How Australian winemakers helped bring art to Chatsworth House
A meeting of minds with the aristocratic owners of an English estate dating from the time of Henry VIII led to a fruitful collaboration for an Adelaide winery.
On the long serpentine drive up to Chatsworth House, home to 16 generations of aristocratic Devonshires, the last thing you’d expect to see is a flying Pegasus or a 20-foot steel head exploding with book-like birds, or a technicoloured sabre-toothed tiger. Yet thanks to the support of South Australian winery Bird in Hand’s founders Andrew and Susie Nugent, this sight greeted the thousands of visitors who went to explore Chatsworth estate’s historic parklands last year.
Shown for the first time in the UK, in collaboration with Sotheby’s, the exhibition Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man thrust eight epic sculptures made for Nevada’s famous Black Rock Desert annual art event into the lush, bucolic environs of Derbyshire. Another four were conceived specifically for Chatsworth, using largely found and recycled materials, overseen by such Burning Man artists as Dana Albany and Brent Allen Spears (aka Shrine) with help from the local community.
Dotted around the thousand-acre park, positioned alongside ponds, under the shade of ancient oak trees and in the middle of grassy fields kept company by grazing sheep, they looked completely at home. “We thought the suggestion to pull the existing art of Burning Man into the roaming Arcadian parkland was just great,” says Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, best known as Stoker to family and friends. “We wanted the Radical Horizons exhibition to welcome as many people from as many different walks of life to Chatsworth, to really experience both the artwork and the landscape,” he says. “And part of that, and something that Burning Man insisted on, was to make it free, which wouldn’t have been possible without sponsors like Bird in Hand.”
To celebrate this illustrious partnership, WISH was exclusively invited to join the Nugents and Bird in Hand’s London-based brand director Mashoom Tait (who is married to former cricketer Shaun Tait) for a lavish gathering thrown by Bird in Hand and held across many of Chatsworth’s most spectacular spaces, one very special night. Hollywood A-listers such as Brooke Shields and her screenwriter and producer husband Chris Henchy (also Will Ferrell’s creative collaborator) came together with some of London’s brightest movers and shakers – including fashion designers Erdem (with architect husband Philip Joseph) and Christopher Kane, models Daisy Lowe and Charli Howard, actress Amber Anderson, Australian fashion and creative consultant Michelle Jank and man-about-town Jack Guinness – generously welcomed by the Duke of Devonshire alongside his son William, Lord Burlington, and wife Laura who will take over the reins of Chatsworth this year.
Guests began the evening in Chatsworth’s inner courtyard with chilled glasses of Bird in Hand’s ‘O’ Sparkling – a classic méthode champenoise style wine made with grapes handpicked from the Adelaide Hills’ Piccadilly Valley – while admiring the modernity of Barry Flanagan’s bronze Leaping Hare on Curly Bell, 1989, juxtaposed against intricately embellished stone façades carved by English sculptor Samuel Watson in the 1600s.
Inside the Painted Hall, complete with sweeping staircase and walls and ceilings painted by 17th century French decorative artist Louis Laguerre with scenes depicting the life of Julius Caesar, portraits of the guests were taken before they headed to dinner in the Great Dining Room, where Princess Victoria dined formally for the first time in adult company in 1832. Here, decadent red walls and swathes of silk brocade curtains, gilded ceilings and magnificent framed family portraits dating from the 1500s provided a breathtaking backdrop to a table set for 40, laden with a surtout de table of shimmering silver – from ornate candelabra and cutlery to elegant urns filled with flowers cut fresh from Chatsworth’s gardens – all commissioned by the 6th Duke of Devonshire from Paul Storr and Robert Garrard, the leading silversmiths of the early 19th century.
Dishes made with seasonal local ingredients, from tender spring lamb to rich British cheeses, were accompanied by some of Bird in Hand’s most precious vintages, including the 2013 Marie Elizabeth Cabernet Sauvignon and 2017 Nest Egg Chardonnay. Afterwards, guests retreated for digestifs in the elegant surroundings of the library, its walls lined more with than 17,000 books.
