Gundagai is a newly developed wine region on the south-west slopes of New South Wales. It is here that the landscape and its mountain streams run down from the western heights of the Snowy Mountains towards the plains of the Riverina.
The McWilliam family established the successful Markview vineyard at Junee in 1877, but grapevines were absent from the Gundagai region from the 1920s to the mid 1990s.
However, since 1995 there has been a flurry of plantings and by 2003 there were about 750 acres of vines under cultivation. The wine styles produced include Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Also home of the famous Australian icon, the Dog on a Tucker Box, Gundagai is also a haven for writers of bush poetry and prose. Its growing reputation as a wine region has also meant a growth in cellar doors and wine-related events.
Gundagai Regional Snapshot 2023-24
Regional Snapshots are one-page profiles updated annually of individual Australian wine regions. They provide at-a-glance summary statistics on: climatic characteristics, viticulture data, winegrape production, and winegrape price and export sales data for wine, compared against the same statistics for the whole of Australia.
Download nowCabernet Sauvignon
These are well-coloured, berry-flavoured reds of medium to full body. Again, there is a resemblance to the Cabernets of the Hilltops region.
Chardonnay
The region makes both unwooded and wooded Chardonnay styles. Melon, stone fruit, lime and citrus characters dominate. The Chardonnays are surprisingly elegant and lend themselves to subtle oak handling.
- Stretching from Tumut in the south-east to Temora in the north-west and Junee in the west, Gundagai is an undulating region varying between 200 and 300 metres in altitude.
- The temperature is warm to hot, with an even year-round rainfall and low humidity. It is only in the south-east corner, nearest to the Australian Alps, that climatic conditions are cooler.
- The chief soil types are similar to those in other regions in south-east Australia; red earth and red podsols, although soils along the major rivers and creeks are more variable.