Time in a Bottle: Thomas Wines Braemore Semillon
If you want to understand Hunter Valley Semillon — truly understand it, not just taste it young and wonder what the fuss is about — you need to begin somewhere unlikely. You need to begin with patience.
There is no other wine in Australia that demands it quite so emphatically, and no other wine that rewards it quite so extravagantly. Young Hunter Semillon is lean, angular, almost severe. Pale as water. Barely twelve percent alcohol. Lemon and cut grass and something flinty, almost mineral, hovering just out of reach. To the uninitiated it can seem like a wine still waiting to become itself.
And then the years pass. Five, eight, ten. Something extraordinary happens. The lean frame fills. The citrus deepens to lemon curd and butter. Toast and honey arrive uninvited and somehow improve everything. The wine that seemed so restrained in its youth blossoms into something that the French would recognise — structured, complex, alive — and that wine lovers anywhere in the world, if they tasted it blind, would not believe cost thirty-five dollars.
This is the magic that Andrew Thomas has been bottling, quite literally, since 1997.
Born in McLaren Vale, Andrew Thomas had it all mapped out. Graduate from Roseworthy. Return to South Australia. Follow in the footsteps of his father Wayne Thomas, whose winery had established the family name. And then fate stepped in. Between semesters, he took on a vintage at Tyrrell’s. He met Murray Tyrrell — larger than life, opinionated, passionate — and the Hunter Valley imprinted on him for life.
During his thirteen years at Tyrrell’s, Thomas developed a deep respect for Semillon and Shiraz and a passion for the more subtle, savoury, structured wines of the Hunter Valley. When he left to establish Thomas Wines in 1997, the focus was clear from the first vintage: single-vineyard wines that expressed the specific character of specific places. Not a broad Hunter style. A place. A soil type. A season.
No place in his portfolio has proven more specific — or more spectacular — than Braemore.
The Braemore vineyard is situated on the sandy alluvial flats of Hermitage Road, Pokolbin, planted in 1969. The name itself is a hybrid — coined by owners Ken and Christine Bray, who combined their surnames when they purchased the block in the early 1990s. Bray had spent decades in the Hunter, understood the site’s potential, and began selling small parcels to local winemakers. Thomas was among the first to see what the vineyard could do.
The synergy between the unique site, Bray’s intuitive vineyard management, and Thomas’s uncompromising winemaking saw the wine rapidly grow in popularity and acclaim. Thomas eventually purchased the vineyard in late 2017. Despite the change in ownership, Ken Bray continues his connection to the land by managing the vineyard.
The winemaking philosophy is deliberate and restrained. Gentle whole-bunch pressing. Only the finest free-run juice. Fermentation in stainless steel using a neutral yeast to express the citrus characters of the vineyard. Early bottling to preserve freshness. No oak. No intervention. No shortcuts. Thomas feels morally obliged to hold a sizeable portion of each vintage back as a six-year-old cellar reserve, giving his customers the chance to experience the immense beauty of aged Braemore.
In 2023, Andrew Thomas was named Hunter Valley Winemaker of the Year for the third time. It is not a coincidence that Braemore Semillon sits at the centre of that recognition.
Four Vintages. One Vineyard. A Study in Time.
2006 — Museum Release
Utterly stunning, with exceptional citrusy freshness, richness, and lingering gunflint nuances. Nearly two decades on, the 2006 demonstrates everything that believers in Hunter Semillon have always argued. This is a wine that has arrived at a destination that younger vintages are still travelling towards — all honeyed complexity, toasted brioche and preserved lemon, the acid still singing cleanly underneath. Remarkable.
2009 — Cellar Reserve
A sublime wine, gorgeous and intense, with subtle gunflint notes. The 2009 sits in that ideal drinking window where the youthful citrus has given way to layered, secondary richness without losing the freshness that makes Braemore what it is. Lemon curd, warm toast, a saline edge that draws you back to the glass. This is Hunter Semillon making its case for immortality.
2013 — The Greatest
“The best vintage I have produced in the twenty-one years of making wine from this iconic vineyard,” says Andrew Thomas. Awarded twelve trophies and twenty-one gold medals. Outstanding — full-flavoured and expressive with a long, soft, bright palate. Exceptional purity with alluring toastiness late on the finish and incredible length of flavour. This is the benchmark against which all other Braemore vintages are measured, and it is still — astonishingly — drinking at or near its peak. If you have one in the cellar, open it now with ceremony. If you don’t, find one.
2023 — Current Release
Classically shaped with impeccable purity and precision. Tightly wound lemongrass and lime zest fruit with impressive intensity and concentration. The mouth-watering acidity provides impeccable balance, ensuring the wine can be enjoyed as a youngster or cellared for five to fifteen or more years. The 2023 is the twenty-fourth consecutive bottling of Braemore Semillon under the Thomas Wines label. It carries the weight of that lineage without showing the strain. Fresh, focused, and coiled like a spring. Give it time. It will deliver.
Hunter Valley Semillon is one of the great wine puzzles — a style that reveals itself slowly, that asks something of the drinker, that rewards those willing to wait. Thomas Wines Braemore is its finest expression. A vineyard on Hermitage Road in Pokolbin, planted in 1969, cared for by the same hands for decades, and coaxed into something genuinely world-class by a winemaker who has never once looked elsewhere.
This is what the Hunter does better than anywhere on earth.
Find Thomas Wines at their cellar door in Pokolbin, or at thomaswines.com.au.
