High ranking marks another vintage year

HEATHCOTE wine maker Ron Laughton does not make large volumes of his acclaimed shiraz.

Yet his Jasper Hill Georgia’s Paddock shiraz is the 20th most collected wine in Australia. Georgia’s Paddock is the highest-ranked wine from central Victoria in Wine Ark’s catalogue of most collected wines.

Wine Ark is a large professional wine storage company.

“I’m always proud of these achievements,” Mr Laughton said.

“We don’t make very much wine and it’s my 29th vintage so I’m a bit blaseaac about it now. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and love being there.”

Mr Laughton has a simple philosophy: he cultivates his grapes bio-dynamically.

“My philosophy is to do as little as possible,” he said.

“If I want my wines to reflect the place then every time I do something to that place, like putting out fertiliser, I’m changing the place.

“Irrigation is part of changing the place as well; if you go back to first principles, the grapevine, the gum tree, the rose tree and every other member of the plant kingdom evolved without man tipping a bucket to water on it.”

He also exploits the deep red soil that drew him to the area.

After working as a food scientist in Europe, he returned to his native Victoria and, acting on a hunch, planted shiraz in the untried Heathcote area in 1977.

“After being exposed to wines in Europe, Australian wines weren’t exciting enough for me and I was brash enough to think I could do better,” he said.

This gamble paid off and Jasper Hill wines feature prominently in international books such as Bettane and Desseauve: The World’s Greatest Wines and 1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die.

And his grape-growing skills are not restricted to Australia.

During a barbecue at his home several years ago, renowned French winemaker Michel Chapoutier put forward a proposition.

“Because of strict laws in France, Michel could no longer experiment with his wine, so he came to Australia to explore,” Mr Laughton said.

The two bought a property together and now produce a wine from Mr Laughton’s shiraz and some from Mr Chapoutier’s Syrah - these were cultivated from cuttings that spent four years in Australian quarantine.

“The partnership turned full circle when I went to France to experiment,” Mr Laughton said.

“The pair of us bought a vineyard in the south of France near the Spanish border.”