3 minute read
Producer Profile: Tim Shand
TIM SHAND
Winemaker, Voyager Estate
How did you get your start in wine? I spent way too much time in the tav in my first year of an Arts degree and got politely shown the door (I was still mispronouncing Descartes well into 2nd semester). That woke me up, and looking around south-west WA in the early 2000s, I realised that an energised wine industry was gathering speed and it would be great to get on board.
What is the best thing about working in the wine sector?
When people that you meet are genuinely excited to talk about what you do because drinking wine plays a significant role in their own lives. By the end of a long dinner this becomes the worst thing about working in the wine sector.
What have been some of the highlights of your career in wine? No idea how, but I seem to lob into places just at the point where interesting and talented people are taking off in their lives. Kerri Thompson, Mark O’Callaghan, Sue Bell, Anton Van Klopper, Andrew Higgins, Adrian Sparks, Sam Brewer, Steve Flamsteed, Behn Payten and Dave Mackintosh to name a few. To learn from these people then count them as friends trumps any wine show wins. [P.S. Adrian Sparks insisted I put his name in this list as I always forget to credit his amazingness and humility. Hi Adrian.]
What are some characteristics of Australian wine that help it stand out from other countries?
Increasingly, we are getting the balance right between responding to our markets whilst expressing our knowledge and terroir in the wines we make. The evolution of Chardonnay is the best example of that. The (at times quite heated) conversation around customer preference versus winemaking style seems to have landed in a happy place where the customer feels engaged and ‘listened to’, and the winemaker has been challenged but appreciated. The days of being able to say ‘the customer doesn’t get our wines’ are long gone.
How have you been able to explore viticulture throughout your career and across different regions? I’ve been digging through old G&Ws since 2001 for uni assignments. It’s role now is to refresh my curiosity for things that would otherwise lay dormant in my head. It’s easy to get stuck in the hamster wheel of just keeping the winery doors open. A monthly hit of G&W takes my head out of the weeds (literally and figuratively when you work in an organic vineyard!).
Tim Shand on the Grapegrower & Winemaker
I’ve been fortunate to work in great vineyards around Australia and the world, and they have a commonality in their DNA – there exists a wider business appreciation for the vineyard team and the annual complexity of their challenge, and for their part the vineyard team comprehends how each individual task translates into the broader mission of the business, right up to the point of sale.
What are some of the challenges involved with being a part of the winemaking industry? It’s tempting to reel off one or all of the buzz words du jour – climate change, China, the health lobby, supply issues, shortages of skilled workers... however the challenges won’t ever stop coming or be truly resolved, so the focus moves inward – incrementally improving the resilience and sustainability of your own business in its place in time.
What would be your advice be to someone just entering the industry? Move around when you’re young and pre-kids. Northern hemisphere vintages, but also consider working in remoter parts of Australia. That’s where the opportunities to challenge yourself in meaty roles are. There are only so many latte-sipping inner-north Melbourne winemakers the industry can handle (I can say this as I was one for five years).
What place do alternative varieties have in the Australian wine industry? Vital, but it is time to move past the term alternative varieties which diminishes the subject. We bet the house on Gamay when I was at Punt Road, thinking it perfectly suited to our site and our market. For us Gamay was a logical progression in the way we liked to grow and make wine in a changing climate. Planting, making and selling Gamay wasn’t outside the box because it was a natural evolution of what we were already doing. There was no alternative but to plant it. Tempranillo and Chenin Blanc are in the same boat at Voyager.
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