At one of Australia’s oldest wineries, two siblings are 2025’s champion vignerons
These Yarra Valley siblings are quietly building on the 160-year-old legacy of their Swiss baron great-grandfather.
The Real Review’s Vigneron of the Year award winners, Sandra and David de Pury.Credit: Wine Australia
Billboards punctuate the Maroondah Highway as it barrels east of Melbourne through the pastoral undulations of the Yarra Valley. They are a roll call of the big-name vineyards in one of Australia’s most important grape-growing regions: Hubert Estate, Chandon Australia, Oakridge, Tarra-Warra Estate. Only the keenest-eyed drivers would notice a sign the size of a number plate on a gate in the town of Coldstream with Yeringberg painted on it in quiet black font. This, though, is one of Australia’s oldest wineries.
Sandra de Pury, 62, the fourth generation of her family to farm this site, strides out to meet me as I park near the 162-year-old winery. Her appearance identifies her as a winemaker at the end of vintage: slightly frazzled hair, hands stained with grape juice and the hard graft of picking and pressing 12 hours a day, seven days a week for the past month.
We head over to the weatherboard, Amish barn-style building – currently being renovated under the exacting gaze of the National Trust – and into the cellar. Thirty-five tonnes of grapes, enough to make about 1750 cases, have been harvested, the wine stored in barrels that line the subterranean stone walls. De Pury’s great-grandfather, Baron Frédéric Guillaume de Pury, who emigrated from Switzerland in 1852, quarried this stone from an adjacent hill on which the vines that produced the current vintage now grow.
Genetic pull drew de Pury back here after avoiding the family legacy and busying herself for years as a chef and management consultant. She joined her brother, David, 60, full-time on the property in 2008. Pushing to produce wines even better than their great-grandfather and father, Guillaume, before them, they have just won The Real Review Vigneron of the Year award.
Sandra sorts through grapes during harvest time.
This new category lauds excellence by a vigneron – in this case the partnership between Sandra, who makes the wine, and David, with a PhD in plant physiology, who manages the vines. “The de Purys are quiet people who fly under the radar,” says judge Huon Hooke. “They are Swiss nobility but also salt of the earth. It is their lack of ego which sets them apart. Neither of them mess too much with the grapes, they simply guide them into becoming great wine.”
Yeringberg neither sends out media releases nor mounts social media
campaigns. Intermittent emails are dispatched to announce a new batch of wine for sale, sometimes with the bonus of a leg of Yeringberg lamb (they graze sheep and cattle on the property). “There is no other winery I can think of which sells wine and meat together,” Hooke says. “I imagine it would be pretty great drinking their cabernet with a roast leg of their lamb.”
‘For six weeks I get to immerse myself in the art of making wine and not worry about things like marketing.’
Sandra de Pury
In an area known for chardonnay and pinot noir, the de Purys are recognised for a cabernet blend and a marsanne roussanne, a white wine blend. Marsanne grapes are macerating in an open tank when I enter the winery. Jenna Mornau, who is helping Sandra this vintage, uses a plastic measuring jug to dip into the nectar-sweet juice and pour it over the pulpy surface, a very sticky, manual way of extracting maximum flavour from the grape skins.
The annual Australian harvest starts in northern vineyards, such as the Hunter Valley, in February and finishes in the Tasmanian estates in May. “Vintage reminds me why I love being a winemaker,” says de Pury. “For six weeks I get to immerse myself in the grapes and the art of making wine and not worry about things like marketing.”
The Amish-style barn at Yeringberg’s estate is undergoing National Trust-led renovations.
At the moment, though, many Australian winemakers are worrying about marketing. Huon Hooke says the industry is facing its toughest time since he started as a wine writer more than 40 years ago. De Pury agrees the industry is hurting. “Australia has a major oversupply of wine. There is a lot of wine currently sitting in tanks not being bottled.”
Tax incentives in the late 1990s led to a lot of vines being planted, partly to cater for an insatiable demand for Australian wine from China. “The US, UK and Chinese markets have all declined,” Hooke says. “This, coupled with changing consumer tastes for gin, spirits and beer, means it’s really hard.” Yeringberg is not immune from this but selling the 2025 vintage won’t be a problem, he adds.
David de Pury says the way the family makes wine now is not very different from when the original vines were planted. “Sure, there are some technological changes, but really the land is the same, the grape varieties are similar and we are good at not interfering with either of these too much,” he says.
Sandra says tenacity and attention to detail are her strengths, along with having a finely honed palate, having spent her 20s in chefs’ whites in kitchens from Melbourne (including Fanny’s, with famed late chef Greg Malouf) to Hong Kong (at the legendary M at the Fringe in Central). After cheffing she worked as a management consultant, until one day she concluded she didn’t like offices and thought, “Why don’t I do a winemaking degree?”
“I am glad I came home,” she says. “We have such a deep connection to this place and we want to keep honouring the past while also looking to the future.”
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