Kate Goodman of Penley Estate named winemaker of the year by James Halliday
Kate Goodman from Penley Estate has won the James Halliday winemaker of the year award and a South Australian drop scored best wine.
Kate Goodman was tinkering away at her own wine business in the Yarra Valley when she got an offer she couldn’t refuse, and which years later she joyfully describes as a “gift”.
“I remember this clear as day, my brief was do whatever you want, as long as it‘s not what has been done in the past.
“That’s a real gift and such an opportunity because unless you go work for yourself or you start a brand new business you’d rarely get someone saying to you, ‘do whatever you like, just make good wine, it’s entirely up to you’.”
That open-ended invitation was from sisters Ang and Bec Tolley of Penley Estate, a Coonawarra winemaker that was born in 1945 when the offspring of two famous wine families, Penfold and Tolley, met, fell in love and fused their names to create Penley.
In keeping with the family ethos of “grow up and be fascinating” Goodman was tapped on the shoulder and given free rein over the wines and she did just that from her first vintage in 2016.
“It was a massive opportunity and it takes courage and patience to create change. For the first years it was about being gentle and trying to understand the vineyard and the potential, but the longer I‘ve been there the risk taking has gotten greater – but I think the reward has been greater.”
That risk-reward balance has now surely shifted to the reward side of the ledger with Penley Estate’s Goodman named winemaker of the year at the 2024 Halliday Wine Companion Awards held in Melbourne on Wednesday night.
A standout of the awards was the performance of South Australia as it won more varietal gongs than any other state and Barossa Valley overtook Western Australia’s Margaret River in having the most five-star wineries.
“It’s a huge honour, and I couldn’t be more proud of what we have achieved at Penley in the last seven years and when I look back to where the business was and where the wine styles were to where they are now, it’s such a great feeling,” Goodman told The Australian.
“And it is also that outside recognition that maybe we are on the right path and we don’t have to keep second guessing ourselves all the time.”
Goodman initially grew up wanting to be an architect but then later took the winemaking path after ‘falling in love’ with fermentation while studying microbiology. Her first vintage was with Wirra Wirra in McLaren Vale in the early 1990s.
“And I was hooked, immediately.”
She describes her winemaking style as “aware, informed but minimal”.
“It’s not doing too much, but only doing what you absolutely have to do to allow your place, or vineyard, to speak. So you provide direction but you don‘t tell it where to go. It‘s that intuitive, trusting-your-gut process, and that allows for that connection in wine to people and place in doing that.”
At Penley, Goodman has taken that initial offer of freedom and run with it, bringing with her a touch of the Yarra Valley to the Coonawarra where she is rethinking the way cabernet sauvignon is created and presented to the drinker.
“At Penley we are very much a red wine producer and particularly focused on cabernet sauvignon and I’ve worked really hard to show cabernet is more than just full bodied red wine.
“We have really pushed and experimented with different wine making styles. And having worked in the Yarra Valley for a long time and made pinot noir for a long time, I‘ve even started making some of our cabernet the way I would make pinot – a really gentle style.
“So cabernet that is more medium bodied, more approachable – but that doesn‘t mean we don’t make serious cabernet.”
Goodman was among a top tier of winners on the night which also saw winery of the year handed to Bleasdale Vineyards in Langhorne Creek, South Australia and the prestigious wine of the year taken home by South Australia’s Yangarra Estate Vineyard Old Vine Grenache 2021.
The famous Seppeltsfield 100-Year-Old Para Vintage Tawny 1923 from the Barossa Valley – Australia’s liquid gold which retails for almost $1700 a bottle – was granted entry into the James Halliday Hall of Fame and given a perfect 100 points score.
Prue Henschke of Henschke Wines was inducted into the James Halliday Hall of Fame.
More than 8500 wines were tasted for the 2024 Halliday Wine Companion from over 1100 wineries. In the wash-up from the awards which are highly followed by wine lovers, the Barossa Valley has overtaken Margaret River with the most five-star wineries in the 2024 edition.
Indeed, South Australia won more varietal awards than any other state for this edition of the James Halliday wine bible including red and white wines of the year followed closely by Victoria where the Yarra Valley claimed best pinot noir, pinot gris and other reds and blends of the year.
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