Why you should drink wine at 10am

If you ask most people, they’ll tell you not to drink in the morning, but according to this wine connoisseur, it's the perfect time for wine tasting.

I dropped by Deviation Road Winery to meet winemaker Hamish Laurie, whose great-great-grandmother was the first woman winemaker registered in South Australia.

“The best time of the day to taste wine is 10 or 11 in the morning,” Ian Hongell assures me. “You’re looking for flavours, your mouth is looking to be satisfied.”

I’m seated inside Torbreck Vintners’ cellar door at Marananga in the Barossa Valley at (checks watch) 10.30am, so I’m no position to disagree.

Hongell, Torbreck’s chief winemaker and general manager, makes the most of the hour with seven (or was it eight?) glasses of their finest. Founder David Powell started the winery in the ’90s as a kind of share-farm cooperative that gave him access to fruit from some of the Barossa’s, and Australia’s, oldest vines. So these are all exceptional drops, from the intensely floral 2022 Woodcutter’s semillon made with “quite young vines” planted in 1893, to the velvety, fragrant RunRig shiraz-viognier. “I call this one The Beautiful Shiraz,” Hongell smiles.

I know just enough about wine to realise that having someone of his calibre guide me personally through a suite of Torbreck’s vintages is not your standard cellar-door experience. It’s a rare opportunity arranged by Simon Burley, whose company Coast & Co specialises in exclusive access to some of South Australia’s top vineyards. “You meet with winemakers all the time that no one else can,” he tells me. “It’s highly personalised.”

Coast & Co specialises in exclusive access to some of South Australia’s top vineyards.

This is my second tour with Burley, arranged on this occasion by luxury lodge The Louise. We met previously in the Adelaide Hills, where I tasted wines at Tapanappa by the legend Brian Croser (founder, with his wife Ann, of Petaluma), and dropped by Deviation Road to meet winemaker Hamish Laurie, whose great-great-grandmother Mary Laurie was the first woman winemaker registered in the state. Laurie’s wife, Kate, is another pioneer – trained in France, she’s SA’s undisputed queen of sparkling wine. He takes me on a tasting of her Champagne-style wines followed by a leisurely lunch in their fire-warmed courtyard, looking out to vines and virgin bushland.

I’m a big fan of visiting cellar doors, and not just for the drinking. Winemakers are some of our most generous farmers, opening their gates to visitors to taste their wares, hear their (often fascinating) stories, and have experiences that tend to be fully immersive. All the senses are satisfied.

But getting this sort of access to leading winemakers? That’s much harder to come by.

Back in the Barossa with Burley, our next stop is Otherness, a new-wave bottle shop in historic Tanunda. It’s owned by restaurateur and wine supremo Grant Dixon, formerly of Fermentasian, one of my favourite Barossa restaurants.

Torbreck’s vintages are all exceptional drops, from the intensely floral 2022 Woodcutter to the velvety, fragrant RunRig shiraz-viognier.

Here he’s got a bakery – Breaking Bread by Sarah Voigt – a restaurant and bottle shop, as well as a tasting room for his range of Otherness wines made in collaboration with leading winemakers, all of whom also happen to be his friends. Here, they get to experiment with styles outside their usual CVs.

Over plates of Parma salumi and artichoke hearts, we try three very different styled rieslings including one from the Eden Valley by my new acquaintance Ian Hongell, and a Tamar Valley variant by Rieslingfreak’s John Hughes that’s off-dry and extremely drinkable. There’s a foot-stomped shiraz from sixth-generation Barossan Dan Standish and a cab sav by grenache maestro Marco Cirillo, among the always-evolving offerings. Something for everyone.

For our last call, Burley takes me high into the Eden Valley to Max & Me, the appointment-on&ly vineyard of Phil Lehmann, winemaker son of local hero Peter Lehmann, the man who pioneered premium red winemaking in the Barossa.

Max & Me owner Phil Lehmann is the winemaker son of local hero Peter Lehmann, the man who pioneered premium red winemaking in the Barossa. Picture: John Kruger.

When we arrive Phil bundles us into his truck for a tiki tour of his gently hilly property – its 10 hectares of vines, the olive groves, the kangaroos, and the humble shed where his wine comes to life. Then we gather round a table beneath a massive, centuries-old red gum, galahs screeching in the trees, where Phil’s wife, Sarah, has laid out a spread including homemade sourdough and estate olive oil to sustain us while Phil showcases the “soulful, expressive” wines he produces up here. Highlights include a full-flavoured riesling grown nearby at Flaxman Valley, a “very smashable” pinot noir bursting with berries and, as a special treat, a syrah from 2015, a year when fruit was scarce but the vines were “very, very happy”.

“It’s like it turned up the Australian-ness of it,” he says, checking off notes of eucalyptus, graphite, saltbush and mulberry. “To me it’s like the Australian landscape.”

It’s a fun afternoon of learning, laughter and basking in the sort of warmth and generosity usually reserved for good friends. Which is what Burley’s wine tours manage to do so well.

Originally published as Why you should drink wine at 10am