{"title":"semillon","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"eagles-rest-dam-block-semillon-2012","title":"Eagles Rest Dam Block Semillon 2012","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eEagles Rest is a small family owned winery high up in the foothills of the Brokenback range in the Hunter Valley. The oldest vines were planted in the 1970s and at an elevation of 240m above sea level, the vineyard is the highest in the Hunter Valley. The 2012 Dam Block Semillon, made by winemaking legend PJ Charteris, is Hunter Valley Semillon at its very best. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is a freakish wine, still with the colour (or rather the lack of colour] of a 1yo semillon, not a 4yo. What is more, the palate lives up to the promise of the colour, incredibly fine, long and pure, with lemon, lime and grapefruit citrus flavours locked together by tightly wound acidity on the long, perfectly balanced palate. An absolute steal at the price\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"This is a freakish wine, still with the colour (or rather the lack of colour] of a 1yo semillon, not a 4yo. What is more, the palate lives up to the promise of the colour, incredibly fine, long and pure, with lemon, lime and grapefruit citrus flavours locked together by tightly wound acidity on the long, perfectly balanced palate. An absolute steal at the price\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. Drink by 2026.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 96 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eand Special Value Wine  \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan property=\"maxValue\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"cs-detail\" style=\"text-align: start;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: start;\"\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecial Value Wine – \u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Segoe UI',sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; color: #212b36; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;\" data-mce-style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Segoe UI',sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; color: #212b36; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\" data-mce-style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAbout the winery\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg style=\"float: none;\" alt=\"Eagles Rest Vineyard, Hunter Valley\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Eagles_Rest_3_1024x1024.png?v=1721566667\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Eagles_Rest_3_1024x1024.png?v=1721566667\" data-mce-style=\"float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEagles Rest is a small family owned winery in the foothills of the Brokenback range in the Hunter Valley. The estate is planted \u003cspan\u003eto 8ha of chardonnay, 7ha shiraz, 3ha semillon and 2ha verdelho. The oldest vines were planted in the 1970s and at an elevation of 240m above sea level, the vineyard is the highest in the Hunter Valley.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"We're a family owned, small-batch winery from Pokolbin, Hunter Valley. In 2006 we found a very special parcel of land for sale high up in the foothills of the Brokenback range - the Maluna vineyard. It was a wild and exciting place, planted to 50-year-old Chardonnay, Semillon and Syrah.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eIt was our passion for wines that have purpose, that capture a sense of time and place that ignited our desire to start a label. When we first stumbled upon Maluna, we knew that it would be our goal to tell its story through wine. We named our label after the Wedged-tailed eagles that already nested there - it only seemed fitting. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eWe hand-craft small-batch wines exclusively from our Maluna vineyard which aim to capture a sense of time and place. Each of our wines is an expression of the land, the climate and the vintage. This means that no two wines will be the same and it's a concept we fully embrace in our winemaking. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eOur vineyard is nestled 180-240m above sea level in the foothills of the Broken Back Range. We share the west border with the Pokolbin state forest and over 100 kilometres of untouched wilderness. Through the centre of the property flows the Flemming gully and to either side lie the steeply terraced vineyard blocks. This orientation allows for a variety of unique microclimates, from cool south-facing slopes and higher altitude blocks, to the warmer north-facing terraces. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eWith vines planted up to 240m above sea level, Maluna is the highest elevated vineyard in the Hunter Valley and benefits from a slightly cooler microclimate. The elevation also gives us greater exposure to the cooling easterly and southerly sea breezes during the warm summer months. This helps limit humidity and decrease the risk of disease.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe soil on the vineyard is over 300 million years old and is incredibly diverse. On the ridgetops you will find red volcanic duplex soils planted to Syrah and on the valley floor lies sandy loam planted to Chardonnay and Semillon. The oldest of these vines were planted in the 1970’s and dry farmed for decades, typically producing a low crop of highly concentrated fruit.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eTo the west of the Maluna vineyard lies nothing but 100 kilometres of forest and wilderness. This means that we share the vineyard with an abundance of native plants and wildlife. We're constantly inspired by the scenes we see every day and aim to reflect this in our wines.\"\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\" data-mce-style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(128, 128, 128);\" data-mce-style=\"color: rgb(128, 128, 128);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEagles Rest\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42763703288049,"sku":"","price":57.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/eagles-rest-dam-block-semillon-2012.jpg?v=1696397429"},{"product_id":"bimbadgen-estate-myall-road-botrytis-semillon-2004-375ml","title":"Bimbadgen Estate Myall Road Botrytis Semillon 2004 (375ml)","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy, Best Dessert Wine Under ₤10 - 2005 Decanter World Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best NSW Sweet White Wine  - 2005 NSW Wine Awards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFruit for the trophy winning 2004 Bimbadgen Estate Myall Road Botrytis Semillon were harvested from the Myall Road vineyard at Yenda, a town in the Riverina region of New South Wales. The wine is a delicious dessert wine with high levels of botrytis (the fungus \u003cem\u003eBotrytis Cinerea\u003c\/em\u003e), which has much more in common with a French Sauterne than many of the overtly sweet and rich examples from our shores.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This dessert-styled semillon, made from grapes grown at Yenda, is all lemon and butter and apricot and honey, and the moment it hits your lips is the moment the word 'value' pops up too.\"   Campbell Mattinson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The wine has a fabulously complex, perfumed nose of citrus and apricots with masses of botrytis. When wines have this level of botrytis (and hence complexity), I often find myself content just sniffing the wine - but in the end curiosity always gets the better of me and I have to taste the goods! The palate is equally complex; bursting with lemon, lime and apricot flavours that are perfectly balanced by refreshing acidity. A wine of great depth and elegance, that has much more in common with a French Sauterne than many of the overtly sweet and rich examples from our shores.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNick Munday, Canterbury Wines - 95 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Picked at a whopping 32 baume (translation: very ripe and very sweet!), this is an intense apricot-powered dessert wine. The bouquet is quite delightful with fresh, intense lemon\/marmalade and tropical fruit over a buttery smoothness. The palate adds an interesting touch of mushroom complexity and great length. It doesn't have the acidity or structure to age long, but it's lacking nothing now, so dig in! \u003c\/span\u003eValue plus!\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Best drinking around: 2005-2008.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyson Stelzer, Top 500 Wines 2005-2006 – 94 points, Top 500 Wines 2005-2006\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"This dessert-styled semillon, made from grapes grown at Yenda, is all lemon and butter and apricot and honey, and the moment it hits your lips is the moment the word 'value' pops up too.\"   \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCampbell\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Mattinson, The Wine Front – Best Hunter Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eTrophy, Best Dessert Wine Under ₤10 - 2005 Decanter World Wine Awards\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eTrophy for Best NSW Sweet White Wine  - 2005 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Canterbury Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896829481201,"sku":"","price":34.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/bimbadgen-estate-myall-road-botrytis-semillon-2004-375ml_e58b3f87-b15a-4f25-8f48-3a8912985c88.jpg?v=1695783109"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-hvd-semillon-2015","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites HVD Semillon 2015","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"A dry-straw, meadow hay bouquet leading into intense lemon and herb flavours, with fresh acidity and lots of energy. Very appetising and delicious.\"  Huon Hooke\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe HVD Semillon is made from a select parcel of fruit planted on the old Hunter Valley Distillery site in 1908. These old vines produce luxurious Semillon with a richness and softness that is unique to the site. It's a wine that can be enjoyed as a young wine but one which also ages superbly for up to 20 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2kgJGJi66GY\" title=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_HVD_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753627\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e Expert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis wine is only sourced from the vineyard planted by the Hunter Valley Distillery in 1908 on very sandy soil, the legacy of creek beds countless years before. It's stacked with flavour to the point of space invasion, and doesn't need more time for muscle building. Drink by 2025.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion - 94 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"Light to mid-yellow colour, with a dry-straw, meadow hay bouquet leading into intense lemon and herb flavours, with fresh acidity and lots of energy. Very appetising and delicious.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Drink: 2020–2029.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 93 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The HVD vineyard is a key source of Tyrrell’s top semillon fruit, with this wine also regularly the best value in their semillon range, especially considering vines were planted back in 1908. There is a delicious upfront generosity to the 2015 vintage right now and a bit of colour with lemony, almost sunlight soap, citrus and green apple aromas with nice purity and precision. It’s past the reserved, tight style of young Hunter Semillon and has put on some attractive weight with good fruit concentration and crisp acid balance. HVD is not always so approachable in its youth and this vintage, with its vibrant acidity and fruit power, is a wine that is not only delicious to enjoy now but also has potential to gain more honeyed, lanolin complexity over the medium term. Drink: 2021 - 2032.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eAngus Hughson, Wine Pilot - 93 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - 2016 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHVD vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\" alt=\"Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\"\u003eT\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ehe HVD vineyard was first planted in 1908 by the Hunter Valley Distillery Company, which was formed in 1903 when the demand for spirits and fortified wines was high. The distillery was designed to take excess grapes for distillation into spirits for the manufacture of fortified wines.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePenfolds leased the vineyard in 1933 and bought it in 1948. Murray Tyrrell always said that it was one of the finest white wine vineyards in the Hunter and it was a coup for Tyrrell’s when he bought it in 1982\/83. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vineyard, which is located beside Moore’s Creek about 3.5 kilometres north of the Tyrrell’s winery, sits at an elevation of about 85 metres on alluvial sandy clay loam. It is planted to a mixture of Semillon (4.29 hectares) and Chardonnay (1.1 hectares) vines, the latter making up the oldest block of Chardonnay in the world. It provides the grapes for Tyrrell's HVD Semillon and HVD Chardonnay.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896898949361,"sku":"","price":47.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-HVD-Semillon-2015.jpg?v=1698646130"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-hvd-semillon-2013","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites HVD Semillon 2013","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"I love the pear, sliced apple and mineral aromas here. Full body, tangy fruit and a tight finish. Focused and balanced. A real beauty.\"  James Suckling\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Semillon is made from a select parcel of fruit planted on the old Hunter Valley Distillery site in 1908. These old vines produce luxurious Semillon with a richness and softness that is unique to the site. It's a wine that can be enjoyed as a young wine but one which also ages superbly for up to 20 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2kgJGJi66GY\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_HVD_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753627\" alt=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e Expert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI love the pear, sliced apple and mineral aromas here. Full body, tangy fruit and a tight finish. Focused and balanced. A real beauty. Drink now or hold. Screw cap.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFresh squeezed lime, vanilla, approachable, zesty but round – the volume of fruit is most excellent – almost flamboyant for such a young wine. Flinty and tight to close. Not an ounce of flab here though, make no mistake. Ripping length. I predict an amazing future for this wine: a toast and lime spectacular to come. Drink: 2016 - 2033.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLight to medium-yellow, bright colour, with a lovely rich, spicy, toasty bouquet with dried herb notes and a winning combination of refinement and richness in the mouth, the mid-palate having a delicious dab of fruit-sweetness. A generous and finessy semillon starting to show excellent matured flavours.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink: 2018–2024.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"This wine has amazing aromatics of creamy citrus curd and delicate smoky notes. Good fruit succulence plus hints of lemon butter. The liveliness and energy of the wine are quite extraordinary, especially considering its age. And the strength of the vintage and the uniqueness of the site shows through. It is youthful and delicious, and it is drinking well now. And although it will continue to evolve with time, I think it is in a particular sweet-spot right now.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson MW, The Real Review - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2013 HVD Semillon is golden in the glass and moving toward what I would consider to be the right kind of drinking window for it. It is toasty and wide aromatically, with lemongrass and beeswax, white pepper and creamed honey on toast. This is really magnificent. It is texturally round but not squishy\/bruised. 11.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 94 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHas some colour development, and also power as it passes its fifth birthday. The centenarian HVD Vineyard can produce soft, early drinking semillon, but its area is substantial, and this has come from an area that handles higher than normal alcohol, this with crisp acidity running through its lemongrass, lemon curd and wax notes.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2028.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion - 94 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGold Medal - 2016 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHVD vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\" alt=\"Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\"\u003eT\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ehe HVD vineyard was first planted in 1908 by the Hunter Valley Distillery Company, which was formed in 1903 when the demand for spirits and fortified wines was high. The distillery was designed to take excess grapes for distillation into spirits for the manufacture of fortified wines.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePenfolds leased the vineyard in 1933 and bought it in 1948. Murray Tyrrell always said that it was one of the finest white wine vineyards in the Hunter and it was a coup for Tyrrell’s when he bought it in 1982\/83.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vineyard, which is located beside Moore’s Creek about 3.5 kilometres north of the Tyrrell’s winery, sits at an elevation of about 85 metres on alluvial sandy clay loam. It is planted to a mixture of Semillon (4.29 hectares) and Chardonnay (1.1 hectares) vines, the latter making up the oldest block of Chardonnay in the world. It provides the grapes for Tyrrell's HVD Semillon and HVD Chardonnay.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899047665,"sku":"","price":59.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-HVD-Semillon-2013.jpg?v=1698646017"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-hvd-semillon-2010","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites HVD Semillon 2010","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This has started down its development path with the first hint of honey joining the lively, tangy, lemon\/lemongrass flavours, the acidity crisp and reassuring.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Semillon is made from a select parcel of fruit planted on the old Hunter Valley Distillery site in 1908. These old vines produce luxurious Semillon with a richness and softness that is unique to the site. It's a wine that can be enjoyed as a young wine but one which also ages superbly for up to 20 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2kgJGJi66GY\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_HVD_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753627\" alt=\"The story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e Expert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD vineyard was planted in 1908. Despite a touch of spritz, this has started down its development path with the first hint of honey joining the lively, tangy, lemon\/lemongrass flavours, the acidity crisp and reassuring.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2030.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion - 95 points and Special Value Wine (Tasted Feb 2015)   \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom a single vineyard planted in 1908, the 2010 HVD Semillon is just entering its window of drinkability, where it should remain for a solid 10 years. The lifted, vibrant aromas bring to mind lime zest and citrus blossom, while the light-bodied palate nonetheless packs considerable intensity. Hints of honeyed, toasty development are just starting to appear on the finish. Drink: 2017-2027.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJoe Czerwinski, Wine Advocate - 93 points (Tasted Dec 2017)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGold Medal - 2011 Adelaide Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGold Medal - 2011 Sydney Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHVD vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\" alt=\"Tyrrell's HVD Vineyard\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sHVDVineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692499893\"\u003eT\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ehe HVD vineyard was first planted in 1908 by the Hunter Valley Distillery Company, which was formed in 1903 when the demand for spirits and fortified wines was high. The distillery was designed to take excess grapes for distillation into spirits for the manufacture of fortified wines.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe HVD Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePenfolds leased the vineyard in 1933 and bought it in 1948. Murray Tyrrell always said that it was one of the finest white wine vineyards in the Hunter and it was a coup for Tyrrell’s when he bought it in 1982\/83.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vineyard, which is located beside Moore’s Creek about 3.5 kilometres north of the Tyrrell’s winery, sits at an elevation of about 85 metres on alluvial sandy clay loam. It is planted to a mixture of Semillon (4.29 hectares) and Chardonnay (1.1 hectares) vines, the latter making up the oldest block of Chardonnay in the world. It provides the grapes for Tyrrell's HVD Semillon and HVD Chardonnay.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899080433,"sku":"","price":64.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-HVD-Semillon-2010.jpg?v=1698645843"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-johnnos-semillon-2011","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites Johnno's Semillon 2011","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"It has all the vivid flavour of great young semillon, minerally acidity the turbo-charged energy that will drive the palate for decades to come.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohnno's vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. The vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils, which give the Semillon a flavour and texture unique to the site.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Johnno_s_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753998\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vines were planted in 1908 on sandy flats; the hand-picked grapes were basket-pressed, reducing the volume of juice; and the bottle and label are a throwback to the '60s and '70s. It has all the vivid flavour of great young semillon, minerally acidity the turbo-charged energy that will drive the palate for decades to come.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2036.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion - 96 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The old basket press used to make this wine is now, apparently, an ex-basket press. Chris Tyrrell tells me that, for whatever reason, it resulted in lower pH and higher acidity in the wines that went through it. 250 dozen made. A subdued, neutral dry white, tending to vinous rather than fruity, though given a chance it flashes a little lemon boiled lolly and drizzled lime at you. It’s tangy and firm with a subtly abrasive texture that lends it more layers and adds an extra dimension to that of your average Hunter Semillon. A little grassiness comes through on the finish, but what a charismatic brute it is. One for the cellar. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDrink: 2015-2031+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"Lanolin, grapefruit pulp, apple and melon. Quite filigree in the mouth. Expansive and long with a lot of ageability and chewy texture reminiscent of less-interventionist styles. Pressed and straight to tank, without settling. Screwcap. 11%.\"\u003cb\u003e  James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 95 points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899113201,"sku":"","price":139.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Site-Johnno_s-Semillon-2011.jpg?v=1698706062"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-lost-block-semillon-1997","title":"Tyrrell's Lost Block Semillon 1997","description":"\u003cp\u003eTyrrell’s Lost Block flagship, the Lost Block Semillon, was named after a vintage mishap in 1993 when Semillon grapes on a small vineyard block were 'forgotten about' at harvest time. After realising the oversight, the 'lost' Semillon was eventually picked and chief winemaker, Andrew Spinaze, created a more approachable, softer style than the classic aged Hunter Semillons for which Tyrrell’s is renowned. The tank of juice was duly titled the 'Lost Block' and the name stuck.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Honey characters are starting to appear matched by light citrus and toast on the bouquet. A lively mix of honey and crisp, grassy semillon provides mid-palate sweetness; good length and finish.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Medium yellow-green; honey characters are starting to appear matched by light citrus and toast on the bouquet. A lively mix of honey and crisp, grassy semillon provides mid-palate sweetness; good length and finish.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 91 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJeremy Oliver – 90 points\u003c\/strong\u003e (No review available)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899211505,"sku":"","price":39.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Lost-Block-Semillon-1997_75e10a21-c163-43b7-b949-8b9277b68847.jpg?v=1702264000"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2014","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2014","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This wine has incredible palate depth, not to mention delicacy, form and grace. Lemon curd aromatics with faint and respectful flintiness. The bright palate is soft, generously flavoured and mouth-filling, with an integrated acid line. Completely delicious and well-worthy of its icon status.