We’ve been busy organising activities, finessing events and finalising details for the arrival of nine IWSC Judges in Margaret River Wine Region early next week.
Margaret River wineries have submitted their selection of red, white, sparkling and rosé wines for the IWSC Judging committee.
We are very excited to host the Judges in the Margaret River Region. This year, the IWSC judges have judged in-situ programs with South Africa, Argentina, Turkey, Austria and Georgia. Margaret River is the only wine region in the world where the in situ judging will focus solely on a region rather than an entire nation.
Showcasing the stunning Margaret River Region
But it’s not all about wine.
Over the six-day stay in the region, the judges will visit some of our most breathtaking locations, including places of cultural significance for the Wadandi People.
It’s a unique opportunity for the judges to encounter the region and gain an appreciation of what makes it so special.
While here, the Judges will participate in Masterclasses and tastings in situ at the wineries, where the winemakers will take them on a deep dive of Margaret River’s key varieties, organic wines and sparkling.
They will also have a chance to discover the quality produce and meet the chefs at our finest venues, including Ben Jacob of Lagoon Yallingup, Aaron Carr of Yarri Restaurant and Bar, and Ben Day of Cullen Wines.
Judging will take place over three days at Clairault Streicker, with results announced on the final day of judging at a sundowner hosted by Vasse Felix.
Who is the IWSC?
Established in 1969, the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) is renowned for assessing wines and spirits.
The distinguished organisation comprises expert judges and enthusiasts who conduct blind tastings to evaluate global submissions. In addition, they organise events, workshops, and educational activities to spread the love for wines and spirits and foster understanding of these beverages.
Its core objective is recognising exceptional quality and authenticity in the industry. Winning an IWSC medal holds significant prestige, boosting the reputation of wine and spirit producers.
The IWSC plays an essential role in maintaining and elevating industry standards in the world of wines and spirits.
Meet the Judges
Alistair Cooper MW is an independent British wine writer, judge, consultant and educator with over 20 years of experience in the industry. He writes for JancisRobinson.com and regularly contributes to several publications, including Club Oenologique and Decanter. Alistair is also the global consultant wine buyer for the Sydney-based Australian company United Cellars, Australia’s largest independent wine merchant.
Freddy Bulmer is a veteran IWSC judge and wine buyer for The Wine Society, the world’s oldest wine club, where he’s responsible for The Wine Society’s portfolio of wines. He also contributes a monthly column to OllySmith.com and judges in numerous wine competitions. Freddy strongly believes that wine should, first and foremost, be about having fun.
Melania Battiston traded a career in marketing for one in wine, swapping university for the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) and Court of Master Sommelier (MS) exams. She’s now sizing up what it takes to become an MS. After working as Head sommelier/wine buyer at Medlar, Melania is now the Junior Food & Beverage manager at Aman Resorts. In 2022, she won the Young Sommelier Competition and was number 3 on Harper’s Top 25 Sommeliers in the UK.
Libby Brodie is the founder of London-based independent wine consultancy Bacchus & Brodie, co-founder of The Wine Collective and City AM’s dedicated wine columnist with her regular “Wine Without The Snobbery” page. Libby is a qualified wine consultant and self-proclaimed “wine translator” with a passion for accessible, entertaining wine communication. She regularly moderates and hosts panels and events, sources and curates wines for private clients, and guest lectures at Universities on Wine Communication.
Beth Pearce MW is the Buying Director for Lay & Wheeler, one of Britain’s longest-standing fine wine merchants. Before that, she spent ten years at Majestic Wine, initially managing stores in the UK’s South West, followed by five years in the buying team at Majestic Wine, sourcing wines, beers and spirits from around the world for their 200 stores. Beth became a Master of Wine in February 2020 and, in September 2021, won the ‘Outstanding Young Person award at the Vintner’s Company.
Chris Crawford is Group General Manager of Beverage at Crown Resorts (Melbourne, Perth & Sydney). Chris is a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers (UK and USA) and a past president of Sommeliers Australia. He is also a senior judge at various regional and capital wine shows and the outgoing chair of the Yarra Valley Wine Show and James Halliday Chardonnay and Cabernet Challenge.
Randall Pollard is a Roseworthy (Wine Production & Marketing) Graduate. Since 1999, Randall has been an importer and merchant of fine wines for Melbourne-based Heart& Soil Imports and Randall’s Fine Wines. He’s judged in Australian Capital City Shows widely since 1987 and smaller regional shows since the 1990s. Randall regularly visits many European wine producers, tasting and learning each year. He is a regular tutor at the Len Evans Tutorial.
