Lumen Winter 2023 - Flipbook - Page 23
A wine by many
other names…
By Briony Hoare
After graduating, I began working in the
Southcorp Wines graduate program at
Lindeman’s Karadoc winery in Victoria.
One of the benefits of working in Mildura
in the late 1990s as a young, single
professional with a disposable income
was the regular joy of dining at Stefano’s
restaurant.
Stefano had a cellar (really just a hole) at
the back of his restaurant, full of random
wines with really weird names that I
couldn’t pronounce and strange Italian
varieties that I’d never heard of … and
I fell in love with them. What I found so
compelling was the texture and the subtlety
and the way they worked so beautifully
with food.
After the millennium clicked over and
the world didn’t end, I travelled to Italy
to work and learnt about Nebbiolo,
Dolcetto, Moscato and Barbera in the
north, and Cortese in central Italy. When
I returned to Australia, and again worked
with Southcorp, any time there was a
new variety coming up on the production
forecast I was there pestering the group
winemaker to have a chance to work with
them. I made Sangiovese at Langhorne
Creek, and Tempranillo and Nebbiolo in
Mudgee – it was really exciting to work
with those varieties.
When I left Southcorp to start my family,
I was consulting to some growers in
Langhorne Creek and spotted some odd
looking vines and asked what they were.
It turns out they’d been to southern Italy
in the late 1990s to explore varieties that
would better suit their sunny region which
often experienced early dews, and acid
challenges in their fruit. So they planted
Pinot Grigio, Fiano, Greco and Aglianico
but seemed a bit unsure about what to do
with them. So I said, “I know what to do
with them!” and that was the beginning of
Beach Road Wines for me.
We made Aglianico and Pinot Grigio
in 2006, Fiano in 2008, Greco in 2009
and we’ve been going ever since really.
Fiano, Nero, Vermentino, Aglianico,
Montepulciano, Prosecco … all of those
varieties tick so many boxes in terms of
natural acids, low disease problems, low
water requirements, heat tolerance and
higher yield. Vermentino in particular
is just fabulous. The grapes have got a
strong skin so you get fewer disease issues,
they’re big chunky bunches, it has a huge
yield compared to say Chardonnay, and it
makes a cracking glass of wine. As a wine,
Vermentino should be pushing every bottle
of Sav Blanc off the shelf because it’s such a
good drink!
When we opened our cellar door in
McLaren Vale in 2014, a lot of people hadn’t
heard of the varieties we were working with,
but they’re definitely a lot more accepted
now, and the words don’t seem quite so
foreign. This is part of the beauty of our
culture: we’re always changing and adapting.
Briony Hoare is winemaker at Beach Road
Wines. She graduated with a Bachelor of
Agricultural Sciences (Oenology) in 1997.
Briony Hoare and Spritz - Beach Road Wines
LUMEN – WINTER 2023 23