\"  Toni Paterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt is a classic Hunter Valley semillon showing a tightly structured palate with considerable length and breadth of citrus fruit flavours. This wine is only just beginning to evolve and show a hint of toasty, bottle aged complexity. An iconic Australian wine from what is a classic vintage for Hunter Valley semillon.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Only available to Wine Club members now, the main release 5 years down the track. Made from the estate's Short Flat Vineyard, the blocks dating back to '23, this is destined to add yet more trophies to the Tyrrell's warehouse of such tributes. Its balance and mouthfeel are remarkable, supple and juicy, yet cleansed by gently insistent acidity\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion – 97 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"'2013 and 2014 will be top vintages', states winemaker Andrew Spinaze, 'it's a real Vat 1 character; very intense, robust almost. Intensity is at the highest here in 2014'\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. Interestingly, the winemaking team is talking shifting production across to the basket press, for more phenolic work and complexity of texture. A changing of style, or reverting to…\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCompact and powerful wine. Such focus and persistence too. Waxy and floral notes in perfume, citrus to the max. Purity of flavour, light juicy citrus, squeaky waxiness in texture, big hit of flint-like minerality, almost a rock chisel and then green apple. Incredible power. Incredible focus. Incredible young release. Drink: 2017-2034+.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMike Bennie, The Wine Front – 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"From a stellar vintage in Hunter Valley, this late-release wine is just coming into its own. Freshly squeezed lemon bursts from the glass, accompanied by citrus leaf, blossom and white spice notes. A laser beam of crystalline acidity slices through the textural, citrus-driven palate. Drink now with buttery seafood, or cellar for through 2035.\"\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast – 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Yet another stellar release from a red wine vintage (like 2005), what’s magical here is the contrasts – the green apple and rampant acidity, but also the first whispers of wax, toast and popcorn. Each time you have another sip the identity changes – all primary fruit and aching youth at first, then that subtle secondary richness next. It’s fuller through the middle than, say, the green-edged 2012, but that just makes it even more drinkable. It’s a great Vat 1. Like the ’11. Or the ’05, or even the ’99. But it’s not ready. Not yet. Greatness needs time. Best drinking: Not now. It’s still too primary. Too sprightly. Wait until it’s eight, then drink it whenever you like for over next twenty years. I’d open in 2024. Would I buy it? Gladly.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eAndrew Graham, Australian Wine Review – 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A fantastic semillon, this is deep and dry with lemon-curd, salt, stone and pear-skin character. Full and energetic. So much going on here. It goes on for minutes. Block of marble. Drink or hold. Screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"When you look at Vat 1 in a blind line-up including other top semillons, what makes it stand out is its sheer intensity of flavour, as well as its freshness compared to other wines of similar age. This wine has incredible palate depth, not to mention delicacy, form and grace. Lemon curd aromatics with faint and respectful flintiness. The bright palate is soft, generously flavoured and mouth-filling, with an integrated acid line. Completely delicious and well-worthy of its icon status\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. Drink 2019-2028.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eToni Paterson, The Real Review – 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_600x600.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe\u003cspan\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003efollowing article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899375345,"sku":"","price":145.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2014.jpg?v=1698714024"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2013","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2013","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2018\u003cbr\u003eHalliday Wine Companion  Best Semillon of 2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Wine of Show - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best White Wine - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Mature White - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2021 Royal Adelaide Wine Show \u003cbr\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2022 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Mature White - 2022 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This majestic wine's lightweight belies its sheer stretch of flavours across the palate. Energetic and gently grippy; tightly wound but bristling with mineral intent. Bottle age has softened this ever so slightly. Nothing more. An Australian classic in the making!\"  Ned Goodwin\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 2013 Vat 1 is a winner of seven trophies and 22 Gold Medals, including 4 trophies at the 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show where it collected trophies for the Best Wine of Show, Best White Wine, Best Mature White and Best Semillon. It became the first Semillon to take the Best Wine of Show trophy in eight years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2013 is at 3:43 into the video)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2013 Vat 1 Semillon is perfumed and floral, with nary a hair out of place here. This is sleek and streamlined, perfect in its way. It is light and detailed, fresh and distinct. It has a balanced ledger of almond meal, pressed flowers, tatami mat\/straw, saline threads of acidity, pear skin, cumin, scratched yuzus, bay leaf and Murraya (orange jessamine). The texture is silky, so silky, almost slippery, without being viscose. This is unutterably good. This is me—this is the wine I want to drink. 11.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe grapes came from two vineyards, one planted in '23, the younger one in '69, both on well drained sandy soils. This is classic stuff, the Tyrrell family with generational experience and an embarrassment of richness with its holdings of old vines, here resulting in lime\/lemon\/talc flavours and texture. Drink by 2033.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points, Top 100 Wines of 2018 and Best Semillon of 2019 and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The Emperor, shy but strident, wearing a myriad of citrus and orchard colours and a tensile sash of calm, and poise. This majestic wine's lightweight belies its sheer stretch of flavours across the palate. Energetic and gently grippy; tightly wound but bristling with mineral intent. Bottle age has softened this ever so slightly. Nothing more. An Australian classic in the making\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e! Jan 2018. Jan 2018.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNed Goodwin, Wine Companion 2019 – 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Bright, medium to light-yellow colour. A whiff of free sulfur comes off at first sniff, then there's lemony herbal freshness, discreet and refined with no single aroma dominating. \u003c\/span\u003eThere's just a whisper of toast starting up, but the wine is reserved for its age, promising to live long if cellared. Taut, dry, savoury and restrained. An excellent wine with a long future ahead of it. (5 Gold medals)\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e . Drink: 2018-2028.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Tasted as part of \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ea vertical of the Vat 1 Semillon: 2022 - 1998. All bottles were sealed under screw cap (magical) and, as such, were in pristine condition. The beauty of progression through the years showed glorious bottle age complexity and a strong indication that these wines will keep going and going, endlessly through the years. Marvelous, singular stuff here; the majesty of this particular aging arc cannot be overstated.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBefore I explain what this tastes like, it is important to note that between the 2017 and the 2006, there is very little color difference in the glass. Here, you get green glints, pale straw lemon, and it's packed (and I mean PACKED) with flavor. So, this 2013 Vat 1 Semillon is closed on the nose, reduced to preserved lemon rind, brine, quinine and crushed shells. Quiet things. In the mouth, this Zen mood continues; it unfurls in a languid fashion, slowly spooling white tea, apple skins, juniper, creamed honey and beeswax. If this wine had a sound, it would be the cast of a baited, weighted fishing line, right before it *plonks* into the water. It appears nine years is the cusp of old and new in these Vat 1s. My advice is to hold it. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2022 - 2038.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 96+ points (Tasted Dec 2022)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"As with any great wine, there must be distinction, purity, and true expression, all bundled up with absolute balance and harmony. Tyrrell's 2013 Vat 1 Semillon, while mature at nearly nine years old, is just hitting its straps.\" \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e PJ Charteris, Chair of Judges Sydney Royal Wine Show 2021\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eChris Tyrrell commented that the Vat 1 and Belford Semillons in 2013 were within .01 (i.e. stuff all) of the readings for the 2005 vintage for TA, Ph, alcohol and sugar. There's always something different to the flavour and character of a vintage other than just chemistry, but it gives us a pretty good clue to the nature of the wines regardless.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eClean, lemon, lime, light honeyed tones – subdued – and then? \u003c\/span\u003eA powerhouse palate presenting juicy, almost sweet, citrus fruit that fills the mouth – remarkable presence for such a light wine. Subtle powdery texture and pure acidity. Length to burn. A classic Vat 1. Drink: 2017-2033+.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Classic in the making. Straw-green, slight spritz, excellent intensity yet it still manages to trip lightly from the attack to the extended finish. Citrus, wax, anise and green herbs but beautifully integrated. Complete.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eCampbell Mattinson - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2018\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHalliday Wine Companion  Best Semillon of 2019\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eTrophy, Best Wine of Show - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy, Best White Wine - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy, Best Mature White - 2021 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2021 Royal Adelaide Wine Show (96 points)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Semillon - 2022 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy, Best Mature White - 2022 Sydney Royal Wine Show\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899440881,"sku":"","price":165.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2013_cd703510-ba5f-49c3-a348-5c8fe3efa81c.jpg?v=1723681655"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2011","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2011","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is a beautiful Vat 1, just starting its journey towards maturity. Its balance and harmony allow it to float effortlessly along the palate and into a finish that caresses the taste buds. It will develop slowly, but give pleasure whenever it is tasted.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Fine bright straw gold with fantastic green freshness. On the nose, lime and lemon purity with subtle yet complex hints of toast, clover honey and lanolin. The palate is beautifully tight, focussed and remarkably fresh, yet richly flavoured with velvety layers of lemon curd and honey in full Semillon expression. Displays delicious varietal intensity, creamy and textural mouth-feel and fabulous acidity resulting in a great drink now or over the next five to ten years plus.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Bright, gleaming straw-green; this is a beautiful Vat 1, just starting its journey towards maturity. Its balance and harmony allow it to float effortlessly along the palate and into a finish that caresses the taste buds. It will develop slowly, but give pleasure whenever it is tasted\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. Drink by 2031.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion – 97 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Light, bright yellow colour; the aromas complex and showing some positive age development but not toasty or mature yet. \u003c\/span\u003eThis wine is showing some positive aged characteristics but remains fresh and very alive and promises to live on for many more years. A superbly stylish, delicate, high-quality semillon. Drink: 2016-2029.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The colour is still light, bright yellow and aromas complex, showing some positive age development, but not yet toasty or mature. Some aged nuances, but it's fresh and alive, and will live for many more years. A fine, delicate, top quality semillon.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGourmet Traveller Magazine, August 2016 – 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 can always be relied upon to deliver a pure, focused and linear wine, year-in, year-out; as a young wine, there is just enough flesh for a little pleasure, with lemon sherbet, lime leaf and straw; the structure indicates a long future ahead, and real pleasure will come at least five years down the track. Certainly worth investing both time and money to watch it truly come together. Drink by 2035.\"   \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBen Edwards, Halliday Wine Companion – 97 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899473649,"sku":"","price":180.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2011_862d9a28-ee42-4f3f-86f3-36d25e7c68be.jpg?v=1698709379"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2006","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2006","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2012\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Museum White - 2022 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Semillon - 2006 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Dry White - 2006 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2011 Perth Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White - 2011 Hobart Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Dry White Wine of Show - 2011 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGold Medal Winner at 25 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A freak wine that will live as long as any red wine of similar age.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"What a fantastic wine (Oct 2006)...  What a classic. Just showing some toast and honey development, but zinging with life. Such length. Freshness (Mar 2017)...  Looking like a three year old wine but still so good to drink. Will live for ever (Dec 2019)...  2006 much better definition than 2005. More 'classic' (Feb 2020)...  Yet another bottle of this, and I wonder how many I have left now. Brilliant (Sep 2020).\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e''To me,\u003cstrong\u003e all great wines\u003c\/strong\u003e have the ability to get better and better in the bottle, with few exceptions. The seven-year-old \u003c\/span\u003eTyrrell's 2006 Vat 1 Semillon\u003cspan\u003e was still a juvenile, capable of another decade of good drinking easily. Its longevity is at the heart of what makes it astounding.\" \u003cstrong\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003eJancis Robinson (Apr 2013)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2006 vintage is at 4:52 into the video)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Tasted as part of \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ea vertical of the Vat 1 Semillon: 2022 - 1998. All bottles were sealed under screw cap (magical) and, as such, were in pristine condition. The beauty of progression through the years showed glorious bottle age complexity and a strong indication that these wines will keep going and going, endlessly through the years. Marvelous, singular stuff here; the majesty of this particular aging arc cannot be overstated.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 2006 Vat 1 Semillon had a fine spritz in the glass as I poured it, and now in the mouth, 30 minutes later, it is alive and kinetic in texture. This is complex and vital, so alive and pert it feels younger than the 2009 tasted beside it, perhaps even brighter than the 2013. A marvelous wine. All things tight and glorious here, you get lemongrass, brine, grated apple peel, jasmine tea, almond meal, citrus oil, lemon verbena, thyme ... I could go on. Suffice to say, this is sensational. It has a resonant vibration at its very core. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2022 - 2052.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97+ points (Tasted Dec 2022)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Museum Release. The display of 14 gold medals and seven trophies on the bottle borders on the vulgar, however richly it deserves this haul. It is still a pale, bright green, and the lemon\/mineral flavours are exceptionally fresh and vibrant, lingering for minutes on the finish and aftertaste; a freak wine that will live as long as any red wine of similar age.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2046.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points and Top 100 Wines of 2012 and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e''To me, all great wines have the ability to get better and better in the bottle, with few exceptions. The seven-year-old \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell's 2006 Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was still a juvenile, capable of another decade of good drinking easily. Its longevity is at the heart of what makes it astounding.\" \u003cstrong\u003e Jancis Robinson (Tasted Apr 2013)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA great wine which will seemingly live forever, it is so fresh and youthful at eight and a half years. It has the typical Vat 1 bouquet of lemony Sunlight soap with a lanolin overtone, with very little aged toastiness. The palate is soft and seamless, pure as the proverbial driven snow, the acidity in perfect harmony and not showing out at all. A great example of the style and probably has at least another 20 years in it. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDrink: 2018-2028.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points (Tasted Sep 2014)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"More restrained than the 2000, and more balanced.  There is delicate fruit with hints of minerals and talc.  This has some of the toasty notes that were evident on the 2005, but still has remarkable freshness and balance.  A superb wine that is drinking superbly, but is also capable of aging further.\"\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLester Jesberg, Winewise (Tasted Dec 2018)  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e★★★★★ \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Aromas of sweet lime\/lemon, white peach, beeswax, honey and herb. On the palate tight and very fresh yet bursting with intense citrus and peach fruit with a sprinkle of green herbs and lanolin. Soft but crisp acidity. Perfect balance. Clean long limey finish. Now or later. What a fantastic wine. Drink: 2006-2030+. (\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eTasted Oct 2006)...\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e... Just having a bottle now. Over a decade since I wrote the note. What a classic. Just showing some toast and honey development, but zinging with life. Such length. Freshness. Flintiness. (\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eTasted Mar 2017)...\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e... Opened one on Xmas day. Looking like a three year old wine but still so good to drink. Will live for ever. (Tasted Dec 2019\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e)...\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e... 2006 much better definition than 2005. More 'classic'. (Tasted Feb 2020)...\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e... Yet another bottle of this, and I wonder how many I have left now. Brilliant. (Tasted Sep 2020).\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96\/97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2012\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Museum White - 2022 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Semillon - 2006 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Dry White - 2006 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2011 Perth Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White - 2011 Hobart Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Dry White Wine of Show - 2011 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eGeorge Wyndham Memorial Trophy\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e - 2011 Hunter Valley Wine Show\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBest Wine by a NSW Exhibitor - 2012 Sydney Wine Show\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGold Medal Winner at 25 Australian Wine Shows\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899506417,"sku":"","price":210.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2006_bdcfebcd-ab89-4faf-a8aa-ff43e45d8c98.jpg?v=1714434567"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2005","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2005","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTrophy for Best Wine in Show - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Mature Dry White - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White - 2010 Hobart Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2010 Sydney Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2009 Sydney Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show - 2009 Sydney Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Dry White Table Wine - 2007 Canberra Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal Winner at 18 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Drank one of these yesterday. Such a stellar wine. So fresh, still so tense, so much time to go. While still so precise and vibrant, just a little suppleness creeping in, all the detail revealing itself, length, and finish phenomenal. Such brilliant drinking.\"  Mike Bennie (Tasted Jan 2019)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA great semillon in typical Tyrrell style. It has a nicely ripe bouquet of great detail, with a gentle toasty patina of age plus honeyed lemon and beeswax nuances. The palate is tremendously intense and refined, the flavour very sustained and powerful but subtle at the same time. The line of the palate is impeccable. It still has years ahead of it, if well cellared.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink: 2021–2026.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 99 points (Tasted Apr 2021)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A very great Hunter semillon, to be re-released in May 2018 at $175 to commemorate the 160th anniversary of Tyrrell's Wines. The wine is still very fresh and yet has acquired all the wonderful toasty and beeswaxy complexities of a mature semillon. The palate is intense and long, pure and refreshing as well as multi-layered, with impeccable line. A benchmark wine. (57 gold medals, 33 trophies).\"\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  Huon Hooke, The Real Review - 99 points (Tasted Mar 2018)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Tasted as part of \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ea vertical of the Vat 1 Semillon: 2022 - 1998. All bottles were sealed under screw cap (magical) and, as such, were in pristine condition. The beauty of progression through the years showed glorious bottle age complexity and a strong indication that these wines will keep going and going, endlessly through the years. Marvelous, singular stuff here; the majesty of this particular aging arc cannot be overstated.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 2005 Vat 1 Semillon is currently in the perfect place to drink it—right now, in 2022. This is tight, taut, complex and evolving, moving around the mouth like a time-lapse of dappled sunlight across an afternoon. It has hay, lemongrass, shells, white sand, tamarind, honeysuckle, creamed honey, bitter walnut, meal and preserved citrus in abundance. What I like most about this wine is its restraint. It is barely bridled, yet it is bridled enough. Utterly sensational. My words butcher the experience. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2022 - 2050.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97 points (Tasted Dec 2022)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Drank one of these yesterday. Such a stellar wine. So fresh, still so tense, so much time to go. Made me pause to think about the Tyrrell’s Futures Semillon 1986, and wonder if it might have similar DNA and scale that lofty height. While still so precise and vibrant, just a little suppleness creeping in, all the detail revealing itself, length, and finish phenomenal. Such brilliant drinking.\" \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Mike Bennie\u003c\/span\u003e, The Wine Front (Tasted Jan 2019)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A rich, fresh, mature semillon with a long acid line. The fruit is still full of life, indicating that this magnificent wine has years left in it. One of the greatest Vat 1s of all.