Land in the Woolshed Valley Beechworth was the start of the retirement plans of Rhonda and James. When Rhonda retired from teaching and James from the computer software industry in 2000 the intention was to slow down and enjoy the countryside and to have friends visit for long weekends to enjoy all the Northeast has to offer. For fun, exercise and interest a few vines where planted. They grew well and a decision was made to plant more and make our own wines. Before long there was Shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay vines flourishing in the granite soils. It was a huge learning curve for us with a lot of the lessons learned from our mistakes as we went along. There was no slowing down now an adventure had started. The first three years were difficult 2001 and 2002 were drought years and then in the hot summer of 2003 came the Eldorado bushfire, this burnt the leaves off the Chardonnay and destroyed most of our fences but fortunately nothing major was damaged. In 2004 we had enough grapes to make our first serious batch of wine and we contracted Andrew Doyle, a local Beechworth winemaker to help.

With wine in the barrels a name was required for our growing enterprise. “Tinkers Hill” came about because our neighbours nicked named James “Tinker Taylor”, as he was always playing around with something somewhere on our property like a typical city boy. The logo on the bottle is the Tinker’s Bell a puzzle made by the Tinkers in Ireland, which is appropriate as it is sometimes a puzzle how we came to be doing all this.

That all seems a long time ago, and now our first vintage of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon merlot, and chardonnay is ready for tasting and sale at our new cellar door built by James in 2006. So much for retirement!

The second chapter of our story began when our two daughters Kristy and Jeanette decided to leave Melbourne and come to join us here in the lovely North East of Victoria. Life couldn’t get any better I hear you say. Well it has. We now have two lovely grand daughters, Dylan and Mae courtesy of our eldest daughter Kristy and her husband Peter.

When Kristy and Peter decided to move up to the North East more by good luck than design the property they acquired in Markwood also had a vineyard and they have now produced their first vintage under the Cirko–V label. Their wines, Viognier, Shiraz Viognier and Merlot are proving popular and will also be available for tasting and sales at our new Tinkers Hill Vineyard cellar door.

It has been an interesting and exciting journey for us all so far and having our family here to share the experience just makes it all the better.

The third chapter in our story has began with the opening of our Cellar Door every weekend from 11.00am to 5.00pm and we invite you to come along and try the fruits of our labour and enjoy the surrounding beauty of the historic Woolshed Valley,

A place of stories.