Winemaker of the Year Profile – Gary Baldwin

Gary Baldwin is the first consultant winemaker to be nominated for this award. He’s a founding partner of Wine Network Australia Winenet, the country’s largest technical winemaking and viticultural consultancy, which works in the areas of winery design and construction, winemaking, viticulture and business planning for wine companies. He’s also a prominent and highly rated judge at wine shows.

It would surprise a great many people just how many leading wineries utilise a consultant winemaker to some degree or other. While his company is employed by a very wide range of wineries large and small, the number whose wines Baldwin feels he has personally influenced in a favourable way include some pretty impressive names. Try these for size: Dalwhinnie, Stoniers, Arthurs Creek Estate and Massoni in Victoria, Devil’s Lair, Voyager Estate, Brookland Valley and Lenton Brae in Western Australia and Freycinet in Tasmania.

Gary Baldwin gains much satisfaction from the fact that most of those names are long-term clients, several he collected or gained when he bought Brian Croser’s and Tony Jordan’s Oenotec consultancy business in 1988, the business he folded into Winenet in 1994 with well-known Victorian winemaker David Wollan of TarraWarra fame. Prior to that he was an advisory oenologist to the Australian industry with the Australian Wine Institute, having previously been chief winemaker and general manager of Arrowfield.

Baldwin says that like most consultants he’s in danger of doing himself out of a job in terms of straight practical winemaking assistance. He regularly finds that most problems faced by modern wineries tend to be solved in the vineyard, so he’s now employing viticulturists to provide a more complete and enduring service to his clients.

According to Gary Baldwin it’s a consultant’s job to listen to discover what a wine company’s objectives are, then to formalise a plan which is signed off by the full-time winemaker and the owner, then to appear on a regular basis to ensure that the agreed timelines and outcomes are being adhered to. Because the consultant turns up regularly to check on progress, things tend to happen when they might not otherwise, he suggests. ‘Over time a consultant’s role may change. You might not be so prescriptive and concerned with day to day problem solving, but instead focused more on checking on goals and monitoring a planning role in a company’, he explains.

‘When I first get involved with a new client the first thing I try to do is to make clean sound wines that reflect the site’s terroir. Once everyone is comfortable with that, it’s then time to stretch the boundaries a little. For instance you don’t decide overnight to move from cultured yeasts in barrel fermented chardonnay to 100 natural fermentation, for the risks are huge. I’d prefer to experiment with a 10 batch, which we can leave out if it doesn’t work. It’s a fine line between feral/natural or funky winemaking and making bad wine, and sometimes consultants get accused of taking too clean an approach. That can be a fair criticism.’

As for the full-time employed winemakers who learn for the first time that their owners have employed a consultant, Baldwin finds that some simply ‘freeze’ at the idea, while others recognise the opportunity to access a professional sounding board to discuss ideas and develop concepts of style. ‘When they’re sitting in a pub having a beer nobody tells them they have a problem’, says Baldwin, ‘not even their best mates. That’s human nature. But if somebody is paying money for advice, they expect to hear the bad with the good.’

While most winemakers come around and enjoy the experience of having someone else who can lend a hand, some do spit the dummy, occasionally with the result that they wind up in alternative accommodation. Those who understand the benefits a consultant can bring, suggests Baldwin, will use their consultant to present a stronger and united front when petitioning for new equipment before the owner.

Gary Baldwin says that it’s integral to the consultant’s role to present the bigger picture to winemakers. Too many are concerned only about making better wine than their neighbour on the other side of the fence, rather than following global trends and attitudes. ‘We help them look at what they do from a broader perspective’, he poses. ‘We can take their blinkers off.’ Please login to post comment