Emma Farrelly is Director of Wine for the State Buildings & Como The Treasury, where she curates unique wine lists and wine events for each of the award-winning restaurants. For over 19 years, Emma’s passion for the wine industry has produced award-winning wine lists across top venues in Perth. For two years, Emma studied under the guidance of Dr Steve Charters, Master of Wine. Since then, Emma has worked as a Sommelier and consulted on various wine lists and menus, earning her recognition through numerous awards.
Erin Larkin is an independent wine writer and communicator based in Perth. In 2012, Erin left her successful fashion career and moved into the Wine business, where she is now a writer, judge, and presenter. She reviews Australian and New Zealand wines for Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and contributes to publications, including The Wine Companion magazine and Gourmet Traveller Wine. Erin is also WSET Level 3 qualified and is a Barossa Wine School Specialist educator. In 2022, she was accepted as a scholar in the prestigious Len Evans Tutorial.
A NEW VOICES STORY by Dianne Bortoletto
Italians have left an indelible mark in all corners of the globe, shaping human history and modern culture from arts to science, inventions to architecture and of course, food and wine. In Margaret River, Dianne Bortoletto looks at some Italian influences that add to the region’s story.
Cherubino Wines
Driving into Cherubino Wines, you could pretend you were in Tuscany; the gravel driveway meanders alongside rows of vines toward a two-story Tuscan-looking cellar door, the surrounding garden adorned with large ceramic pots, Cyprus pines and olive trees.
Owner and winemaker Larry Cherubino, a first-generation Italian, explained how his family came to be in Australia, and like many immigrant stories, it’s marred with struggles.
“Grandad immigrated from Calabria in 1939 with the view of setting up a farm in Logue Brook Dam just outside of Harvey (about 90 minutes south of Perth),” Larry said.
“When he left Italy, my grandmother was pregnant with my mum, and the aim was for her to immigrate to Australia as soon as possible. But then the Second World War broke, out and Italy was initially an enemy, and he was rounded up and put in an internment camp.
“It was ten years before my grandmother and mother could come to Australia. My mum was ten years old when she met her father.”
Also born in Calabria, southern Italy, Larry’s father immigrated to Australia in the late 1950s as a 12-year-old boy making the long, arduous boat journey alone to be reunited with an older brother, one of Larry’s uncles, who was already in Perth.
“I’ve still got relatives in Reggio, Calabria. I’m not that close to them these days, but it’s funny when I go back there, there’s lots of familiar-looking people!”
Image: Tuscan influenced architecture of Cherubino Wine’s Margaret River vineyards and cellar door.
Larry, who has 30 years of experience in the wine industry, has spent a lot of time in Tuscany, where Chianti is his drop of choice, and about five years working in Sicily.
“My Italian heritage is a big part of what we what we do and how we go about it,” the father of three said. My grandad had three acres and every inch of those three acres was planted with tomatoes or something you could eat. Yes, we make wine, but we’re ultimately farmers, we grew up on the land and I really put a heavy emphasis on the way we grow and the way we farm, great wine starts in the vineyard. From a winemaking point of view, what’s most important is that everything we make has to be really sympathetic to food.”
When it comes to food, Cherubino Wines has already carved a name for itself in Perth with a slick city cellar and recently opened a 50-seat restaurant Frui Momento, Latin for ‘enjoy the moment’, next door to their Margaret River cellar door.
In Margaret River, Cherubino Wines has 40 hectares under vine, where the focus is predominately Chardonnay, a varietal the region is renowned for. They also have 60 hectares in Pemberton (about two hours south-east of Margaret River), and 100 hectares in Frankland River in the Great Southern (about three hours east) where they grow Italian varietal Fiano. Cherubino Wines were responsible for bringing the first cuttings of Fiano into Western Australia and now boast the oldest and largest Fiano plantings in the state.
Cherubino Wines produces other Italian varietals, notably Nebbiolo, which Larry describes as getting better with every year, as well as white Arneis that originates from Piemonte.
Of the 25,000 cases produced each year, Cherubino Wines exports close to 30 per cent to Europe, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia.
Credaro Wines
One of the oldest names in wine in Margaret River is Credaro, a pioneering family who first started making wine for family and friends 100 years ago, an Italian table wine called Fragola.
Cesare Credaro arrived on the SS Omar from Naples into Fremantle, Western Australia in 1921. With his brother Olympio he moved to the northern part of what is now the Margaret River Wine Region, working on the land to cut sleepers by hand for the railways.
Living frugally and saving all they could, the brothers had an opportunity to conditionally purchase 146 acres (59 hectares) for 500 pounds from the Government, on condition that they had to continue to cut sleepers and thus clear the land for farming. Robert Credaro, Cesare’s grandson, still has the broad axe his grandfather used.
“They had saw pits where they’d roll a big log over and there’d be one guy above and one below in the pit sawing by hand, that’s how they did it,” said father-of-five Robert, who is now semi-retired.
