Last week, Steve James, Voyager Estate's Manager of Winemaking & Viticulture, made a big announcement: this year, as this renowned Margaret River winery celebrates the 40th anniversary of its first plantings, it will also be transitioning to organic certification!

40 hectares of vineyards - or nearly one third of the total vineyard area - are already in conversion as certified by Australian Certified Organic (ACO), with the remainder to transition to organic certification within the next three years.

Just last month, Voyager welcomed Claude Bourguignon from LAMS (Laboratoire Analyses Microbiologiques Sols), a unique French laboratory that specialises in analysing vineyard soils to understand its physical, chemical and biological properties and how this relates to wine quality and style. Claude was particularly impressed with Voyager Estate's soils and attributes their extremely high quality to organic practices, lack of herbicides and use of natural products, such as compost, over many years. Steve says: “It was great to hear an internationally renowned expert endorse our commitment and shift to organics and identify our soils as amongst the best he has seen during his visit to Australia. I know the hard work is going to pay off in terms of the potential for our wines to get better and better”.