Hentley Farm chief winemaker Andrew Quin joins us this episode of the podcast, reflecting on accolades received for its grenache wines in recent years.
Established in 1884, the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards annually attracts around 2,500 entries from over 400 wineries from across the country.
The Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy is the pinnacle of the competition. It’s awarded to the best one- or two-year-old red wine as blind tasted by the judges.
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In 2022, the winner was the 2021 Old Legend Grenache from Hentley Farm in the Barossa Valley.
It was another milestone in the ascendancy of Australian grenache, which is something I’ve discussed recently on the podcast with both with Max Allen and Jane Lopes.
Wolf Blass once said the Jimmy Watson was worth a million dollars to the winning producer, so I started by asking Andrew about the significance of last year’s prize to Hentley Farm.
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Andrew Quin of Hentley Farm Wines: Full transcript
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, look, it’s certainly of all the trophies you can win in the wine industry, I think it’s certainly the one that we all dream of winning and probably assume that we’ll never will.
So yeah, it was pretty amazing result. Grenache is a grape variety that’s getting more and more traction, but it’s certainly probably not been over the years as easy to sell as shiraz.
So, yeah, it’s off a small section of the vineyard. We’ve only got two small plantings of Grenache and, and yeah, it was probably not quite enough wine to sell to get us to our million dollars that Wolf’s suggesting.
JAMES ATKINSON: How important is Grenache at Hentley Farm to the business?
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, I think it’s really important on a, on a number of levels. It’s certainly a variety that we love to work with and, and love to drink, but I think, and, and this is my view of Grenache as a whole, I think that we’ve got a lot of Shiraz in this region and, and on this property, and Shiraz produces a style that is very big and very rich, and, and that’s great because that’s what it is.
And that’s it. It sort of speaks of the place. But what grenache can do for us is it can produce a style that is a lot lighter, a lot more textural, something completely different to what people necessarily expect from the grape variety that is Shiraz.
So it adds a point of difference, I think, for us, but also, you know, I think moving forward, Grenache is, there’s a lot of topics around Grenache, but one is that as a grape variety, it does tend to deal really well with the warm summers that we have here in the Barossa Valley. So, you know, on those really hot days here in the Valley, when Shiraz looks like it’s just about had enough, Grenache is really doing it very easy. It sort of doesn’t need as much water. It deals with the heat. Its leaves don’t get as tired.
And so I think it from a, even from a climate change perspective, Grenache is important moving forward. So, and I guess the other thing from a company perspective, we have had a lot of success, particularly in the wine show circuit, but not just with the Jimmy Watson, but in the years prior, I think we won, I think it was 2019… We won best red wine at the Barossa Valley Wine Show with The Old Legend. And then before that we’d had quite a bit of success with our wine, The Stray, that’s a Grenache Shiraz Zinfandel blend. So yeah, it’s been important for us on a whole lot of levels.
JAMES ATKINSON: When you joined, I mean, you’ve been at Hentley Farm for a while now, I think maybe about 15 years, but you can correct me on that if that’s wrong.
But when you joined the business, you know, what sort of level of esteem was, was Grenache kind of held in at Hentley Farm, but in the Barossa as well, generally?
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, it’s a really good question, James, and the answer is it wasn’t very held in very high esteem at all at the time. I mean, I think it was certainly, even then, a great variety that we all loved in the industry.
Grenache characteristics
But I think, and I was certainly guilty of this as well, I think, at the time Grenache was sort of being treated a little bit like the poor cousin. So everyone had sort of picked their Shiraz and their Cabernet when it was at the appropriate ripeness. And then once you got all your Shiraz and Cabernet off, well then it was probably time to pick your Grenache.
And that was probably increased by the fact that Grenache tends to be quite a late ripener. But as a result, you’d end up bringing Grenache into the winery at sort of 15 and a half Baumé and that is a grape variety that tends to convert pretty high on alcohol as well. So you ended up with really high alcohol wines.
But more importantly, when you pick it later in the season, the pH goes up, and, and the acid tends to fall out. And, and as a result you end up producing Grenache that is full of that sort of confected fruit and, and a very soft, broad palate. And so that’s really where Grenache was sitting at the time.
And I remember doing a benchmark tasting of the first couple of grenaches I made for Henley farm in 2010 and 2012 that were picked later. And I sort of looked at them and thought, well, what we’re really doing here is, is trying to make Shiraz, which is silly because there’s a grape variety that’s different.
It’s much lighter in colour and lends itself to more sort of bright textural styles. So we made a decision to head in a totally different direction with Grenache, picking earlier, using at the time extended maceration and as we moved through, more whole bunch to try and create a more vibrant style. And that’s been really successful for us.