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eLester Jesberg, Winewise (Tasted Dec 2018)  ★★★★★ \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Bright straw-green, it has a strikingly perfumed bouquet of grass, herbs and wild flowers, the palate charged with lemon juice and lemon zest flavours, crisp acid driving the long palate and lingering finish.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 96 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTrophy for Best Wine in Show - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Mature Dry White - 2017 NSW Wine Awards\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White - 2010 Hobart Wine Show\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2010 Sydney Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon of Show - 2009 Sydney Wine Show\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show - 2009 Sydney Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Dry White Table Wine - 2007 Canberra Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal Winner at 18 Australian Wine Shows\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan mce-data-marked=\"1\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899703025,"sku":"","price":195.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2005_b588221b-773c-4eea-8ee7-76169b05372c.jpg?v=1698708694"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-1999","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 1999","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2006\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine – Melbourne Wine Show 2005\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine – Hobart Wine Show 2005\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage White Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 1999\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 1999\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGold Medal Winner at 28 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"1999 is maturing slower and more assuredly than any other Vat 1 to hit the re-release queue in years. It’s still a youthful green hue, disclosing nuances of lime, pepper, spice and peppermint. Pure, driven and seamless. Cross your fingers for a good cork.\"  Tyson Stelzer (Tasted Jul 2011)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt last count, 8 Trophies and 28 Gold medals have been awarded to this wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"When one includes McWilliam's Lovedale and Brokenwood ILR Reserve Semillons, no other single region, single-variety wine has acumulated so many Australian wine show trophies. This is a marvellous wine, with its lemon and lime-juice flavours running the length of its exhilarating palate and lingering aftertaste. Drink Now-2009.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, The Weekend Australian\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e - 97 points and Top 100 Wines of 2006\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"1999 is maturing slower and more assuredly than any other Vat 1 to hit the re-release queue in years. It’s still a youthful green hue, disclosing nuances of lime, pepper, spice and peppermint. Pure, driven and seamless. Cross your fingers for a good cork. Drink: 2011-2019.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyson Stelzer, Wine Taste - 97 points (Tasted Jul 2011)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Long and seamless, this slowly maturing Hunter semillon has a faintly buttery and toasty bouquet of melon and citrus, backed by delicate floral aromas. Its smooth and savoury palate reveals a deep core of fruit with tobacco-like and chalky undertones. Exceptionally tight and focused, it finishes with refreshingly tangy acidity. Drink 2007-2011+.\"\u003cstrong\u003e  Jeremy Oliver – 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The 1999 vintage is arguably the best of the nineties. The product of a near perfect growing season the wines have beautifully defined citrus flavours, refreshing acidity and finish long and dry. A classic cellaring vintage. Many of the wines are just beginning to reveal their true potential. Again, if you have never been a fan of aged Semillon then this is the vintage that could well turn you on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAromas of lemon and lime and some lightly honeyed toast. Hint of candle wax. Juicy fresh squeezed lime flavours with a little toasty development. Touch of spice and vanilla. Pure and perfectly balanced – everything is just right here. Exceptional length of flavour. Just starting to develop some complexity but still  fresh and vibrant. Reminds me of the 1994 vintage a bit and I’d say it’s the best since. Drink: 2010-2020.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Very well preserved; fine, restrained and delicate. Subtle lemon, mineral, herb and waxy notes. Tight, delicate, fresh and crisp on the tongue. A lovely, fine, aerial wine still with potential to live on.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 96 points (Tasted Apr 2018)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAmazingly fresh and vibrant for a seven-year-old wine. The palate delivers an impressive intensity and complexity of lemon, straw and honeysuckle flavours. Lean, austere and structured. '\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOutstanding!' noted one judge.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWinestate Magazine  ★★★★★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Australian semillon is so good and Tyrrell's has long been its master and this is no exception. It starts with a delicate nose of grapefruit and lemon, too, that follows through on the palate. It's vibrant, crisp with lovely minerality, yet some honeyed notes that peel off to reveal a fresh and long finish.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eJane Faulkner, The Age 48 Hours\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The first wine in the line-up to show some toasty bottle development among the honey, lemon marmalade and burnt match notes. It's starting to build some texture in the mouth but has a way to go before maturity. The driving acidity is ever-present and keeps the wine as fresh as a deodorant commercial. Balance is very similar to the 02. \u003c\/span\u003eDrinking brilliantly now\u003cspan\u003e and will continue to do so for at least another five to eight years.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eAndrew Wood, Divine Magazine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2006\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine – Melbourne Wine Show 2005\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine – Hobart Wine Show 2005\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage White Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 1999\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Current Vintage Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 1999\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal Winner at 28 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42896899735793,"sku":"","price":210.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-1999.jpg?v=1748322293"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2010","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2010","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Five years have passed since the wine was made, but it's oh so young and fresh, with years of life in front of it; its balance and length are faultless, so its future is gold-plated.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom two dry-grown blocks with an average age of 60 years. Five years have passed since the wine was made, but it's oh so young and fresh, with years of life in front of it; its balance and length are faultless, so its future is gold-plated, but I must point it as it is today. Drink by 2040.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Lemon powder and subtle tropical notes, but largely drenched in freshly squeezed lime. It has richness and intensity of flavour but remains tangy and zesty – the acid line feels tight and secure – enough to anchor it safely for many years. Sails through the mouth and coasts effortlessly long through the finish. In short, a richer style, but a beautiful Vat 1. Drink: 2012 - 2025+.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon is fermented in stainless steel, spending a short time on lees in tank prior to bottling. It sees no oak. The 2010 Winemaker’s Selection Vat 1 Semillon has youthfully mute aromas of lemon peel, fresh grass, chalk boards, fresh lime juice and grapefruit. Very crisp, dry and light-bodied, it possesses an excellent concentration of citrus and mineral flavors, finishing long. Don’t even think about drinking this now – try it in about 5-6 years when it will start to enter its drinking window. It should cellar to 2022+.\" \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate - 94+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2010\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43215735914737,"sku":"","price":170.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2010_25b96cb9-752f-4448-9764-f97e2d0da7fe.jpg?v=1698709057"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2016","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2016","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is looking really good in 2016. It's such a young wine, but there's a pleasing roundness and fleshy quality to the mid-palate that sets this wine apart from the other single vineyard offerings. It's distinctive and convincing. Length is terrific, and it has plenty of zest and crunch on offer too. I'm picking this as the one to watch.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Video\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A dry-grown planting dating from 1933 across light sandy soils. Belford boasts the most fruit intensity of Tyrell's 3 single-vineyard semillons. The strongest immediate impact of the triumvirate. Talc, barley sugar and chalky riffs lead, with pink grapefruit and lemon balm. A linger of tonic, lemon myrtle and orange verbena. Extremely long and slaking already, with the confluence of fruit and structural components still elemental. Pulls the saliva from the back of the mouth. A little more time needed to really gel. Superb wine in the making. Drink by 2030.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNed Goodwin MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, Wine Companion 2019 – 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Fresh and youthful in the glass. Aromas of citrus blossom, nettle, lemon curd, wet stone and lemon pith. Powerful on the palate, there's a real drive of lemon and sherbet goodness, talc, grapefruit pith, mineral and green melon. Juicy acidity and a touch of phenolic grip provide cut and definition\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e. Drink: 2022-2032.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAaron Brasher, The Real Review - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eBelford is looking really good in 2016. Lemon and lime with a gentle talc perfume and a dusting of the same lending a subtle powdery texture. It's such a young wine, but there's a pleasing roundness and fleshy quality to the mid-palate that sets this wine apart from the other single vineyard offerings. It's distinctive and convincing. Length is terrific, and it has plenty of zest and crunch on offer too. I'm picking this as the one to watch. Drink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2019 - 2036+\u003c\/span\u003e.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 94+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The 2016 Tyrrell's Semillon range is in a very good place. The Tyrrell's Belford Semillon 2016 is a bejewelled and detailed white wine, with the same angular lines that made the 2022 so unappealing now giving this 2016 presence and line, fleshed out with just a little toast. I like it more than the top dog 2017 Vat 1.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Graham, Australian Wine Review\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43663782445297,"sku":"","price":45.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2016_89a5ddef-4f4d-4c1c-a538-33f34580efc7.jpg?v=1698644450"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2017-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2017 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2025 National Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2023 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2022 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2021 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eNick Ryan Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is a great vineyard, and the wines have a distinct personality. White peach, lemon, a little talc-like perfume. Powerful and coiled up, but a big mid-palate hit, almost succulent, then onto a roaring finish of superb length, with powdery texture trailing in its wake. Clarity. Intensity. Sails through the mouth. Classic Belford.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eIntensely lifted citrus notes, this wine has the robust, richer, almost chalky palate that is commonly associated with the Belford vineyard that is balanced by a soft, clean acid profile, giving the wine its great length. \u003c\/span\u003eHand-picked in the early hours of the morning, the fruit was lightly crushed and pressed before a relatively cool fermentation. Then the wine spent minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard Video\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I need to turn the music down. Take a breath. Strap in for a fidelitous ride across the ebbs and flows of Hunter regality, when I taste this suite of semillon. The top drawer, with few peers. Belford, a little more reticent and stonier than its Stevens brethren. Talc, wet pebbles strewn across a stream, lemongrass and citrus balm. But the texture, the opus. Still in need of time. Taut, linear and of pixelated detail and precision. Wait with bated breath. Drink by 2030.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Wine Companion 2019 – 97 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eBelford is a great vineyard, and the wines have a distinct personality. White peach, lemon, a little talc-like perfume. Powerful and coiled up, but a big mid-palate hit, almost succulent, then onto a roaring finish of superb length, with powdery texture trailing in its wake. Clarity. Intensity. Sails through the mouth. Classic Belford. Drink: \u003cspan\u003e2018 - 2037+\u003c\/span\u003e.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Light, bright yellow hue with an intense lemony\/Sunlight Soap aroma, some green-herb nuances in the background, while the taste is light-bodied and crisply cut, delicate and balanced with a medium length finish. The immediate drinking qualities are outstanding. A refined and intense semillon, young for its years.\" \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Huon Hooke, The Real Review - 96 points and Wine of the Week\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAlan Jones and Bon Scott probably don’t have many things in common, but this wine is one of them. The label is not inspired by the middle name they share, but rather the vineyard’s proximity to the little town of the same moniker. It’s the most northerly of this label’s rich semillon resources and it delivers a deeper, more powerful style, packed tight with waxy citrus and fine, powdery length.\u003c\/span\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e  Nick Ryan\u003c\/strong\u003e, The Weekend Australian - 95 points and Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A trio of 2017 single-vineyard Semillons are in front of me, and the 2017 Belford Semillon is showing the excellent vintage to its greatest possible iteration. Toasted bay leaf, brine, sun-drenched hay, roasted green apple skins, sandalwood and matcha adorn the nose, while the procession of flavor in the mouth is seemingly never-ending. It's richer and more savory than the HVD Semillon tasted before it, but it has no less of an acid line, nor glassy purity. Excellent. This has won two trophies and five gold medals at wine shows since its release. Drink: 2022-2042.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 94+ points\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eNick Ryan Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2025 National Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2023 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2022 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2021 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWine of the Week - The Real Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eGold Medal - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Adelaide Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2017 \u003cspan style=\"mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-ligatures: standardcontextual;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\" style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43663835169009,"sku":"","price":145.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2017-1500ml_ff4a77f8-1ca5-437f-b028-1d81481024c5.jpg?v=1750217856"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2012","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2012","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  Erin Larkin\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This wine offers bright elements of flowers and lemons that are highlighted by white pepper, lemon thyme and a fresh green vegetal note. The palate is laser focused and tightly wound, with a strong line of acidity beautifully balancing a silky smooth texture. Still very much in its youth, this will age well.\"  Christina Pickard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Five\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e years in bottle is the magic moment when the first phase of moving to maturity is completed. This magic moment sees the palate swelling with toast and honey components clasped to the bosom by minerally acidity the wine will never lose. It's a great match for rich seafood dishes. Drink by 2032. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion – 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Beautiful aromas of lemon peel, light beeswax and lemon grass here. There’s a light toasty edge and lemon blossom, too. The palate is elegant, fine and long, really refined and succulent. Very sleek and elegant. Has more to come. Drink now. Screw cap.\" \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 94 points (Tasted Aug 2020)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"This wine offers bright elements of flowers and lemons that are highlighted by white pepper, lemon thyme and a fresh green vegetal note. The palate is laser focused and tightly wound, with a strong line of acidity beautifully balancing a silky smooth texture. Still very much in its youth, this will age well.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast – 94 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43903393431793,"sku":null,"price":145.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2012.jpg?v=1698713540"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2017","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2017","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White Wine - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Royal Perth Wine Show 2021\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Intense limey goodness here, which will roll on to become a classic white Hunter Burgundy with bottle age: a subtle white flower perfume tells part of tale. Perfectly pitched, intense and crunchy, flavoursome too, with weight but no heaviness. There’s a light powdery texture, which seems to be a hallmark of the 2017 vintage. Then the finish. So long. A phenomenal Vat 1.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. The 2017 Vintage was one of the best in recent memory and has produced wines of the highest quality. All of the fruit was hand picked and carefully sorted in the vineyard. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation. With lifted lime citrus aromas the palate is seamless, showing the typical powerful fruit core which is balanced by the wine’s texture and soft acid profile. This wine shows a length of flavour only produced from great vineyards.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2017 is at 3:19 into the video)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"2017 was a rare Hunter vintage, rain absent, and both shiraz and semillon flourished. The pale straw-green colour of this wine is startling, showing no development. The palate is superb, lime and lemon fused with mouth-watering, diamond-drill acidity. Drink by 2048.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, The Weekend Australian - 98 points and Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003eBright, light yellow colour with intense lemongrass aromas, hints of straw and wax, barely any toast evident at this stage, the palate intense and long, concentrated and driving, without bigness or heft but light on its feet and super-precise. Fills every corner of the mouth effortlessly: an outstanding semi-mature semillon. Superior concentration and persistence here. This is ageing very slowly and will be long-lived.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink: 2023–2033.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Tasted as part of \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ea vertical of the Vat 1 Semillon: 2022 - 1998. All bottles were sealed under screw cap (magical) and, as such, were in pristine condition. The beauty of progression through the years showed glorious bottle age complexity and a strong indication that these wines will keep going and going, endlessly through the years. Marvelous, singular stuff here; the majesty of this particular aging arc cannot be overstated.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 2017 Vat 1 Semillon represents an excellent Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley, and it is here that we start to see the majesty of aged Semillon begin to unfold. Sun-drenched hay, caper brine, wisps of black tea, crushed shells, a whiff of Szechuan peppercorn, lemongrass, green apples and cold buttered toast. In the mouth, the wine is texturally silky (with a weighty fall, like heavy gauge silk) and lingering. It moves with momentum rather than outright speed (like watching a whale shark swim: they might move slowly, but they swim fast), and it has a clarity and freshness in the mouth that is astounding. This is a super wine, an evocative wine, an imaginative wine. It's a wine on the up, with miles to go before it sleeps. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2022 - 2047.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97+ points (Tasted Dec 2022)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile I enjoy the open-knit approaches to crafting semillon across the region, this remains the bulletproof benchmark. Even here, there have been endeavours toward greater accessibility, with some lees inflection. A meld of the finest dry-grown plots conferring a carapace of talc, sandy mineral and effusive acidity that is, to be frank, indomitable. Descriptives, ineffable. The length, justifiable. Bury this. Drink by 2035.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Intense limey goodness here, which will roll on to become a classic white Hunter Burgundy with bottle age: a subtle white flower perfume tells part of tale. Perfectly pitched, intense and crunchy, flavoursome too, with weight but no heaviness. There’s a light powdery texture, which seems to be a hallmark of the 2017 vintage. Then the finish. So long. A phenomenal Vat 1. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2020-2038+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2017 was hailed as a great vintage in the Hunter Valley, but it was also hot and dry, so this is a richer, more advanced bottling than the previous vintage. Lucid and concentrated, it's unmistakably Hunter Sem, with its woolly, beeswax, lemon pith and lamp oil appeal. A mineral, flinty note adds interest. There's a laser-like line of acidity on the slippery palate and a flavor richness that flows to the long finish. Drink now-2030.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast – 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White Wine - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Royal Perth Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold  Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Sydney Wine Show 2017\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Melbourne Royal Wine Awards 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Melbourne Royal Wine Awards 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43903892816113,"sku":null,"price":99.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2017_b03d8c01-a2fb-4d87-a672-90646042f02e.jpg?v=1731023761"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2016","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2016","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Vat 1’s capacity to age is prodigious. Barley water, honeysuckle, lemon drop, dried straw and a skein of evergreen freshness that quenches, drives and balances the myriad of accents and textures. This is a long sheath of nervous energy, readying itself for calm into the later stages of development.\"  Ned Goodwin MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This is a wine that combines elegance with power. It has lifted citrus aromas and a seamless palate structure that shows the powerful fruit core that we’ve come to expect in the Vat 1. Cellaring 10+ years.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2016 wasn't hailed as a particularly great vintage, but, seven years in, this wine, from the historic winery's best old blocks, is singing. A heady, layered perfume of citrus pith, dried herb, beeswax, wool, flint and orchard blossom leads to a palate that's uniquely textured, like chalk dust swirled into melted wax and lifted by mouthwatering acidity. Bright, prickly lemon peel lingers on the long, slippery finish. Both delicate and powerful, it drinks beautifully now, but also has a long life ahead.