Ruggabellus - Barossa Valley –‘rugged beauty’ – pertaining to the ancient & enchanting nature of our land. I have no recollection of life before this place. I moved here when I was two. I was about to experience the bouquet of my first wine cellar. It was Penfolds and it was the vintage of 1975. My father contributed to many vintages here and it was my good fortune to have the culture of this place woven into my childhood. Indeed since then my life has been lled with privileged experience working with and observing some great winemakers each with their own unique way of crafting wine. ‘Respect and history’ was learned at Penfolds, ‘craft and tradition’ at Rockford, ‘intellect and detail’ from Chris Ringland, ‘perfume and texture’ from Charlie Melton, ‘layers and length’ from my father Rob Gibson and most importantly‘belief’from Pete and Magali at Spinifex – without their encouragement Ruggabellus would in all likelihood have remained just an idea to this day.

Emma and I love drinking wine with food. We love wines with grace and intrigue. We live in the Barossa valley in southern Australia. This is our home. We have taken great pleasure in exploring its strengths – an ancient landscape with a great resource of young and very old vines. We remain constantly aware of the most signicant local challenge – an abundance of sunshine. For a few years now we have been dabbling with small parcels of Grenache, Mataro, Syrah and Cinsault and more recently old vine Riesling, Semillon and Muscat (the rst of these to be released in late 2014). We are keen to understand the uniquely Australian character of our wines. We use no new oak. For our reds we are attracted to vineyards that allow us to pick earlier in an eort to preserve vitality, crunch and intrigue. And for our whites we are attracted to vineyards that are rocky and closer to the sun – for us the white skins play a very important role as we explore a full and more exotic realm of avour whilst trying to retain natural acidity, a realm of avour we hope reects the old, wild and mystical landscape we are lucky to now call our home amongst the hills here. Our wines range from 10% to 100% whole bunch and all wine movements are done using gravity. We nearly always harvest on ‘fruit’ days. All ferments are unseeded and allowed to progress naturally. All wines are bottled under screw cap.

We sincerely hope they become a valuable contribution to the evolving nature of Australian wine.