Page 16 - Tesco Wine Club Magazine - March

The inside view
Australian wine by Neil McGuigan
Wine-maker of the Year, Neil McGuigan, recently met
Pierpaolo Petrassi, MW to give him his thoughts on Australian wine.
The Hunter Valley must be one of the toughest places on earth to grow grapes. It’s the first fertile valley you come across when you travel north from Sydney, which is why the early settlers planted vineyards there. I doubt anyone would choose it today.
The climate is so extreme, you’re literally walking a tightrope every day. But when you get it right, the wines are fantastic. It’s where I grew up, and where I still live today.
I started working in the family winery when I was just five years old. There were huge 750 gallon casks that could only be cleaned by climbing in small doors at the front. Because I was so small I used to get in with my brother to clean them. We used to enjoy helping out but I doubt health and safety would allow that sort of thing today.
If I hadn’t been a wine-maker, I would like to have been a pilot. Just down the road from us in the Hunter Valley is the Williamtown air force
16 March 2010 Tesco Wine Club Magazine
base. It’s where the F1-11s used to be based. When I was a kid growing up, the air force guys used to come and visit the winery from time to time. So I was very tempted to sign up. But wine won out in the end. Australia was the first country to make wines that people could really understand. Our wines were the first to deliver bags of flavour and intensity. So, for the first time, you could pick up a glass and immediately know what grape you were drinking. For instance, you could instantly tell a Chardonnay from the lovely buttery, vanilla flavour. The wines may have got
more subtle over the years, but
it’s still a great feature of
Australian wine.
There’s a lot of talk about climate change in Australia. There’s no doubt that in my lifetime the vintages have been getting earlier because the summers are hotter. We’re also experiencing more extreme weather patterns, such as huge storms. But we’re already adapting our way of working. Australia is a dry country so we’re learning to use our precious asset of water very carefully.
The proudest moment in my life was having my three children. But career-wise, it would have to be winning ‘Best White Winemaker in the world’ at the International Wine Challenge last year, followed by ‘Winemaker
of the Year’ at the International Wine & Spirits Competition. I don’t know whether that’s been done before by one winery in one year. I think we’ve really lifted the bar for Australian wine; both in a quality sense and the evolution of Australian wine style.
Tastes change and I think it’s my job as a wine-maker to reflect that. A few years ago
I realised that many white wine drinkers were looking for a lighter, more floral style of wine. So I began working to bring out the fresh fruit characteristics in the aromas, while adding freshness, elegance and complexity to the palate. Of course, it’s not something you can achieve overnight; it’s an evolutionary process that takes a lot of hard work in the vineyard and winery. That’s one of the reasons why I think we won the awards.
People expect Australian wines to have a certain warmth. But that doesn’t mean they have to be high in alcohol.
We have been developing our reds over the past few years to deliver that beautiful Australian warmth and richness, but without too
much alcohol. I think these will be next to shine in the competitions.
It may take a year or two as reds take longer to evolve...but time
will tell.