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast – 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere's a wow factor to this wine, the way in which it manages to harness such impressive power and concentration and deliver it in such smooth, seamless and tubular shape is a thing to marvel at. Aromas of gently flinty lime and lemon fruits lead to flavorus of the same ilk, really astonishingly pure, long and polished, green apple flavors close it out fresh and bright. Drink now or age, superb.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNick Stock, JamesSuckling.com – 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA cull of the most propitious plots across the single dry-grown sites. Additional lees time in the modern era has promoted a winning approachability after a few years, rather than several. And yet Vat 1’s capacity to age is prodigious. Barley water, honeysuckle, lemon drop, dried straw and a skein of evergreen freshness that quenches, drives and balances the myriad of accents and textures. This is a long sheath of nervous energy, readying itself for calm into the later stages of development.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2031.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW, Halliday Wine Companion - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLight yellow colour, bright and youthful. Aromas of straw and meadow hay, very subtle lemon notes and the faintest toastiness starting to develop. The wine is very delicate, restrained and light-bodied, beautifully balanced, refreshingly dry, with seamless acidity. It's evidently a very slow-ageing wine with many profitable years ahead of it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink: 2022–2031.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 94 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43903974277361,"sku":null,"price":99.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2016.jpg?v=1698714168"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-johnnos-semillon-2021","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites Johnno's Semillon 2021","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Johnno's is something of an aficionados wine, with an increasingly hard core of followers. Light chalky feel, a ripcord of acidity, lemon juicy, intense, plenty of grip, a bit of Disprin, lime zest, and a zingy tart finish of great length. One for the ages.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohnno's vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. The vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils, which give the Semillon a flavour and texture unique to the site.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Johnno_s_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753998\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Intense aromas of lanolin and citrus are framed in wet-stone notes. The palate has a silky texture, beneath which is blazing acidity and very concentrated lemon. Smooth-honed and powerful semillon. From grapes planted in 1908. Drink over the next decade. Screw cap.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe vineyard for this wine was planted in 1908, the wine made in the method of that time – basket pressed, the juice only partly clarified. While the acidity provides the spine of the wine, it has more texture than almost all of its peers.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink by 2036.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHalliday Wine Companion - 95 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"Johnno’s is something of an aficionados wine, with an increasingly hard core of followers. Almost fully allocated now, says Chris Tyrrell. Light chalky feel, a ripcord of acidity, lemon juicy, intense, plenty of grip, a bit of Disprin, lime zest, and a zingy tart finish of great length. One for the ages. Drink: 2024-2040+.\"\u003cb\u003e  Gary Walsh, The Wine Front - 94+ points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43912556118257,"sku":null,"price":125.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-Johnno_s-Semillon-2021.jpg?v=1698706426"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-johnnos-semillon-2019","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites Johnno's Semillon 2019","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2020\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"It's my favourite Johnno’s since the 2009.\"  Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Sizzles in the mouth, but comes over as less abrasive than many a young Johnno’s. So powerful with a wonderful fine chalky texture and, well, dramatic length of flavour. Tight and tangy, juicy fresh squeezed lime, delicious even as a young wine. Maybe the best of this line to date.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohnno's vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. The vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils, which give the Semillon a flavour and texture unique to the site.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Johnno_s_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753998\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" property=\"reviewBody\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"It is the greatest young semillon I have tasted. Super intense and fresh with a gently floral, lemon-blossom edge with wet stones and chalky notes, too. The palate has such intense lemon and lime flavors with a bracingly flavorful core that is so neatly contained, textural and long. Immensely fresh and sturdy. From a parcel planted in 1908. Drink or hold. Screw cap.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNick Stock, JamesSuckling.com - 99 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"Vaguely tropical, lemon and lime, slight sweet herb top note. Sizzles in the mouth, but comes over as less abrasive than many a young Johnno’s. So powerful with a wonderful fine chalky texture and, well, dramatic length of flavour. Tight and tangy, juicy fresh squeezed lime, delicious even as a young wine. Maybe the best of this line to date? Drink: 2022-2039+.\"\u003cb\u003e  Gary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"It's my favourite Johnno’s since the 2009.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eChris Tyrrell\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2020  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohnno's vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43912556806385,"sku":null,"price":125.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-Johnno_s-Semillon-2019.jpg?v=1698706230"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2022","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2022","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2022\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is an iconic – arguably the most iconic of all – Hunter semillon, sourced from estate vines that will be 100 years old in 2023. The flowery, meadow grass and lemon blossom bouquet was followed by a superbly elegant yet intense palate that I refused to spit out. At last, Hunter semillon is being recognised by its price. Bottled July ’22, its élevage all about the most delicate, detailed semillon one can imagine.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2022 is at 1:51 into the video)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"This is an iconic – arguably the most iconic of all – Hunter semillon, sourced from estate vines that will be 100 years old in 2023. The flowery, meadow grass and lemon blossom bouquet was followed by a superbly elegant yet intense palate that I refused to spit out. At last, Hunter semillon is being recognised by its price. Bottled July ’22, its élevage all about the most delicate, detailed semillon one can imagine. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDrink by 2047.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 98 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The 2022 Vat 1 Semillon is already complex and full-bodied, and this signals the style of Vat 1 to a tee. Richer and more concentrated than many (read: most) in the region, Tyrrell's has sat at the top of the Australian Semillon quality tree for almost forever, and it is this cuvée that leads the charge. I never thought I'd say this out loud, let alone in print, but I miss all the top-heavy gold medal and trophy stickers that adorn the fronts of the older vintages. Perhaps the numbers got out of control, or there wasn't enough room on the bottle ... who knows. But bring them back. Regardless, this has salted white peach, apples, lemongrass, sandalwood, crushed shells, a dash of caper brine and layers of minerals and rocks. So, it's super good, but it will be even better in the future, just you watch. Drink: 2022 - 2052.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97+ points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Limes, green mangoes, ripe pears, crushed stone and some slate. Full-bodied with phenolics and depth. Amazing structure and so flavored. Drinkable but can age for years. Screw cap.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eand Top 100 Wines of Australia 2022\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"White peach, ripe lemon\/lime, quite some perfume. Burst of flavour, salted lime stands out to me, fine acidity, power with finesse, a slight chalkiness, though also kind of glossy. Really drives through the finish, all lemon\/lime with superb length. Yes. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2023-2045+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eTop 100 Wines of Australia 2022 - James Suckling\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43914051027185,"sku":null,"price":96.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2022_1471fbd1-ad89-4aeb-b0ef-55335044309b.jpg?v=1737347116"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2023","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2023","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Ripe lemon with a little lime, a tonic edge to the flavour too, with a sort of wet stone texture, quite firm, with a strong but clean line of acidity, and a long finish offering some lime zest and spice. It feels somewhat more reticent than the Stevens, Belford and HVD from this vintage, but has the structure and stuffing to make a very good Vat 1, given time in the cellar. And gee, I really like the texture of it.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" data-mce-style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A fine La Nina year, drying out well before harvest, the grapes hanging long and cool. Formidable flavor intensity, the result. Radically different aromas, at least when pulling straw from the aromatic haystack that is youthful semillon: custard apple, fennel, pistachio, spiced granny smith, spa salts to quince. Sure, plenty of citrus doused across the acid balancing beam. But this is as densely packed as it is obviously fresh. A classic wine built for long-term cellaring. Among the country's very finest wines of either color. Best after 2028. Screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points and Top 100 Wines of Austalia 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eI have already reviewed this wine, but there's nothing like context. The Vat 1 is an iconic wine in Australia, a king amongst men in the game of aged whites. The first vintage was in 1962. As a young wine, it is closed and aromatically reticent, but it has palate weight and length to indicate the long future it has ahead of it. So, this 2023 Vat 1 Semillon leads with scratched citrus and green apple, white pepper, brine and a hint of damp straw. However, on the palate, the flavor seeps into the tongue and coats the mouth. It seeps into every aspect of the wine, and the register of spice and flavor is all white and beige scale. There are inflections of citrus and some crushed shells, all the things. If you're buying this wine and tasting it as a young wine, it is easy to miss the potential of it. Get your hands on an old bottle in order to understand what it has to offer you, us, the drinkers. The backbone vineyard that provides fruit for this wine is the Short Flat vineyard, with Semillon vines planted 1923-2001, although the majority of the fruit is from 1923, 1927 and 1967 planted blocks.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber, a cool feel, and aromatic with citrus blossom and a slight fennel top note. Ripe lemon with a little lime, a tonic edge to the flavour too, with a sort of wet stone texture, quite firm, with a strong but clean line of acidity, and a long finish offering some lime zest and spice (and maybe a bit of Disprin). It feels somewhat more reticent than the Stevens, Belford and HVD from this vintage, but has the structure and stuffing to make a very good Vat 1, given time in the cellar. And gee, I really like the texture of it. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2026-2043+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2023\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" data-mce-style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43945115877617,"sku":null,"price":89.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2023_89563736-2048-4ead-92df-275ff10832f8.jpg?v=1723681091"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2017-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2017 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White Wine - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Royal Perth Wine Show 2021\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Intense limey goodness here, which will roll on to become a classic white Hunter Burgundy with bottle age: a subtle white flower perfume tells part of tale. Perfectly pitched, intense and crunchy, flavoursome too, with weight but no heaviness. There’s a light powdery texture, which seems to be a hallmark of the 2017 vintage. Then the finish. So long. A phenomenal Vat 1.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. The 2017 Vintage was one of the best in recent memory and has produced wines of the highest quality. All of the fruit was hand picked and carefully sorted in the vineyard. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation. With lifted lime citrus aromas the palate is seamless, showing the typical powerful fruit core which is balanced by the wine’s texture and soft acid profile. This wine shows a length of flavour only produced from great vineyards.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2017 is at 3:19 into the video)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"2017 was a rare Hunter vintage, rain absent, and both shiraz and semillon flourished. The pale straw-green colour of this wine is startling, showing no development. The palate is superb, lime and lemon fused with mouth-watering, diamond-drill acidity. Drink by 2048.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, The Weekend Australian - 98 points and Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003eBright, light yellow colour with intense lemongrass aromas, hints of straw and wax, barely any toast evident at this stage, the palate intense and long, concentrated and driving, without bigness or heft but light on its feet and super-precise. Fills every corner of the mouth effortlessly: an outstanding semi-mature semillon. Superior concentration and persistence here. This is ageing very slowly and will be long-lived.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Drink: 2023–2033.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Tasted as part of \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ea vertical of the Vat 1 Semillon: 2022 - 1998. All bottles were sealed under screw cap (magical) and, as such, were in pristine condition. The beauty of progression through the years showed glorious bottle age complexity and a strong indication that these wines will keep going and going, endlessly through the years. Marvelous, singular stuff here; the majesty of this particular aging arc cannot be overstated.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 2017 Vat 1 Semillon represents an excellent Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley, and it is here that we start to see the majesty of aged Semillon begin to unfold. Sun-drenched hay, caper brine, wisps of black tea, crushed shells, a whiff of Szechuan peppercorn, lemongrass, green apples and cold buttered toast. In the mouth, the wine is texturally silky (with a weighty fall, like heavy gauge silk) and lingering. It moves with momentum rather than outright speed (like watching a whale shark swim: they might move slowly, but they swim fast), and it has a clarity and freshness in the mouth that is astounding. This is a super wine, an evocative wine, an imaginative wine. It's a wine on the up, with miles to go before it sleeps. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2022 - 2047.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97+ points (Tasted Dec 2022)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile I enjoy the open-knit approaches to crafting semillon across the region, this remains the bulletproof benchmark. Even here, there have been endeavours toward greater accessibility, with some lees inflection. A meld of the finest dry-grown plots conferring a carapace of talc, sandy mineral and effusive acidity that is, to be frank, indomitable. Descriptives, ineffable. The length, justifiable. Bury this. Drink by 2035.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Intense limey goodness here, which will roll on to become a classic white Hunter Burgundy with bottle age: a subtle white flower perfume tells part of tale. Perfectly pitched, intense and crunchy, flavoursome too, with weight but no heaviness. There’s a light powdery texture, which seems to be a hallmark of the 2017 vintage. Then the finish. So long. A phenomenal Vat 1. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2020-2038+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2017 was hailed as a great vintage in the Hunter Valley, but it was also hot and dry, so this is a richer, more advanced bottling than the previous vintage. Lucid and concentrated, it's unmistakably Hunter Sem, with its woolly, beeswax, lemon pith and lamp oil appeal. A mineral, flinty note adds interest. There's a laser-like line of acidity on the slippery palate and a flavor richness that flows to the long finish. Drink now-2030.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast – 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAwards\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday Top 100 Wines of 2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Varietal White Wine - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Royal Perth Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold  Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Sydney Wine Show 2017\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Melbourne Royal Wine Awards 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Melbourne Royal Wine Awards 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44126581653745,"sku":null,"price":295.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2017-1500ml_caa4f9bf-dd7a-484d-98e4-3d5976a0ea95.jpg?v=1731023852"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2023-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2023 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Ripe lemon with a little lime, a tonic edge to the flavour too, with a sort of wet stone texture, quite firm, with a strong but clean line of acidity, and a long finish offering some lime zest and spice. It feels somewhat more reticent than the Stevens, Belford and HVD from this vintage, but has the structure and stuffing to make a very good Vat 1, given time in the cellar. And gee, I really like the texture of it.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  Erin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A fine La Nina year, drying out well before harvest, the grapes hanging long and cool. Formidable flavor intensity, the result. Radically different aromas, at least when pulling straw from the aromatic haystack that is youthful semillon: custard apple, fennel, pistachio, spiced granny smith, spa salts to quince. Sure, plenty of citrus doused across the acid balancing beam. But this is as densely packed as it is obviously fresh. A classic wine built for long-term cellaring. Among the country's very finest wines of either color. Best after 2028. Screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points and Top 100 Wines of Austalia 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eI have already reviewed this wine, but there's nothing like context. The Vat 1 is an iconic wine in Australia, a king amongst men in the game of aged whites. The first vintage was in 1962. As a young wine, it is closed and aromatically reticent, but it has palate weight and length to indicate the long future it has ahead of it. So, this 2023 Vat 1 Semillon leads with scratched citrus and green apple, white pepper, brine and a hint of damp straw. However, on the palate, the flavor seeps into the tongue and coats the mouth. It seeps into every aspect of the wine, and the register of spice and flavor is all white and beige scale. There are inflections of citrus and some crushed shells, all the things. If you're buying this wine and tasting it as a young wine, it is easy to miss the potential of it. Get your hands on an old bottle in order to understand what it has to offer you, us, the drinkers. The backbone vineyard that provides fruit for this wine is the Short Flat vineyard, with Semillon vines planted 1923-2001, although the majority of the fruit is from 1923, 1927 and 1967 planted blocks.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber, a cool feel, and aromatic with citrus blossom and a slight fennel top note. Ripe lemon with a little lime, a tonic edge to the flavour too, with a sort of wet stone texture, quite firm, with a strong but clean line of acidity, and a long finish offering some lime zest and spice (and maybe a bit of Disprin). It feels somewhat more reticent than the Stevens, Belford and HVD from this vintage, but has the structure and stuffing to make a very good Vat 1, given time in the cellar. And gee, I really like the texture of it. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2026-2043+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2023\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44126583390449,"sku":null,"price":230.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2023-1500ml_29ac584f-799a-4db6-9b8b-86cc12776fbe.jpg?v=1723681141"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2013","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2013","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Single Vineyard Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Single Vineyard White Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Two-Year-Old and Older Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGold Medal Winner at 25 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was planted with Semillon vines in 1933. The vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. The vineyard sits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"The palate is deliciously fruit-sweet in the middle and very lemon-juicy, but neither is it simple. The flavour and balance are immaculate, the finish super-long. A great semillon.\"  Huon Hooke\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Video\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLight, bright yellow colour, young for its age, with a straw-like and lightly-toasty bouquet, reflecting some bottle-age and complexity. It’s at a beautiful medium between youth and maturity, freshness and mellow complexity just entering the wine. The palate is deliciously fruit-sweet in the middle and very lemon-juicy, but neither is it simple. The flavour and balance are immaculate, the finish super-long. A great semillon. Drink: 2018-2026. Tasted Oct 2018.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"From a vineyard planted in '33, the aromas are already enticing with dried hay, lemongrass, allusions of citrus all and a glimpse of riper stone fruits reeling across the nostrils. The palate is one of precision, detail and tightly coiled energy, auguring a bright future based on the wine's vinosity and tenacity of length alone. Limpid, febrile and punchy as is de rigeur, this will ease to a majestic utopia. Drink by 2028. \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTasted Oct 2018.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNed Goodwin MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, Wine Companion 2019 – 96 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Honeysuckle and an almost vanilla perfume on a more gentle style of Semillon. Rounder in the mouth with some lemon flavour and a light powdery\/stony texture. Really like the quality and cleanliness of the acidity here, which rolls onto a pure finish of excellent length. This will be a dead set charmer. Drink: 2015 - 2033+ (Tasted Jul 2013)...\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e... Had a bottle last night. A sort of Chardonnay weight with white peach and lime. It’s superb (Tasted Aug 2023).\"\u003c\/span\u003e  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2013 Belford Semillon is honeyed and toasty, with white pepper, preserved citrus rind, tatami mat and cold buttered toast. This is powerful and yet complex, kaleidoscopic and compact. The fruit is never fined at Tyrrell's, so you get this texture and width in the wine that grows over time. It makes the wines what they are. This is a thrill and a long-lived national treasure. 11.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best White Wine of Show – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Single Vineyard Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Single Vineyard White Wine – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Two-Year-Old and Older Semillon – Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal Winner at 25 Australian Wine Shows\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44732822454513,"sku":null,"price":74.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2013.jpg?v=1714353788"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2017","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2017","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2025 National Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2023 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2022 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon at the 2021 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eNick Ryan Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is a great vineyard, and the wines have a distinct personality. White peach, lemon, a little talc-like perfume. Powerful and coiled up, but a big mid-palate hit, almost succulent, then onto a roaring finish of superb length, with powdery texture trailing in its wake. Clarity. Intensity. Sails through the mouth. Classic Belford.