Mount Pleasant
Lovedale Single Vineyard
Hunter Valley
2017

The producer

Mount Pleasant is one of Australia’s most storied wine estates, founded on the vision of Maurice O’Shea—widely regarded as a pioneer of modern Australian winemaking. Nestled in the lower Hunter Valley, the original Old Hill vineyard was planted in 1880 and became the heart of Mount Pleasant when O’Shea acquired it in 1921. Trained in France at Montpellier, O’Shea brought European finesse and a deep understanding of terroir to the rugged soils of New South Wales, crafting table wines of remarkable subtlety and longevity at a time when fortified styles dominated the market.

His partnership with the McWilliam family from the 1930s allowed him to expand his vineyard holdings, notably adding the Rosehill and Lovedale sites - now legendary for Shiraz and Semillon respectively. Despite rudimentary equipment and a fiercely hot climate, O’Shea produced wines of breathtaking elegance, often in tiny quantities, many of which have aged gracefully for decades and still serve as benchmarks.

Today, Mount Pleasant is proudly independent once more and continues to honour O’Shea’s legacy by sourcing fruit from heritage vineyards he originally planted. The winemaking philosophy remains true to its roots: minimal intervention, a deep respect for site, and a focus on individual vineyard expression. These are wines shaped by history, but with a renewed clarity and purpose, bridging the past with the present in every bottle.

The wine

Mount Pleasant Lovedale Single Vineyard Semillon is one of Australia’s most iconic white wines, first produced in 1950 from a vineyard selected and planted by Maurice O’Shea in 1946. Located on the sandy alluvial soils of the Lovedale site in the lower Hunter Valley, this vineyard produces fruit of exceptional purity and balance. The wine is crafted with minimal intervention: hand-harvested, gently pressed, and fermented cool in stainless steel to preserve the crystalline citrus and floral aromatics that define the style. No oak is used, and the wine is bottled early to lock in freshness. It is then cellared at the winery and released with significant bottle age - typically six or more years - revealing the wine’s extraordinary capacity for development. With time, its taut acidity and lime-driven core give way to layers of toast, lanolin, and preserved lemon, making Lovedale Semillon a benchmark for age-worthy, world-class Australian white wine.

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.