The genteel ladies presiding at Lisa McGuigan’s former Swiss finishing school might well be astonished at the Down Under product of their endeavours, far away now in the Australian wine growing region of the Hunter Valley.
Displaying a heavy goth influence, McGuigan has created the arresting Vamp Wine Rooms and an eponymous cellar door in her home domain of Pokolbin, in the heart of the vineyard country now poised to mark its 200th anniversary. It’s the country’s oldest wine growing region.
Hunter Valley 200th birthday
Scotsman James Busby, who studied viticulture in France before migrating to Sydney in 1824, planted the first grape vines four years later on his grant of 2000 acres [800ha] in the valley. (Busby, history records, was dissatisfied with life in the colony and by four years further on had established himself in New Zealand, where he also planted the country’s first cultivated vines, on land near Waitangi).
Two centuries later, here, Lisa McGuigan is a new generation of wine pioneer, one the Swiss matrons – educators of nobility in the art of polished individuality – would in fact be proud of. Wine royalty herself, McGuigan is the daughter of local pioneer Brian McGuigan, eminent Hunter Valley Legend and premium winemaker and exporter, responsible for much of the region’s past tradition and prosperity.
But the style of her own offering is a motif for a new way of wine that’s happening in the Hunter. More outré than others, it’s at the avant-garde of the range of change. Even in the branding of her company, Lisa McGuigan Wines, some letters of her name are reversed, as if to warn; “we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
A modern twist on a winery
Enter into Vamp and become enveloped in an environment of ink-like ebony tones highlighted by metallics: a vast black hole of a space soaring so high it’s hard to make out the peak; a black and silver tapestry of a crest and stylised claymores rising six metres tall on a facing “altar”; a medieval-style circular chandelier the size of a cartwheel, the pendant flame-lit around its massive circumference.
All in an enormous, overwhelming room with shimmering chainmail drapes screening tasting/dining areas, and displays of leather and bronze gladiator armour and fearsome medieval helmets and swords.
The atmosphere of determined originality attests to McGuigan’s novel way of winemaking: it’s pushing boundaries and sourcing unconventional grape varieties, she says, using non-traditional techniques and firing the fermentation with, for example, hemp seeds.
Perfectly paired
When she entertains to showcase and promote her product, complementary offerings speak to her sassy new direction: there’s a makeup artist garbed in black lace, offering his cosmetic skills along with matching wines, styled as “Makeup and Mercato”; a random thermidor, mid-floor, with serve-yourself $100 Cuban-style cigars; and a surprising pairing: forget wine and cheese, the latest combo is wine and cheesecake.
Golf ball-size confections known as Shots are encased in tempered chocolate (white, milk or dark, as suits its partner wine), concealing a crumbly biscuit base topped by cheesecake, and flavourings such as lemon, dulce de leche caramel and raspberry sauce.
The delectable morsels are served matched with prosecco, pinot gris and cabernet merlot. Oysters undergo a transformation too: in the guise of Boozy Spoons, the chilled delights are released from their shell and lavished with strawberry-scented rosé granita and mandarin vodka sorbet.
The Hunter Valley is changing
As in many industries where times have changed, depending on established practices has proven inadequate to sustain the future. Excessive corporatisation, a drive to quantity affecting quality, wine gluts, and geopolitical issues such as Chinese trade embargoes are some of the influences that have underscored Australian wine’s need to find a new direction. Overseas marketing is a uniquely confronting challenge.
Meanwhile, domestically, experiential travel is seen as the essential way now. Visitors to the valley – no longer content merely to taste at the cellar door and take away a carton or two of wine – seek, demand, immersion in the culture: what makes it all tick, the personalities; the whys and wherefores of grape growing, wine making and wine marketing, and consumption; and, above all, novelty and enjoyment.
One such manifestation is renewed support for and the promotion of boutique producers who love, and live, their product, by contrast with the commodification of the big corporations that work on bulk volume and thus have generated the gluts affecting prices, as well as international reputational damage for the generally poorer quality of their mass-produced output.
McGuigan legacy
Lisa McGuigan’s uncle Neil McGuigan is also a Hunter Valley Legend, graduate of South Australia’s eminent wine alma mater, Roseworthy Agricultural College, and long-time maker of the finest of award-winning valley wines. He supports his niece’s eclectic endeavours, yet simultaneously is an advocate of the old ways – a “return to the past” avenue of change paying respect to individuality, and to “the smaller guys” who started it all, before becoming engulfed by agglomeration.
Reaching out in this new – renewed – way, Neil McGuigan heads up the earnest ongoing stimulation of the valley’s boutique wineries as chief judge of the annual Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show, where more than 300 local wines were entered this year.
Plenty of choice
Elsewhere in the valley, winemaker Declan McCaffrey has just launched Winemaker for a Day – the opportunity for small groups to learn hands-on to blend their own wine, plucking samples from barrels of merlot, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon pressings. Guests use pipettes and measuring jugs to precisely mix the crimson liquids, taste, reject, modify – until satisfied to bottle their own creations, with their own label.
At Jen Nicita’s cooking school, Our Italian Table, visitors make, roll and cook their own pasta, then dine on their creations at an open-air long table overlooking the panorama of the valley … but, also, may well be invited to inspect a line-up of classic cars housed on the estate: Jen’s Italian husband Vince is an avid Maserati aficionado.
And over the way at Gartelmann Wines, a range of tapas to teach the Spanish a thing or dos is offered by owner Matt Dillow, with a pedigree that’s made him one of Australia’s leading chefs. Adults can enjoy a glass and feast on an elevated deck overlooking a lake, where they can watch their children interacting with diversions such as horses, chickens and petting llamas.
Now, above all, it’s no longer the bulk buys but the warmth, sincere welcome, the connection, enthusiasm and individuality – never a hallmark of the wine monoliths – that are capturing and captivating Hunter visitors, marvelling at many remarkable personal encounters in intimate, genuine, laughter-filled experiences with the valley’s boutique wine fraternity, re-emerging energetically towards their third century.
Images by Susie Boswell
