Professor Robert Lusby (AM), to give him his full title, was a pioneering vascular surgeon based at Sydney University and Concord Hospital, Sydney. In the early nineties he and his family purchased a property on Hermitage Road, Pokolbin, Hunter Valley (Tintilla Estate) and set about producing wines in homage to the Europeans, especially the Tuscans and Burgundians, who had shown the way to integrate family, wine and food.
Now “retired”, Bob, pursues his passion for wine and food living full time in the Hunter Valley. Bob’s passion for wine is not only in the making and drinking of it, but also in the history of how Australian Wines and in particular the Hunter Valley Wines came to be and continue to be some of the best wines in the world. Bob’s Blog tells that story.
While harvesting our Semillon I was asked by one of the pickers “how come Semillon does so well in the Hunter?” Well it was not by accident but as a result of keen observation and experiment in the early days of the wine industry that it emerged as a successful varietal in the Hunter. It…
We recently visited the very successful Hunter Distillery on Broke Road as part of an Around Hermitage Famil. It got me thinking about the role distillation has had in our history. The First Fleet’s arrival in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788 is not the only important event that has occurred on 26 January. In…