Australia Wine New South Wales Wines and Vineyards Bidgeebong Winery Bidgeebong's wines are made from grapes grown on the South West Slopes of NSW - an area emerging as the source of some of Australia's most interesting and exciting premium and super-premium wines. The 'Bidgeebong Triangle' encompasses three distinct districts: Tumbarumba, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains; the Hilltops district, centred on the town of Young; and the Murrumbidgee plain around Gundagai, on the Hume Highway, about half way between Sydney and Melbourne. The three regions provide Bidgeebong's Director of Winemaking, Andrew Birks, with a range of options that ensure consistency of both style and quality in wines released under the various Bidgeebong labels. Each year, Birks has available to him grapes grown in the cool-to-cold alpine climate of Tumbarumba, the mild-to-cool climate of Hilltops/Young and in the mild-to-warm Gundagai climate. These allow him to produce outstanding single-district wines, such as Tumbarumba Chardonnay and Gundagai Shiraz, and also the high-quality blended wines released under the Bidgeebong Triangle label. More recently, Bidgeebong has kept aside small quantities of exceptional single-vineyard wines for release under its flagship Icon Series. Bidgeebong Wines is a state-of-the-art facility located on the outskirts of Wagga Wagga, the main centre of the the agriculturally rich and diverse NSW South West Slopes. It is perfectly equipped to fulfil Bidgeebong's reason for being - to create wines that fully express the distinctive flavours and characters of grapes grown in the 'Bidgeebong Triangle', whether they be single-vineyard, single-region or blends from across the region. The name Bidgeebong was coined by Irish immigrants who settled near Gundagai in the early 1800s and used it as the name for one of their sheep stations. It is a combination of 'Murrumbidgee' and 'billabong', two words derived from the language of the Wiradjuri tribe ('river people') who occupied much of southern NSW for many thousands of years prior to white settlement. The Murrumbidgee River is the lifeline of this rich agricultural region, and the name comes from two Wiradjuri words - 'moroombeeja' (big water, forever flowing and occasionally overflowing) and 'morrong' (curved, round, symmetrical). A 'billabong' (meaning 'place of still water') refers to a lagoon or waterhole. Billabongs were used as gathering and meeting places by the Waradjuri people, and often have particular spiritual significance. When Bidgeebong Wines was established, we commissioned Donna Kirby, a member of the Wagga Wagga Aboriginal community, to design our logo. The result is her interpretation of the Murrumbidgee River, which, according to tribal folklore, contains the spirits of two young lovers who drowned in the river when attempting to escape their two warring tribes. 'Wagga', incidentally, is the Wiradjuri wird for 'crow'. To create a plural, the Wiradjuri people repeated the word. Hence, 'Wagga Wagga' translates as 'the place of many crows'. 352 Byrnes Road, Wagga Wagga NSW 2650 New South Wales Telephone 02 6931 9955 Facsimile 02 6931 9966 Website: www.bidgeebong.com

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