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‘It’s what we’re all seeking, isn’t it? To be inspired by art in the fullest sense – food, wine, art, music, design and architecture’
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For Andrew Nugent, who started Bird in Hand in the Adelaide Hills 25 years ago, the opportunity to align with the Devonshires for the Burning Man exhibition and this very special dinner “brought together a connection between worlds”, he says. “There’s a shared philosophy between Chatsworth and Bird in Hand, albeit on completely different scales. There’s a love of the land. There’s a love of art. And there’s a philanthropic nature that runs through everything we both do.
“It’s what we’re all seeking, isn’t it? To be inspired by art in the fullest sense of the word – food, wine, art, music, design and architecture, all coming together to create an energy that is positive and kind.”
“Energy” is a word that crops up constantly in Nugent’s conversation. “I’m interested in the energy we create around our wines – from the energy we put into the grapes to the energy we create in a room when people are enjoying our wines, it’s a kind of kinetic energy that can really lift things to another level,” he enthuses.
Yet establishing a winery from scratch was never Nugent’s childhood dream. “I was a typical kid, growing up in the foothills of Adelaide. I wasn’t particularly studious, I was a little bit rebellious, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he says. From summer school holidays spent picking grapes to studying agricultural science at college, it wasn’t until he completed apprenticeships at wineries in Mildura and McLaren Vale that Nugent’s journey into viticulture began. “It immediately struck a chord,” he says. “I really loved the connection with growing things – the soil, the planting, the growing and creating.”
Immersing himself in the world of wine satisfied Nugent’s insatiable curiosity for life. “I liked that it wasn’t just growing grapes,” he says. “There was also the chemistry and techniques behind the production of wine, and the design side of things – the bottles, the labels, the marketing. It was the art and culture that surrounds wine – the vineyard, the garden, the architecture, the food, the art – that inspired me to keep moving. And I’ve really enjoyed the fact that I don’t do the one thing over and over again. Winemaking is so multi-layered.”
Located just half an hour east of Adelaide and 18km north of Mount Barker, Bird in Hand was established in 1997 on an old 40ha dairy farm in what was then the emerging Adelaide Hills winery region, previously gold mining territory in the 19th century. “It had all the right ingredients,” enthuses Nugent. “It had an abundant and pristine water supply, it was all north facing, and the deep red earth was mineral-rich with metamorphic ‘schist’,” he recalls. “But more than anything, and this has only happened to me a few times in my life, I felt a part of this land, or the land felt like a part of me. Either way, I sensed my future lay there. It was where I was meant to be.”
Bird in Hand’s first vintage was released four years later, launched at the Art Gallery of South Australia, with a sparkling, shiraz and sauvignon blanc. Today, it produces around 75,000 cases of award-winning wine, using grapes sourced from its own vineyard and a number of privately owned vineyards around the Adelaide Hills, and will soon start producing prestige sparkling wines with grapes grown on its newly acquired site on the east coast of Tasmania, at the edge of Douglas Apsley National Park.
The brand’s wines traverse four series: Tribute and Nest Egg wines (where each bottle is individually numbered) are at the top end of the market; and for everyday drinking sparkling and still wines, there is Bird in Hand (created from the best parcels of fruit from every vintage) and its café-style Two in the Bush, both named after original mineshafts in Bird in Hand’s 1800s goldmine.
Many of the wines are named after family members – the Joy sparkling, with its slight pinky hue, honours Nugent’s mother, the 2013 MAC Shiraz his dad. Their three children, Lalla, Ted and Oscar, get a mention too. In the mix are also Italian varietals such as Montepulciano, Nero D’Avola and Arneis, served in tall, thin, strikingly red and black striped bottles designed by Australian fashion designer Dion Lee. Most recently, Nugent launched The Bird, a single malt whisky aged first in port and sherry casks then Bird in Hand red wine barrels, created with charismatic entrepreneur and The Mentor podcaster Mark Bouris and former model Paul Giles (guided by Murray River-based Fleurieu Distillery whiskey makers Gareth and Angela).