Initially potato and sheep farmers, the Credaro family first planted a commercial crop of vines in 1988, supplying grapes to other wineries. In 2003, Credaro Wines built a winery and established their own label soon after.
“We also farm pomegranates, avocados and a new breed of sheep, with 2,000 breeding ewes,” Robert said.
Over the last hundred years, the Credaro empire and family has grown, but the business remains family-run with the fourth generation now at the helm. The eldest of the four sons and Credaro Wines operations manager, Matt Credaro, works alongside his twin brothers Mike and Chris, while brother Jason, a qualified winemaker, has moved into brewing, but is still involved in the family business.
Image: Three generations of the Credaro family in the vineyards at Woolston A
“Being a part of the family business is great and a privilege, I enjoy working with my family and my brothers,” Matt said. “I’m not sure my daughters will follow the family tradition of being out on a tractor, but my nephews love it–there’s a few children in generation number five likely to carry on the family tradition.”
Located on Caves Road, the Credaro cellar door is more than a tasting stop. The white stucco building sits within a garden of beautiful rose bushes and mature trees, and the entrance arbour is covered with purple wisteria. Inside, the walls tell the Credaro story with old family photos, and out on the balcony the breathtaking views of the rolling hills make it a popular wedding venue. There’s also a gorgeous clothes and homewares boutique to wander through.
Credaro Wines has four vineyards in the Margaret River Wine Region, a total of 107 hectares growing predominately Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, but also other varietals includingSangiovese and, excitingly, they have grafted cuttings of Italian varietals Montepulciano, Barbera and Nebbiolo which are expected to produce fruit in the next three years. They produce one million bottles each year and continue to make Fragola, which means “strawberry” in Italian, from the original cuttings from those first vines.
“At the moment, we’re exporting ten per cent of our wines to Singapore, United Kingdom and Taiwan,” Matt said. Future plans for Credaro Wines include making Italian styles when the new vines mature, and in time, opening a new cellar door at their Wilyabrup vineyard.
Mr Barval
One of Margaret River’s smallest producers, Mr Barval, is heavily influenced by owner and winemaker Robert Gherardi’s Italian heritage along with his experience working in Italy’s famous Barolo wine region.
A second generation and dual citizen Italian, all four of Robert’s grandparents immigrated from a small town and alpine valley wine region called Valtellina, famous for Nebbiolo, about 100 kilometres northeast of Milan near the Swiss border.
In fact, the name Mr Barval is an acronym for Robert’s wine experiences: Mr represents Margaret River, Bar represents Barolo, and Val is for Valtellina.
“My grandparents were ‘off the boat’ [arriving in] in Fremantle, and I grew up in Perth’s southern suburbs. We did the holy trinity of typical Italian experiences: every summer we’d make passata, every autumn we’d make wine and every winter we’d do one or two pigs and make salami and sausages. They were such fun days!” Robert said.
“I studied winemaking in my mid-20s and had the desire to do an overseas vintage and get some different experience. A lot of Australian winemakers go to France because we grow so many French varietals, but for me, I had the urge to experience winemaking, but also to reconnect with family and with a culture that I only knew as an Aussie-Italian.”
Following a vintage in Barolo, Robert was offered full-time work, and moved his wife and two young children to Piedmonte where the family lived for a few years. Those traditional Italian winemaking principles he learnt now inform his approach at Mr Barval.
“We make our wines the same traditional way, they are very natural in that we hand-pick, we wild ferment, we don’t fine, we don’t filter. It’s not this more modern natural winemaking phenomena, it’s not the naturalness that’s important, it’s growing the right grape in the right area and looking after it well and capturing the essence of the season.”
What’s interesting about Mr Barval is that they don’t own vineyards, but rather they rent rows of vines from several different vineyards, working with the landowners and tending to those vines themselves, plucking leaves to allow more sun to hit the fruit or directing vine shoots to grow a certain way.
“Renting rows of vines is par for the course in Europe, but here, no one had heard of that system, so we had some convincing to do,” Robert said.“Working with grapes from great sites, that are established and balanced, allows us to make the unfiltered and unfined wines, but in a really fine wine way because we’re working with a base level of grapes that are perfect. Our focus is on the varietals that do really well here, which is Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, but we do make a small amount of Nebbiolo too.”
Mr Barval’s first harvest was in 2015, when they made just 4,500 bottles across four different wines. This year, their largest production to date saw them produce eight different wines and 20,000 bottles in total. While highly sought-after domestically in Australia, Mr Barval has exported wine to Singapore, Hong Kong and a selection of private buyers in Europe.
Altro?
There are other small Italian producers and Italian varietals grown in the region. Visithttps://winewa.asn.au/margaret-river/for more information.
