The Two Hands of Michael Twelftree and Richard Mintz were a couple of Adelaide businessmen when they decided to launch a wine brand with the clear objective of making the highest quality Shiraz based wine sourced from the best vineyards in South Australia.

Two Hands debuted with the 2000 vintage and quickly rocketed to fame once Robert Parker Jnr labeled the brand as ‘The finest negociant operation south of the equator.’

Today the winery produces several tiers, which include their three flagship wines; the Ares Shiraz, Aphrodite Cabernet Sauvignon and Aerope Grenache, the Garden Series with each wine named after the various females within the Two Hands clan, followed by the irreverent and entertaining Picture Series. The Garden Series have been around the longest and it was largely these wines, which sealed the winery’s reputation when they caught the attention of Wine Spectator and Robert Parker Jnr.

Twelftree and Mintz set about not only to make wine, but to build a brand and a company around a set of core values: quality without compromise, differentiation through innovation and fun, using the best barrels for the best wines, sourcing the best available fruit and crafting wines which feature fruit as their predominant quality, not oak. As a matter of principal, grapes are only harvested when they taste ripe and not when the refractometer indicates a certain sugar or brix measurement. The grapes are not subject to extended time on the vine to increase sugar, nor does the resultant wine go through a watering down or a process of de-alcoholisation. Two Hands make no apologies for the 14% and 15% alcohol in the finished wine as they fervently believe that this is a transparent reflection of the vineyard and climate. Two Hands has a horde of followers and are consistently ranked amongst the top Shiraz in Australia.