And it’s certainly, you know, we’re not the only ones that have been doing that over the last 10 years. So, yeah, I think at the time grenache was the poor cousin and these days it’s sort of the cool kid around the valley. And it’s because people are picking grenache at an appropriate time. And I like to think of it as we’re making grenache be the best that it can be rather than forcing it to look a bit like Shiraz.
JAMES ATKINSON: And what about the vineyards that you mentioned that are planted to grenache there? I mean, how far back do they date? Are there some vineyards there that were sort of lucky to survive the 80s, you know, vine pool scheme?
ANDREW QUIN: No, so the Hentley Farm story is more about site selection and Keith sort of put a huge amount of time into travelling around the Barossa back in the mid 90s trying to find what he thought would be the best sub-region in the valley to plant out a new vineyard. And so yeah, he found this beautiful vineyard here on the banks of Granite Creek, where we’ve got these lovely red clay loam soils with predominantly, this calcareous limestone like subsoil.
And so he planted out this vineyard in 99 to 2001. So I guess the Hentley Farm grenache story, you know, we’re sort of heading into the twenties now, so there is some nice vine age across the whole property, but our grenache story is more about how it works in this sub-region of the valley, rather than about vine age.
But I mean, I think, stepping back from Hentley Farm for a moment, I think certainly the story of Old Vine Grenache in the valley is so important. And I think the history in some of those old wines is amazing. And, and there’s certainly some incredible wines to be, to be made from those old vineyards.
And again, I think, I think it’s really great to see so many people in the region picking those old vine grenaches when they should be picked, and producing wines and styles that really suit that grape variety and can tell the story of the sites and those old wines better than some of those more ripe, overripe classic styles that were produced.
JAMES ATKINSON: Tell me a little bit more about the evolution of how you’ve been making grenache wines there because it must have been something that sort of changed incrementally from season to season.
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, I mean, there’s been quite a few changes, certainly ripeness, ripeness level at harvest has been the big one, like I was saying earlier, rather than letting it get ripened up, you know, up into the sort of mid fifteens and potentially higher depending on the speed of ripening in the vintage and availability of space in the winery.
Rather than letting that happen, we’re very much looking to pick earlier. So we’ll start picking Grenache in the mid to high thirteens and, and then push out into the mid fourteens. So a Baumé and a half earlier than was probably that original style. So that’s part of it. But I’m a big believer that if Barossa Grenache falls short, it falls short when it’s all about that simple red fruit.
That’s a really important characteristic. You know, it can be a little bit confected and as a component of the wine, that’s outstanding. Yeah. But when it dominates, when all you sort of get is simple red fruit and that fruit sweetness that comes with it, I think they can fall a little bit short.
And so we’ve been using a lot of extended maceration, particularly where we’re leaving the wine on skins for anywhere, not, not too long, but anywhere from, I guess, 50 to 70 days total. time on skins. And when you do that, you tend to see the tannin profile really filling and softening later in the piece.
But also we see a quite a big increase in terms of savory influence and complexity in the aromatic and flavour profile. So that extent of maceration has been a really big part of what we do. But then in the last probably five or six years, we’ve started to use a lot more whole bunch, generally sort of looking at somewhere between 30 and 50 percent bunching in each ferment.
And I just love whole bunch as a characteristic. I like it in Shiraz as well, but in grenache it just works brilliantly because it just really highlights those pretty aromatics, but you’re also drawing some spice and some complexity in tannin from the stalks themselves. So that combination of earlier harvest, some extended maceration, some whole bunch influence, giving us lots of blend options and ensuring that we can produce a wine that is light and pretty, because that’s what I think Grenache should be, but it’s also going to be complex and we’re going to fill the palate and, and have a really complete product.
So yeah, it’s sort of, I guess in the early days, it was just about extended maceration and trying to be earlier. And then we’ve sort of evolved with those other components moving forward. And then oak is the other thing, you know, the first couple that I did, we had a little bit of new French wood, not much, but a little bit, but we’ve certainly gone away from that altogether to using more seasoned barrels.
It’s very much short term oak maturation. So we’re only putting our grenaches in barrel for about two weeks, eight months before we get them in bottle, sort of December year of vintage, and we’re going towards larger formats. So we’ve got some puncheons in the winery that we use. And then more recently we’ve introduced some large formats.
So some, they’re about three and a half thousand litre oak casks that we’re maturing part of The Old Legend in. So yeah, there’s been quite a bit of change, I guess, over, over that sort of 10-year journey.
JAMES ATKINSON: Was there a point where you felt like you’d really hit the sweet spot and now let’s just settle on this as kind of being our, our house style, if you will?
ANDREW QUIN: I’m always overthinking these things, James, and coming up with new ideas. But, I mean, look, the 21 vintage was a pretty outstanding year. And I think mainly because we saw sugars really sit still for a couple of weeks, quite close to harvest while flavours and tannins continue to ripen, so I think for me the highlight of the 2021 Vintage was the whole bunch of wines and I think that it was probably that really slow flavour development that saw the stalks look quite ripe and I think that had a big impact on the quality of those wines.
