Produce Profile: Wine (Grapes)
The Riverina is Australia’s largest wine region, growing 66 varieties of grapes and producing 1 in every 4 glasses of wine (Visit Griffith).
Yarran Wines spans 30 hectares. While Lorraine and John Brewer were involved in the vineyard since 1978 when it grew fruit for larger wineries, it wasn’t until 1998 when the Yarran Wines label was established with their own release of Shiraz.
We caught up with Sam Brewer, who took over the Yarran brand from his parents, Lorraine and John, around 2010. Sam also worked for larger local corporate wineries for ten years prior. He provided us with some first-hand insight into wine production in the MIA.
Yarran Wines’ vineyard grows a range of grape varieties including Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay in the whites. In the reds they do standard varieties like Shiraz, Cabernet and Merlot.
“We also do Montepulciano Rosé, Petit Verdot and Durif,” Sam added.
“We are currently doing variations on some of those varieties, like a full, French, barrel oak aged Chardy, and this year we are going to do a Fumé style Sauvignon Blanc which is, uncommonly, a type of barrel-aged style for Sav Blanc.”
“We do a small volume of Pétillant too, which is a sparkling wine made using the ‘Ancestral Method’ where the wine is bottled off before the fermentation process is complete, making a good contrast to our other wines.
“We also do a table wine from the same batch of fruit, our Montepulciano Rosé, which is the sister wine of the Pétillant.”
Reading between the wines
When asked about the process from grape to wine, Sam joked, “in short, it goes through a winery!”
Like other types of orchards and vineyards, wine grapes are grown on permanent plantings.
“That’s vineyard farming,” Sam explained.
“Permanent plantings take time. It’s a three or four year job just to get your first fruit and vintage. Then it’s a good two or three years after that before you can balance that vine to grow in a way that you feel you can get your quality.”
When ready, around 300-400 tonnes of wine grapes are harvested from the Yarran Wine vineyards and taken to be crushed.
“A winery like De Bortoli crushes 50,000-60,000 tonnes, so there’s a big difference in size,” Sam said.
The skin of the grape plays an important role in wine production and is the main difference in the processes behind red and white wine with skin and no skin respectively.
“For red wine, the crushed fruit gets put in a tank and given around 10 days to be on skins, before it goes to the press and gets squeezed.”
Everything, besides all the bottling, is undertaken on site at Yarran Wines.
“The ultimate goal is to produce everything from our own vineyard and put it through our business as a bottled product that people want to buy,” Sam revealed.
After bottling there are a few ways that Yarran Wines go about selling their produce. The main one is through their Cellar Door which opened in 2008.
“We have the Cellar Door here where we market and brand and push what we are all about, then there is wholesale to bottle shops and restaurants, and then we have distributors that work in each major east coast city in both NSW and Queensland,” Sam explained.
“It’s about building over time.”
What makes winery vineyards so grape?
When discussing why vineyards and wine are so popular, Sam emphasised the relevance and importance of a location.
“You can’t find a vineyard in the middle of a city,” Sam said.
“For us, it’s that consumers have got a place that they can visit, like a sense of being involved and getting a real feel for where their wines are coming from. They can sit within the vineyards and see exactly the fruit that they’ve got in their glass in front of them.”
“Some people see a label and they’re drawn to that, some people are drawn to a particular style, but I think a genuine connection with the people and the brand behind the wines.”
It is not just the wine grapes that make an end wine appeal to people’s taste. Yarran Wine’s Marketing and Cellar Door Manager, Kate Alpen, said this is especially true when it comes to wine tastings.
“We are big on tastings and doing everything from start to finish,” she said.
“There is value in doing something different and creating that connection, not just between people and our brand, but between the grapes we grow and the final wine product.”
“When we had harvest going through here, people were shocked that we physically grow the fruit here to make the wines they are drinking. Sometimes they have to physically see it for themselves.”
Sam stressed the importance of good quality produce to creating something memorable and attractive to consumers.
“The quality has got to be there, and people have got to enjoy the product,” he said.
“Appeal relies on delivering wines that are approachable and drinkable – the ones where people want to have that next glass.”
Wine not go organic?
Sam said Yarran Wine’s decision to have an organic range was made by looking at what they offer compared to the industry as a whole, not just locally, and trying to differentiate a little bit.
“We were replanting because the vineyard was set up with varieties that aren’t really suited to what we were doing, like Ruby Cabernet, Colombard and Riesling, which are varieties better suited to higher volume, lower end, generic products,” he explained.
These varieties have never been under the Yarran Wines label and were therefore supplanted by Pinot Grigio and Montepulciano.
“The first couple of years after replacing Riesling with Pinot Grigio, we were farming it organically anyway just because of the way I had been shown how to get the block established,” Sam said.
“At that point I was like, ‘You know what? We should attempt to go to organic because the climate is really suitable since its normally warm and dry.’ We are small enough and flexible enough to achieve organic and wanted to see where it would lead.”
Sam also mentioned the value of having gone through the certification process because of the positive health and environmental connotations with the term ‘organic’ which has therefore expanded consumer appeal in the produce.
Kate pointed out that Pinot Grigio is a popular style in the region which is at every Cellar Door in the area.
“Therefore, I find when we do a tasting that it’s good to be organic because when people are comparing places and produce, it is a niche that creates a point of difference which people seem to love and are interested in trying,” she said.
Water to wine
Sam said that his system has changed quite a lot in terms of irrigation due to upgrades over the past twelve months.
“The infrastructure upgrade is heaps better,” he said.
“There’s pressure there so I’ve got supply all the time.”
“Before there was an open concrete channel which was original infrastructure from the 1960s-1970s, but now there is a new pipeline which means more timely water delivery and water which is a lot cleaner.”
When discussing irrigation for wine grapes, Sam said that personal preference is a large factor on irrigation styles used depending on the desired focus on or balance between quality and yield.
“Typically flood irrigation was used for vineyards, but now drip irrigation is more popular,” he said.
“Here I have an irrigation program set up via laptop. The only manual thing is I go up and open the outlet which feeds water to the property supply.
“From there the irrigation program controls the valves which automatically turn on and pump water to the vineyard based on the soil moisture.”
“We have moisture probes in the vineyards to measure the moisture in the soil. This data gets sent through aerials on the roof to our lab and determines the nature of our irrigation program.”
Crushing on wine grapes
Being surrounded by wines his whole life, Sam doesn’t limit himself to a favourite wine, not even just those produced by Yarran Wines.
“Personally, I just change with the season,” he said.
“It doesn’t really matter what it is, you can’t just consume the same thing over and over, and mostly I try not to drink just our own wines. I really enjoy them, don’t get me wrong, but I try and stretch out, so I get a bit of exposure.
“I do plan on having a crack at our recently hand-bottled Chardonnay-type wine.”
Meanwhile, Kate had a couple of go-to styles.
“When in doubt, I always go Rosé,” she said.
“A Petit Verdot is also very good.”
Sam added that younger people who visit the winery are usually drinking Rosé, Sparkling or sometimes Moscato.
Riverina aging like fine wine
Sam mentioned that there has always been a push by local councils from a tourism perspective, with an emphasis on wine, food and culture. He talked about how the Riverina region provides a more distinctive sense of place when referred to on bottles.
“The Riverina has a well-established wine industry, however, it is about how it is promoted,” he said.
Sam also pointed out that people come to Yarran Wines looking for locally produced wine.
Kate added that they often have a cheese board or other additions to their wines.
“For this we try and support local by buying local. It also adds to the consumer experience,” she said.
“Sam’s Mum, Lorainne, also makes our biscuits!”