◆ The dʼArenberg personalities ■ dʼArry Osborn Managing Director and Legend of the Vine dʼArry Osborn recently celebrated his 90th birthday, and is still intimately involved with the business. In conversation, numbers, dates and colorful stories roll easily off the tip of his tongue. dʼArry joined the family business in 1943, when they cultivated nearly all red varieties, and supplied bulk wines for wholesale. After his father passed away in 1957, dʼArry took over the business, launching the dʼArenberg red stripe label in 1959. He handed over the winemaking reins to his son Chester in 1984. Personal favorite: The Shiraz Grenache. Originally sold in half-gallon flagons (2-liter when Australia went metric). The outstanding 1967 won29 golds and 7 trophies in Australian wine shows. ■ Chester Osborn Chief Winemaker since he graduated from Rose worthy College in 1983, Chester has overseen the growth of dʼArenberg for over 30 years, expanding first into white wines, then into a wide range of varietals. Today, dʼArenberg cultivates 37 grape varieties, with more in the offing. Chesterʼs outstanding analytical palate, kept in fine form by not drinking coffee, tea or strong flavors, enables him to follow his passion for highlighting the nuances in soil types. These nuances are exemplified by eccentric wines such as The Old Bloke & The Three Young Blondes (in celebration of Chester and his 3 daughters), a Shiraz blended with Roussanne, Viognier and Marsanne, that showcases his innovative approach and blending skills.Chester has always been passionately interested in architecture, anddʼArenbergʼs current project is sure to not only set the direction and growth for dʼArenberg for the next few years, but also for the McLaren Vale region. The ʻCubeʼ is an iconic building set in dʼArenbergʼs vineyards, a major investment in the future of wine and tourism, combining a new tasting room, bars, restaurant, private tasting rooms, offices and viewing spaces spread over 5 floors. d'Arry (left) and Chester (right)◆ Setting the scene Chester says: “In 1987 I was already chief winemaker, so most of the changes in the winemaking over the last 30 years are from when have been around. 1985 was the year of the government vine pull scheme because of a grape surplus, and people were being paid $2000 a hectare topfull out their vines. So, it was a pretty hard time, though it mostly affected wineries north of Adelaide. In the mid-80s grape prices were the same across the board, even for great vineyards with old, low-yielding vines, whereas today there are significant variables for pricing in quality to reflect the great vineyards. So, a lot of the older, low-yielding vineyards disappeared during the scheme. Chester (left) and d'Arry (right) in 1980◆ 30 years in the vineyard "I suppose in the vineyard we did change about 20 years ago. Returned vineyard back to the more old-fashioned processes that dad was doing. When dad joined the company in 1943, he only had 4 Clydesdales horses to work the vineyard, and could never keep up with trying to cultivate the weeds. When he got a tractor about 5 years later, he was pretty happy about that because he could kill all the weeds. And then 20 years ago I said to him we are going to stop cultivation because I think it is actually destroying the soil, and stop fertilizer, and stop irrigation where we can. He replied: we should sell the vineyard now while we can get something for it. ʼBut he was quite surprised that my ideas held up, that the vines still survived without fertilizer and irrigation, and we were making better quality grapes as we went from flagons and casks to all 750ml bottles, and expanded the range over those 30 years to really high-quality wines. In the vineyards, giving up herbicides and fertilizers led to becoming certified organic and biodynamic as well, and enabled us to explore the different expressions of terroir. Today, we're the biggest bio dynamic viticultural producer in Australia. ”■ The maturing of vines" We have many vines that are 50, 80 and 100 years old, and the show a stronger geological expression than the younger vines. 