When did you realise you wanted to become a winemaker?

I remember a trip to Coonawarra when I had only just begun my studies at Wagga. Over three days, my friends and I had our first encounters with real winemaking people. The generosity, the curiosity and the spirit of the wine industry caught my attention and that was when the penny dropped.

Please tell us about your career so far.

After leaving high school, I was working in restaurants and became interested in the wine side of hospitality, so I began studying applied science. After short vintages at Bests Wines and Stonier Wines, I landed the cellar hand dream job at Coldstream Hills, where I had the opportunity to be in the orbit of James Halliday. I had the chance to travel with winemaking, first to Bordeaux where I worked at a small Chateau in the Premieres Cotes de Bordeaux. Later, I went to Champagne where I worked in the Aube. Shortly after that, I went to Burgundy for an entirely different experience in 2001. I began work at Mount Langi Ghiran in 2003, where I might have stayed longer, but I had to look for a winemaking role close to Melbourne. After a few years, the Senior Winemaker role at Chandon came up and I jumped at it.

What do you love most about being a winemaker?

As a winemaker, we have the job of making something real and tangible, which involves all the senses, and is something to be proud of. The magic of fermentation continues to fascinate me. I think the thing I love most of all is the people who come together in wine – each year we build a team of people to help us get through the big heave of harvest, and invariably there are some cool people and moments. Somehow, I’m still excited every year. A friend of mine texted me recently – his son had just turned twenty, and they had opened a wine I had made in 2004 and they loved it. Winemakers live to get texts like that.

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

It’s hard to pin one pairing down as a favourite. That said, there’s something about vintage sparkling with scallops and salmon roe. Simple ingredients reflecting their origins.

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

No. That may be surprising, but we try to follow what’s presented to us by the season. There might be a patch of the vineyard which looks amazing, or a tank fermenting which catches your attention during vintage. Or an idea which takes a few years to elaborate. We have surprising freedom at Chandon to play around; we aren’t limited by any rules. Except the golden rule – the wines we release in the end must be delicious to drink.

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

The 2017 Chandon Vintage Brut is something I’m really pleased with. Making Chandon vintage brut is a challenge in terms of responding to the season, and the cooler harvest at Whitlands that year really helped us with this blend. Blending wine is at the heart of what we do. The wine has such lovely complexity and tension, even seven years later. I’m also super proud of how the first release of our Chandon Étoile, which is a blend of eight different vintage brut base wines, has developed over time.

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

Climate and season affect flavour tremendously, and that’s a year-to-year thing. We’ve seen warmer years like 2013 and 2016, and cooler years like 2015 and 2017. Behind that sits the scaffolding of soils and locations. We see terrific steely acidity from the granitic soils at Strathbogie, whereas the red basalt soils at Whitlands give us reliable citrus characters.

Which of your own varieties do you typically indulge in?

We probably drink vintage brut at home the most; I’ve been enjoying the 2017 Chandon Vintage Brut. Wines taste different at home. I took a six bottle cases of our 2018 Petit Meslier Cuvée wine home when we released it and I think it took me about a month to really come to terms with this traditional champenoise variety, which was an entirely new discovery for me. I think sometimes wines, aromas, flavours and palate structures need time and rumination to fully reveal themselves.