So, yeah, I feel pretty comfortable with where we’re at the moment. I don’t think.. the percentage of whole bunch will always be the same because every year whole bunch wines look different and some years they shine and some years they don’t. But I also always love the impact of the extended maceration that we do year in year out, off one of the higher blocks on the property.
So I think we’re reasonably comfortable with the way we’re dealing with oak and, movement to, to large format and we’ll always have those blend options, which is really what it’s all about.
JAMES ATKINSON: What about in terms of the attitude of the consumers, but also sort of the gatekeepers in the trade, if you will, to grenache, you know, do you think there was kind of a particular moment or any kind of catalyst that led to what we’ve really seen in the last few years, which is, as you say, that grenache is kind of like the cool thing in the Barossa?
ANDREW QUIN: I think I’m finally seeing consumers definitely turn towards it. I think there’s been a long period of time where there was a lot of talk about Grenache and we’re certainly seeing prices of fruit for Grenache in the Valley going up, but I wasn’t necessarily going into venues and hearing lots of talk about people coming in and asking for Grenache, but I do feel certainly in the last couple of months I’ve been out in the trade, a lot more positive talk, both from the gatekeepers, but more importantly from the gatekeepers saying that people are coming in wanting to try Grenache, which is pretty exciting really.
And yeah, I do think that success like us winning the Jimmy with Grenache helps. You know, things like the James Halloran Grenache Challenge certainly puts the variety up there. But I think there’s been quite a few steps along the way. I mean, obviously Turkey Flat winning the Jimmy Watson first time round back in 17 with a Barossa Grenache was pretty exciting for the variety in the region.
We were lucky enough, like I said, to win Best Red in 2019 at the Barossa Wine Show again with a Grenache, which would have been sort of unheard of a long way back. So, yeah, I think it’s, it’s sort of all building and it continues to build, which, which, as I said, I think the variety is so important for the region for a whole lot of reasons.
And so it’s nice to see that it’s catching on out there in the marketplace.
Grenache wine taste
JAMES ATKINSON: Do you think it kind of appeals because, you know, in the same way that Pinot really appeals, but perhaps its advantage is that you can, maybe deliver a bit of better value for money than Pinot sometimes does at, well, at all price points really, because you’ve got to spend a lot of money to get really good premium Pinot Noir these days.
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s certainly stylistically it fits in that sort of bracket. And it is an interesting comparison, and it’s a comparison that tends to get used, I think, mainly to try and describe, to describe to our consumers what to expect when they’re trying these Grenaches. we don’t want them coming at them expecting it to be like Shiraz, and pinot’s that sort of easy comparison.
But I do think, you know, in terms of colour and palette weight, and even to an extent, aromatic and flavour profile, there’s similarities. I guess for me, Grenache, tends to deliver a little bit more, I guess, volume and, and fruit weight than, than often some of those leaner Pinot styles. So, yeah, it’s an alternative to Pinot, no doubt.
Although it is really realistically quite different as a grape variety. Those comparisons are worthwhile. But yeah, for me, I’m trying to be careful. I don’t want to upset all my mates that make Pinot. But I think the Grenache delivers a little bit more in terms of palate weight and flavour, which can be nice.
JAMES ATKINSON: So in terms of Grenache at Hentley Farm, you know, because you’ve got a few different releases showcasing that variety, how do they fit together in the portfolio?
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, we’ve got quite a few and then they’ve certainly grown over the years. We have a range that we do that’s non-estate that’s called the Villain & Vixen range and we do a straight Grenache in that portfolio that’s very fruit forward, very soft, I guess, like an introduction to Grenache as a general statement.
Then up in the Hentley Farm Range, we also do a wine called The Stray, which is a Grenache Shiraz blend with a tiny bit of Zinfandel, that we’ve been making since even before I came along to Hentley Farm. Which is more about the influence of extended maceration and a blend of those varieties, but fairly medium-weighted and very expressive and approachable.
And we were lucky enough actually last year to win best South Australian red wine with that 2021 Stray, which I think is still available in the marketplace. So that one’s been really successful for us. And then the other thing that’s happening in 2021 is, we do a wine within our premium portfolio called The Creation, that is a different block off the property every year, which we’ve been doing since 2007. The majority of them have been Shiraz; we’ve had a Cabernet and some blends, but in 2021 will be the first time that we’re releasing grenache under that creation label, which is effectively a component of the old legend blend, the whole bunch component that we’ve separated out a few barrels and bottled off on its own. So, so that’s a pretty exciting development for us.
