The Prendergast family are family believers in quality over quantity, and this philosophy underpins all of the vineyard operations. The vineyard is set up for minimal cropping, with a heavy pruning during the winter to help keep down yields. The vineyard aims at producing less than two tonnes of fruit per acre, thus maximising flavours in the berries. The Prendergasts also believe that low cropping is the reason that in the past six vintages they have had no difficulties ripening the fruit even with adverse weather conditions. All organic fertiliser is used on the property and all the wines are made from grape grown only on the estate.
Their first vintage was in 1999, which produced 1800 bottles from 1.5 tonnes of Shiraz, 1 tonne of Cabernet Sauvignon and three buckets of Merlot. In 2004 Dusty Hill picked 28 tonnes of fruit off 17 acres with a maximum production capped at 34 tonnes.
2004 is the sixth vintage from the grapes and the age of the vines is starting to show through in the depth of flavours of the wines. The Prendergasts are also conscious of releasing their wines when they are showing at their best.
Joe Prendergast comments: "Many wines in Australia are released at a very young age, they are often still rough around the edges and need time to develop and soften. Dusty Hill puts so much passion and work into growing good grapes and making quality wines that we feel it would be doing the wines a disservice to release them too early. We hold them back, let them settle in the bottle, soften and obtain further complexity with some age before we let them be released."