shutting down its more interesting conversation.
The release also sits within Topper’s Mountain’s refreshed portfolio, which has been reorganised into three ranges: Seeker, Finder and Keeper. The Tempranillo Blanco belongs, fittingly, in the Keeper range, the peak expression of the winery’s rarest and most distinctive work. Each bottle is uniquely numbered, which is helpful because a wine like this deserves to feel slightly illicit, like you have acquired it through a whisper network of people who know things.
There is also a grounded, thoughtful approach behind the romance. Topper’s Mountain uses minimal-impact vineyard practices, including sheep grazing among the vines in cooler months and natural inter-row vegetation to encourage biodiversity and soil health. Pesticides have not been used on the site since 2002, with the vineyard relying on ecological balance rather than chemical intervention. Even the vines, it seems, are asked to behave like decent members of the community.
And that is perhaps why this wine feels so appealing. Tempranillo Blanco began as a strange little rebellion on a red grapevine in Rioja, noticed by a grower named Jesús and coaxed into existence by science. Decades later, it has crossed the world to a high-altitude vineyard in New England, where Topper’s Mountain has given it an Australian chapter. It is history, mutation, terroir and nerve in a glass.
Not quite water into wine, perhaps. But close enough to make one raise an eyebrow, pour another glass and quietly believe in miracles.
More information found here – Topper’s Mountain @toppersmtnwines
