Her love affair with Champagne began during a year living in France, and resulted in Australia gaining a sparkling specialist who also has quite a knack with table wine.
A gap year spent in France after finishing the first year of her agricultural science degree at the University of Western Australia has had a huge influence on Kate Laurie’s career. The family she lived with told her that the local Lycee Viticole d’Avize offered a few scholarships to foreign students and encouraged her to apply. This led to her completing a two-year advanced diploma in viticulture and oenology, writing a thesis in French (that almost 20 years later astounds her) and gaining experience at Champagne Doyard Mahé in Vertus, Domaine Oury Schreiber in Bassu (Vitry) and Champagne Sanger in Avize.
This was a far cry from Laurie’s upbringing in the leafy Perth suburb of Nedlands. Her father, engineer Syd Hooker, would no doubt claim some credit for the path she has taken. He had bought a farm, which he called Stone Bridge Estate, about 20 kilometres from Manjimup on the Rocky Gully Road in 1988 and, because of his interest in wine, planted vines the following year. Laurie remembers reluctantly hoeing between the vines as a teenager.
Laurie took on the role of winemaker when Stone Bridge Estate began to make wines in the mid-1990s. She does recall that the life of a self-taught winemaker was somewhat stressful. During her time in France she flew back each year to do vintage at Stone Bridge Estate, which had cabernet, merlot, malbec, cabernet franc, shiraz and sangiovese. She produced a well-regarded, complex cabernet blend as well as 300 to 400 dozen bottles of bubbly made from chardonnay and pinot noir.
The winery established markets on the eastern seaboard and so Laurie spent time on the road and at trade days selling wine. Stone Bridge Estate shared a distributor with Hillstowe and this was how she met Hamish Laurie. A move to the Adelaide Hills followed and the two later married.
The Hillstowe label was sold by the Laurie family and Hamish and Kate started Deviation Road. As they built the brand, Laurie juggled having Eliza (12), Emily (11) and Annabelle (7); completing a Bachelor of Medical Science at Flinders University; and working in the Ophthalmology Department at the Flinders Medical Centre studying genetic links to eye diseases.
Her father offered Laurie the sparkling winemaking equipment sourced from Champagne for Stone Bridge Estate. This enabled her to take control of the entire process at Deviation Road, allowing her to produce 200-dozen bottles of bubbles in 2008. As well as making the wine at both Stone Bridge Estate and Deviation Road, Laurie does all the cellar work, laboratory analyses and bottling, and is involved in vineyard establishment and management.
Sparkling wine makes up about half of the Deviation Road production with small amounts of Beltana and Altair and significant volumes of the vintage chardonnay pinot noir Loftia. Production of bubbly has risen so that 3,500-dozen bottles are currently on tirage.
For the Lauries, the key to their sparkling wines is the sourcing from high-altitude vines, mostly from their Deviation Road vineyard. The wines are exceptional: 2010 Beltana is bright, vibrant and youthful with a fine thread of natural acidity providing structure in the mid-palate and a crisp zestiness to its finish. It is a bubbly of wonderful intensity and impressive finesse. The NV Altair Rosé has delightful strawberries and cream aromatics, full-throttle flavours, and a taut, dry finish that lingers. The 2013 Loftia shows gentle white flower aromatics, and great concentration and body on the mid-palate which is balanced by bright, zippy acidity to finish.
“There is something very challenging about making sparkling wine that draws me back to it each year,” states Laurie. “While all winemaking is a craft using both science and art, traditional method sparkling pushes that to the next level. Every decision impacts 10 other decisions down the track. Once you think you’ve nailed the technical aspects, the effect on the sensory attributes from the second fermentation and time on lees reminds you it is all magic in the end. It is truly very exciting when you watch a wine develop over a couple of years, and the day I pop the cork and finally see that it has worked reminds me why I do what I do.”