By Corks Crew Grapevine C/o the Times News Group
An article by the Corks Crew, showcasing the Fighting Gully Road Petit Arvine.
“It started in 2004, standing among the steep, terraced vineyards of the Aosta Valley.” While most travellers might have been lost in the drama of the Alps, Mark Walpole saw something else entirely — “a mirror of his own patch of dirt in Stanley.”
That mirror was Petit Arvine, a variety that thrives in the thin air of the Swiss and Italian Alps. A “notorious diva in the vineyard,” it buds early – “a sitting duck for the brutal spring frosts” – and ripens late, demanding a long, patient autumn to reveal its character. It has taken two decades, time in government quarantine, and the help of the Chalmers family to bring it to bottle under our Fighting Gully Road label.
Mark Walpole planted the vines at the Europa vineyard in Stanley (in 2025), in an old sheep paddock at 740 metres, where red Dermosol and shaley soils provide the drainage and mineral tension the grape craves. It is high-altitude viticulture at its most precarious…“one bad frost can wipe out a year’s work in a single morning.”
The result? “A bracing, intellectual white wine that doesn’t forget to be delicious.” Aromas of pink grapefruit and delicate wisteria lift from the glass, but “the real story is the texture.” Tightly coiled around a stony mineral core, the palate carries flavour and gentle creaminess before finishing with “a distinctly pithy and salty edge as you would hope to see from this variety.”
As the Corks Crew note, while much of the conversation has focused on drought-hardy Mediterranean grapes, we are also seeing “a renewed interest in the cooler margins of viticulture.” Petit Arvine “fits this niche perfectly.” It doesn’t simply offer another white for the fridge, it delivers a saline, textural experience that speaks of granite, altitude and quiet persistence.
With only a handful of cases produced, the 2025 wine is more than a new release…it’s the culmination of twenty years of obsession, and proof that Beechworth can support far more than the expected!
Read the full article from the Corks Crew here.