Mount Mary
Quintet Red Blend
Yarra Valley
2018

The producer

Mount Mary is one of the founding estates of the modern Yarra Valley renaissance, established in 1971 by Dr John Middleton, a man of exacting standards and profound vision. At a time when the Yarra was only just re-emerging as a wine region, Middleton set out to produce elegant, classical wines inspired by the great regions of France - Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Rhône - yet deeply rooted in Australian terroir. The property, nestled in the foothills near Lilydale, was carefully chosen for its aspect, elevation, and gravelly loam soils, ideal for crafting restrained, age-worthy wines.

From the beginning, Mount Mary forged its reputation on a commitment to tradition, purity, and balance. The four cornerstone wines - Quintet (a Bordeaux-style blend), Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Triolet (a white Bordeaux blend) - remain unchanged in style and unwavering in quality. The estate has always taken a hands-off approach in the winery: low yields, hand harvesting, wild yeast fermentations, minimal new oak, and gentle handling throughout. These are wines of quiet power and remarkable longevity, with Quintet in particular regarded as one of Australia’s most refined and collectible reds.

Now run by the second and third generations of the Middleton family, Mount Mary continues to honour its founding ethos. It remains a benchmark of elegance in Australian wine—an estate where time, heritage, and restraint come together in every bottle.

The wine

Mount Mary Quintet is the flagship red of this revered Yarra Valley estate, first produced in 1976 and inspired by the great châteaux of Bordeaux’s Left Bank. A meticulous blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot, the wine is sourced entirely from estate-grown fruit planted in the early 1970s. The Quintet is crafted with precision and restraint: low yields, careful bunch thinning, hand harvesting, and gravity-fed handling in the winery. Fermentation is conducted in small open vats with gentle plunging, followed by maturation in a mix of new and seasoned French oak barriques for around 22 months. The result is a wine of extraordinary balance and finessea- romatically complex, medium-bodied, and built for graceful aging. Typically released after three years in bottle, Quintet has become a benchmark for cool-climate Australian Cabernet blends, prized for its subtlety, structure, and quiet longevity.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.