Giant Steps’ first vineyard, Sexton, lies on the steep slopes of the Warramate Ranges in Gruyere, and is planted at elevations of 130-210 metres. The variation in altitudes, along with the fact that vineyards face east, north and west, helps it to ripen a range of grapes. But although there’s some Cabernet, Merlot and Petit Verdot planted there, it’s Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – the Valley’s icon grapes – that have always been at the heart of both the Sexton vineyard and Giant Steps’ portfolio.

Over the years, the number of vineyards owned by Giant Steps has grown. The closest vineyard to Sexton is the low-lying Tarraford vineyard. It’s in the northwest of the Valley, and due to its slightly warmer meso-climate, Syrah thrives alongside Pinot and Chardonnay. The remaining vineyards are clumped together on the eastern fringes of the Valley. There’s Primavera in Woori Yallock, a gently sloping site whose Pinot is typically supple and fragrant. Applejack Vineyard in Gladysdale, where dramatically steep slopes and volcanic soils contribute towards the creation of epic, structured Pinots and taut, focused Chardonnays.

The latest acquisition to join the Giant Steps portfolio is the precipitous Bastard Hill vineyard, originally planted in 1986 with the intention of growing grapes destined for sparkling wine production. (Why Bastard Hill? Apparently that’s the name given to the vineyard by the poor unfortunates who have to climb up and down its scarps all day when tending to the vines.) It wasn’t long, though, before this once marginal site was recognised as a potential source of high-quality still wines, especially in an era of warming temperatures.

None of these extraordinary sites would have been able to achieve their full potential, of course, without the vision and guidance of an equally extraordinary team of men and women. When Sexton hired his first head winemaker, Steve Flamsteed, in 2003, he may not have realised that Flamsteed would stick around for the next couple of decades, helping to mould Giant Steps’ raw material into a cabinet trophy’s worth of award-winning wines. At a time when much of Australia was still in thrall to the ‘more is more’ school of winemaking, Flamsteed was a pioneer of a restrained, elegant style that would help to change the country’s direction of oenological travel. Over the years, Flamsteed has earned his fair share of accolades, too, including the title of Australian Gourmet Traveller Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2016.

In 2020, Sexton sold Giant Steps to the California-based Jackson Family Wines, and Flamsteed passed his winemaker’s baton on to Melanie Chester in 2022. Most people might have felt challenged by the idea of stepping into such big shoes, but Chester is not only undaunted, she’s also a highly awarded winemaker in her own right. She won the Wolf Blass Prize for Excellence in Winemaking on graduation from the University of Adelaide and was named Young Winemaker of the Year in 2015 by Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine – not a bad way to kick off a winemaking career. In 2022, she took on the role of Chair of Judges at the prestigious Melbourne Royal Wine Awards, becoming not only the youngest person to hold the title but also the first woman to do so. To cap it all, under her tutelage, Giant Steps was recently awarded the title of 2025 Winery of the Year in the Halliday wine guide, while her Applejack Pinot was Pinot of the year for two years in succession (2023 and 2024).

Chester hasn’t really changed the paradigm at Giant Steps. Over the course of a tasting that provided an overview of the past 15 years or so at the winery, from a quick gloss of vintages past through to a deep dive through recent vintages of the Sexton Chardonnay and Applejack Pinot, and then on to an overview of all the single vineyard wines from the 2023 vintage, it’s easy to see that Chester’s winemaking succeeds Flamsteed’s as a stylistic evolution rather than a revolution. The 2023 wines also benefitted from outstanding growing conditions, with Flamsteed declaring the year ‘the greatest Chardonnay year I’ve ever seen in the Yarra’.

It’s clear that even though Sexton is no longer at the helm of Giant Steps, his pioneering vision of making terroir-focused wines from single vineyard sites in the Yarra Valley is still bearing fruit.