King of Wine James Halliday steps down after 40 vintage years

After a Bradmanesque innings penning The Weekend Australian Magazine’s wine column, the incomparable James Halliday is passing over his tasting glass to Nick Ryan.

The Australian’s veteran wine writer James Halliday, left, and his replacement Nick Ryan raise a glass at Halliday’s Coldstream Hills home in the Yarra Valley. Picture: Jay Town

After a Bradmanesque innings penning The Weekend Australian Magazine’s wine column, the incomparable James Halliday is passing over his tasting glass.

Charismatic wine writer Nick Ryan will take up the challenge of following Halliday’s formidable palate by continuing what is the nation’s longest-running wine column.

Halliday signs off today on his final weekly column, an endeavour he began with the magazine in August 1984, issuing the creed that “people should enjoy wine more and talk about it less’’.

Then a corporate lawyer who had already written seven books on wine, he told readers he hadn’t yet gone into wine as a full-time career because “I think it’s a mistake to make one’s mistress one’s wife”.

Forty years later, having buried that belief, the 85-year-old finds himself regarded globally as the most influential voice in Australian wine, shaping tastes and trends through his precisely chosen words.

“It is the ‘must-read’ column,’’ Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago said. “James has influenced the big and small and everything in between – he is the definitive commentator on Grange but has also put so many small players on the map too.”

Trade Minister Don Farrell, a former winemaker who lives on a vineyard, hailed Halliday as being “a leading force in getting our wines on the world stage”.

The Australian’s editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn spoke on ­behalf of her wine-loving readers, saying “we’ve been so fortunate to have enjoyed James’s wisdom, knowledge and experience over all these years”.

“The Australian wine industry has had no greater champion than James Halliday and our readers have certainly benefited from his fine palate, stocking their cellars and bar fridges with his recommendations,” she said.

Halliday, who plans in his semi-retirement to continue writing features for The Australian and will remain president of The Australian Wine Club, spoke modestly of his achievements from his home in the Yarra Valley this week.

The Australian’s wine columnist Halliday in 1994.

“The most frequent face-to-face reaction to my column has very often been, ‘I really like your column because I can understand it’,” he said.

He endorsed Ryan’s appointment, saying Ryan had built a reputation as “an energetic, knowledgeable communicator” who had a great love for the Australian wine industry.

Gunn said Ryan was an ideal choice as Halliday’s successor. “With a keen eye for detail and a passion for discovery, Nick promises to engage readers with captivating narratives that showcase the diversity and complexity of the world of wine,” she said.

Ryan has written on wine and spirits for the past 25 years, including as a contributor to The Australian and international magazines such as the prestigious The World of Fine Wine, and has judged at major Australian wine shows.

Halliday’s first column in The Weekend Australian in August 1984.

“I have a career as a wine writer because James Halliday, through his passion for the subject and herculean work ethic, showed such a thing could even exist,” said Ryan, who is based in South Australia’s Clare Valley.

“I’m genuinely humbled that I’m the one tasked with building on his 40-year contribution to The Australian.”

Gago, who recently hosted Ryan at a Penfolds tasting in Paris for international wine writers, said the new columnist would bring “a lot of colour and shade and depth”. “We were tasting in Paris and Nick says, matter-of-factly, St Henri isn’t a style but a mood – that really caught my attention.”

Halliday, left, and Len Evans, in 1983.

Halliday’s wine affair has extended far beyond wine writing and reviewing – although at the peak of his powers he estimates he was tasting between 9000 and 10,000 wines a year.

Apart from writing more than 40 books, including annual wine bible the Halliday Wine Companion, he has imported wines, planted vineyards, worked as a senior winemaker and judged wines on the international circuit and at every major Australian wine show. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010.

Among the achievements he holds closest to his heart are founding two wineries that have become iconic producers, Brokenwood in 1970 in NSW’s Hunter Valley and Coldstream Hills in Victoria’s Yarra Valley in 1985, where he lives, overlooking the Chardonnay House Block.

His fondest memories tend to uniformly involve pinot noir from Burgundy and lunches with his ­irrepressible mentor, the beloved wine promoter Len Evans.

“Len first invited me to one of his Single-Bottle Club lunches in 1970 and put on a spray of First-Growth Burgundy – there must have been 25 bottles,’’ he said.

“I was so far out of my sphere, gobsmacked, I could barely taste them.”

Halliday judging at the Royal Adelaide Wine Show.

While talking at his home this week, Halliday rummaged around the hundreds of wine books and boxes of newspaper clippings in his office to emerge triumphantly with the wine list of a dinner staged at Brisbane’s Milano restaurant in 1983 for 16 people.

“This was one of the greatest Single Bottle Club dinners,’’ he said. “There must have been a million dollars of wine on the table.’’

Among the 26 French masterpieces were a Krug 1971, Chassagne-Montrachet (Vigneau) 1923, Romanee-Conti (Domaine de la Romanee-Conti) 1962, La Tache (Domaine de la Romanee-Conti) 1948, Richebourg (Domaine de la Romanee-Conti) 1972 and a Chateau d’Yquem 1961.

The lucky attendees included Malcolm Fraser, who had lost the prime ministership earlier that year, Brisbane architect Robin Gibson, the-then Queensland governor Sir James Ramsay and Michael Baume, who was soon to be elected to the Senate and later consul-general in New York.

Halliday, whose other loves include cricket and rugby, believes he has one book left in him – a chronicle of these extraordinary dinners.

One of his personal rules is to never drink a great wine at home by himself as it’s more rewarding to share greatness with those who appreciate it: “You also have to ­remember, it costs nothing to take a wine from your cellar – you’ve ­already written off the cost in your mind – so enjoy your wines.”

Nick Ryan’s first column will appear in The Weekend Australian next Saturday. John Lehmann is the cellar director of The Australian Wine Club.