Yarra Yering named winery of the year in James Halliday awards

Yarra Yering winemaker Sarah Crowe pulls off the first double win — wine of the year and winery of the year in the James Halliday awards.

Sarah Crowe, at Yarra Yering in the Yarra Valley, has achieved the double in the Halliday Wine Companion Awards – wine of the year and winery of the year. Picture: Aaron Francis

When Sarah Crowe flung open the doors at the Yarra Yering winery she was hit with a punch of flavour so rich, full and fragrant, confirming a hunch she had when she first picked the grapes – she was onto something special.

“Every step of the way I thought this was something ­special,” she said. “When we ­aerated it in the winery, like swirling a glass of wine, you just walked into the winery and you were hit with a beautiful fragrance.

“I thought, that smells good! It is the winemakers’ equivalent of a cake cooling on the windowsill.”

To make exceptional wine during a pandemic takes a particular type of mastery. To produce the wine of the year from a winery also deemed the best in Australia is nothing short of ­triumph over the pessimism and melancholia now gripping the world.

Winemaker Crowe has done exactly that. Firmly halting the doom and gloom at the gates of Yarra Yering, situated at the foot of the Warramate Hills in Vic­toria’s Yarra Valley, her classic Yarra Yering 2019 Dry Red Wine No 1 has been named wine of the year in the Halliday Wine Companion Awards.

Pulling off the double, Yarra Yering was also named winery of the year. In 2016 Crowe was named winemaker of the year in the highly prestigious Halliday Awards, the first woman to be given such an honour.

Now she has backed that up with two major awards in the same year, another first.

The wizard behind the flagship Yarra Yering Dry Red No 1, she still can’t quite believe she has won the plaudits from national treasure and wine doyen James Halliday despite her trophy cabinet filling to bursting point.

“I tend to think in my mind, wow, don’t get too excited, they still might change their mind,” Crowe said. “But also I really just think it kind of means all of the hard work is worth it and that we are heading in the right direction, on the right path, and just stick to what you know.”

It wasn’t always so. Crowe had the courage, some might say temerity, to quit her job at a plant nursery where she was sought after for her views on plants and mulch, to try her hand at winemaking.

Some were more than happy to challenge her boldness.

“I did get the odd comment when I was in the winery to ‘go back the vineyard’ in the early days, which is pretty awful and that’s not the norm in this industry. This industry is very collegiate, encouraging and sharing, but there is always the odd person who doubts you or doesn‘t think you deserve to be doing what you are doing.

“I don’t really feel I need to ­respond to those people, I’m just working hard and we are getting results. That silences them.”

Crowe is now the winemaker and custodian of Yarra Yering, founded in 1969 by the late Bailey Carrodus, and through her craftsmanship has helped elevate the flagship Yarra Yering Dry Red No 1 to a wine that can comfortably sit beside Penfolds Grange and Henschke Hill of Grace.

“Yarra Yering has lower yields but extraordinary intensity and depths, it is the intensity of flavour and depth of those flavours that so marks those wines,” Halliday told The Australian as his annual awards ceremony was held online for the second time due to Covid-19 lockdowns.

“Sarah Crowe has an exceptional palate, commitment, it’s aged-old stuff, but attention to ­detail and she really does think hard about the challenge to ­always make a better wine this year than she has ever made ­before. That type of self-perpetuating drive is what distinguishes very good, great winemakers from those who simply go through the motions.”

Crowe is now preparing the next vintage, and has detected a change in tastes. “An evolution in the wine style has been to make them a little more perfumed and fleshy and a little more accessible on release then they were 10 years ago,” she said. “It’s a bit of a response to the way we live, so people are living in smaller homes or apartments and don’t have as much space for cellaring wine. It’s really just making the wine in this way to give people permission to enjoy the wines sooner.”