Allowing a wine to express its sense of place is vital to Adam Carnaby’s vision for winemaking and never has it been more important than during his tenure at Seppelt.
There is a delicious irony in the timing of the judges’ decision to acknowledge the part that Adam Carnaby played in revitalising the Grampians reds of Seppelt, lifting the profile of the shiraz from Mount Ida and Bendigo, and the Drumborg wines from Henty in far western Victoria. The nomination of Carnaby as a finalist in this year’s Gourmet Traveller WINE Winemaker of the Year Awards coincides with Treasury Wine Estate’s (TWE) decision to close the winemaking facility at Great Western. It would appear to us that economic rather than winemaking considerations underpin this move. Having said that, we are delighted that TWE have decided to keep open the cellar door and historic drives.
As a teenager, Carnaby was primarily interested in science and so it was not surprising that he chose to study that at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). By the time he was two-thirds of the way through his chemistry degree he started to wonder whether that was exactly what he wanted to do.
His father, John, was interested in wine and had shared his love of traditional Australian wines with Carnaby as he grew up. Part-time jobs in hospitality and a girlfriend who was a “wine nut” accelerated an incipient interest in wine. A job as bar manager at the Melbourne Hilton convinced him that this was his path. He asked one of his former university lecturers how he could get involved in the wine industry and this led to him applying to do the wine science degree at Charles Sturt University.
While studying at Charles Sturt he did vintage at Tarrawarra and Punt Road in the Yarra Valley before obtaining an assistant winemaker job with Tom Carson at Yering Station. Carnaby learnt a great deal in six years there. “Tom is tough but once you earn his respect a whole new world opens up, especially tasting the great European wines,” he says. “You realise that you can learn from these without wanting to replicate them. Because of this experience, when I was looking for natural balance in the Drumborg rieslings, I wasn’t afraid to leave a small amount of residual sugar as the Germans do as a matter of course. I believe this has made them more approachable.”
In 2007, a move to Xanadu in Margaret River, one of the Rathbone Group’s other wineries, offered new challenges. Apart from learning from Glenn Goodall’s masterly touch with chardonnay and cabernet, he learnt about handling a winery in transition from the old ways to the streamlined world of the Rathbones. Being familiar with the operating of a large winery has been vital in his role at Seppelt. Equally important was the skill he learnt at Xanadu of recognising the right moment to pick grapes. “If you do this they retain the regionality and personality of the vineyard,” he explains.
Carnaby took on the role of senior winemaker at Seppelt, based at Great Western, in 2011. One of the great challenges for the Seppelt winemakers has been monitoring vineyards that are spread over almost 400 kilometres from Drumborg to Heathcote. He gives credit to the viticulturists. The vineyard at Mount Ida, for example, has been revitalised over the last six years to give it greater consistency and evenness and ensure that the crops are in balance. He sees Drumborg as an almost mystical place and wondered why Karl Seppelt planted such a tough site in 1964, until he saw the quality, purity and freshness of the grapes.
Shiraz is a central focus for Seppelt with the iconic St Peters vineyard providing the winery’s flagship red. Carnaby loves its medium-bodied texture and minerally, graphite tannins while appreciating Heathcote’s Mount Ida with its fine, powdery and warmer climate crunchy raspberry and dark plum flavours. He allows his wines to express a sense of the place from which they come and they are much more complete because of this.