The Huntington Estate Music Festival at Mudgee will come to an end after 30 years, Huntington Estate winery announced today. The festival of food, wine and chamber music, which was established in 1989 by Bob and Wendy Roberts, along with Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, will close its doors forever following its 30th anniversary festival in November.

Huntington Estate Music FestivalHuntington Estate Music Festival. Photo: supplied

Since 2006 the Festival has been presented by the Stevens family, with Carl Vine as Artistic Director and Musica Viva Australia providing the artistic content. For Nicky Stevens, the Festival’s CEO and General Manager of the Winery, the decision to end the Festival was one of “self-preservation”.

“It was an agonising decision to make, to be honest, and it still feels like a very emotional one. It’s very hard, but in the end we had to prioritise family and sanity, really, and the wine business,” she tells Limelight. “This is a big and complicated business – we grow our own grapes, we make our own wine, we bottle it, we sell it direct, we have 12 full-time employees. It’s a complex organisation to run and that, with...