WINE
Great fruit ultimately means great wines.
Thommo credits this success mainly with a very close relationship with the growers of the grapes themselves, a relationship that allows both parties to end up with a finished product that they are happy with. “Great fruit ultimately means great wines,” he says. “With really great fruit, my job is more about fine tuning and helping the fruit express itself.” Another successful contract winemaker and big winner at the 2012 Citibank NSW Wine Awards was Audrey Wilkinson, who picked up two trophies for Best Mature Dry White and Best Young Semillon. Audrey Wilkinson is owned by the Agnew family through their Agnew Wines operation, a business which purchased the Pooles Rock and Cockfighters Ghost wine brands off the estate of former Macquarie Bank Chairman - and passionate Hunter Valley wine identity David Clarke in 2011. It is the Agnew Wines winery that makes it so ideal for contract winemaking, with the 3,000-tonne capacity facility built to handle both small, hands-on winemaking style batches of grapes as well as much larger batches. It is little wonder that Agnew Wines handles contract winemaking for some 15 wine brands. Couple this with the likes of ALLANDale WineRY, which also provides contract winemaking on both a small and medium scale, and you’ve got a quite comprehensive set of options for what can be done with that crop of Shiraz and Semillon. Ultimately, the only challenge in employing a contract winemaker is that you do lose some of the hands-on joy that comes from winemaking. The smell of fermenting Shiraz grapes, for one, is one of the most delicious things imaginable, akin to having your own spicy jam factory 16
BREATHE summer 2012/13
that rolls on for a week or more, as the grapes ferment. Whilst most contract winemakers allow for input into the process so you can feel a part of the action, there is nothing that can match the feel of wine skins between your toes as you do your own foot–treading, a la Lucille Ball. If you do decide that DIY is the only way, there are options to help facilitate that, too. The Hunter Valley Bottling Company is perhaps the best-known bottling and labelling company in the region, with equipment to bottle and package wines for small and large producers. Even the more renowned, mediumsized makers tend to outsource their bottling to outfits like Hunter Valley bottlers, particularly given how expensive a good-quality bottling line can be to install ($1 million per line is typical), and how much more efficient the newer equipment can be. With decisions like this taken care of by the skilled hands of contract winemakers, bottlers and consultants, you are left with the more important decisions - like what sort of food will match best with your award-winning Shiraz!
PICTURED Liz Jackson