John is a Civil Engineer and Lynne a Head Chef and restaurant owner of several restaurants in the Bowral area in the 1980’s.
They moved to Sydney into the big time. Lynne managed the corporate catering for Ernst and Young in their national office in Sydney and John managed NSW for a construction company called EPT.
In 1994 John was moved to Melbourne to manage Victoria and Lynne started Wine Marketing and Viticulture at Roseworthy College South Australia. After a lot of research they bought a 65 acre cattle property at Yarra Glen in the beautiful Yarra Valley in 1998 and started Roundstone Vineyard and Winery. By 1999, 20 acres were under vine and in 2001 they opened the very successful 100 seater restaurant and cellar door.
John left engineering to become winemaker and Lynne ran the restaurant specialising in wood fired cooking with rustic style.
Roundstone won many awards and recognition for its wine particularly the Gamay, and the restaurant was awarded 3 stars in The Age Cheap Eats several years in a row and highly recommended in the Good Food Guide each year until till its shock destruction.
All was destroyed in the dreadful bushfires that swept through the valley on February7th 2009.
Restaurant, cellar door, winery, house and all contents, vineyard, irrigation, nets, and fencing.
All that survived was the hayshed and the sheep. It took 3 years of hard work to reinstate the fencing, vineyard, trellising, pump house and irrigation, however sadly, were not able to face rebuilding the beautiful buildings that were destroyed on “Black Saturday”.
The property was sold in 2012 and is managed by De Bortoli Wines and the Gamay still carries the name “Roundstone Vineyard” on the label.
The difficult decision to move back to the Southern Highlands after an absence of 30 years to be closer to their family resulted in the Fox Hill experience. The beginning of a new exciting chapter.