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Briony Hoare is winemaker at Beach Road Wines. She graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Sciences (Oenology) in 1997

After graduating, I began working in the Southcorp Wines graduate program at Lindeman’s Karadoc winery in Victoria. One of the benefits of working in Mildura in the late 1990s as a young, single professional with a disposable income was the regular joy of dining at Stefano’s restaurant.

Stefano had a cellar (really just a hole) at the back of his restaurant, full of random wines with really weird names that I couldn’t pronounce and strange Italian varieties that I’d never heard of ... and I fell in love with them. What I found so compelling was the texture and the subtlety and the way they worked so beautifully with food.

After the millennium clicked over and the world didn’t end, I travelled to Italy to work and learnt about Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Moscato and Barbera in the north, and Cortese in central Italy. When I returned to Australia, and again worked with Southcorp, any time there was a new variety coming up on the production forecast I was there pestering the group winemaker to have a chance to work with them. I made Sangiovese at Langhorne Creek, and Tempranillo and Nebbiolo in Mudgee – it was really exciting to work with those varieties.

When I left Southcorp to start my family, I was consulting to some growers in Langhorne Creek and spotted some odd looking vines and asked what they were. It turns out they’d been to southern Italy in the late 1990s to explore varieties that would better suit their sunny region which often experienced early dews, and acid challenges in their fruit. So they planted Pinot Grigio, Fiano, Greco and Aglianico but seemed a bit unsure about what to do with them. So I said, “I know what to do with them!” and that was the beginning of Beach Road Wines for me.

We made Aglianico and Pinot Grigio in 2006, Fiano in 2008, Greco in 2009 and we’ve been going ever since really. Fiano, Nero, Vermentino, Aglianico, Montepulciano, Prosecco ... all of those varieties tick so many boxes in terms of natural acids, low disease problems, low water requirements, heat tolerance and higher yield.Vermentino in particular is just fabulous.The grapes have got a strong skin so you get fewer disease issues, they’re big chunky bunches, it has a huge yield compared to say Chardonnay, and it makes a cracking glass of wine. As a wine, Vermentino should be pushing every bottle of Sav Blanc off the shelf because it’s such a good drink!

When we opened our cellar door in McLaren Vale in 2014, a lot of people hadn’t heard of the varieties we were working with, but they’re definitely a lot more accepted now, and the words don’t seem quite so foreign.This is part of the beauty of our culture: we’re always changing and adapting.

Story by Briony Hoare