It never rains but it pours

The last time the cellars flooded at Mitchelton was 1974, just after the new showpiece winery in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley opened.

‘I have a newspaper clipping from the time’, says Mitchelton co-owner Andrew Ryan. ‘The flooding this year was much worse.’

In October 2022, after months of incessant rain across the catchment, the swollen Goulburn River burst its banks, inundating much of Mitchelton’s vineyards, flooding the vast cellars underneath the winery, lapping at the luxury hotel built on-site a few years ago, resulting in AU$5 million in damage.

Many works in the valuable...