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eIntensely lifted citrus notes, this wine has the robust, richer, almost chalky palate that is commonly associated with the Belford vineyard that is balanced by a soft, clean acid profile, giving the wine its great length. \u003c\/span\u003eHand-picked in the early hours of the morning, the fruit was lightly crushed and pressed before a relatively cool fermentation. Then the wine spent minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard Video\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I need to turn the music down. Take a breath. Strap in for a fidelitous ride across the ebbs and flows of Hunter regality, when I taste this suite of semillon. The top drawer, with few peers. Belford, a little more reticent and stonier than its Stevens brethren. Talc, wet pebbles strewn across a stream, lemongrass and citrus balm. But the texture, the opus. Still in need of time. Taut, linear and of pixelated detail and precision. Wait with bated breath. Drink by 2030.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eNed Goodwin MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Wine Companion 2019 – 97 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eBelford is a great vineyard, and the wines have a distinct personality. White peach, lemon, a little talc-like perfume. Powerful and coiled up, but a big mid-palate hit, almost succulent, then onto a roaring finish of superb length, with powdery texture trailing in its wake. Clarity. Intensity. Sails through the mouth. Classic Belford. Drink: \u003cspan\u003e2018 - 2037+\u003c\/span\u003e.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Light, bright yellow hue with an intense lemony\/Sunlight Soap aroma, some green-herb nuances in the background, while the taste is light-bodied and crisply cut, delicate and balanced with a medium length finish. The immediate drinking qualities are outstanding. A refined and intense semillon, young for its years.\" \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Huon Hooke, The Real Review - 96 points and Wine of the Week\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAlan Jones and Bon Scott probably don’t have many things in common, but this wine is one of them. The label is not inspired by the middle name they share, but rather the vineyard’s proximity to the little town of the same moniker. It’s the most northerly of this label’s rich semillon resources and it delivers a deeper, more powerful style, packed tight with waxy citrus and fine, powdery length.\u003c\/span\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e  Nick Ryan\u003c\/strong\u003e, The Weekend Australian - 95 points and Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A trio of 2017 single-vineyard Semillons are in front of me, and the 2017 Belford Semillon is showing the excellent vintage to its greatest possible iteration. Toasted bay leaf, brine, sun-drenched hay, roasted green apple skins, sandalwood and matcha adorn the nose, while the procession of flavor in the mouth is seemingly never-ending. It's richer and more savory than the HVD Semillon tasted before it, but it has no less of an acid line, nor glassy purity. Excellent. This has won two trophies and five gold medals at wine shows since its release. Drink: 2022-2042.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 94+ points\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eNick Ryan Top 100 Wines of 2024\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2025 National Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2023 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2022 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2021 Royal Melbourne Wine Show\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWine of the Week - The Real Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eGold Medal - Australian National Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Adelaide Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2024\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2022\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2017 \u003cspan style=\"mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-ligatures: standardcontextual;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44774834471153,"sku":null,"price":49.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2017_f1412055-752d-4bf4-84ea-a79a77dc1a34.jpg?v=1750217786"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2023","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2023","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is a great vineyard.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Lovely mid-palate and presence here, almost into (light) Chardonnay weight in a way, delivers flavour in a delicate way to every corner of the mouth, and the finish is chalky, firm and very long, with a subtle ginger spiciness. My word.\"\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eGary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"Belford Semillon this year shows its typical rich flavours. Grilled lemon and touch of honey, it has great depth and intensity, almost robust in its structure. This powerful fruit profile is then finished with a tight, zippy acid structure.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard Video\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eA slight struck match thing, minor though, ripe lemon, pear and blossom perfume. Lovely mid-palate and presence here, almost into (light) Chardonnay weight in a way, delivers flavour in a delicate way to every corner of the mouth, and the finish is chalky, firm and very long, with a subtle ginger spiciness. My word.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e Drink: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e2023 - 2043+\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"The 2023 Belford Semillon leads with lilac and lavender, green apple skins, white peach and brine. This is layered and rich, with a profusion of creamed nuts\/meal, chalk, crushed shells and a saline thread of acidity that holds it all together. This is a sensational wine. I'll look forward to tasting (drinking!) this wine in 10 years' time - 2034. 11.2% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.\" \u003cstrong\u003e Erin Larkin, The Wine Advocate - 95+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45208564596977,"sku":null,"price":44.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2023_95b6ab64-9b14-42d9-b5eb-2325232d2908.jpg?v=1723679663"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-stevens-single-vineyard-semillon-2023","title":"Tyrrell's Stevens Single Vineyard Semillon 2023","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Stevens Vineyard, located on a hill beside Marrowbone Road 1.5 kilometres from the edge of Cessnock, is Tyrrell's southernmost Semillon vineyard. The oldest plantings on this dry-grown vineyard are from 1911. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell struck a deal to buy grapes from the Stevens family in 1992, sealing it with a handshake. In March 2022, Tyrrells purchased the property \u003c\/span\u003efrom the Stevens family.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"I know I said the 2022 was the best Stevens in years, but this 2023 is the best Stevens in years. It’s very Stevens; in 2023 the essence of each vineyard seems to be coming forward. Lemongrass and ripe lemon, cut fennel and such lovely perfume here; bright and expressive. Tight but juicy, cool acidity, fine gently powdery\/chalky texture, light and fresh, with a long and zesty lime finish. Such a delicious wine. It’s a superb example of this vineyard in 2023.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"More often than not, Stevens is the first of the super-premium blocks of Semillon that we pick. This year was no different, with picking taking place on 4 and 5 February. This was the first time in many years, since the mid-2000’s, that approximately 50% of the Stevens Vineyard was handpicked rather than mostly machine. The fruit was then lightly pressed before the free-run juice was fermented at cool temperatures in stainless steel tanks. The wine spent approximately six weeks on fine lees before being prepared for bottling in late June.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe nose is classic Stevens showing mineral, wet stone and lime zest. The palate is fine and tightly coiled with rich lemon flavours with a grippy, talcy finish. A moreish wine with high drinkability, even as a young wine.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/5PxqDvmyBOE\" title=\"The story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Stevens_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753781\" alt=\"The story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I know I said the 2022 was the best Stevens in years, but this 2023 is the best Stevens in years. Picked on the 4th and 5th of February, which is a bit later than usual for Stevens, and the first vintage where over half of the fruit was handpicked (rather than mostly machine), which makes a difference.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s very Stevens; in 2023 the essence of each vineyard seems to be coming forward. Lemongrass and ripe lemon, cut fennel and such lovely perfume here; bright and expressive. Tight but juicy, cool acidity, fine gently powdery\/chalky texture, light and fresh, with a long and zesty lime finish. Such a delicious wine. It’s a superb example of this vineyard in 2023. \u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\" property=\"reviewBody\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2023-2038+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStevens vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrells Stevens Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Stevens_Vineyard_1024x1024.png?v=1723877011\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eT\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ehe Stevens vineyard is located on a hill beside Marrowbone Road just 1.5 kilometres from the edge of Cessnock and 6.5 kilometres south of Tyrrell’s winery. The 16.4 hectare vineyard is planted with a mix of Semillon (10.4 hectares) and Shiraz (six hectares). Stevens is another vineyard with a mosaic of vine ages: the oldest plantings are from 2011, while the youngest were planted in 2010.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn 1992, Bruce Tyrrell struck a deal to buy grapes from the Stevens family, sealing it with a handshake. The first vintage of the Stevens Single Vineyard wines was released in 1993. The 2022 vintage was the first in which Tyrrell managed the vineyard before they purchased\u003cspan\u003e the property \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003efrom the Stevens family in March 2022.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe hill tops out at an elevation of 135 metres and on the western side, the soils are mainly sandy clay loam, leading up to red podzolic loams over the crest of the hill and down to heavy clay loams on the eastern side. The undulating topography and transitional soils give wines from this vineyard extraordinary depth and structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" mce-data-marked=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and in a few short years he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property (named Ashmans after his grandmother’s family home in Kent); an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Dan and Avery, the 'book-end boys', as the family refers to them, who would take the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. The Tyrrells like to acknowledge that Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. If Avery, the father of Murray Tyrrell, was the viticulturist, then Uncle Dan was the family's first winemaker.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\" data-mce-style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45208583602417,"sku":null,"price":39.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Stevens-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2023.jpg?v=1720405336"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2024","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2024","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Lime and lemon, fennel perfume, light white flower and honey notes. It has flavour, but it’s tight and flinty, with an intense burst of lime and lemon, and feels so very classic, a tiny amount of herbal stuff, but gee this is a great release. It’s electric, and very long. So clean, and so pure. It’s superb.\u003c\/span\u003e\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Very complex aromas of dried lemons, limes, fresh thyme and bay leaves. Medium- to full-bodied with a dense palate and a long, intense finish with grated lemon rind notes. Tangy at the end. Drink or hold.\" \u003cstrong\u003e James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eLime and lemon, fennel perfume, light white flower and honey notes. It has flavour, but it’s tight and flinty, with an intense burst of lime and lemon, and feels so very classic, a tiny amount of herbal stuff, but gee this is a great release. It’s electric, and very long. So clean, and so pure. It’s superb.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2027-2048+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45517865550065,"sku":null,"price":86.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2024_835fc77e-d78e-4498-b02c-dde1cc73fddb.jpg?v=1737347274"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2024-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2024 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Lime and lemon, fennel perfume, light white flower and honey notes. It has flavour, but it’s tight and flinty, with an intense burst of lime and lemon, and feels so very classic, a tiny amount of herbal stuff, but gee this is a great release. It’s electric, and very long. So clean, and so pure. It’s superb.\u003c\/span\u003e\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Very complex aromas of dried lemons, limes, fresh thyme and bay leaves. Medium- to full-bodied with a dense palate and a long, intense finish with grated lemon rind notes. Tangy at the end. Drink or hold.\" \u003cstrong\u003e James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eLime and lemon, fennel perfume, light white flower and honey notes. It has flavour, but it’s tight and flinty, with an intense burst of lime and lemon, and feels so very classic, a tiny amount of herbal stuff, but gee this is a great release. It’s electric, and very long. So clean, and so pure. It’s superb.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2027-2048+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45519511814385,"sku":null,"price":195.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2024-1500ml_a5259501-d556-48ca-a4ec-adfefa62b220.jpg?v=1737347321"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-sacred-sites-johnnos-semillon-2024","title":"Tyrrell's Sacred Sites Johnno's Semillon 2024","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Plenty of juicy lemon and smells and tastes like a classic Johnno’s, and has that core of strident citrus acidity, some talc-like perfume, a little white pepper,  pulls very stony, has excellent texture and super length. It’s the most reticent and tightly-coiled wine at the moment of the 2024 Tyrrell’s Semillons, but gee it’s so good. Charismatic. High-tension. Outstanding.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eGary Walsh\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohnno's vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. The vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils, which give the Semillon a flavour and texture unique to the site.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Johnno_s_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753998\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/eF5g_7lwgPI\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e \u003c\/a\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe ultra-pure lemon aromas and the pristine palate set this wine apart. It is long and silky with rounded edges and intensely focused citrus flavours. Johnno's vineyard (originally known as the Long Flat vineyard) was planted in 1908 on alluvial sandy loam soils. Its generosity comes from basket pressing of the hand-picked fruit and minimal juice clarification before fermentation. Drink by 2034.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Guess who’s back? The last vintage was the 2021, and while yields were super low with only 100 dozen made instead of the usual 250, the quality is high. Plenty of juicy lemon and smells and tastes like a classic Johnno’s, and has that core of strident citrus acidity, some talc-like perfume, a little white pepper,  pulls very stony, has excellent texture and super length. It’s the most reticent and tightly-coiled wine at the moment of the 2024 Tyrrell’s Semillons, but gee it’s so good. Charismatic. High-tension. Outstanding. \u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eDrink: 2017-2044+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95+ points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692506788\"\u003eJohnno's Vineyard is one of Tyrrell's sacred sites, a vineyard on its own roots (ungrafted) which is more than 100 years old. In 2004, Tyrrell's decided that if the vines were still healthy and producing great wine after 100 years, then those wines deserved to be made and bottled individually, and so the Sacred Sites range was born. These sacred sites are some of the most distinguished pockets of vineyard land in Australia. Vineyard size limits production to 250–300 dozen from each site, which, combined with their intrinsic quality, unique flavour profiles and ability to age, turns the wines into instant collectors’ items.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45519520563441,"sku":null,"price":125.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Sacred-Sites-Johnno_s-Semillon-2024_a0867108-6039-4603-9723-5dc1fa69ab20.jpg?v=1740356345"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2018","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2018","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Lime and vanilla, subtle perfume, stony things, and immaculately clean. It’s soft and subdued, a little bit juicy and round, yet has a cool and pure 'minerally' acidity that gives it quiet confidence. Quartz and fine powder texture. Length is convincing, with a little pulpy bitterness. I have a good feeling about this release\u003c\/span\u003e.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eOur Vat 1 Semillon is only ever made using fruit from our best old-vine, dry-grown vineyards. The centrepiece is always our Short Flat vineyard, where the oldest plantings date back to 1923. Vintage 2018 was another strong Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley. Dry, warm conditions that were similar to 2003 meant cropping levels were much smaller than average and produced wines with robust flavours and softer acids. All of the fruit was hand picked and carefully sorted in the vineyard. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDelicate citrus aromas. The palate has a density and depth of fruit which only comes from special vineyard blocks. This robust fruit profile is balanced by the wines texture and soft acid profile giving it an approachability now, however will age well into the future.\u003c\/span\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAt six years of age, the wine is beginning to bloom, displaying attractive ripe lemon, citrus curd and honeysuckle aromas. These characters are in the riper spectrum for this wine. The palate is on the generous side, but it still has the clarity and style one expects from Vat 1. There is no hiding the fact that '18 was a hot year. Consequently, this will be an earlier-drinking Vat 1, but no less enjoyable. That is the thing about iconic wines; the season may change, but their inherent qualities remain constant. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink 2024-2035.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"A very complete aged semillon with sliced lemon, heather, green mango, and crushed stone aromas that follow through to a full body with a crunchy palate and cement and marble notes. Tight at the end. Lightly nutty. Plenty of flavor. The vines were planted in 1923. Drink now. Screw cap.\" \u003cstrong\u003e James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eLime and vanilla, subtle perfume, stony things, and immaculately clean. It’s soft and subdued, a little bit juicy and round, yet has a cool and pure 'minerally' acidity that gives it quiet confidence. Quartz and fine powder texture. Length is convincing, with a little pulpy bitterness. I have a good feeling about this release.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2021-2035+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eTop Gold Medal - Royal Adelaide Wine Show 2018\u003cbr\u003eTop Gold Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2018\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eGold Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45578725392625,"sku":null,"price":115.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2018_8102bafc-e1f3-4705-bb80-ad22a3775ee4.jpg?v=1738562113"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-stevens-single-vineyard-semillon-2018","title":"Tyrrell's Stevens Single Vineyard Semillon 2018","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2023 Winewise Championship 2023\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Current Semillon - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTrophy for Wine of Provenance (2004, 2011 \u0026amp; 2018) - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2018\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Stevens Vineyard, located on a hill beside Marrowbone Road 1.5 kilometres from the edge of Cessnock, is Tyrrell's southernmost Semillon vineyard. The oldest plantings on this dry-grown vineyard are from 1911. Bruce Tyrrell struck a deal to buy grapes from the Stevens family in 1992, sealing it with a handshake. In March 2022, Tyrrells purchased the property from the Stevens family.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"The wine is in a sweet spot, with an expressive lemon curd aroma and a subtle smoky overlay. The palate exhibits the warmth of the vintage with delicious, subtle sweet pear and white peach flavours packed into a soft, cleansing palate. The wine is in its prime, with exceptional character and brightness.\"\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eToni Paterson MW\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This year, Stevens Semillon shows a vibrant citrus lift, along with its typical mineral edge. The palate is tightly bound and has a racy citrus fruit profile that is tight, elegant, and impeccably long with an almost sherbet-like character. One of the better Stevens Semillon releases in recent memory. Drinking very well at six years of age but will evolve gracefully over the next five to ten years. Vintage 2018 was a strong Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley. Dry, warm conditions that were similar to 2003 meant cropping levels were smaller than average and produced wines of great concentration and length of flavour.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/5PxqDvmyBOE\" title=\"The story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Stevens_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713753781\" alt=\"The story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Stevens Vineyard\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\"\u003eBright, light-mid yellow; attractively floral and cold steel\/mineral-tinged lemon juice aromas and flavours, the acidity bright and piercing, the palate refined and intense, youthfully bright and fresh, with excellent line and length. A long-term wine which is still young.\u003c\/span\u003e Drink: 2024-2036.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eStevens Semillon is a special wine at Tyrrell's, which began making it in 1993 from a block owned by Neil and Bernadette Stevens. The wine inspired Bruce Tyrrell to develop a 'single site' range of wines. Tyrrell's cemented this wine's place within its portfolio by purchasing the block in 2022. The wine is in a sweet spot, with an expressive lemon curd aroma and a subtle smoky overlay. The palate exhibits the warmth of the vintage with delicious, subtle sweet pear and white peach flavours packed into a soft, cleansing palate. The wine is in its prime, with exceptional character and brightness.\u003c\/span\u003e Drink by 2026.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion – 96 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Adelaide Wine Show 2023 - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Melbourne Wine Show 2019 - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAustralian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2021 - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Melbourne Wine Show 2022 - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Sydney Wine Show 2021 - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Sydney Wine Show 2019 - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Adelaide Wine Show 2022 - 95 points\u003cbr\u003eAustralian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2024 - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNSW Wine Awards 2023 - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2018 Stevens Semillon is starting to show that lovely toasty momentum that Hunter Semillon gains with age, and yet it isn't forward. The 2018 is the current vintage release in 2024, and I can see why that is the case. There are notes of creamed honey, dried coriander, white pepper, lanolin, pressed roses and almond meal. I love the width and intensity. This is a beautiful wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\"\u003eDrink: 2024-2038.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 94+ points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Stevens is always the first vineyard to be picked (for Semillon) by Tyrrell’s, and it’s certainly the zippiest number from the 2018 vintage. Tight and lemony, Granny Smith apple, and lemon sherbet, hits with a burst of flavour, subtle talc-like texture, real zip and energy on the finish, with a slight green herb\/gin and tonic perfume trailing in its wake. Plenty of crunch and intensity in a light framework.