When Moorooduc Estate was founded in 1982 very little was known about growing grapes and making wine on the Mornington Peninsula. Since then they have accumulated sufficient experience about the viticulture and winemaking on their piece of land to be able to draw some conclusions about its potential for making great wine. In most years, wines that were made from the later ripening varieties of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz were very good. This is explained by the warmer subregion and a well situated and exposed vineyard. It is increasingly evident, however, that the site is most suited to the early ripening varieties of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The Mornington Peninsula has the potential to be one of the world's great regions for the production of wines made from these varieties, which are the main focus.

Over the years the winemaking has been defined and refined through experimentation, research and reflection. In 1996 Moorooduc started experimenting with indigenous or 'Wild' yeasts naturally present in the vineyard, relying on these to effect the primary fermentation.

As a result, Moorooduc has consistently preferred the wild yeast wines to those inoculated with commercially available cultured yeast, the former being less fruity but richer and more complex, and this name was adopted for the reserve wine. So successful were the results that today all of the Moorooduc Estate wines are now fermented with indigenous yeasts and, starting with the 2001 vintage, all the Moorooduc Estate wines are labelled as such and the reserve wine is called "The Moorooduc".

It has also become clear that, whereas the Mornington Peninsula as a whole shares certain viticultural characteristics such as a temperate, maritime climate, there are distinct differences between areas within the region. In particular, the warmer, drier Northern part has quite a different climate to the cooler Southern areas around Main Ridge and Red Hill. It is likely that these differences will be recognised by the definition of two or more subregions.

After centuries of experience, many old world wine regions have observed definable subregions and within them, individual vineyards that consistently produce characters identifiably different and better than their neighbours. Examples of this are seen in Italy's Piedmont, Germany's Mosel and in many French regions with the best known being Burgundy's Cote D'Or. Here the classifications encompass regional wines made from grapes grown in any part of the region, village wines from individual communes and individual vineyard wines within communes, usually indicated by Premier or Grand Cru status.

The nose shows a similarly intense core of nectarine and citrus fruit though with more savoury, smoky and nutty aromas, richer palate structure and better length.