That’s a premium price point… Just under a couple of hundred bucks a bottle. And it’s a product that our members have always loved and really got behind. It also comes with a different label every year that that’s sort of like the wine tells a different story. So that’s a new addition for us and an exciting moment for Grenache.
And, and, you know, I think it’s nice to see Grenache getting sold at that premium price point. I think it’s, it’s, it’s something that we will hopefully do more of and that others should do more of as well, because it’s certainly a great variety that can handle that price.
JAMES ATKINSON: Looking more broadly at Hentley Farm, you talk about crafting wines of balance, power and elegance and the distinct hallmarks of vibrancy, velvet, silky tannins and intense flavour richness.
How do you see the style of the wines that you guys are making comparing to sort of what the overarching trends are in Barossa at the moment?
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, it’s a tough question. I mean, I guess what we try to do is make what we believe is the best wines that we can produce.
JAMES ATKINSON: That’s a very subjective thing though.
ANDREW QUIN: Yeah, absolutely. But I guess you’ve got to believe in yourselves. And the overarching thing for me is I’m a big believer that we don’t have to get. Barossa Shiraz up to six and a half Baumé to make wines of quality. In fact, quite the opposite. And so I guess the, the overarching theme in what we’re trying to do is pick as early as we can so that we can produce wines that I guess will tell the story of the place.
I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a warm climate and we love the place and we love the soils and we love what this climate does to Shiraz and to Grenache and to Cabernet. So it is about making wines that speak of this place. place, but by picking as early as we can, we’re able to retain more natural acidity.
And with that comes more presence of tannin, but also more vibrancy and more brightness of fruit. And so that, that’s really, for me, what it’s all about, you know, like, I think that the terms you just used were really what I am about as a winemaker. We want to produce wines that are complete and that are balanced, but they need to be complex, but they need to speak of the place.
And by picking earlier and trying to use winemaking technique to really highlight that freshness and vibrancy, I really think that we make wines that, that do that. And so that’s the trend for us is picking earlier, you know, it’s not like we’re picking at 12 that the climate doesn’t allow that, but you know, we’re picking earlier and trying to make sure that the wines have that vibrancy because that’s what we believe in.
JAMES ATKINSON: But there are still some of those wines up at that 16, you know, getting picked at 16 and a half that are still very much out there in the Barossa.
ANDREW QUIN: Oh, look, there are. And they certainly have their place, James. Don’t get me wrong. I mean if that’s what you believe in as a winemaker, that’s great.
And, you know, I think that’s what makes wine making interesting. We all. different ideas about how we should go about it and thank God for that. Because if we’re all doing it the same way, it would make for a pretty boring wine landscape. So, yeah, there are some riper styles still out there and there’s certainly a market for them as well.
And I mean, look, at the end of the day, we certainly produce a wine in our portfolio called The Beast that is probably the wine that we push the boundaries a bit with as well. It’s called The Beast and we like it to sort of fit more into that, into its name, I suppose. But even in that case, we’re picking earlier than we were 10 years ago.
We’re using less oak than we were 10 years ago. We still want the beast to have that sort of inherent softness and we still want the fruit to stand forward of the oak and we still want there to be balance and vibrancy. So that’s the trend for us. I think the great majority of the Barossa is heading in that direction.
And I think that probably makes sense because I do think that consumers are heading in that direction as well. And so it’s important for the longevity of the region and the grape variety that we move with the trend.
JAMES ATKINSON: What are some of the other projects that you’re working on at the moment in the winery that you’re most excited about?
ANDREW QUIN: Grenache tends to get a lot of highlights for sure, but I think the other, the other one that comes to mind is, we purchased a vineyard down in Mount Crawford, which is a little sub-region down there at the very southern end of the Barossa Valley, back just before the 2021 growing season, which we purchased mainly for the presence of pinot and riesling on the property, the pinot for our sparkling base of Blanc de Noir that we do out of the valley.
So that’s pretty exciting. It’s an exciting project. It’s a vineyard that sits at about 460 metres above sea level, which is really more of an Eden Valley altitude than a Barossa Valley altitude, but with a Barossa Valley GI. And it was planted out by a guy by the name of Robin Day, who was the head winemaker for Pernod Ricard for a long time.
He planted out quite a lot of alternate varieties. So we’ve got Saparavi, Nebbiolo, Garganiga, and a few others as well down there that have been new for me and a new experience trying to work out the best way to produce these varieties that I haven’t had a lot to do with. So that’s probably the most exciting project at the moment.
And it, it’s obviously quite new and, and something we’re working pretty hard on.
JAMES ATKINSON: Awesome, Andrew, we really look forward to seeing some of those exciting new wines that you’ve talked about and congratulations again on picking up the Jimmy last year.
ANDREW QUIN: Thanks James. Thanks. Thanks mate. Yeah, and thanks for having me on.
