A little Background…

It’s funny how life goes. I grew up exposed to, surrounded by, in fact immersed in a household totally focused on wine -having Peter Lehmann as my Dad saw to this! But, (get this) back then, I never considered going into 'THE BUSINESS'.
I had half the adults (who always seem to enjoy passing edicts to 8 year olds) telling me that with PL as my dad I'd "JUST HAVE to go into wine making…daaarling…" The Other half seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out that my life would come up 'gravy' if I just jumped aboard the Lehmann Wine Train… Well I took all of these sort of comments on board and thought to myself, "Fuck em, I'll do my own thing!" From the day I decided that on I'd tell anyone who asked that I wanted to be a graphic designer.
My parents wisely kept their own council at this time. Mum and Dad obviously had the confidence that we (my younger brother Phil and I) had been brought up able to make the right choices in the long run. Well they were right. We've both found the 'faith' (Phil is a Winemaker at Yalumba as well as an Electrical Engineer.) All the many paths we've trod to get where we now are have given us a big bucket of experience to dig around in that is always invaluable.

My first vintage ever was in the legendary 1992 vintage. I scored a night shift position at St Hallets on the Red Fermenters. I worked directly under Peter Gambetta (now at Yalumba) and Trev Jones (now of Trev Jones Wines). It was bloody hard yakka, but I was hooked.
The second vintage was in 1997 when Nicki, my brand new wife and I headed to South Africa. I had a vintage lined up with the Finlayson family at Glen Carlou Winery in Paal whilst Nicki managed to score cellar door work with the Delheim Winery. That vintage was a real eye-opener. Again, heaps of hard yakka but also a lot of fun! I was sad to go when it was over and hope to catch up with Dave Finlayson for another one someday. After South Africa we spent another 8 months traveling before heading back to the Barossa, Nicki pregnant and me ready to get on with it! Coming home was awesome. 11 months away left me so hungry for the Barossa I thought that I would burst my chest.

My next vintage (1998) narrowly missed being full time in the cellar and instead saw me out in the vineyards picking. I did however manage to squeeze in a little winemaking with my brother Phil (who was doing a vintage at PLW) and together we made the first -still unreleased- david Franz wines. The '98's are absolutely awesome wines and set the production template the basics of which are still unchanged today.

After the vintage I went to work full time as a vineyard hand. I needed to start (or so dad reckoned) at the 'bottom' so worked for Darryl ‘Jacky’ Hearnden looking after Dads newly acquired Stonewell Hill and Stelzer Road vineyards. This was great. I got to spend a lot of time in the vineyards at the grass roots level, absorbing the rhythms and learning the vines. Over the next three years I gradually took over Jacky’s role in the vineyards and now manage them entirely.

1999 vintage rolled around and rather than spend another three months breaking my back hand picking I managed to get a vintage at home with Peter Lehmann Wines (PLW) This vintage saw me running the centrifuge during the day shift. This job actually gave me a fair bit of time to ‘frigg around’ with my own bits when spinning through the 'big' tanks. I hand produced a lightweight Shiraz (only 15.7% alc vol) and a Cab Shiraz blend(70% 30%). Both wines were big but balanced.

In 2000 I managed to convince Dad to back me for a more serious vintage. Andrew Wigan allowed me to use the facilities at PLW to make my 2000 Reds. Andrew offered invaluable experience, gentle guidance and bloody good advice in what was a difficult year. 2000, 2001 2002 and 2003 were all made under the roof of PLW. Until the end of the 2003 vintage, I worked Dads vineyards, did vintages and produced my wines at PLW.

From these years I took in a lot more from the PLW team than they probably realize. Andrew Wigan and Leonie Lange gave me the methodologies and tools I use every time I make my wines. Peter Scholz gave me over and above everything else the belief in myself and my wines that still drives me today. Ian Hongell gave me the practical day to day advice (like how to manipulate pH’s Sulphur levels etc) that enable me to actually make my wines properly. For all of that I thank the team at PLW from the bottom of my Heart.

After the 2003 vintage I was determined to finally shift everything home and make all of my wine under one roof. I sat down and did some figuring and worked out that although it would be tight I could probably afford to do it.
My first purchases were an even dozen food grade plastic grape bins. These were ideal fermenters. They had a great surface area to volume ratio, were small for easy handling and compared to stainless steel, cheap as chips. I managed to pick up through means both devious and clever sixteen food grade plastic thousand litre for an absolute song, so now had both fermenters and storage space.

Paul Lindner and I had been kicking around an idea on how to get the grapes into the fermenter with the minimum of handling. The idea was to crush directly into the top of the fermenter. Although Paul and I (and many others) had been forking grapes through the top of the de-stemmer into the fermenter for years, we wanted to take it one step further and do it out in the vineyard. Basically it took away the need to fork and left all the piles of stalks out in the vineyard where they could go back to the vines. With remarkably little planning and an ‘adapt as we build’ philosophy, Paul and I put together a successful ‘contraption’. It does everything I initially wanted and more.

Every winery needs a pump. Big wineries use big pumps, little wineries use little pumps. I bought a very little one inch mono that hasn’t missed a beat for over three years. Although not as quick as most pumps I had always been a big fan of the ‘Mono Pump’ It is a rugged design that doesn’t need priming and can cope with being asked to move pretty chunky materials. It is perfect for barrel filling and with patience does all it needs to.

During fermentation it is important to be able to control your ferment temperature. In 2004 a six hundred litre milk vat and ‘drain and return’ looked after all my chilling requirements. I love drain and return as you have the majority of the wine getting icy cold in the chiller whilst the skins and the last little bit of wine in the fermenter keep on steaming away. Finally you splash the chilled wine back over the hot ferment, extremes of temperature clashing to help extract ever more flavours. Pressing was done in tiny batches through a Zambelli ¼ tonne hand basket press. The basket press is the ultimate form of pressing for red grapes. Because it is static you don’t get the addition of maceration every single other form of pressing introduces. This gentle but inexorable form of pressing can extract (with patience) just as much as a continuous screw press, but it does it incredibly softly. I guess the trade off is something that is too often not available during vintage: time.

2005 and 2006 saw me extend on the theme. I’ve traded up from the hand cranked 250kg Zambelli Basket press to a hydraulic Hypac 1 tonne Basket press. I now have 2 milk vats for chilling, have doubled the number of fermenters and even have a some Stainless Steel tanks for storage.
In late 2006 I finally cracked and bought myself a second pump. This is a mighty 2" Zambelli that can really shunt the wine around. It has created a bit of a dilemma though… do I want to get the job done quickly… or do I need a few beers..?? the beers usually win! apart from this and a few other little touches the operation is still the same as it was in '04…

The Bottom Line…

So here I am now. I have a little winery surrounded by my vines which keeps me as busy as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest. This business I have to balance with my family life of 3 kids and a beautiful wife. We are sitting up on our hill facing a world that seems to be getting increasingly more complex, impersonal and hungry. I can’t claim that anything I am doing is new… in fact it really is the opposite. I embrace all the traditions of hard work and creating something real that you can hold turn around and criticize if you want. I am moved each day by a passion to live my life at my own pace and to create wines that are as individual as the fruit that has made them. I know that the wines I am making taste good, and the motivations and hard work behind them are real. I don’t really have any earth shattering conclusions to draw here, just that in all I am happy with my Dolce Vita and hope that it makes sense to others.

Cheers and good drinking