the Vincognita story...      

Vigneron, Peter Belej, saw some of his best grapes being 'lost' into large corporate blends and wanted to showcase just how great the wines could be.

In 2000, our first vintage, we made just one barrel of Shiraz and with the success of those first wines, we went on to experiment with more exotic varieties such as Zinfandel and Viognier. 

Peter Belej was one of the pioneers of the Viognier variety in Australia, first planting in 1995 over a decade before the current craze.

Vincognita is based in the heart of Shiraz and Viognier country: McLaren Vale and Nangkita in the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.  

The Nangkita Vineyard lies at the southern end of the Mt Lofty ranges just outside the Adelaide Hills wine region.  It lies halfway between McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek, being the 'Bullseye' in the centre of the Fleurieu Peninsula.

Where is Nangkita (click for map)

Our main focus is on Northern Rhone style wines, not only because we love them, but because the varieties suit our area so well.  Shiraz and Viognier from our vineyard coupled with Shiraz from what we believe are the oldest vines in Willunga help us create flavoursome, rich and complex wines. 

By applying all our viticultural and winemaking knowledge and expertise, coupled with innovative techniques that can only ever be 'small scale', we have complete control of quality throughout the whole grape-growing and winemaking process.

This means our production is quite limited and we have had significant demand from customers for our wines.  Most years we will sell out of the wine before the next vintage is released.  All we can suggest is to order the wine while we still have stocks - there are no plans to increase our bottlings because we need to make the wines ourselves to ensure genuine and authentic wines that reflect where they are grown.

Vincognita is committed to making quality handmade wine from selected vineyard estates.