Wine Only Made In The Good Years

John developed an operational understanding of the winemaking process, with invaluable tuition from Mitchelton’s senior winemaker Don Lewis and winemaker Toby Barlow. Don was a highly regarded for producing some of the country’s best Rieslings and Rhone Valley wine styles. During his time in the cellar, John developed a strong understanding of all operations and processes involved in producing both commercial and premium red and white wines.

In late 2010, John joined Rosemount Estate as a member of their winemaking team. His learning curve was steep, guided by Matt Koch, Andrew Locke, Randall Cummins, Trevor Tucker and Priscilla Buckley, as well as very experienced cellar and lab teams. Over four years, the brand became the most highly awarded in Australia, winning medals for over 80% of the wines entered in wine shows, including over 20% Gold medals, where the national average is 6% Gold.

For the 2015 vintage at Penfolds in the Barossa Valley, John took on the role of vintage/nightshift winemaker for one of the world’s most iconic wine brands. Early in the harvest, John frequented Penfolds vineyards and assisted in harvest grading and timing, before making the switch to managing nightshift winemaking responsibilities and built a strong rapport with not only the Penfolds winemaking team, but also worked very closely with the cellar and lab teams while there.

John’s love of fortified wines was further enhanced during his time at Penfolds, by shadowing the fortified winemaking team of James Godfrey and Matt Woo, and becoming involved in grading and classification tastings, operational decisions and protocols as well as final blending and bottling preparation of some of the grandest and oldest port wines Australia produces.

As Research Winemaker for WIC Winemaking Services, John oversees 20–100kg parcels of fruit carrying out small batch winemaking in the interest of viticultural and winegrape research. He has been responsible for developing and implementing specific winemaking protocols to assist the research organisations maximise their outcomes and provide value back to industry. John’s clients include both University of Adelaide and AWRI, as well as CSIRO, state Department of Agriculture bodies and some external commercial client.