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\" class=\"cs-reviewBody\"\u003eDrink: 2019-2032.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 94 points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This has immaculately fresh lemon and lemon-blossom aromas with lemon-peel notes, too. The palate has a very intense, rich and ripe feel with succulently fleshy lemon flavors. Drink or hold. Screw cap.\"\u003cb\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 94 points\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - 2023 Winewise Championship 2023\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Australian Single Vineyard Wine Show 2021\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Best Current Semillon - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2018\u003cbr\u003eTrophy for Wine of Provenance (2004, 2011 \u0026amp; 2018) - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTop Gold Medal Winner at 6 Australian Wine Shows\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal Winner at 11 Australian Wine Shows\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eStevens vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrells Stevens Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Stevens_Vineyard_1024x1024.png?v=1723877011\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eT\u003cspan\u003ehe Stevens vineyard is located on a hill beside Marrowbone Road just 1.5 kilometres from the edge of Cessnock and 6.5 kilometres south of Tyrrell’s winery. The 16.4 hectare vineyard is planted with a mix of Semillon (10.4 hectares) and Shiraz (six hectares). Stevens is another vineyard with a mosaic of vine ages: the oldest plantings are from 2011, while the youngest were planted in 2010.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 1992, Bruce Tyrrell struck a deal to buy grapes from the Stevens family, sealing it with a handshake. The first vintage of the Stevens Single Vineyard wines was released in 1993. The 2022 vintage was the first in which Tyrrell managed the vineyard before they purchased\u003cspan\u003e the property \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003efrom the Stevens family in March 2022.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hill tops out at an elevation of 135 metres and on the western side, the soils are mainly sandy clay loam, leading up to red podzolic loams over the crest of the hill and down to heavy clay loams on the eastern side. The undulating topography and transitional soils give wines from this vineyard extraordinary depth and structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and in a few short years he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property (named Ashmans after his grandmother’s family home in Kent); an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Dan and Avery, the 'book-end boys', as the family refers to them, who would take the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. The Tyrrells like to acknowledge that Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. If Avery, the father of Murray Tyrrell, was the viticulturist, then Uncle Dan was the family's first winemaker.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45578734633201,"sku":null,"price":44.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Stevens-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2018_3d9fe600-23f8-4dd2-94c0-a790b1aa2089.jpg?v=1740447209"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2018","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2018","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is a great vineyard.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"I’ve been tasting the Private Bin range with Chris Tyrrell for twelve years now, which is both alarming, and kind of reassuring. CT says this one is a real 'white Burgundy' style. Agree. Straight off just loved this release. It’s soft and round, yet finely wrought with pure acidity, fine powdery texture and a splendidly long finish, subtle bitterness in tow. Flavours are almost into white peach and white flowers, yet the signature lime and lemon is still there. It’s already a great thing to drink, but with a few more years on it, should be a thing of beauty.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIntensely lifted citrus notes, this wine has the robust, richer, almost chalky palate that is commonly associated with the Belford Vineyard that is balanced by a soft, clean acid profile, giving the wine its great length. 2018 was another strong Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley. Dry, warm conditions that were similar to 2003 meant cropping levels were much smaller than average and produced wines with robust flavours and softer acids. The grapes were handpicked and sorted in the vineyard. Once arriving at the winery, the fruit was very lightly crushed and pressed with a small percentage of stalks. After a relatively cool fermentation, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard Video\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Edgy straw and lemon bouquet, with a broken-rock minerality, the wine is intense and deeply flavoured, with gorgeous lemon and lemon balm flavours that run very long and harmonious. Impressive wine, drinking beautifully now but has years to go. Drink: 2024-2033.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I’ve been tasting the Private Bin range with Chris Tyrrell for twelve years now, which is both alarming, and kind of reassuring. CT says this one is a real 'white Burgundy' style. Agree. Straight off just loved this release. It’s soft and round, yet finely wrought with pure acidity, fine powdery texture and a splendidly long finish, subtle bitterness in tow. Flavours are almost into white peach and white flowers, yet the signature lime and lemon is still there. It’s already a great thing to drink, but with a few more years on it, should be a thing of beauty. Drink: 2018 - 2032+.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe warm, dry, low-yielding '18 vintage produced semillons that are distinctive in style, with ripe, concentrated flavours and generous fruit. This Belford has gorgeous preserved-lemon aromatics with some fresh citrus curd. The palate is laden with sweet pear and juicy melon flavours, and although it is a riper style, the wine still has the fruit purity and palate softness for which the vineyard is renowned. The finish is long and delicious, with just a hint of nuttiness on the close.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion – 94 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2018 Belford Semillon is similar in color to the 2023 and is a rich, robust experience in the mouth. The season was early and warm, and the flex of that season is evident on the palate. There's a super attractive mid-palate character that is gray in color - tea, flint, cracked rocks, etc. This is an excellent wine, a little lusty perhaps, in the context of the wine, but nevertheless, excellent. 12.2% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.\u003c\/span\u003e Drink: 2024-2038.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 93 points\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\" style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45578753999089,"sku":null,"price":45.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2018_7615b851-d646-4353-8e1d-5335abebac94.jpg?v=1737429097"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2022-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2022 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2022\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is an iconic – arguably the most iconic of all – Hunter semillon, sourced from estate vines that will be 100 years old in 2023. The flowery, meadow grass and lemon blossom bouquet was followed by a superbly elegant yet intense palate that I refused to spit out. At last, Hunter semillon is being recognised by its price. Bottled July ’22, its élevage all about the most delicate, detailed semillon one can imagine.\"  James Halliday\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\"  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon (2022 is at 1:51 into the video)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"This is an iconic – arguably the most iconic of all – Hunter semillon, sourced from estate vines that will be 100 years old in 2023. The flowery, meadow grass and lemon blossom bouquet was followed by a superbly elegant yet intense palate that I refused to spit out. At last, Hunter semillon is being recognised by its price. Bottled July ’22, its élevage all about the most delicate, detailed semillon one can imagine. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDrink by 2047.\"  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJames Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion - 98 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The 2022 Vat 1 Semillon is already complex and full-bodied, and this signals the style of Vat 1 to a tee. Richer and more concentrated than many (read: most) in the region, Tyrrell's has sat at the top of the Australian Semillon quality tree for almost forever, and it is this cuvée that leads the charge. I never thought I'd say this out loud, let alone in print, but I miss all the top-heavy gold medal and trophy stickers that adorn the fronts of the older vintages. Perhaps the numbers got out of control, or there wasn't enough room on the bottle ... who knows. But bring them back. Regardless, this has salted white peach, apples, lemongrass, sandalwood, crushed shells, a dash of caper brine and layers of minerals and rocks. So, it's super good, but it will be even better in the future, just you watch. Drink: 2022 - 2052.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 97+ points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Limes, green mangoes, ripe pears, crushed stone and some slate. Full-bodied with phenolics and depth. Amazing structure and so flavored. Drinkable but can age for years. Screw cap.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJames Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eand Top 100 Wines of Australia 2022\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"White peach, ripe lemon\/lime, quite some perfume. Burst of flavour, salted lime stands out to me, fine acidity, power with finesse, a slight chalkiness, though also kind of glossy. Really drives through the finish, all lemon\/lime with superb length. Yes. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2023-2045+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eTop 100 Wines of Australia 2022 - James Suckling\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45631612453105,"sku":null,"price":245.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2022-1500ml_16df90e1-8804-40de-80a9-02dd38ece027.jpg?v=1737347168"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2018-1500ml","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2018 (1500ml)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Lime and vanilla, subtle perfume, stony things, and immaculately clean. It’s soft and subdued, a little bit juicy and round, yet has a cool and pure 'minerally' acidity that gives it quiet confidence. Quartz and fine powder texture. Length is convincing, with a little pulpy bitterness. I have a good feeling about this release\u003c\/span\u003e.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eOur Vat 1 Semillon is only ever made using fruit from our best old-vine, dry-grown vineyards. The centrepiece is always our Short Flat vineyard, where the oldest plantings date back to 1923. Vintage 2018 was another strong Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley. Dry, warm conditions that were similar to 2003 meant cropping levels were much smaller than average and produced wines with robust flavours and softer acids. All of the fruit was hand picked and carefully sorted in the vineyard. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDelicate citrus aromas. The palate has a density and depth of fruit which only comes from special vineyard blocks. This robust fruit profile is balanced by the wines texture and soft acid profile giving it an approachability now, however will age well into the future.\u003c\/span\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAt six years of age, the wine is beginning to bloom, displaying attractive ripe lemon, citrus curd and honeysuckle aromas. These characters are in the riper spectrum for this wine. The palate is on the generous side, but it still has the clarity and style one expects from Vat 1. There is no hiding the fact that '18 was a hot year. Consequently, this will be an earlier-drinking Vat 1, but no less enjoyable. That is the thing about iconic wines; the season may change, but their inherent qualities remain constant. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink 2024-2035.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"A very complete aged semillon with sliced lemon, heather, green mango, and crushed stone aromas that follow through to a full body with a crunchy palate and cement and marble notes. Tight at the end. Lightly nutty. Plenty of flavor. The vines were planted in 1923. Drink now. Screw cap.\" \u003cstrong\u003e James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 97 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eLime and vanilla, subtle perfume, stony things, and immaculately clean. It’s soft and subdued, a little bit juicy and round, yet has a cool and pure 'minerally' acidity that gives it quiet confidence. Quartz and fine powder texture. Length is convincing, with a little pulpy bitterness. I have a good feeling about this release.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2021-2035+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 95 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrophy for Best Semillon - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eTop Gold Medal - Royal Adelaide Wine Show 2018\u003cbr\u003eTop Gold Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2023\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Royal Hobart Wine Show 2018\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eGold Medal - Cowra Wine Show 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45906811355377,"sku":null,"price":215.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2018_ae754499-a95d-4bc6-ad21-8e833ee46b13.jpg?v=1738562038"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2019","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2019","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is the best money you can spend on an Australian wine icon.\"  Shanteh Wale\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Sourced from the oldest and best blocks, dry grown vines dating back to 1923. The 2019 continues the harmonious vintage streak with superb fruit intensity showing zested limes, calamansi pip and wet river stone. Some apple blossoms and fresh linen billowing on the hills hoist. Its time in bottle has allowed the wine to snuggle into itself and drinks with the same magnitude of flavour as the nose promises, scratch that, it actually doubles down in its fruit power. Shouting from the rooftops with lime margaritas, Mirabelle plums and pistachio nougatine. A mealy cashew mid palate and a long echoing, juicy acidity and persistent length. Simply put, it’s everything you hoped it would be and drinking like an Aussie bushland dream. Its purity and complexity is and always is utterly astounding. This is the best money you can spend on an Australian wine icon. Drink now with oysters or put your faith in Semillon and lay down for further 10 years, 20 or 30 years plus.\"  Shanteh Wale\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Vat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. The 2019 vintage in the Hunter Valley was another high-quality year across all varieties and was a stellar follow up to 2018. Continued dry conditions meant cropping levels were slightly lower than normal however all of the fruit was in perfect condition with intense concentration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe nose shows a lifted floral character with a hint of citrus that is more intense than in recent years. The palate is grand cru-like in the sense that it has great depth and power yet maintains its elegance through the finish, with a softer acid profile giving the wine great balance. A classic Vat 1 with the exceptional length and balance only seen in great vintages.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kq3PMkaFemA\u0026amp;ab_channel=ErinLarkin\" title=\"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon: Why It's So Good. 2022 - 1998\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Vat_1_Erin_Larkin_Reviews_480x480.jpg?v=1713751324\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kq3PMkaFemA\" title=\"Erin Larkin reviews Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003eErin Larkin talks about Vat 1 Semillon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eSourced from the oldest and best blocks, dry grown vines dating back to 1923. The 2019 continues the harmonious vintage streak with superb fruit intensity showing zested limes, calamansi pip and wet river stone. Some apple blossoms and fresh linen billowing on the hills hoist. Its time in bottle has allowed the wine to snuggle into itself and drinks with the same magnitude of flavour as the nose promises, scratch that, it actually doubles down in its fruit power. Shouting from the rooftops with lime margaritas, Mirabelle plums and pistachio nougatine. A mealy cashew mid palate and a long echoing, juicy acidity and persistent length. Simply put, it’s everything you hoped it would be and drinking like an Aussie bushland dream. Its purity and complexity is and always is utterly astounding. This is the best money you can spend on an Australian wine icon. Drink now with oysters (obvs) maybe with a white wine mignonette and some sea succulent. Or put your faith in Semillon and lay down for further 10 years, 20 or 30 years plus.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eShanteh Wale, Wine Pilot\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eBright, light yellow colour; reserved and delicate lemon and honey aromas, a hint of grassiness, but no toast yet; the palate light bodied and reserved, delicate and refined, with a big lemon-juicy finish that lingers long and harmonious. The fruit purity is impressive. Delicious, pristine semillon of great depth of flavour and harmony. It's starting to drink really well and has many years ahead of it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink 2025-2037.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eHuon Hooke\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, The Real Review - 98 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eGreat wines like Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon are celebrated for their clarity of expression and remarkable intensity – qualities that shine brightly in the '19 vintage. The mid-palate is beautifully open and generous, showcasing powerful citrus flavours and micro hints of flint, wet river stones, lemon curd and greengages. The true strength of this vintage lies in its refreshing, succulent mid-palate, harmonious balance and ultra-cleansing finish, making it a superb accompaniment to food. It is at the beginning of its evolution, and its refinement and grace set it apart.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink 2025-2029.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eSourced from old vines planted on ancient sand, the 2019 is tightly bound with vibrant citrus, white stone fruit and apple blossom. Remarkably pure, driven and delicate, it will age into magnificence in the decades to come.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eDaniel Honan, Decanter - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"As of this tasting at the end of 2025, the 2019 Vat 1 Semillon is nearly seven years from its harvest. The wine is yet to fully develop the characteristic and desirable toastiness that is endemic to great, older Hunter Valley Semillon, and yet there are whiffs of it. And it is good. There are notes of creamed honey on toast, pressed linen, lemon pith, ocean spray, crushed shells and wheat. In the mouth, the wine is featherlight, intense and long through the finish. This is very good indeed. 10.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. \u003c\/span\u003eDrink: \u003cspan\u003e2025 - 2044.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 96 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"So much honeysuckle, honey, green melon, lime and heather character. It’s medium-bodied with bright acidity. Flavorful and so long. Tight on the palate. Drinking beautifully now.\" \u003cstrong\u003e James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 96 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eA strong set of releases for Tyrrell’s in 2019. White peach and citrus, lemon balm perfume, very fine feeling wine with soft chalky texture, almost silky (in context), but nervy and gently grainy on the finish. A  subtle herbal thread runs through it, adding complexity. It feels cool and composed and delivers flavour in a quietly confident way. Explosive length marks it out as being a special wine. \u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2023-2039+.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThere's beautiful concentration to this vintage of the famed 'Vat 1'. A spicy, waxy, flinty character combines with the grapefruit and lemon aromas - the honeyed edges just starting to form. There's flesh on the bones of the palate, with bright acidity set to last and lovely textural intrigue. This is an excellent vintage of this distinctive Aussie style, and one that should keep evolving for decades.\u003c\/span\u003e\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003eChristina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast - 96 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eThe 2019 Vat 1 Semillon is quite punchy and focussed with feijoa and preserved lemon with an edge of lime juice, still bright, youthful and pure. Tangy acidity well matched to a silky palate before delivering a fine and very long finish. Classic and built to last. Drink: 2021-2040\u003c\/span\u003e.\" \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Angus Hughson, Wine Pilot - 95 points \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\" alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47975926825201,"sku":null,"price":95.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2019.jpg?v=1775100828"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-belford-single-vineyard-semillon-2019","title":"Tyrrell's Belford Single Vineyard Semillon 2019","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Belford is a great vineyard.\"  Gary Walsh\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Belford Vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and was\u003c\/span\u003e planted with Semillon vines in 1933. \u003cspan\u003eThe vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s. \u003c\/span\u003eThe vineyard \u003cspan\u003esits on very fine, deep alluvial sand which imparts a fuller, almost honeyed flavour to the wine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"The palate is rich and deep, with refinement and delicacy but also expansive flavour that is generous and powerful, clean and dry but beautifully balanced, and very long in the finish. This is drinking superbly now and has a long life ahead: it has generosity as well and finesse. A great semillon.\"  Huon Hooke\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Belford Semillon this year shows its typical ripe citrus aromatics, with hints of white stone fruit. The palate is dense and robust with a touch of honey that sits behind the riper citrus flavours. More phenolic texture than the other wines gives this year’s Belford Semillon another layer of flavour.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtlpV704cgA\u0026amp;ab_channel=Tyrrell%27sWines\" title=\"The Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard Video\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s_Belford_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713752012\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Story of Tyrrell's Belford Vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Light, bright yellow; dry straw and the beginnings of toast and honeycomb on the bouquet; the palate rich and deep, with refinement and delicacy but also expansive flavour that is generous and powerful, clean and dry but beautifully balanced, and very long in the finish. This is drinking superbly now and has a long life ahead: it has generosity as well and finesse. A great semillon. Drink: 2025-2035.\"  \u003cstrong\u003eHuon Hooke, The Real Review - 97 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"This wine displays the hallmark intensity of this unique site, defined by its talc-like sandy soils. Despite its bottle age, it remains beautifully fresh, with alluring notes of persimmon, smoky lime and lemon curd. The palate is expansive and supple, delivering excellent flavour intensity with harmonised acidity and a wet stone underlay. It opens beautifully with time in the glass, finishing clean, lemony and long. Drink: 2025-2029.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"  \u003cstrong\u003eToni Paterson MW\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, Halliday Wine Companion – 96 points \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eand Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGold Medal - Hobart Wine Show 2022|\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hobart Wine Show 2019\u003cbr\u003eGold Medal - Hunter Valley Wine Show 2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBelford vineyard\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sBelfordvineyard_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481290\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Belford vineyard\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe Belford vineyard is the northern-most of the Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley vineyards and is located at an elevation of 50 metres about 15 kilometres north of the Tyrrells winery on Hermitage Road. Bounded by gum trees, it’s tucked in behind Jump Up Creek in a tranquil location just a stone’s throw from the New England Highway. It sits on deep alluvial sand that’s so fine that it looks like talcum powder when it’s dry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1933, the vineyard was planted with Semillon vines (3.9 hectares) by the Elliott family and then in 1994, Chardonnay vines (1.6 hectares) were added. Grapes from this vineyard go into the Belford Semillon and Belford Chardonnay. The Vineyard has been leased by Tyrrell's since the early 1980s, firstly from the Elliot family and subsequently from the current owners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Belford_Vineyard_Map_c1bf50c6-f1f9-49a1-9543-754507846594_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730950536\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48108949274865,"sku":null,"price":43.