30 years ago, the 50-year old vines were only 20 years old, so over time their maturing hashed a major impact on the mineral and earthy characters of the wine. The 100-year old vines are very strong geologically, showing intense earth, iron and soot characters, the tannins are much more closed, restrained and tight, tough and interesting – there is quite a difference to making great wines reflective of the geology.”Dead Arm Shiraz vines are over 100 years old■ The growth in grape varieties “In 1987, we had the traditional whites of the time – Palomino, Pedro, Doradillo, and Chenin Blanc, which we subsequently got rid of. We started planting Chardonnay in the early 1980s, and Sauvignon Blanc was starting to go in. We had a lot of Riesling. Shiraz and Cabernet were the main reds in McLaren Vale at the time, closely followed by Grenache and Mouvedre, and really there wasn't a lot of playing around with other varieties in those days. In 1989 I planted Chambourcy in a difficult vineyard where the Shiraz Had died, and then started looking at other varieties. With the Red wine boom in the mid-90s I thought that we should be looking at Rhone whites and not Chardonnay and Riesling. All our growers were planting Shiraz because that was the boom, but with fear of oversupply I suggested they plant Viognier as a white, and after a few years we had 140 acres of Viognier planted in McLaren Vale, and we hadn't actually made a Viognier to know if it worked! We had the largest plantings in the southern hemisphere, so were lucky that it did work out, and today our No. 1 selling white wine is the Viognier Marsanne Hermit Crab. In the 1990s we planted a lot of other varieties, Tempranillo, Tinto Cio, Scarantino, Cinsault, Grenache, and more recently Italian varieties like Sangiovese and Arneis. Now we are up to 37 varieties.” ◆ 30 years in the winery ― “At first glance not much has changed, we are still basket pressing everything and using old oak fermenters. Before 1987 I had already introduced inert gases and yeast technologies for the white wines so not much change there. Today dʼArenberg is one of the largest users of basket presses in the world. Everything is basket pressed in 10 presses – one is 200 years old, one is 100 years old, and the rest we copied and made ourselves except with stainless steel slats. They are small 2-tonne presses which let us crush every hour to keep the freshness of the fruit. 2t basket pressesCompared to having around 20 fermenters 30 years ago, today, we have 240 small fermenters that we keep separate, and also use a lot more oak. We weren't really using a lot of oak for the reds and Chardonnay in the1980s – much of it was cask wine. Now we have 10,000 barrels on-site, and each fermenter produces 14-barrel lots, and the ferment is finished in the barrel. This means we follow parts of vineyards all the way through the process to blending. It is quite an intense program of making wine in a small-scale way, on a big scale. We bought our first Demoisy crusher, which is softer on the fruit, in 1987. Before that we had a beater crusher which was much more aggressive, so that was the beginning of making much more fragrant elegant whites. In 2009 we bought a modified Velo crusher which gives a softer crush for our reds, which means we can leave our skins in contact with the grapes for an extra 15% to get more tannins, which are also different, and less broken seeds or stalks. So, 2009 onwards, the reds are more graceful foraging, more flowery length, and better wines. So, I guess we have seen significant changes!” Foot treading ■ The evolving use of oak When we first started making wines 30 years ago, we used the same AP John oak that Grange was using, a coarse oak with quite strong character. Gradually we found more elegant oaks, and at times cheaper American oak. Nowadays, we only use French oak, with a really light toast that is specific tours, not trying to get any of the caramel character that confuses the flavor of the vine and variety, and the soil characters – we don't want to overpower any of that – we want the elegance of the middle part of the palate to be flowery and elegant like a Bordeaux does, not filling it up with oak. ”◆ The wine market and exports“ 30 years ago, wines were still described in general terms, there was only Port, Claret, Burgundy, Moselle, Hock and Sherry. Suddenly, Australia was all varietals which made a huge difference to sales, once the new wine drinkers discovered Shiraz was different from Cabernet and so on. It is also when the Australian wine industry really took off on exports. So in 1989 we changed the Burgundy to dʼArryʼs Original – Grenache was a dirty word in the 70s, and really in the 80s it started to popup on labels and journalists got interested. It was a gradual evolution – we just started calling our wines new names, beginning with Olive Grove in 1985. It was followed by High Trellis Cabernet and Ironstone Pressings in 1987, Dead Arm in 1993 and the Coppermine in 1995, and then we expanded the range gradually as we had more and more higher quality grapes, and we introduced other wines at different price points. dʼArenbergʼs first significant export was in the late 80s, a container of Old Vines Shiraz 1985 sent to the Netherlands. The first shipments to Village Cellars were in 1996, and today we export to over 80 countries around the world.”