The centre of Sydney city is definitely not where you’d expect to find a winery.

Meet Alex Retief, the man who started Australia’s first urban winery. You enter the Moore Park Entertainment Quarter, situated behind the SCG, and you find yourself stumbling upon the Urban Winery Sydney, a fully operating winery in the heart of a pumping cosmopolitan city.

Alex, founder of both A.Retief Wines and the Urban Winery, stumbled into the world of winemaking more than entering into it as part of a life-long goal. During a university break from the Australian National University, Alex found himself helping his father plant a vineyard on their family property in Wagga.

At the time an ambitious student studying an arts degree, the thought occurred to Alex that winemaking was actually ‘awesome’. As a result, he left Canberra, returned home to Wagga and began studying winemaking – and the rest is history.

Our Wine Hunter discusses the paths that led Alex to developing the Urban Winery Sydney, drinking wine worth 15,000 euros, and the one wine he’d take onto a desert island to drink for the rest of his life.