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Belford-Single-Vineyard-Semillon-2019.jpg?v=1777610494"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-hunter-valley-semillon-2025","title":"Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon 2025","description":"\u003cp\u003eHunter Valley Semillon is world-famous and \u003cspan\u003ea unique Australian treasure. T\u003c\/span\u003ehere is one famous family name in the region and that is Tyrrell’s, home \u003cspan\u003eto some of Australia’s most awarded wines including the iconic Vat 1 Semillon. The Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon is sourced from a small selection of their top vineyards with an average vine age of 40 years. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\"An outstanding classic semillon, with flavour, weight and presence. Pristine aromas of ripe lemon accented with fragrant quinine and grapefruit pith. The palate has a pure citrus core, subtle mid-palate softness, a cleansing wet-stone undercurrent and soft acidity on the close. Tremendous value.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e Toni Paterson MW\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eClassic Hunter Valley Semillon from another strong vintage. The nose is vibrant with an abundance of citrus fruits and floral elements. The palate is medium bodied, yet intense, with great length and a brisk acidity. The grapes were machine picked in the cool of the night before gentle pressing and fermentation in stainless steel tanks. The wine then spent a short amount of time on yeast lees to gain extra complexity and mouth feel.\u003c\/span\u003e\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"\u003e  Tyrrell's Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003eRoyal Melbourne Wine Show 2025 - 96 Points and Top Gold \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e\"This is the best vintage of Tyrrell's Hunter Valley Semillon I have tried. Sourced from 40 year old vines, it is beautifully fragrant and bursting with pristine citrus fruit. The palate has gentle weight, purity, juiciness and succulence. Classic Hunter Valley Semillon at a bargain basement price.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNick Munday, Canterbury Wines - 95 points and Special Value Wine  \u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eThis comes from HVD young vine (40 years old) and Army Block on Mistletoe Lane (30-40 years old). Very aromatic and floral, slight cut fennel, lemongrass, lime, white peach. Tight and flinty, pure acidity, feels and tastes great, a little bit powdery in texture, and finishes long with plenty lime and Disprin flavour. There’s a succulence and richness to this wine, though it keeps itself trim and classic all the same. A top release, and it’s so delicious now, you don’t really need to wait (though you could). It’s a toss up between 93 and 94 points, though I’m going for the latter as it’s just so tasty. \u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eDrink: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e2025 - 2035\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGary Walsh, The Wine Front - 94 points\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\"\u003cspan\u003eAn outstanding classic semillon, with flavour, weight and presence. Pristine aromas of ripe lemon accented with fragrant quinine and grapefruit pith. The palate has a pure citrus core, subtle mid-palate softness, a cleansing wet-stone undercurrent and soft acidity on the close. Tremendous value.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e Toni Paterson MW, Halliday Wine Companion – 93 points \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"cs-reviewBody\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003eand Special Value Wine \u003c\/span\u003e ★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTop Gold - Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2025\u003cbr\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e★\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003eSpecial Value Wine – Canterbury Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #f9e00c;\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e★\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48109043351793,"sku":null,"price":19.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Hunter-Valley-Semillon-2025.jpg?v=1777610762"},{"product_id":"tyrrells-vat-1-semillon-2021","title":"Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2021","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of the World 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eJames Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2021\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. The oldest vines were planted in 1923. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most-awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies to its name. It is arguably the world's finest Semillon and is undoubtedly one of Australia's greatest wines. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Superb wine. Keeps you wanting more. Toothsome. Tense, precise, al dente, floral, just under ripe stone fruit in best sense, mouth-watering, beautiful and detailed. Epic semillon. In the zone now but for the future too. Fragrant, delicious, juicy acid-led, so much going on. An experience. Settle in.\"  Mike Bennie\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVat 1 Semillon only ever comes from the oldest and best blocks. The vines are all dry grown, on their own roots, and date back to 1923. After a relatively cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks, the wine spent a minimal time on yeast lees before being bottled early to maintain its freshness. No oak fermentation or maturation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"When I have aged semillon I just wonder how I could possibly want anything else. They are just thrilling. If you haven't had Hunter Valley semillon you might as well start at the top with the Vat 1. It is unparalleled in quality and style.\"  \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Larkin\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Delicate citrus aromas. The palate has a density and depth of fruit which only comes from special vineyard blocks. This robust fruit profile is balanced by the wines texture and soft acid profile giving it an approachability now, however, will age well into the future.\"  \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell's Wines\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eExpert reviews\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e98 points - James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Limes, green mangoes, ripe pears, crushed stone and some slate. Full-bodied with phenolics and depth. Amazing structure and so flavored. Drinkable but can age for years. Screw cap.\"  \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eTop 100 Wines of the World 2021 and \u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eTop 100 Wines of Australia 2021\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e96 points - Gary Walsh, The Wine Front \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\"Vat 1 is invariably the pinnacle of Tyrrell’s Semillon releases, and no change here. Floral, vanilla pod, white peach, lime, glossy and ripe but firm acidity, plenty of flavour and so much charm. It’s long. It’s balanced. It’s a beautiful wine of impeccable composition and graceful style. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrink: 2023-2045+.\"  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e96 points - Mike Bennie, The Wine Front \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\"Superb wine. Keeps you wanting more. Toothsome. Tense, precise, al dente, floral, just under ripe stone fruit in best sense, mouth-watering, beautiful and detailed. Epic semillon. In the zone now but for the future too. Fragrant, delicious, juicy acid-led, so much going on. An experience. Settle in.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e95+ points - Toni Paterson, Halliday Wine Companion\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\"It is impressive that in a challenging year like '21, Vat 1 can look this good, a testament to the winemaking skill and old-vine resources of Tyrrell’s. This wine is a showcase of the best blocks of the season, showing the gentle tension and tones of the cooler year. The palate is beautifully refreshing, with delicious sweet lemon flavours and faint quinine accents. Its satin-like, cleansing palate sets it apart from the rest. Drink by 2031.\"  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAwards\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"vertical-align: inherit;\"\u003eTop 100 Wines of the World 2021 - James Suckling\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTop 100 Wines of Australia 2021 - James Suckling\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vat 1 semillon\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVat1_71c908f3-645e-4a94-ab22-9b3b9858894f_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691892620\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon was produced in 1963 from grapes grown on the Short Flat Vineyard. Vat 1 has gone on to become Australia’s most awarded white wine, with almost 5,500 medals and more than 330 trophies, and is arguably the world's finest Semillon and one of Australia's greatest wines. The Production of Vat 1 is about 2000-2500 cases annually.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInitially, Vat 1 was a single vineyard wine from the Short Flat vineyard positioned in front of the winery. The vines were planted in 1923 and 1927. This vineyard still makes up the backbone of Vat 1, but today fruit is also sourced from Johnno’s Vineyard where the oldest vines date from 1908. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVat 1 comes from two very old blocks within these two vineyards, with a combined area of about six hectares. The two blocks are separated by just 800m and flank the same creek. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe vines are all dry grown and are on their own roots. These blocks feature sandy, free draining soils that give these wines their unique character. Along with vine age, the sandy soil profile defines the vineyard selection of grapes destined for Vat 1.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil the 1980s Vat1 was released as a young wine but was not received well overseas, particularly in the United States. According to Bruce Tyrrell: \"Everyone was saying you can’t drink it young, you have got to give it some bottle age. So I decided to hold back the release date. I hid 1000 dozen of the 1989 Vat 1 away in the shed behind some red. Later we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there. I remember hearing my dad at a show saying 'bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away' and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad. It’s a very similar story to Grange – Max Schubert hid it away for 5 years or more.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, leading UK wine magazine Decanter included the 1994 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon in its list of 'International Wine Legends'. The only other Australian wines to have been included in this exclusive list are Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Shiraz, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Henschke Hill of Grace and Lindemans Special Reserve Hunter River Burgundy. The magazine said, \"Tyrrell’s Vat 1 is one of the supreme expressions of this underrated wine style (semillon). No wine has been awarded more medals on the Australian wine show circuit.\" In response to the accolade, managing director Bruce Tyrrell said: \"It is a great honour for our Vat 1 to be included among the world’s great wines. We began the journey to drive recognition of Hunter Valley semillon in the late 1980s, and it looks like we’ve arrived.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sShortFlatvineyard_2_9e41fd60-b8e2-4c42-8111-1bacdbc929d8_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077030\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Short Flat Vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShort Flat Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eThe five-hectare Short Flat Vineyard is located directly north of the driveway up to Tyrrell’s Wines at an elevation of about 110 metres. The vineyard is a mosaic of vine ages, with the oldest Semillon vines dating back to 1923 and 1927. The Semillon is planted in the middle of the vineyard, where the soils are quite uniform sandy loams. \u003cspan\u003eFruit from the Semillon vines goes into the flagship Vat 1 Semillon.\u003c\/span\u003e   \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sJohnno_svineyard_2_c8d0d1cb-5d99-4b6c-b363-c3c1f31b6845_1024x1024.jpg?v=1702077094\" alt=\"Tyrrell's Johnno's vineyard\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohnno's Vineyard\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eLocated at an elevation of about 135 metres adjacent to Ekert’s Road on the edge of Mary Ann’s creek on the southern boundary of the original Ashmans property, Johnno’s vineyard is planted on alluvial sandy loam soils. Originally known as the Long Flat vineyard, the name was changed in 2002 in honour of fifth-generation family member John Tyrrell. The vineyard was first planted in 1908 with a mix of Semillon (2.1 hectares) and Shiraz (0.7 hectares) vines. It’s the source for the flagship Vat 1 Semillon and two of the Sacred Sites wines; Johnno’s Semillon and Johnno’s Shiraz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Tyrrell's Vineyards map\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sVineyardsmap_1024x1024.jpg?v=1692481736\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrell's Vineyard map showing the position of Short Flat And Johnno's Vineyards\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce Tyrrell\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells-BruceTyrrell_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691891037\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrrell is a major force in Australian wine. Bruce is a fourth-generation winemaker and managing director of Tyrrell’s, one of Australia’s oldest family-run wineries.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBruce graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and \u003c\/span\u003ejoined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2006, Bruce was recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his contribution to the Australian wine industry; improving grape quality, research, tourism and export opportunities.  In 2009, he was named a Hunter Valley Living Legend at the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Awards. In 2016, Bruce was awarded the Graham Gregory Award for his service to the NSW Wine Industry, and in 2017 he was recognised by his peers within the Industry for his significant contribution to the Hunter Valley Wine Industry and received the 'Hunter Valley – Award for Excellence'.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUnder Bruce Tyrrell’s management Tyrrell’s Wines will remain family owned and continue with the simple philosophy of striving to be one of Australia’s pre-eminent family owned wine companies, producing the highest quality wines possible at all levels.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"I spent most of my life lifting the profile of the semillon variety, because it is something we do here better than anywhere else in the world. My chief winemaker (Andrew Spinaze) and I started on that line in the 80s and we’re just getting there now, it’s been a long road. To change the perception of this variety as being high quality in the Hunter Region is the goal. To leave our business and area stronger and better than it was before. Just like a football team, you’re only as good as your worst player, so for us, making sure the whole district has the right reputation is just as important as our own reputation.\"  Bruce \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTyrrell  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T0vb53oZP18\u0026amp;ab_channel=WineAustralia\" title=\"Bruce Tyrrell - Tyrrell's Wines - Hunter Valley\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cimg style=\"margin-bottom: 16px; float: none;\" alt=\"Bruce Tyrrell discusses Hunter semillon et al\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Bruce_Tyrrell_Video_480x480.jpg?v=1713750526\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"color: #808080; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe  following article on Bruce Tyrrell by Milton Wordley appeared in winetenquestions.com.au\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTyrrells Wines is one of the oldest family owned wineries in Australia, did you ever consider doing anything else?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was going to play rugby league for Australia then got my right knee smashed and that was the end of that. I wouldn’t have minded journalism, I always enjoyed reading and writing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt one stage I thought maybe the military.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know I’ve been around this place all my life… my first memory, I must have been about two or three…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was running around the old receival vat outside, I was just under the edge and the ‘old man’ was cleaning the inside and he tipped a bucket of skins and water straight onto my head, frightened Christ out of me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn’t study winemaking, I did Ag Economics at the University of New England, majored in beer, football and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI reckon I have been running the place since October 2000 when my father died – but probably being involved in all major decisions about eight to ten years before that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe died on the 2nd of the 10th and he was born on the 10th of the second. Dad always used to say they should never start picking here till after his birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe now employ about 68 full-time staff… there was a time when it was 148.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re a different business to what we were 25 years ago – a very different business. We’ve pretty much come one line in each generation… its probably why we are still here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYour son Chris is now in the business: Who does what at Tyrrell's?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris looks after everything on site here – and has an involvement in the rest – I look after the admin and sales and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m still here at vintage time – I make the picking decisions on the white.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat about two tonne of grapes in January and February. We start fizz base in mid-January and we finish normally in the last week in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe get bud burst 7 – 8 weeks earlier than my sister in Macedon. Chris was like me the winery was his playground. He then studied at Wagga but was always around the winery at vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne year he came home from school to work vintage as he had done for years, and said \"I actually don’t have a lot of respect for the people who are teaching me and I’ve been working with one of the top ten winemakers in the world – I think I’ll stay here and work with Spin\" …\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spinaze: He’s your head Winemaker, has been here for over thirty years, first started casually with us in 1979 I think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe’s a bloody good winemaker and very much part of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we get to vintage all the decisions are made between Andrew, Mark Richardson the red wine maker, Andrew Pengilly the vineyard manager, Chris and I.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo if God comes knocking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon – he has to wait until we’ve done our daily juice tasting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat’s special about the Hunter?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very difficult area to grow grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI would suspect this is the most challenging place to grow grapes and make wine in the country. It’s not a bad thing – it means you have to hone your skills and be sharper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe advantage of it is that because we are northerly our ripening is more in the earlier part of summer, so while everyone will say you have a horrible hot climate in the Hunter, what it means is that we get flavour early.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with varieties like Semillon you are picking at ten to eleven beaume and they are flavour ripe at that, you can leave them to 13 and a half – but they’ve lost their acid, or the acid’s changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou look at the two areas that make white wines that live a long time and they are the two most Northerly ones – because Clare is the same latitude as Sydney.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wines from here off the decent dirt will outlive just about anything.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the notion about cool climate and the more southerly it has to be, is actually bullshit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere has been an issue with mining, but we’ve got rid of coal seam gas in the Valley… it’s gone and I guess in the end AGL shot themselves in the foot – we’ve got them out of this immediate area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell you a funny story, there were about ten of us who had dinner here one night with Julia Gillard…when she was Prime Minister and she said are there any rules left to keep the coal seam gas guys off your land and I said Yes there’s one left….she said what's that – and I said ‘Rule 303’…\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe had no idea what I was talking about….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was sitting next to Tim Matheson and I said I think you had better get Breaker Morant out. She said \"What\" – and he said \"he’s going to shoot them\" and she said \"Ohh Right….\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other thing about the Hunter is the close knit community, the people here, especially the late Len Evans, I always used to say that Evans taught me the difference between good wine and great wine. He was an amazing man, had an amazing memory palate, he never forgot a wine – you had to keep him under control a bit at times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was lucky to be invited into the circle that was those Monday luncheon clubs by Evans as a twenty-year-old. He was and did many things, but the ‘Len Evans Tutorial’ doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, what a gift to leave to the Australian Wine Industry. Chris did it three years ago, he kept coming home with the list of wines that had tasted and I said Jesus, how good was that…. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of my favourite wines is Tyrrells Vat 1: You were very much a part of that, I believe you kind of did a Max Schubert, what’s the back label?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s off that bit of land opposite us at the winery here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe oldest bit of vineyard down there was planted in 1923. It’s the only bit of land in the district that's got a bit of calcite in it – so it’s a bit different. The first vintage was 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until the eighties I decided to hold back the release date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was a real battle – I’d spent a fair bit of time in the States and in the UK. People like John Avery who were helping us in the UK but in the States it was like get the hell out of here with that …. and so I thought if I’ve got to make this work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEveryone was saying you can’t drink it young you have got to give it some bottle age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo with the 1989 Vat 1, I hid the first 1000 dozen, away in the shed. There were about 43 board meetings and I was banned from doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe production boss and I hid it behind some red that was put away for a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen we started sneaking it into shows and we started winning gold medals and trophies and then away we went from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember hearing my dad at a show saying \"bloody younger generation never thought of putting this wine away\" and I thought oh yeah right’o Dad…..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a very similar story to Grange – Max hid it away for 5 years or more… It was the mid-90s, I reckon it was around $20 a bottle, expensive white wine then….I remember when Grange went through $10 and we all said it wouldn’t sell – and the sales through the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarossa Semillon, a difference?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOh, a couple of degrees of alcohol difference – we go with making them at lower alcohol.