Clarendon Hills: How One Guy, One Shiraz, and One Ridiculous Hill Built an Aussie Icon The rebel who bottled old vines, dodged rules, and made Australia's most Burgundy-minded Shiraz.

Let’s start with this: Most people build a brand with marketing. Roman Bratasiuk built his with obsession, old vine maps, and a defiant refusal to blend.

Clarendon Hills isn’t your average Aussie winery story. There are no big teams, no sprawling cellar doors, no vineyard signs pointing to “icon range.” What you get instead is one man, one style, and a whole lot of single-site belief.

This is the tale of Clarendon Hills—a high-altitude, high-integrity operation that helped put South Australia’s McLaren Vale on the fine wine map, not by shouting, but by bottling purity, vineyard by vineyard, year after year.

1. 1990 – A First Generation Winemaker Lights a Fuse

Roman Bratasiuk was a biochemist who loved Burgundy. Which already makes him unusual in 1990s McLaren Vale. He wasn't from a wine family. He didn’t own vineyards. But he had an eye for neglected, dry-grown old-vine plots—mostly bush vines planted between 1920 and 1965 on rocky, elevated soils.

He went door to door. Literally. He bought fruit by handshake. And instead of blending it all, he vinified each parcel separately.

Single vineyard. Single varietal. Zero compromise.

2. The Single-Site Shiraz Crus of Clarendon Hills

Bratasiuk believed in Shiraz the way Burgundy believes in Pinot. Each vineyard would become a voice—one that could speak for itself. No new oak showmanship. No mechanical tricks. Just gravity-fed winemaking and time.

The most famous bottlings:

• Astralis (Shiraz):
  The flagship. Grown on a low-yielding 1920s-planted site in Clarendon. Ultra-concentrated, deeply perfumed, with a structure that often outpaces Grange. Multiple 99s and 100s from critics. If Côte-Rôtie and Barossa had a lovechild, this is it.
• Brookman (Shiraz):
  A rocky site with polish and perfume. Dark chocolate, spice, and a velvet frame.
• Liandra (Shiraz):
  Sleek, spicy, more lifted. Often the most elegant of the line-up.
• Hickinbotham (Cabernet Sauvignon):
  A separate cult in itself. From 1960s-planted vines at elevation. Plush yet vertical, with cassis and mineral lines.
• Blewitt Springs Grenache:
  A sleeper hit—old bush vines on sandy soils yielding intensely aromatic, fine-tannin wines that age better than anyone expects.

3. Style That Defied a Category

Clarendon Hills wasn’t making “Aussie Shiraz” in the classic blockbuster style. Roman’s wines were high in intensity, yes—but with mineral tension, structure, and balance that begged for aging.

No filtration. Indigenous ferments. Long elevage. Big critics (Parker, Tanzer) swooned. Collectors chased Astralis as Australia’s Burgundy alternative.

Roman didn’t bend to trends. He doubled down on origin.

4. Legacy and Future (Post-2010)

Clarendon Hills remains family-run. Roman still calls the shots, now joined by his son Adam. Production is small—sometimes under 500 cases per vineyard. And Astralis remains the reference point for site-expressive Shiraz in Australia.

While some estates chase expansion, Clarendon Hills goes deeper: refining farming, reducing extraction, aging even longer in bottle before release.

Why Clarendon Hills Still Matters

• It pioneered site-specific winemaking in South Australia long before it was fashionable.
• It kept old vine heritage alive by working with dry-grown bush vines many had forgotten.
• It made collectors take McLaren Vale seriously as a region capable of age-worthy, world-class reds.

Liber’s Bottom Line

Clarendon Hills proves you don’t need to shout to be iconic. Just listen—to the vines, to the soils, to the differences in slope and sun and wind. Roman Bratasiuk heard that early. And instead of blending it all into silence, he let each voice sing.

So next time someone hands you a glass of Astralis, don’t chug it. Swirl. Listen. Taste the hill.

And raise a glass to one man’s refusal to blend in.

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