When did you realise you wanted to become a winemaker?

My dad is a winemaker, and while I was growing up, winemaking was just Dad’s job. When he started his own vineyard and winery when I was ten years old, my younger sister, brother and I played on the property and amongst the barrels, and we were also roped into helping with bottling during school holidays. I only seriously considered winemaking as a career when I got towards the end of high school and had to start thinking about what I wanted to do. I considered some other options, but the more I learnt about winemaking, the more I realised my interests and strengths (chemistry, biology, French) aligned with a career in making wine.

Please tell us about your career so far.

I studied winemaking at Adelaide University and graduated with first class honours. I did my industry experience vintage in the ‘kindergarten winery’ at Brown Brothers where they make their experimental and smaller scale batches. My first vintage out of university was at Rutherglen estates (now De Bortoli). I then went to France for a year to work in Alsace, Champagne and northern Rhone. After then working vintage 2006 with Dad at home, I went back to France to work the northern hemisphere vintage in Burgundy. Since then, Dad and I have been working together at Anderson winery.

What do you love most about being a winemaker?

I love having a family winery and vineyard and being involved in the entire process from nurturing the vines to making the wine to seeing people enjoy a product that we’ve made from scratch.

What is your favourite wine, and what food do you typically pair it with?

I really like our saperavi, which is a red grape variety from the country of Georgia. It’s really good with a rich, slow cooked daube or ragu.

Is there a specific process you follow when developing a new wine?

That’s the beauty of a small family winery, if we have an idea, we can go ahead and try it – no need to clear it with management or the marketing department! And we do, so we have lots of little batches of different wines, which means our cellar club members get lots of variety in their wine club packs!

Is there any vintage you’re particularly proud of creating? Why?

Our sparkling rosé was something I wanted to do for a while, and it finally happened in 2022. It’s made using the traditional method, and the bottle fermentation used in this method to produce the bubbles does inevitably strip out some colour from the wine. So, I’m very pleased that as well as making a wine that tastes great, we also ended up with a pretty pink colour, which we’ve been able to duplicate again since.

How does the local climate/soil affect the wine you make?

Rutherglen has a warm growing season, and our soil is clay broken up with quartz gravel. These two factors combined produce quite fruit-driven wines with good flavour intensity and structure.

Which of your own varieties do you typically indulge in?

All of them! We make quite a range of wines for such a small winery and there’s one for every occasion!