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the Lehmann Margaret … that was about 11 and a half… and that’s a very good wine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other one who has gone down that line is Alister Purbrick with Tahblik Marsanne – now he’s picking them at 11 they are not the big honeysuckle ones they used to make 25 years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that is the thing – if you can get your flavour early and you can maintain acid. … we are going to bottle at 3 3.1 pH the wines are going to live naturally … and it doesn’t matter if its 6 or 8 acid … that’s something which we’ve come to realise – if the acid is down a bit you don’t have to adjust if your pH is right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeave the bloody thing alone. Winemaking is pretty easy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI observed how hard Australian Winemakers work, how much time do you spend travelling and where do you see the future for Aust Wines, Asia ?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year I’m going to be 6 weeks overseas….. China is our biggest market. Strangely we are now selling more wine back in the States – when our dollar was over a US dollar there was not much market in the States. I can pretty much tell you the American dollar exchange rate over the last 40 years. The interesting bit – I was there 2 weeks ago the reaction to our Semillon was unbelievable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYears ago they would all say piss off we don’t want to talk to you about Semillon… But now it’s a totally different reaction. The market is always moving and particularly in the States, the sophisticated and medium sophisticated drinkers are looking for something a bit finer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina is an interesting beast we have a national importer who is probably our smallest customer – I think what I have learned in China is that the normal business model for distributing wine as we know it in the Western world doesn’t exist in China. And so we deal a lot with what you’d call the grey market.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did a job 5 years ago where there were three groups involved – one had a corporate gift giving business – one had a whole heap of shares in sports and leisure clubs and the other two brothers owned over 1000 restaurants. So they don’t need to deal with a local distributor because their business is bigger than the local distributor. They are buying wineries here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA group came here a while back and said first thing is that we want to buy 70% of your business and if Christopher and his brother and sister hadn’t been here I would probably have said yes. The future could very well be Chinese to Chinese – they are very sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou are involved with the 'First Families of Wine'. What benefits do you feel that has created?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember the first thing we did in England, one of the young journalists said \"What holds this group together?\" and I said – if you call Ross Brown a dill – I will pick you up to hit you the third time. He said – but he’s a competitor – and I said but he’s also one of my oldest and best friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRoss and I and Alastair Perbrick and Col Campbell I suppose are the same. I knew Mitchell Taylor – but not well – now I know him well and he’s just a wonderful bloke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo we’re much closer that we were, and more importantly, now the next generation is getting to know each other. They are sent on tour for three days every year – they go as a group. They went to Margaret River last year – they were here the year before… we brought them in for the weekend of the Hunter Valley wine shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey went to the presentation lunch then came here and to Mc Williams and then they did a function in Newcastle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd I remember saying to them – you’ve all got the same problem – your Father won't let you do exactly what you want to do in the winery and he won’t bloody retire and you are all dead scared that your mother is going to die and he’s going to shack up with a floozy and she is going to get all your money all your inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat you have is this network and you must never lose that because when the problem does hit you know that you are going to get an honest answer because they’ve got the same problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re suddenly finding that people are coming to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think that we’ve all been concerned whether the 'brand' of 'First Families of Wine' was actually doing anything. I think we’ve all got this 'it has resonated' it is working.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the marketing we’ve done is overseas, but we are talking to more people locally as a group, even Dan Murphy’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYou’ve had a long career in the wine industry what is it that you love about it, and also what have been the highlights?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell look, it's like this, it’s a very jealous mistress.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I allowed it to become a very very jealous mistress in those early days in the 70s – the market was growing rapidly and it was just grab the tiger by the tail and run like hell – you took every opportunity you could and you just went for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe business coaching of the 70s and 80s was just grow – don’t worry about anything else just grow – grow your sales grow your production and you’d be right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo that was an exciting bit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last ten–fifteen years have not been a lot of fun – it's been bloody hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’ll come around again times come and go — the last 20 or 30 years of the 1800s and the early 1900s must have been a wonderful time in the wine industry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last two booms, certainly in production and planning have largely been driven by nothing more than the tax act – the stock market boom of the early 70s, late 90s and the deal in 94 that Brian Croser was able to do with the government when we got that accelerated depreciation but we needed to plant red vineyards too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there have been some tough times – I think the toughest of all has been this last run – the banking and financial industry has a lot to answer for and they got let off too the bastards – I always say those guys from Lehman brothers – I would have given them a gold handshake, put it round their necks and kicked them off the top of the building – should have all gone to jail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA whole lot of them should have.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the high dollar – basically export evaporated. The real highlight has been the whole change in perception of the wine industry, we’ve gone from being this funny little thing that sat on the side to being a major contributor to society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had a girlfriend from Inverell in the early 70s when I was at University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer father was not happy that his daughter was going out with someone from the wine industry because we were down there with used car salesmen – I think that has changed – as I say it’s a jealous mistress but it's allowed us to see the world to go to some amazing places – to meet some amazing people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year we sent out a thousand Christmas cards – the year my daughter was born we took one with Pauline and I and Jane and the dog and this year there will be about 13 or 14 of us in the photo and we do that every year – we keep contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s one of the wonderful things – you eat in some of the great restaurants in the world you drink some of the great wines in the world you meet amazing people because it is a tough industry and you have to have your own vision and view and when you get out and about and you learn new things every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are making nuts and bolts you don’t learn much new every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor us it’s the Semillon thing and I think Spin and I realised that at the same time back in the early 80s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe were going to be people who got to work with something that was truly unique – If the industry has given me anything it's given me that opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s been a bloody long climb up the hill pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get the recognition for it. But in that list of Decanters legend wines we were there with your first growth Bordeaux wines and Château d’Yquem and Krug and Penfolds Bin 60A and that sort of stuff and there is bugger all white in there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI remember I was asked to speak at the Fine Wine 2010 conference in Ribera del Duero and they were paying for it so I thought – we’ll go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd we walked in the first night and this tall attractive Asian woman came over to me and said \"Are you Bruce Tyrell\" and I said 'Yes' and she said I’m Jeannie Cho Lee, (the first Asian Master of Wine) – and she said I’ve always wanted to meet you – your Semillons are the best white wines in the world, and I went WTF, Jesus – wow … Thank you….\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next day the young bloke who was the sommelier at El Bulli said, say hello to your red winemaker and your son Chris, they look after me really well and he said the only Australian wine I brought back for the list was Vat 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese compliments just kept happening and I kept saying to Pauline – if I get a swelled head just hit me won’t you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve done it …It took thirty years, but we did it. It's never going to be a major force in the world of winemaking because there isn’t that much of it – it’s a bit like the Hunter, it’s shrinking because out of those two tax booms, there was a lot of vineyard planted where it shouldn’t have been, wrong varieties, all of those things and now it's shrinking back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI said to Max Drayton about 5 years ago we might be back to where we were in 1970 because the little bits of soil are specific and with the Semillons, we make Vat 1 over here, the Stephens and HVD and Belford are all specific bits of dirt with their own characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had a guy here from Czechoslovakia last week and he is writing a thesis on Hunter Semillon and he said – I just can't believe it. We gave him the four Semillons and the same three vintages of each – 16, 11 and 05 or 06 – it just blew him away – and that's what it is going to be a small little area with great bits of vineyard – I always reckon this is the closest we get to Burgundy we’ve got those little bits of specific things that have got their own character its not wall to wall vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eViticulture \/ Winemaking….. A few years ago and now?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is nothing more dangerous than a winemaker in a vineyard a week before vintage if he hasn’t been there for the rest of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, if your fruit is not right at the end of the day people buy a bottle of wine because of the taste of it and the guts of that taste should come out of the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou pick it when the flavour is right – we work on flavour and pH – sugar comes in only if it’s going to get too high.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwenty Five years ago everyone thought the blokes working the vineyard were just the peasants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a wonderful quote in Campbell Mattison’s book on Laurence O’Shea – Wine Hunter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe talks about an oak cask being a place for the wine to lie and rest and get itself ready for bottle and it must never add any flavour to the wine because you work in the vineyard to get that flavour out of the grapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's true you see it here. It happened in 2014, a great year – they left them out and they got them over ripe and then they overloaded them with oak and then they all tell you how good they are in the vineyard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used to have on our EGY Tyrell labels the term 'Winegrower', I think it is a wonderful description\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnything else you would like to say?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is twelve years away from turning 200. The first vines were planted in 1828.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe still own the oldest Chardonnay block in the world – out on HVD planted in 1908.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomething you know, that we don’t talk enough about here in Australia is that this is the greatest repository of old vines – Europeans don’t have them, and The Hunter is the oldest… its basically us and the Barossa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are thirteen blocks in the Hunter on their own roots which are over 100 years old. I’ve got seven of them and I want to get the other six.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were vines in the first fleet. Some of those vines are still in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney….The oldest block is right here at the top of a nearby hill – it's called the 'Four Acres', it's Shiraz.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know that it's first generation cuttings from the Hill of Hermitage from the Busby collection planted in 1867.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Beeston reckons in all his research that they are actually first-generation cuttings from La Chapelle – I don’t know whether it's true or not but it's a good story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI used to drive past Hunter vineyards every day, many of them over a hundred years old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur policy now is, if the vineyard is over a hundred years old it gets bottled on its own because it deserves to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAbout the winery\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"The Tyrrell family today\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_sToday_1024x1024.jpg?v=1691927182\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Tyrrell family today, left to right: Jane, Chris, Bruce, John and Pauline\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region and is defined by its rich historical tapestry. There is one famous family name in the region where the great traditions of the Hunter Valley are joined by a restless spirit of wine innovation. That name is Tyrrell’s. They blend dedication to hand-crafted, minimal intervention wines while never shirking the growth and evolution of wine styles. It’s a practice that has been handed down from generation to generation, renewed with fresh vigour with each passing of the baton.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the winemaking baton is being passed from fourth-generation father Bruce Tyrrell to his fifth-generation son, Chris Tyrrell. Sharing the learnings that come from over 150 vintages in one of the world’s great, unique wine regions. In a relatively short space of time, Chris has blossomed when others may have wilted under the weight of expectation. The future for Tyrrell’s is looking brighter than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In our family, it’s forever looking for the next thing. Not necessarily just for the next thing, but you are looking for the next challenge. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and we’ve got that right… What’s the next thing? How can we improve that?\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThe founding father of Tyrrell’s Wines, Edward Tyrrell, spent his childhood growing up in Kent. In 1854 Edward moved to Australia, and four years later he and his family had settled in the Hunter Valley on a concessional allotment of 320 acres of prime land. He named the property 'Ashmans' after his maternal grandmother's ancestral home in Suffolk. Edward wasted no time building the first residence on the property, an iron bark hut that still stands today. Next was a winery in time for the first Tyrrell’s vintage in 1864. This was soon followed by more vineyards including the 4 Acres Vineyard. Planted in 1879, it is one of the oldest in the Hunter Valley and still produces exceptional fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eBy the time of Edward's death in 1909, he had planted 70 acres of vines and produced 10 children. In the late 1800s he passed the baton on to his first and last sons Avery and Dan, the 'book-end boys' as the family refers to them, who assumed responsibility for the vineyard and winery respectively and took the business forward in the first half of the 20th century. Avery's meticulous approach to vineyard management is still bearing fruit today: \"The vines that he tended so carefully are the backbone of Tyrrells' benchmark wines today, 130 years after they were planted,\" says Bruce. Dan, affectionately known as 'Uncle Dan', took over the mantle of winemaker at just 18 years of age and officiated over an astounding 69 vintages, surely an Australian record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It’s a very humbling experience to be able to go to work every day and work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather. And while the Hunter Valley was Australia’s first grape growing region it is still a progressive wine region. No one rests on their laurels here, and at Tyrrell’s we are very much a part of that.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1959, Avery's son Murray took the reins and quickly proceeded to take things to another level. Before Murray almost all of Tyrrell’s wines were sold to other wineries. Murray changed this, keeping and bottling the best wines under their own label. Before too long names like Vat 1 Semillon, Vat 9 Hunter and Vat 47 Hunter Chardonnay became part of the Australian wine lover’s vernacular. Murray also introduced new wine styles and revolutionised wine tourism in Australia, setting a new standard of excellence in innovation that his son Bruce built on since the turn of the century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The big change when my father took over was introducing Australia to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of modern times. But probably more importantly he was the real father of wine tourism. In the 1960s we had no other way of getting people to buy our wines, we had to get them to come to us!\" Bruce Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBruce Tyrell graduated from the University of New England in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics and joined the family business full-time a year later at the age of 23. In 2000, he took over from his father Murray as managing director of Tyrrell’s. He quickly jettisoned the Long Flat brand that focused on quantity, giving the winemaking team the chance to focus on Tyrrell’s single-vineyard, sacred site and winemaker’s selection wines. The results? Tyrrell’s global reputation for exceptional Semillon and Chardonnay is now matched by a reputation for their reds that is the envy of many in the valley and across Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as Avery and Dan learnt from Edward, and Bruce learnt from Murray, today Chris Tyrrell is learning each day from Bruce and the rest of the team in the vineyard and in the winery. Like Bruce, Chris isn’t just blindly following the path others before him have forged - he wouldn’t be a Tyrrell if he wasn’t looking to improve, innovate and evolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than looking to the modern or the technical to improve the way things are done at Tyrrell’s, Chris is actually heading back to the past while looking to the future. Back then apart from a few rudimentary tools in the vineyard and winery, it just took a heck of a lot of work to get the grapes getting grown, picked, crushed, fermented and bottled. Over the years there have been many machines, tools and gadgets that have removed the amount of hard work needed in the vineyard and in the winery. Some of these tools have been invaluable in improving the quality of wines made around the world. But other tools have reduced the connection between the vigneron and the land, making it harder to truly express a sense of place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A lot of the wineries in the region, including us, have been dusting old bits of museum equipment and bringing them back to life. For us it’s the basket presses and old bits of vineyard gear and old plows… Everyone, especially with viticulture, is going back to the way things used to be. Doing right by the vineyard and doing right by the soil.\" Chris Tyrrell\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChris has been a key influence on processes in the vineyard and in reviving minimal intervention winemaking traditions in the winery. The result? The wines are in better shape than ever. Chris has been recognised and awarded as one of the best young winemakers in Australia. He was a finalist in the Young Gun of Wine Awards in 2016 and took part in the Australian wine community’s Future Leaders program for the industry’s best and brightest, just a few of the accolades in his short career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the rich and colourful history of Australian wine there are many names that have shone brightly but ultimately failed to create a lasting legacy. No such concerns with the Tyrrells of the Hunter Valley. The solid foundation built by Edward, grown by Avery and Dan, shared with the world by Murray and matured into one of Australia’s great family wineries by Bruce, is stronger and tasting better than it ever has. Chris Tyrrell, one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers and fifth generation family member, is now taking this special legacy and shaping it for the future. An illustrious history. A bright future. The Tyrrell’s name and fine Australian wine will be synonymous for many, many years to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #808080;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe majority of the text above is taken from an article 'Like father, like son' in https:\/\/www.wineaustralia.com\/\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Winemaker\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrells_Andrew_Spinaze_1024x1024.png?v=1720967125\" alt=\"Tyrrell's winemaker Andrew Spinaze\" style=\"margin-top: 15px; float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving first thought he was going to be a chef, Andrew Spinaze fell into winemaking after working for a while in 1978 at Arrowfield in the Upper Hunter. He then decided to take a potshot at Adelaide's Roseworthy\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #484944; background: white;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eAgricultural  College’s wine marketing and making course, completing his studies in 1980. \"Ninety percent of what we did was winemaking, including practical work at a winery. Mike de Garis introduced me to Tyrrells and I worked there during the really hot vintages of 1980 and 1981. Six months later I was invited to return, which I thought I’d do for around twelve months\", he says. Forty-two years later, he’s still there and not going anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the importance of chardonnay to Tyrrell’s in the 1980s, it says something for Murray Tyrrell’s judgement that he allowed one of his senior winemakers, John Cassegrain, to persuade him to put the company’s entire chardonnay production into the hands of the raw and unproven Spinaze. From Vat 47 downwards, Tyrrell’s chardonnay has never looked back, hardly even sideways.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1985, Spinaze was promoted to Assistant Winemaker to Mike de Garis. After travelling to France in 1987 to fine tune his winemaking skills, Andrew was appointed Chief Winemaker in 1989, overseeing all winemaking operations at both Tyrrell’s lower and upper Hunter wineries, with an overall crush of 4,000 tonnes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eDuring Andrew’s time with Tyrrell’s, the firm has successfully made the transition from small family winery to a major Australia wine company. When asked to pick the three biggest highlights of his career so far, he replied:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\"From a production point of view, evolving new techniques over the last 30 years and watching how the wines mature as a consequence – it’s given me a great sense of achievement. This has led to the development of an extensive Single Vineyard portfolio which gives great integrity throughout the business from vineyard to consumer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eSecondly, I would say having worked with a great bunch of people close to the winemaking team. When you have people that have stayed with you for over 20 years they offer amazing experience and knowledge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eThirdly, I’ll be indulgent and say having won QANTAS and Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine Winemaker of the Year in 2004 was great.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canterbury Wines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48415346688241,"sku":null,"price":97.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/files\/Tyrrell_s-Vat-1-Semillon-2021.jpg?v=1792207230"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0642\/3098\/1873\/collections\/b2_ff0ced2e-7de3-4d19-91a5-3623d812d9b1.jpg?v=1654494219","url":"https:\/\/canterburywines.au\/collections\/semillon.oembed?page=2","provider":"Canterbury Wines","version":"1.0","type":"link"}