At Norton Estate, the winemaking starts when our grapes are all hand picked ensuring  only the highest quality fruit is used in the winemaking process. The winemaking itself employs traditional methods to accentuate individuality for the different wines made. 

All of our red wines are aged in the highest quality French and American oak barrels for 18 months until they are ready for bottling. This non-interventionist approach to our wines ensures  the great varietal characters and style that Norton Estates wines are renowned for.

The vineyard at Norton Estate was established in 1997, on some soil types that are almost foreign to the Wimmera, with buckshot sandy loams over deep red sandy clay and fragmented limestone through the clay layers. The vineyard also has good elevation and is frost free.

This elevation ensures an ideal climate, with warm sunny days and cool evenings, enabling the vines to ripen their fruit evenly and provide the flavours and balance that are reflected in our wines. The management of the vineyard is labour intensive, with the pruning, training and picking of the fruit all being done by hand to ensure the highest quality fruit.

Crop levels are kept very low to ensure the best flavours are developed in the grapes and this is done by pruning to precise bud numbers and then thinning by hand, any unwanted bunches early in the growing season. Norton Estate is also in an area that is distant to other vineyards, providing us with a disease and pest free environment, ensuring excellent vineyard hygiene and vine health.