Alongside Bird in Hand’s senior winemakers Dylan Lee, who joined in 2011 (and was awarded Red Winemaker of the Year at London’s 2019 International Wine Challenge) and Adelaide Hills native Sarah Burvill, Nugent has also worked with the esteemed winemaker Kym Milne, the second Australian ever to receive the distinction of Master of Wine, as a longstanding advisor since 2003. “I came from a grape-growing background, Kym came from the winemaking side, and it took me a long time to understand what this wine thing is all about,” Nugent admits. “Kym helped me decipher the wine world in very simple, honest terms but could also speak to the complexities of wine at the very top level.” Sometimes, Nugent adds, “we don’t necessarily follow rules. Sticking close to the qualities of the margins of flavour and finish is where the quality is. That’s where I’d like to think our wines sit.”
Now, Nugent’s focus as the brand’s recognition grows across the globe – it can be found on the wine lists of some of the world’s best restaurants, from The Connaught to The Carlyle – is “to create an energy, experience and interconnectedness surrounding Bird in Hand that brings more people together”. Throwing dinners such as this most recent one at Chatsworth, or supporting events from the National Portrait Gallery Awards, with the likes of Victoria and David Beckham, Naomi Campbell, Grayson Perry and Catherine, Princess of Wales in attendance, to the launch of Adelaide-born film producer and Hollywood heavyweight Bruna Papandrea’s production company Made Up Stories in LA, has created a channel for the brand to connect with “great restaurants, great cities, and most of all, great people”.
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‘Chatsworth honours its past but relishes its future, a place that lives with the ancient and the daringly modern’
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The ethos behind Bird in Hand is in many ways as forward thinking as the emphasis on present and future at Chatsworth. “I was impressed by the Devonshire family’s desire to keep moving forward,” reflects Nugent, who shares their love of sculpture, working with Adelaide’s Hugo Michell Gallery to curate a selection of artworks, from murals to neon installations, for show in Bird in Hand’s public spaces and gardens. “It enhances everything else they have by keeping everything feeling fresh and new, rather than weighed down with the burden that can often come from a place rooted in so much history.”
“Change, transition,” says the Duke, “is what happens in houses that are lived in. Without it, Chatsworth would be full of Elizabethan art and craft.” It has been a long-running tradition, the Duke explains, “for Chatsworth to act as a constant backdrop for contemporary works.” The estate, originally acquired in 1549 by Sir William Cavendish, one of Henry VIII’s commissioners during the Reformation, and his young wife Elizabeth (known as Bess of Hardwick), has evolved with each generation, marking it as one of the UK’s greatest testaments to British artistry and craftsmanship. “Chatsworth honours its past but relishes its future, a place that lives with the ancient and daringly modern,” says the Duke.
So alongside precious 17th century Mortlake tapestries, woven to depict sketches by Renaissance artist Raphael, 17th century Delft flower vases, painted ceilings by Antonio Verrio, Louis XIV marquetry torchères and Queen Anne tables, you will also find family portraits painted by Lucien Freud and Tai-Shan Schierenberg, Joseph Walsh’s twisting, turning sculpted ash chairs, Western Australian artist Pippin Drysdale’s ceramic forms, including Evensong (Devil’s Marbles) 2016 and Horizon Downs 2014 (painted and etched with colours and textures inspired by her love for inland Northern Western Australia), and Michael Craig-Martin’s pop-art depictions of iconic contemporary chairs hung above furniture by 17th century architect William Kent.
It is this laissez-faire ethos that ensures Chatsworth, counted as one of the 10 most magnificent palaces, stately homes and castles in England, continues to live and breathe in the 21st Century. And it is a sentiment Nugent shares. “Maybe it’s an Australian irreverence about not taking ourselves too seriously, or not worrying too much about what might happen if things go wrong, because in a way, I don’t really care, you know what I mean? We’re not here for long,” he says. “There will always be good seasons and bad seasons – where crops might be very light or wiped out by a storm or frost, or the sun shines when it’s meant to shine and the rain falls when it’s meant to fall – but that’s all part of the journey. All we can do is keep pushing and refining and moving forward.”