GT: Winery starts new life at Tempus Two

Last weekend, Rhys and Garth Eather   closed their Meerea Park tasting and sales operation from the leased Boutique Wine Centre in Broke Road after 16years. They will reopen at Tempus Two in early July and in the interim, will rely on sales through their wine club and meereapark.com.au website.

The Boutique Wine Centre building, which adjoins Blaxland Restaurant, is being converted into a NSW Wine Centre by owners, the Sydney-based Aust Leisure Group.

The centre holds a retail wine licence that allows it to sell wines from boutique producers in Mudgee, the Southern Highlands, Canowindra and other emerging NSW regions as well as from the Hunter.

The wine centre, the Blaxland Restaurant and the surrounding 11hectares of land and 3.2hectares of vineyard were bought last year by Aust Leisure from the Cowley family, which owns the neighbouring Tower Estate and is headed by former News Corporation chief Ken Cowley.

Aust Leisure, which is headed by brothers Hugh and Jason Clarke, owns a large chain of hotels in NSW and Queensland, the Snake Creek Cattle Company restaurants and the Snake Creek cattle station at Mandurama in central-western NSW.

Jason Clarke told me last week that the NSW Wine Centre would open in about four weeks.

Meerea Park’s move to the Roche family-owned Tempus Two site is a big advance for the family venture which was launched in 1991 by winemaker Rhys Eather.

The early wines were made from grapes grown on the 44-hectare Wambo Road, Bulga, Meerea Park property, then owned by Rhys and Garth’s father, Ian. In 1995, Ian Eather retired and the Meerea property, but not the wine brand, was sold to prominent Newcastle businessman John Peschar.

Up until 2007, the Eathers did not own vineyards or a winery but that year, Rhys and his wife, Louise, bought the former Littles winery and adjoining house and land in Palmers Lane, Pokolbin, for $1.1million. 

The Palmers Lane winery now processes the Meerea Park vintages. 

Drop rises above the rot

“SOMETIMES things have to go wrong in order to go right” is a quote that Shottesbrooke winemaker Hamish Maguire has applied to the Shottesbrooke 2011 1337 Adelaide Hills Botrytis Sauvignon Blanc reviewed in the Herald on  May 15.

Hamish explained in his background notes that constant rain during the 2011 vintage hit his Adelaide Hills grape growers hard. One of them, who usually provided most of the grapes for the Shottesbrooke sauvignon blancs, had his vines engulfed by botrytis mould.

The grapes were black and an apparent total loss when Hamish inspected them with the grower.

Then, although he had never made a sweet dessert wine before, Hamish decided to have a go, using the rotting grapes in the hope that some return could be extracted.

On a freezing Adelaide Hills morning on the first day of winter 2011, Hamish harvested the grapes and consulted textbooks and  botrytis winemakers as he processed the fruit.

As my review indicated, he had reason to be pretty happy with the result.

As he said: ‘‘Sometimes there is some form of light at the end of a challenging tunnel’’.

Indulging as Mudgee estate celebrates

THE Lowe winery at Mudgee was the scene last month of an ‘‘ode to indulgence’’ reminiscent of the grand Len Evans days of the Hunter’s Rothbury Estate.

Lowe Wines chief winemaker and chief executive officer David Lowe, who has become a trailblazer in organic, biodynamic and preservative-free wines, hosted 120 guests at a 10-course meal matched to 20 wines.

The event  celebrated the end of the 2013 vintage and the 40th anniversary of the planting of the first Lowe vines at Mudgee.

David inaugurated his end-of-vintage feast to mark the 10th anniversary of the building of Lowe winery and has continued the celebrations each year since.

‘‘I cut my teeth in the wine industry during the heady and extravagant days at Rothbury Estate and while those parties were pretty over the top, they were a lot of fun. This is our annual ode to indulgence,’’ he said.

The Lowe vines’ anniversary comes 40years after David’s father, Keith, diversified into wine-grape growing on his Tinja grazing property. David, then 14, helped establish the first vines, some of which were apparently planted upside down.

Said David: ‘‘Not to get too sentimental about it, but the real celebration of achievement here is not that Lowe Wines is a year older, but that 40years ago my father was prepared to have a go at what was, for him, a new form of agriculture.’’

Woolworths beaten in bid for Barossa

NEW Zealand’s family-owned Delegat’s Group has outbid supermarket giant Woolworths to purchase Barossa Valley Estate (BVE) for $24.7million.

Delegat’s produces the Oyster Bay Marlborough sauvignon blancs, the best-selling wine in Australia.

Woolworths was one of a field of Australian and Chinese contenders for BVE’s brands, grower contracts, wine stocks, 5000-tonne-capacity winery and 41hectares of Barossa vineyard.

Woolworths has caused angst within the wine industry by buying vineyards and wineries. It acquired the Dorrien Estate Winery and Vinpac when it bought wine club group Cellarmasters in 2011.

BVE, which makes the super-premium, $85 E and E Black Pepper Barossa shiraz reds, was placed in receivership last January.

Delegat’s Wine Estate is one of New Zealand’s largest family-owned and family-managed winemakers.

Its managing director is Jim Delegat and his sister, Rosemari Delegat, is executive director.

The business was founded in 1947 by their parents, Nikola and Vidosava Delegat, who migrated to New Zealand in the late 1930s from what is modern-day Croatia.

The original vineyard and winery were established at Henderson, in west Auckland. The vineyard has gone from the site, but the modern Delgat’s winery remains.

The BVE takeover is the latest expansion by Delgat’s. Two months ago, it bought the New Zealand vineyard and winery assets of the troubled Matariki Wines and Stony Bay Wines company.