Is winemaking an art or science? Brilliant read for wine lovers

[paulF]

Enjoy guys,

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth-sciences/winemaking-art-or-science

Cheers

[Ken Gargett]

the mag is edited by a great mate of mine since law school, more than 30 years ago and i did think this was one of the most interesting articles they have one for a while.

dave bicknell (pretty much everyone calls him carlos) is one of our top winemakers. for what it is worth, this is a piece on him from Fine Wine Australia/NZ - from our firt issue a year or so ago.

Fine Australasia – David Bicknell

David Bicknell, chief winemaker for Oakridge Wines in the Yarra Valley, is highly regarded for many reasons. Punctuality is not one of them.

Way back in 1992, emerging from Roseworthy College and keen to start work with de Bortoli in the Yarra Valley, he stayed with nearby friends the night before his first day. Next morning, full of promise and potential, he set off on his bicycle. Turns out that 'nearby' was actually 36 kilometres and he was dreadfully late. “It seemed so much shorter in a car”, he mused during our recent chats. He also missed the plane for the first day of the Len Evans Tutorial a few years later, but more on that later.

Bicknell, known to all in the industry as 'Carlos', has very quickly become one of the leading figures in the Australian wine industry, but it wasn't his first career choice. Coming from a family that regularly drank wine, not all that common in those days, was an advantage. Bicknell's father – his family was from Scotland and David himself was born in England – was in the Merchant Navy and subsequently a ship's captain. The extensive travel meant an exposure to a wide range of wines, not least from the Mediterranean and Argentina. The family moved to Melbourne when David was just 8 and “they took to Aussie wines with gusto”. His father's favourites at the time were big, bold Aussie shiraz but in time, he drank almost nothing but pinot noir.

Bicknell raised family eyebrows when he became the “first generation of about eight that didn't go to sea”, working as a nurse in the Prince Henry Hospital in Melbourne. One of his good friends at the time, knew the Rutherglen region very well and the two of them spent plenty of time tasting and buying their way throughout. It was natural that they then also visited places such as the Yarra, though David still had no idea that he would end up forging a career there. A few years later, on a visit to Italy, he had “a lightbulb moment”. He simply decided that he'd like to study winemaking and, rather prophetically, decided the he “might be quite good at it”. His father's reaction? “You are mad”.

Roseworthy followed and then to de Bortoli in 1992, joining Steve Webber and David Slingsby-Smith. Steve and his wife, Leanne de Bortoli, had kicked off the winery a few years earlier, transforming the image of the family from a bulk producer to the quality winery of today. Sadly, Slingers, as he was known to all, is no longer with us but was a very popular winemaker throughout the region.

Bicknell quickly immersed himself in all matters winemaking. In 1994, he managed four vintages – de Bortoli at Griffith (site of the bulk wine production), de Bort's in the Yarra, Louis Latour in Burgundy where he was largely involved with winemaking trials, and also managed to duck over to the Alsace with Paul Blanck. In 1995, he returned to France, working at Chateau du Bluizard in Beaujolais, joining a long line of well known Australian winemakers – Dean Hewitson, Steve Pannell, Steve Flamstead, Kerri Thompson, Tony Davis, Matt Steele and Adam Chapman among others.

De Bortoli was “a great place as a young winemaker, lots of benefits”. That translates to sharing an endless array of great wines with Steve and the other winemakers, but after ten years, in 2002, Bicknell was ready for a change. He had also developed some different views on styles and on to how to get the best into the bottle. Also, with Slingers his senior and with de Bort's a family winery, he had probably gone about as far as he could. It was “time to follow a different line”. Evans & Tate, a high-flying operation from the West, had recently taken over Oakridge Wines in the Yarra and were looking for a head winemaker.

Bicknell gave notice prior to the vintage, though worked right through it – which was “a little awkward at times”. He helped train Paul Bridgman as a replacement but also had to run the Oakridge vintage. His assistant there was a young winemaker called Adrian Rodden, who had been knocked back for a job at de Bort's, making things even more awkward. He concedes, Adrian “turned out to be fantastic”. Much of Oakridge's harvest that year was processed at de Bort's. Bicknell simply didn't have any confidence in the facilities he'd inherited. The polite translation of Bicknell's view of Oakridge at that time was that it was 'stuffed'.

Before long, he was wondering what on earth he had done. From Day One, he “fought non-stop with everyone at E&T”. It was “totally under-resourced” and there was “no support”. He did feel he won on the major issues and, with the benefit of the passing of time, sees the unintended advantage of being allowed to “go down our own pathway” and how it “worked in the long run”. It may not have helped that the previous owners had gained huge publicity for releasing a $100 Merlot, by far the highest priced merlot in Australia and one of the most expensive of all Aussie wines at the time (possibly the most expensive). When Bicknell was interviewed on joining, he pretty much declared it rubbish, noting it affected by brettanomyces and from lesser clones. The winery was left with a lot of very expensive, unsold Merlot.

