Shaun Crinion didn’t exactly grow up surrounded by a strong wine culture. Although today the Sunshine Coast does have an expanding wine-growing industry, that wasn’t exactly the case when Crinion was growing up in the ’80s. Sand, sunshine and the like were the order of the day, with the only vinous connection being his uncle, who was making wine around the world. It seems Crinion did have wine in his blood, though, with the beach culture of the Sunshine Coast leading him to a winemaking career via a surfing trip to California and Mexico when he was 18.
Crinion’s uncle was working at Laetitia Winery & Vineyards, in San Luis Obispo, which gave him some gainful employment over vintage to support his wave habit. It also gave him a taste for both wine and winemaking. As Crinion says, “I was hooked.” What followed was a classically peripatetic journey for a young winemaker, with a decade spent work extensively across three continents, including at Williams Selyem in the Russian River Valley, and Domaine de Montille in Burgundy, as well as back home at Domaine Chandon, Houghtons, Bay of Fires, Devil’s Lair and De Bortoli, amongst others. During all of this, somehow he also managed to complete his Wine Science degree at Charles Sturt University, graduating in 2005.
That constant wandering eventually led to Crinion settling on the Yarra Valley as his base, with forays into both the Mornington Peninsula and Macedon filling out his cool-climate roster of wines. When he first launched his own label, he started with a very simple notion: “Dappled was started in 2009 with the view to make high quality unadulterated wines from special patches of dirt at realistic prices.”
At present he sources his fruit from strong relationships with small growers, but the future is pitched towards a home vineyard, with organic and biodynamic principles at its heart. Crinion focuses firmly on pinot noir and chardonnay, though with meaningful forays into syrah and gewürztraminer. Winemaking is simple and traditional, and never prescriptive, with no adds bar sulphur, and no fining or filtration for both reds and whites.
Emerging out of the Penfolds winemaking graduate program, then going on to spend some considerable time working in the Southcorp machine, while also inadvertently becoming somewhat of a poster child for the Parker-driven American fascination for South Australian red wine, it would be easy to make some assumptions about the kind of wines Corinna Wright…
Dan Graham’s Sigurd has been helping to redefine the Barossa Valley since 2012, with fruit picked earlier to capture freshness, then made with a minimal-intervention approach and no additions bar sulphur at bottling. Now also working with grapes from the Riverland, Adelaide Hills and Clare Valley, Graham makes varietal wines – chardonnay, riesling, chenin blanc, carignan and syrah – as well as complex white, rosé and red blends, with judicious amounts of whole bunch and skin contact employed to create complex, complete wines that are as focused on elegant flavour as they are on texture and structural detail.
Chris Carpenter grew up on the family vineyard, Lark Hill. And but for a science degree that got diverted to wine science, as well as vintages with Penfolds and Seppeltsfield, that’s more or less where he has remained. Working primarily with chardonnay, pinot noir, riesling and grüner veltliner from their cool site, as well as…
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