Moppity Vineyards has continued its strong record at the Canberra and Region Wine Show, collecting a total of 23 medals this year and reinforcing the Hilltops’ growing reputation for premium wine.

This year the winery secured two gold, three silver and thirteen bronze medals, adding to a legacy that owners Jason and Alecia Brown say has been built through years of consistent excellence.

“We’ve actually been the most successful exhibitor at the show eight times in the last twelve years,” Jason said.

“We won a lot of awards this year across the board, but those golds and the trophy were the highlights.”

Among those highlights was a standout result for Moppity’s white wines.

Jason said the team’s hands-on vineyard approach plays an important role in achieving that quality.

“We do a lot of hands-on work in the vineyard to get the right amount of sunlight exposure so we get optimal fruit brightness and flavour intensity,” he said.

“With varieties like Pinot Gris, that takes quite a bit of work — removing shoots and leaves to get the canopy balance right.

We also kept the wine on lees after ferment to build more texture and mouthfeel, which works beautifully for Pinot Gris.”

But for Jason, great wine starts long before it reaches the winery.

“The real key is good fruit.

If you start with excellent fruit, the winemaking is about guiding it, not dominating it,” he said.

“We’re fortunate to have a fantastic site, that’s the essence of a great wine.”

He said the Canberra and Region Wine Show stands out because it brings together producers from a wide range of climates and regions.

“It really is the shoot-out between the best in the surrounding regions,” he said.

“The catchment stretches from Tumbarumba to Gundagai, Southern Highlands, the Hilltops, and it also includes wineries outside those regions that buy fruit from here.”

For Jason, the most meaningful achievement is the consistency with which Moppity performs.

“Occasionally a wine can jag a good result, but being consistently successful over many years is far more challenging,” he said.

“That puts the spotlight on the quality of the wines.”

That quality, he said, has been recognised well beyond the Hilltops, with more winemakers from outside the region now turning to local growers.

“More wineries outside the region are turning to Hilltops because the fruit is simply better, they make better wines with it,” he said.

“If you’ve got fruit from the wrong region or wrong climate, it’s very hard to produce good wine.”

Jason and Alecia chose Hilltops deliberately, long before the region was widely known.

“I could have gone anywhere in Australia,” Jason said.

“We chose Hilltops because we believed we could produce extraordinary wine here.

Hilltops was producing great fruit but getting no recognition, that story hadn’t been told.

There was an underdog element: wines the world wasn’t expecting, from a place they’d never heard of.”

That belief paid off early when a Hilltops wine took home a major award in London.

“People said, ‘Sorry, where does this come from?’” Jason recalled.

“That was exactly why I chose Hilltops.”

Since then, the region’s presence has grown steadily.

“Back in 2004, you’d walk into a bottle shop and see nothing from Hilltops.

Now you see Hilltops wines, ours, other locals, and even wineries from outside the region using Hilltops fruit,” he said.

Despite the success, Jason said the local winemakers don’t see each other as competitors.

“I don’t see any of the locals as competitors, we’re all playing for the same team, Hilltops,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter who scores the try, If Hilltops wins a trophy, Hilltops wins.”

And while the accolades are appreciated, Jason said the focus remains on improvement.

“We’ve had a lot of success, but we’re always looking for ways to get better,” he said.

“In the last twelve years we’ve grafted about 200 acres, I don’t know anyone in New South Wales who’s done more than that.”

With a strong showing at this year’s awards and a growing reputation for quality fruit, both Moppity and the wider Hilltops region appear firmly on track for continued success.