John and Simon Denton’s Vineyard located in the Yarra Valley, is on a fabulous site with great aspect for grapes and with wonderful views of the whole valley. View Hill is an isolated hill in the middle of the Yarra Valley on the north side of the...

Welcome to John and Simon Denton’s Vineyard. Our vineyard, located in the Yarra Valley, is on a fabulous site with great aspect for grapes and with wonderful views of the whole valley. View Hill is an isolated hill in the middle of the Yarra Valley on the north side of the Yarra River. It exists because it is a granite ‘plug’ from the late Devonian Age [370 million years ago], sitting above the surrounding softer sandstones and siltstones of the Valley. James Halliday says of the vineyard, the ‘granite base is most unusual in the Yarra Valley, and together with the natural amphitheatre that the plug created, has consistently produced exceptional grapes.’

We love the valley because it feels like a valley with a real sense of containment unlike say much of the Hunter Valley and most other grape growing areas.

Set on 60 hectares of land (150 acres) the vineyard covers 32 hectares (80 acres) planted in three stages between 1997 and 2004.

From our hilltop we can see most valley vineyards from Ronnie Di Stasios’ high on the hills to the south-east to Mount Mary to the south-west and De Bortoli to the north and all in between – Tarrawarra, Oakridge, Domain Chandon, Yarra Yering, Coldstream Hills, Medhurst, Giant Steps and many others.

We have been growing grapes here since 1996 and making small quantities of wine for nine years. From 2004 – 2008 we experimented with wine styles / alcohol levels etc (with all the vineyard variations of pruning methodologies – shoot and bunch thinning, leaf to bunch ratios, leaf plucking etc, etc) to arrive at the optimum grape outcomes from the vineyard to give our winemakers the best material to work with.

Due to the bushfires and associated smoke taint we made no wine in 2009, and from 2010 we have released wine we are happy with. James Halliday has classified the vineyard as five star outstanding. We can only improve from there!

We have been selling our wine into Restaurants and better Wine Merchants for a while now so you can find our wines from time to time on lists at Vue du Monde, Coda + Tonka, Comme, Taxi, Longrain, Maha, Movida, Healesville Hotel and others and of course Izakaya Den and Hihou, as well as selected specialist liquor stores like Rathdowne Cellars