AS the 2012 wine grape harvest gathers momentum this week, a special milestone is being reached at Brokenwood winery – Iain Riggs’s 30th Hunter vintage.
It is special because Iain Leslie Riggs, just ‘‘Riggsie’’ to his legion of wine industry friends, has had an inspirational impact on Brokenwood and the Hunter, national and international wine scene.
He is an ideas man with the extraordinary ability to implement his ideas.
His acute wine palate is in great demand for wine show judging and, while recently retiring from his 10-year stint as Hunter Valley Wine Show chief judge, he remains chairman of judges at the Sydney Wine Show, the Margaret River Wine Show and the Shanghai International Wine Challenge.
As Brokenwood’s managing director-chief winemaker, he has made it a breeding ground of exceptional wine talent.
In 1997 he established the Brokenwood Prize at the University of Adelaide’s wine school, which gives the second-year oenology course dux a place in the vintage team at Brokenwood.
He is a convener and tutor of the Hunter-based Len Evans Tutorial, which each year runs an intensive wine course for 12 selected young wine professionals and enthusiasts.
He was an instigator of the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Living Legends awards and in 2003 received the Graham Gregory Trophy, an annual prize for outstanding contributions to the NSW industry.
He was deputy chairman of Wine Australia for seven years, a president of the Australian Winemakers’ Forum and a board member of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia.
Iain’s 1982 arrival at Pokolbin as a ginger-haired, fresh-faced 28-year-old was a propitious event for Brokenwood and the Hunter.
Born in Burra, South Australia, in 1955, Iain’s first youthful insight into wine came through relatives who lived in the Riverland.
An encounter with a bottle of Leo Buring 1970 DW110 Riesling convinced him that winemaking was the career for him.
That led to study at Roseworthy College between 1972 and 1975 and a graduation with honours.
Then came jobs at Bleasedale in Langhorne Creek and Hazelmere in McLaren Vale.
With public taste swinging away from red, Iain’s efforts as chief winemaker at Hazelmere stamped him as an exceptional talent. Hazelmere sparked his interest in multi-varietal whites and he was a pioneer of sauvignon blanc and semillon blends.
In 1982 his trophy-winning Hazelmere chardonnay won him the title of McLaren Vale Bushing King, which was followed by the offer of the job as Brokenwood’s first full-time chief winemaker. Brokenwood had been launched in 1970 and for 10years produced only red wine.
It was run by a group of weekend hobbyists, headed by lawyers Tony Albert, James Halliday and John Beeston.
The wines were made by a three-man committee of shareholders comprising Halliday, Beeston and marine biologist-turned wine writer and consultant Nick Bulleid.
The maiden 1973 vintage grapes rode in the boot of Len Evans’s Bentley for processing at Rothbury Estate winery.
Arriving at Pokolbin in 1982 and taking on his first Hunter vintage in the newly completed winery in 1983, Iain quickly revved up Brokenwood white winemaking.
In the 1983 vintage, production levels changed to 70per cent white wine and 30per cent red.
To try to compensate for more difficult Hunter Valley vintages, as well as continuing a long-held Australian winemaking tradition, Iain led Brokenwood into a program of multiregional production from 1978.
Victoria’s Beechworth area was seen as one of the most exciting new prospects and Iain and Brokenwood helped with the establishment of the Indigo vineyard in the late 1990s.
Today Beechworth Indigo fruit, along with grapes from McLaren Vale and the Orange, go into Brokenwood’s output.
The Hunter is, however, still Brokenwood’s heartland and provides its two flagship wines, the Graveyard vineyard shiraz reds and the ILR (Iain Leslie Riggs) reserve semillon whites.
The Graveyards were recently elevated to the top-level ‘‘exceptional’’ ranking in the Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine, the only Hunter shiraz wines included.
He may have reached his 30th Hunter vintage, but Iain Riggs’s innovative spirit is undiminished.
It was that spirit which led to the creation of the super-premium Hunter-McLaren Vale blend HBA shiraz wines, named in honour of Brokenwood founders Halliday, Beeston and Albert.
And later this year Brokenwood will plant pinot noir cuttings from vines planted by the legendary Maurice O’Shea at McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant vineyard.
The aim is to make pinot noir-shiraz blends that replicate the much-loved Mount Pleasant pinot hermitage wines of yesteryear.
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