Winemaker of the Year Profile – Stuart Anderson

While most serious enthusiasts of Australian wine will be more than familiar with the name of Stuart Anderson, it’s only fair that a healthy percentage might raise a questioning eyebrow at his presence amongst those nominated for this year’s award, which acknowledges current achievements. Typically, that’s only because Anderson’s characteristic modesty has prevented him from being better recognised for his more recent efforts as an active winemaker, at the age of seventy-something.

Before Mildara failed dismally to turn it into a national brand and simultaneously diluted the reputation of its estate wines, few small Victorian vineyards were as highly rated as Balgownie, established by Anderson, a Bendigo chemist, in the late 1960s. Balgownie’s cabernet sauvignon was legendary, especially from signature years like 1976 and 1980, while with the benefit of hindsight, its earthy, complex Hermitage Shiraz was at least a decade ahead of its time. Furthermore, from a mesoclimate which was hardly favourable to the Burgundian varieties, Balgownie’s legacy of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir comfortably exceeded the most optimistic expectations.

Having found a 75 ha site at Maiden Gully in 1966, Anderson bought it the following year and began planting in 1969, to four hectares evenly divided between shiraz and cabernet sauvignon. He planted a similar amount the following year and in 1970 began to plant pinot noir and chardonnay. Balgownie’s first harvest was in 1970, when Anderson’s first look at his shiraz and cabernet suggested he was onto something special. In 1985 he received an offer from Mildara Wines that was impossible to refuse.

Anderson draws much of his inspiration from great French wines, but is genuinely excited by the prospect of making wines in emergent Australian regions. Since 1976 he has travelled virtually every year to make wine in France, initially in Bordeaux with Louis Vialard, owner of Chateaux Cissac, the highly rated Cru Bourgeois sited adjacent to Mouton-Rothschild, but for the last thirteen vintages with Domaine Chevrot near Santenay in the south of Burgundy.

Little wonder he’s a committed terroirist whose focus as a winemaker is to allow the vineyard to express its own distinctive qualities. As a winemaker he sees himself in a secondary, but integral role, working alongside those who now manage the vineyards for whose wine he is responsible.

Only a few weeks after the expiration of his occasionally uneasy five-year contract with Mildara, Stuart and his wife Shirley moved to New Gisborne, in the Macedon Ranges region of southern central Victoria. Their intention was to live a conventional retired life while Stuart restored old Bugattis, tinkered on pianos, played and taught the bassoon and travelled to France to make wine. But no sooner had he settled down than Stuart received calls from Bindi’s Bill Dhillon and Mount Gisborne’s David Ell. Their 1991 vintages were imminent, and they both wanted Anderson’s help, immediately. He agreed to lend a hand and ten years later, he’s still doing so.

Anderson’s contribution to the establishment of Bindi as a landmark small vineyard and his little-known role behind the less feted but no less exciting Mount Gisborne property are amply reflected in the compact tightness and rounded completeness shown by the wines from both vineyards, from their unusually convincing early vintages.

Now that Michael Dhillon, Bill’s son, is taking on more winemaking and decision-making responsibility at Bindi under Anderson’s ‘avuncular’ eye, Anderson himself has discovered another rare opportunity to fashion wines of rare pedigree with an unlikely partner in crime, former Essendon premiership footballer Alec Epis. In addition to having developed his own exceptional chardonnay and pinot noir vineyard near Woodend, Epis recently purchased the former Flynn and Williams cabernet sauvignon vineyard near Kyneton. His wines are bottled under the Domaine Epis and Epis and Williams labels and from 1998 and 1999 respectively they have been made by Anderson in commercial quantities.

While the Domaine Epis Pinot Noir is deep, dark and brooding, the Chardonnay is intensely flavoured, taut and minerally. Both demand time in the bottle. The first vintage of the Epis and Williams Cabernet Sauvignon, is fine-grained, supple and refined, with pure small fruit flavours and a lingering savoury finish, while the second, from 2000, is a more statuesque wine with layers of fruit flavours and grainy tannins. Again, both demand time.

It’s in his wines that Anderson’s approach is clearly evident. None show the faintest trace of excessive artefact or over-processing. Each are natural wines which clearly express with almost disarming integrity their vineyards and vintages. None are made from over-ripe fruit, indeed few would even touch 13. None have developed unnatural complexity in their relative youth and each has the balance to suggest long cellaring futures.

In a time when many winemakers are tempted to want too much in their wines too early, usually by doing too little too late, Stuart Anderson’s small volume hand-crafted wines stand out like a beacon. But only the smartest Australian winemakers will take notice of them. Please login to post comment