We’re giving the Queensland Wine website a fresh look. If something looks unfinished, it’s work in progress and won’t be for long.

Queensland Wine

Author: QWIA AI

  • Get bookable: the map in a minute

    Get bookable: the map in a minute

    A visitor is planning their weekend at 11pm. Can they book you?

    QWIA’s Bookable Experiences map takes a cellar door from getting started to trade ready, one step at a time. Tick off what you already have, and what is left is your next bit of road. It is free, it works on your phone, and nothing you tick leaves your browser.

    Explore the map

    Want help getting there? Our hands-on workshop is on Tuesday 8 December. Bring your laptop and leave with your bookings set up. Details and bookings to follow here soon.

    Because nobody wants to be someone’s Plan B.

    Created with QWIA AI. Reviewed and approved by a person before publishing.

  • In case you missed it: getting bookable at Varias

    In case you missed it: getting bookable at Varias

    In case you missed it: on Wednesday 11 November, members and local operators pulled up a chair at Varias in Stanthorpe for the first night of QWIA’s Bookable Experiences Program.

    It was set up as a conversation rather than a lecture, with the tables in a U and questions welcome from the first minute. Adam Penberthy (QWIA President, Ballandean Pub, Dear Vincent Wines) opened with the thinking behind the new strategic plan: Queensland wine businesses are tourism businesses too, and the run to the 2032 Games is the time to get ready for the visitors it will bring.

    The Trade, Tourism and Brand sub-committee then introduced the program. Its first step is a simple one: getting your experiences online, so visitors can find them and book without having to call you. As Stacey Allan (Sancerre Estate, View Wines) put it on the night, a bookable experience can be as small as a $10 tasting, paid for online before the guests arrive. And the line from the night worth repeating: nobody wants to be someone’s Plan B.

    The program’s map walks a business from getting started to trade ready, one step at a time. Tick off what you already have, and what is left is your next bit of road. It is online now, and it works on your phone.

    Explore the map

    Next up is a hands-on workshop on Tuesday 8 December: bring your laptop, sit alongside people who have done it before, and leave with your bookings set up. Details and bookings to follow here soon.

    Thank you to everyone who came, to Varias for having us, and to Queensland Country Tourism for its support of the night.

    Created with QWIA AI. Reviewed and approved by a person before publishing.

  • Balancing Heart: Halliday’s Dark Horse, and a first for Queensland

    Balancing Heart: Halliday’s Dark Horse, and a first for Queensland

    Halliday Wine Companion 2027

    Dark Horse.

    Balancing Heart, Granite Belt. A first for Queensland.

    “As soon as you put Q-L-D after a bottle of wine, people are very sceptical.”

    Mike Hayes, winemaker at Balancing Heart, speaking to Halliday

    Anyone who makes or pours Queensland wine knows that scepticism. This year, Halliday answered it.

    Balancing Heart sits in the Granite Belt, high country with what Mike describes as “quite a continental climate”. By his estimate the region now grows around 100 grape varieties, and he reckons that makes it the most diverse wine region in the country. “We’re not geared up by tradition,” he told Halliday, “so we’re able to let our hair run free.”

    Halliday describes Balancing Heart’s wines as textural whites, medium-weight reds, skin-contact and sparkling wines, and lesser-known varieties, under names like Niche & Montage and Muse & Epoque. Each name pairs a science word with an art word, because to Mike that is what winemaking is. According to Halliday’s Dark Horse write-up, the winery uses no oak, insecticides, chemical fertilisers, added acid or tannin. “Mother Nature and Mother Earth are the best winemaker and viticulturist on the planet,” he says. “We’re merely gatekeepers.”

    In August, the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion named Balancing Heart its Dark Horse Winery. Halliday gives the award to wineries that are not as commonly talked about as they should be, yet are wildly deserving of recognition, and called Balancing Heart “one of the worthiest explorations of fine and unique wine in Australia”. It is the first time a Queensland winery has won one of the Companion’s major awards.

    And the Granite Belt was not finished. Ballandean Estate Wines’ Saperavi 2023 was named Wildcard Red of the Year, so two of the region’s wineries were recognised in the same awards.

    This matters for all of Queensland wine. It is recognition on the national stage for what our growers and makers have known all along.

    Congratulations to Mike and the whole Balancing Heart team, and to everyone at Ballandean Estate. We hope this is the first of many such accolades for both, and we look forward to toasting the next ones. Here’s to the continued success of Queensland wine.

    Read Halliday’s full Dark Horse write-up

    Created with QWIA AI. Reviewed and approved by a person before publishing.

  • Ridgemill Estate takes gold at the Queensland Tourism Awards

    Ridgemill Estate takes gold at the Queensland Tourism Awards

    Queensland Tourism Awards 2026

    Gold.

    Ridgemill Estate, Granite Belt. Tourism Wineries, Distilleries and Breweries.

    The best tourism winery, distillery or brewery in Queensland this year is five minutes’ drive south of Stanthorpe.

    The story of Ridgemill Estate starts in 1998, when Tom and Cath Jimenez planted a vineyard at Severnlea and called it Emerald Hill. Their plan to experiment with alternative grape varieties was, in Ridgemill’s own words, bold and iconoclastic for the Granite Belt at the time.

    In 2004 Martin Cooper, a Brisbane project manager, was in the region managing the build of the Queensland College of Wine Tourism. He fell for the landscape, the lifestyle and the wines, came across Emerald Hill, and within a week the Cooper family had bought it. The new name, so the story goes, came out of a trip to Singapore and a few too many gin and tonics with the late designer David Winter. Peter McGlashan joined as head winemaker that same year, and in 2013 the estate grew with the purchase of the neighbouring property.

    Today Martin and his wife Michelle Feenan run Ridgemill as a winery and a place to stay: a cellar door open every day, tasting experiences, and cabins among the vines.

    On Friday 6 November, at the 41st Queensland Tourism Awards on the Gold Coast, that combination was recognised twice. Ridgemill Estate Winery took gold in Tourism Wineries, Distilleries and Breweries, ahead of Beenleigh Artisan Distillery and the Bundaberg Rum Distillery Visitor Experience. Ridgemill Estate Cabins in the Vineyard took bronze in Self Contained Accommodation. The judges’ citation points to its tastings, its immersive cellar door experiences, its knowledgeable service and a strong commitment to sustainable tourism.

    The gold recognises the experience of visiting Ridgemill: the tastings, the cellar door and the people who run it. QWIA’s strategic plan puts wine tourism at the centre of growing demand for Queensland wine, and as QWIA President, Adam Penberthy, put it at our industry night this month, a winery is a tourism business whose product happens to be wine. Ridgemill is proof of what that looks like, judged against the best tourism operators in the state.

    The Stanthorpe Festival Association also took silver in Major Festivals and Events.

    Congratulations to Martin, Michelle, Peter and the whole Ridgemill team. We wish them every success in the years ahead and many more nights like this one, and here’s to the continued success of Queensland wine.

    See all the 2026 winners on the QTIC website

    Created with QWIA AI. Reviewed and approved by a person before publishing.