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Biochemist and self-taught winemaker Roman Bratasiuk founded Clarendon Hills in 1990, at first buying fruit from growers in the hills around the town of Clarendon, close to Adelaide. He picked the fruit for his first wine, Clarendon Hills Shiraz, by hand, and crushed it with an old Burgundy bottle in a bucket. Back then, he was working full-time for the Australian government and only left to focus exclusively on winemaking in 1994. That same year, he rebranded the Clarendon Hills Shiraz – made with a four-hectare old-vine plot – as Astralis (which means “pertaining to the stars”), a tribute to its out-of-this-world quality. It was the first Australian wine to be priced at $100 a bottle, and has become the flagship for this estate.