One of the 'stylistic' differences was that Bicknell wanted to concentrate on fruit from the more southern regions of the Yarra, which de Bort's had no interest in, at that stage, though things have changed now. He thinks that they have “seen the light”, believing that this is where you find quality chardonnay and pinot noir. A further difference was his strong interest in single vineyards, believing it “logical”. “It is hard to make generalisations when vineyards are not planted cheek by jowl and what we had was a loose collection of vineyard sites”. When the troubles at E&T were at their peak, Oakridge did lose several growers but that has stabilised and he is very happy with the growers now on board. The best wines Bicknell makes at Oakridge fall under the '864' label and he believes that “we have three to four growers for chardonnay who are definitely capable of making that level; and perhaps three for the pinot noir”. The wines across the board are considered some of Australia's finest but pride of place does go to the '864 Chardonnay', one of our very best. Oakridge also has its own vineyards, providing around 20 to 25% of their needs, including some of the best cabernet and shiraz they make.

'864' represents the best wine from a variety in a vintage – from either a single vineyard or often, “down to a block selection”. Although Bicknell aims for consistency across a vineyard, it is of course, not always possible, especially with long rows or changes in altitude. He says that cabernet especially does not like a “height difference”, claiming that it leads to “passive/aggressive wines: high alcohol yet green tasting”. Bicknell loves taking sommeliers through the vineyards, allowing them to see “where the site is, the slope, does it face the sun”, giving them, “a penny-dropping moment”.

In 2005, Bicknell was accepted as one of the twelve scholars in the annual Len Evans Tutorial – a week of intense study in the Hunter Valley, designed to educate young members of the wine industry and to improve judging skills. During the week, scholars taste and assess more than 300 of the world's great wines, many of them decades old. Sadly, this was Evans' last Tutorial before he passed away but his vision has been carried on by others. Despite almost missing his flight there, Bicknell was deservedly named as Dux, winning a trip around some of the great wine estates in Europe. I say 'deservedly' as I was one of the other scholars that year and none of us had any doubt who would ultimately be named dux. The trip allowed him to join another de Bort's winemaker and pinot specialist, Bill Downie, in Gevrey-Chambertin as, for a few years, they made an Australian version of Burgundy.

In late 2006, E&T finally fell over. There was a lengthy period of uncertainty but Bicknell, and almost all the staff, stuck at it. Just when it seemed that things could not get any worse, frosts in October of that year effectively wiped out the fruit from their vineyards, leaving a lengthy period of virtually no wine in the cellar. Just before Christmas 2007, Oakridge got its new owner – Tony d'Aloisio, the former Chairman of the Australian Investment and Securities Commission. Bicknell has a small equity position. You can hear him cringe when he remembers those days. “We worked so hard in 2008” taking on any contract work they could find, but in d'Aloisio, Oakridge had found someone fully prepared to support it. Bicknell says that most importantly, he brought in “business discipline” and they were eventually able to turn things around. When Bicknell joined in 2002, production was around 25,000 cases. Under E&T, it dropped to 8,000 cases “and never came close to breaking even”. Now, not only is the winery profitable but production is almost back to pre E&T levels. More importantly, the quality has never been higher.

Bicknell has embraced show judging and has judged in most of the major shows around the country. In 2011, he became Chairman of Judges at the Melbourne Show, following on from Steve Webber. They have helped revitalise the entire show system. The dinosaurs who had occupied the administrative positions, entrenching ancient views, have been replaced. The contentious Jimmy Watson Trophy, Australia's most prestigious, was finally and belatedly changed from an award to an almost always unbottled one-year-old red to the best bottled red, from the last two vintages – infinitely more sensible. They have also replaced the traditional 20-point system with the much more universally accepted 100-point range. Sparkling wines and rosé are judged chilled – “that is how people drink them”. Judging panels now include both technical and non-technical people. In other words, winemakers have been joined by retailers, sommeliers and writers.

Personally, while he obviously loves Burgundy and pinot noir in general, Bicknell cannot point to any one wine that flicked the switch. “There are just so many wines that blow you away”, and he does not have “an absolute standout”. He does love DRC and Coche-Dury from Burgundy and also Pegau and Rayas from the Rhone. Then he starts to reminisce about old Aussie wines and gets really excited, naming wines like the amazing old Hunter shiraz from the 1959 and 1965 vintages (Lindemans), as well as old Wendouree wines, and even wines that were basic commercial releases at the time, like Wynn’s Ovens Valley Shiraz from 1966. “Just incredible”, he purrs.

As to the future, Bicknell's view is that “innovation is part of how we operate. How that plays out in the future is just crystal ball gazing.”

Finally, why 'Carlos'? Go back to that very first day. As the staff at de Bort's lined up to watch the exhausted and tardy rookie pedal furiously up to the winery, one of them remarked that it looked like his legs were going as fast as Carl Lewis. It soon became 'Carlos' and the name stuck.

KBG

[Colt45]

Interesting read - thanks. Some of the most interesting (in a good way) wines I've had have been ones with minimal intervention. If nothing else, I might suggest people try a wine which has not been filtered.