Balancing Heart Vineyard – Taste The Granite Belt Wine Blog

Balancing Heart Vineyard

Balancing Heart Vineyard, formerly Balancing Rock Wines and before that Preston Peak.

The old Preston Peak vineyard was purchased by David and Lori Broadbent in 2016 and rebranded Balancing Rock. David and Lori had many other competing business interests and soon discovered they were stretched too far. Eventually the property found itself, once again, on the market and it was purchased by Greg Kentish in 2020 with another brand change to Balancing Heart Vineyard. Despite the change in ownership and the rebranding some consistency remained as Mike Hayes who made the wines for Balancing Rock was retained as the wine maker for Balancing Heart Vineyard. This is a fortunate situation as Mike is a very good wine maker who in 2017 was awarded Australian Winemaker of The Year by the Australian Society of Viticulture & Oenology. The original Preston Peak vineyard had a reputation for the quality of its fruit, many years ago the wines were made by Phillipa. I can still remember a shiraz Phillipa made that was awarded Queensland’s top red wine, not certain of the vintage but I think it was 1995.

I visited the Balancing Heart Vineyard Cellar Door for the first time in October 2020. It was immediately evident that there has been a lot of attention to the rebranding. Greg Kentish has some large development plans for the vineyard, he has dedicated marketing social media support. The rebranding includes new labels for all the wines and Mike Hayes has been busy with some new blends.

During a brief conversation with Greg I was able to glean that he intends opening a restaurant and a wedding venue/convention centre. The wedding venue will be located further back from the road with significant views over the vineyard. Greg has also purchased a 400 acre block nearby where new alternatives will be planted. Mike Hayes has been studying these new ‘strangebirds’ and is really enthusiastic about the future of these wines for the region.

The entrance gate with a large Balancing Heart Vineyard bottle and the new wine labels are shown below.

Entrance Gate at Balancing Heart Vineyard (left) – New Wine Labels (right)

The Balancing Heart Vineyard is, to my knowledge, the only vineyard in Queensland that has some Sagrantino in the ground and it’s been there for a while as Peter Stark ex Boireann Winery made a 2010 Sagrantino using fruit from these vines. The variety comes from Montefalco in Italy and is known for its tannins. There’s a tasting note for that 2010 Sagrantino here and also further tasting notes for the 2015 Balancing Rock Sagrantino and the 2017 Balancing Heart Vineyard Sagrantino.

Tasting wines at the Balancing Heart Vineyard Cellar Door