Greg Clayfield, International Winemaker of the Year

It’s easy to get complacent. I must admit, when driving off to Mount Gambier airport to catch the 7 am flight back to Melbourne, that I had done pretty well. A short night of only three and a half hours of sleep, followed by an early start and a breakfast of Just Right and sour milk was genuine testimony to my stamina, which of course, has barely waned in the six years since I left university.

The meandering driveway at Coonawarra’s Chardonnay Lodge takes you back past the restaurant, where just five hours previously a marvellous dinner party thrown by the Coonawarra Vignerons to honour local boy made good, Greg Clayfield, had been in full swing. Memories of the regions’ unique characters, rare cuts of grain beef, endless glasses of local wine and philosophy came flooding back. It was almost as if the dinner hadn’t stopped at all.

Then the full realisation hit me – it hadn’t! In the window, still in jacket and tie, was classic red wine maker Doug Bowen; the green-fingered viticulturalists Colin Kidd and Vic Patrick with wife Margie; winemaker and out-of-form batsman Gavin Hogg; proprietor, grapegrower and rationalist Ian Hollick; and the newly-crowned International Winemaker of the Year, the one and only Greg Clayfield. There were probably others lurking behind the curtains, but the shade inside and the bright reflection the sun was already making in the window made identification difficult.

This apparently trivial, frivolous scene, says a great deal about the Coonawarra area, and why it remains unchallenged as the premium commercial scale red-wine region in Australia. One of their number had won the world’s leading honour for a winemaker, and Coonawarra was going to celebrate as if he was one of the family – which is exactly what Greg is. And as the president of the Vignerons, Doug Bowen rightly said, the award represented an achievement for the entire region.

If you haven’t been to Coonawarra then you should. It is an extraordinary wine area – the wineries are on top of each other, the vineyards intermesh, and of course everyone knows precisely what’s going on over the next fence – where there are fences, that is. There is a remarkable bond between the winemakers and viticulturalists, born of proximity and compatability – they just have to get on well to exist so close. There is no question that the team feeling in the area is of universal benefit – the Coonawarra Vignerons are a very tight unit.

A rather generous degree of friendly rivalry permeates the region, which seems to have been brought closer together by the the regions’s apparent mortgage on the glass and silver decanter of the Jimmy Watson Trophy. {

For better or worse this Trophy, awarded for the best one-year old red at the Royal Melbourne Show, is regarded as the most prestigious in Australia.

Greg Clayfield is Coonawarra through and through. With Bruce Redman he is the only professional winemaker in Coonawarra born and bred in the district – along with umpteen brothers and sisters at the Clayfield homestead, on one of the northern, and as yet unplanted patches of genuine Terra Rossa soil.

Only thirty- three years old, Clayfield has an enviable winemaking track record. Two Jimmy Watson Trophies, a Gold Medal at the Bordeaux Vinexpo, numerous Australian trophies and gold medals and now the Robert Mondavi Prize for the International Winemaker of the Year at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London are undoubtedly the highlights.

“The Jimmy Watsons were great”, he says. “They’re in fashion. They have a lot to do with winemaking – for instance the type of oak used, as Wolf Blass demonstrated. The trophies won by Greg and numerous neighbours have really emphasised the quality of the Coonawarra area”.

At the International Wine and Spirit Competition Greg scored Gold Medals with the 1985 Rouge Homme Cabernet Sauvignon, the 1987 Padthaway Fume Blanc, the 1986 Coonawarra Pyrus and the 1983 Hunter River Burgundy Bin 6600. To do this he topped over 1000 entries from more than 30 countries.

“This award is a feather in the cap on Lindemans’ initial concept of entering the South-East of South Australia, back in 1965, when we purchased the Rouge Homme winery and initiated our huge vineyard development at Padthaway.”

He clearly remembers hearing the good news. “While I was home at lunch Lindemans executive Phil Laffer rang and asked me to call the office. I wanted to know what was wrong – not that things go wrong here on a weekly basis – but I was told to go to London in October to collect the award at the House of Commons.

Clayfield is keen to stress that Coonawarra doesn’t just produce fine reds for the moment, and that they also cellar exceptionally well. “If you’re uncertain of the longevity of Coonawarra wines, take a look in the museum at Rouge Homme, where there are wines going back to ’54. They were made with open fermenters, and natural yeast cultures, without refrigeration or new wood, but they still stand up well. The wines made in the ’70’s and ’80s will go on to be even better”, Greg states. I only hope he remembers the invitation!

Unlike the vast majority of the winemaking community his family has lived in the region for several generations, which actually makes him a `local’ even in the eyes of the cliquey society of downtown Penola and Coonawarra. The other members of the wine community, along with the local teachers, are regarded as almost a race apart by the indigenous pastoralist society, so Greg is something of a link between the two communities.

So what’s the next challenge for a winemaker who has taken all before him? Does a `Chateau Clayfield’ lurk in the recesses of his mind? “No way. The challenges are provided by the season. I have a long-term commitment to Coonawarra, and have no ambitions to set up my own label. What could I want more than working with St George and Limestone Ridge?”

Most wine industry executives are ex-winemakers. Does Greg want to climb up that rickety corporate ladder? “No chance. I’m going to stay `hands on’. It is an important ingredient in the success of the Rouge Homme winery that Roland Wahlquist the other full-time winemaker at Rouge Homme and I get as involved as we can. And no-one can ignore the integral part Roland plays in making our wines. He is extremely capable.”

“In Coonawarra we still have to consolidate styles. Pyrus was an innovation, and there is still loads of room for refinement. The ’85 is followed extremely well by the ’86, but there is still a challenge to maintain the Coonawarra consistency. We’re now going to experiment with barrel fermentation and get more selective with type of oak we use.”

The Limestone Ridge is a wine now beginning to attract the attention it has long deserved, for its neighbour, the St George Cabernet, seems to have hogged the headlines for the last decade. Limestone Ridge was set up for the established Coonawarra blend in the 1960’s – 90 Shiraz with 10 Cabernet Sauvignon. In 1976 cabernet so good it was kept separate, but ever since it has been blended, with the Cabernet Sauvignon added to the Shiraz until a balance is reached. The proportion of the Cabernet Sauvignon in the wine varies from year to year.

Lindemans’ Coonawarra reds from 1985 and 1986 are an exceptional achievement in themselves, regardless of the recognition they have attracted. Clayfield and his team at the Rouge Homme winery are as good as anything going in Australia today, and Lindemans would be entirely justified to pay a fortune to keep them there. Luckily for them, I don’t fancy they’ll have to. Please login to post comment