The New Mount Terrible Winery is now fully operational. The building is on two levels, a cellar thirteen feet below the ground and the winery proper above it.

The cellar is serviced by a lift rated for 1.5 tonnes made from parts salvaged from a scrap cherry-picker by Grant McRostie, friend, neighbour and all-round mechanical genius.

The upper part of the building is heavily insulated and the stairs are sealed by a steel trapdoor. This enables the temperature in the winecellar to be kept between 12 and 18 degrees Centigrade all year round. A further advantage of the two level arrangement is that it allows wine to flow between tank and barrel without the use of a pump. Local and recycled materials have been used wherever possible. The barrels, a combination of Sirugue and Francois Freres, are stored on a redgum rack made by Craig Eury. The design is based on a rack he saw in the Napa Valley and enables individual barrels to be moved without disturbing those stacked above them. The bottling, capping and labelling line sits on a magnificent slab of Himalayan pine Craig milled from a 150 year old tree which used to stand opposite Scott McKenzie’s garage in the main street of Jamieson.

While the three stainless steel fermenters and the wine-press were purchased new, most of the rest of the wine-making equipment is either second-hand or was constructed by Grant. Among the latter is a hydraulically-operated device of his own design, which tilts the contents of picking bins onto a stainless steel sorting table.