Wine icon Mount Pleasant gets new lease on life

2020 was a vintage from hell for Mount Pleasant chief winemaker, Adrian Sparks.

On January 7 he made the tough decision not to make any wine from that year’s crop, due to widespread smoke taint.

The next day, he found out parent company McWilliam’s was going into administration.

Going on three years later, Adrian joins us on the Drinks Adventures podcast with nothing but good news from Mount Pleasant.

You heard from the Calabria family last season why they didn’t want to take on Mount Pleasant as part of their acquisition of McWilliam’s Wines.

The companies went separate ways after 80 years, and the Hunter Valley winery now has a new lease of life under the ownership of investment group Medich Family Office.

The Mediches have gone all in to revitalise the brand, funding a renovation for the cellar door, new viticulture equipment and an optical berry sorter that most winemakers can only dream of. Even the labels have had a revamp, with founder Maurice O’Shea’s family crest back on the bottle.

I started by asking Adrian to fill in the gaps since I last reported on Mount Pleasant in my 2020 podcast documentary on The Rise and Fall of McWilliam’s Wines.