Dinny Goonan (right) with son Angus. Dinny Goonan Facebook
Geelong Feature Week
Dinny Goonan is the founder of his eponymously named winery. An unusual Christian name (to me), but very Irish and steeped in Gaelic history. His ancestors emigrated to Australia from Ireland in the 1850s and Dinny says that the family became ‘more Irish’ the longer they were in Australia.
Dinny Goonan was the first winery established in the Otway hinterland with the initial focus on planting riesling, shiraz and a cabernet and its ‘friends’.
Dinny was working in local government in Melbourne in the 1970s and 80s and in 1988 identified a piece of land outside Geelong in the Otway hinterland with the dream of establishing a vineyard. He was drawn to this region because it was cooler than the rest of the Geelong region and had a higher and more reliable rainfall.
Dinny noted that “At that time the climate was certainly much cooler, however over the past 30 years the effect of climate change has been extremely evident, with average harvest periods coming forward about a month. As a consequence, a challenging area for grape production has become a reliable one for cooler climate varieties.”
Dinny Goonan was the first winery established in the Otway hinterland with the initial focus on planting riesling, shiraz and a cabernet and its ‘friends’ (cabernet franc, merlot and malbec). In 2008 a block of semillon was established so a botrytis affected
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
