Winemaking's new generation
By Wine Atlas, Monday 24 November 2008 :: Wine - Spain :: #172 :: rss
WHEN Jock Tulloch hosted a tasting event to showcase his family's wines this year, he threw a party in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with a DJ, tapas and an upbeat vibe. "I didn't want anything stuffy," says the 31-year-old. "No sit-down dinner, long speeches or overdosing on technical jargon. Wine should be fun."
Jock's childhood friend Lisa McGuigan would thoroughly approve. She describes her Tempus Two wines, with their pewter labels and curvy bottles, as a "fashion accessory". "It's a girl thing," she says, "just like choosing what to wear to dinner. You pick your Prada handbag, but which wine will you take?"
Resort parties and designer labels are a world away from the blokey, grape-stained traditions of Australian winemaking, but Jock and Lisa know that better than most. Despite their 21st-century approach, both can trace their family history to the origins of Australian viticulture. The Tullochs first grew grapes in NSW's Hunter Valley 113 years ago. The McGuigans have been there since the early 1900s, when Owen McGuigan laboured in vineyards metres away from where his great-granddaughter now stages concerts featuring Elton John and Jackson Browne at the Tempus Two winery's 10,000-seat amphitheatre.
These two innovators belong to a small but influential "rat pack" of wine family heirs who are transforming winemaking with radical ideas and cutting-edge technology. Their names - Henschke, Tyrrell, Hardy, Seppelt, Scarborough and more - represent the founding fathers of the Australian wine industry. But their modern methods would have astounded those venerable ancestors.
Says Lisa McGuigan, who's a youthful-looking 41, "If I had told my grandfather Perce all this he would have said, 'Why don't you think about a sewing career?' It would have been an alien concept to him. It's out there even for Mum and Dad's generation."
Continue reading: smallbusiness.smh.com.au
