Winemaker: Geoff Broadfield, Iron Gate Estate

Geoff Broadfield has one of the best workplaces in the Hunter Valley, not least because it is one of the most beautiful boutique wineries in the Pokolbin area. Roger Lilliott, who founded the winery in1996 visited the great wineries of Europe for inspiration and travelled all the wine states of Australia for over a year looking for the perfect place to establish a winery and build a showpiece cellar door.

The perfectionist in everything he did — from selecting Spanish roof and floor tiles for the cellar door, to planting the best Semillon, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Verdelho and Chardonnay vines — Roger also brought in the finest stainless-steel wine vats and equipment from Italy to precision-craft his wines. The cellardoor gates, after which the winery is named, were handcrafted by world-renowned blacksmith, Paul Simpson, in Queensland. With` the winery well established and in good hands, Roger retired in 2017, selling the estate to two Sydney-based families WORDS CATHARINE RETTER

who brought in Geoff as their professional winemaker. Iron Gate Estate is one of the few wineries in the Hunter to manage its winemaking on-site from vine, to pressing, to barrels, to bottle. Since taking over, Geoff — an experienced winemaker of 37 vintages in a number of well-known wine companies, as well as being a teacher of wine making at Kurri Kurri TAFE — has worked hard at putting his own stamp on Iron Gate Estate’s popular wine styles. The last three vintages have shown the effects of increasingly warmer summers and the company has changed over some grape varieties to ones better suited to this change in climate, for example grafting over vines to Tempranillo, a Spanish red variety.

‘We’re finding that we’re harvesting earlier because our summer temperatures are getting hotter earlier and for longer,’ says Geoff. But that’s not all. ‘Right across Australia, wine growers are putting a “sunblock” on their grapes.’ »

So, can we expect to see vines with white-smudged blockout on their grapes?

‘The sunblock is a natural clay mix,’ says Geoff, indulging me. ‘We spray it over the fruit so that the sun doesn’t burn the skins. On a 40-degree day in summer, the juice inside the grapes can be as hot as 50 degrees. And that’s particularly harmful to thinskinned varieties such as Shiraz and Semillon.’

It’s for this reason, too, that harvesting will have to change from hand-harvest to machine.

‘It’s hard to expect pickers to be working out in the field all day in 40-degree heat,’ says Geoff. ‘And it’s tough on the grapes too. So the quicker we can get the fruit inside to temperaturecontrolled conditions, the better for the quality of the wine.’

Climate change has also meant Geoff has adapted some of the wine styles produced from traditional grapes.

‘Cabernet Sauvignon grapes ripen later than other varieties and we can make a beautiful rosé from harvesting the grapes early,’ he says. ‘It’s now become one of our most popular wines, a dryer, fruit-driven style rosé. It has a lovely delicate colour from softpressing the grapes and only leaving the juice in contact with the skins for a very short time.’

Geoff’s biggest joy is making wines from small parcels of grapes from the winery’s vineyard and improving the quality and consistency of the wine from year to year. He is always refining techniques learnt over a lifetime, and the results are starting to show.

‘The individual attention we can give small parcels of fruit, means we can really lift our quality in the finished wines. Following and maintaining that quality from grape to glass is very rewarding for a winemaker.’

Which wine is Geoff most proud of from this vintage? ‘I’d have to say the Primera Semillon we’ve produced this year is the best I’ve ever made, and I don’t say that lightly,’ says Geoff. ‘Our assistant winemaker Jade Hafey and I really nurtured that wine to make sure it was the best we could produce and one that we could proudly hang our hats on.’

Iron Gate Estate, cnr Ingles Lane and Oakey Creek Road Pokolbin irongateestate.com

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