This former navy diver hung up his wetsuit for work boots
From deep sea to vineyard, this winemaker has faced his greatest challenge yet.
Marty Edwards’ career in wine has been bookended by the testing of his physical limits. As a young man he served as a navy clearance diver – one of those rare jobs where your employer is entitled to know your breaking point and puts considerable time and effort into finding it. But when his family bought a vineyard in the Adelaide Hills he towelled off, studied viticulture and helped build The Lane into one of the region’s premier properties. It turned out he was an instinctive wine man, the kind who feels it in his blood.
There were times, in deepest winter, pruning in the cold and the sleet, when he almost felt nostalgic for his old life. But he would remind himself that this kind of hard work brought about beauty in the end, and it was probably better to risk a finger to a careless snip than an arm to a limpet mine. And then it went a bit awry. A Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2012 seemed at first like a cruel hoax. He was only 41 at the time, and had always defined himself through his physicality. Now the body he had pushed to the limit for years decided to push him back.
Around the same time, family ownership of The Lane decreased in stages until they sold out completely. Many in his position would simply have retreated, but Edwards pushed on. He established the Silver Lining label, which donates a significant percentage of its sales to a research project at Flinders Medical Centre and the University of South Australia, which is developing earlier and better diagnostic tests for the disease. Marty is a close friend, and the impartiality that should normally reign on these pages buckles a bit here. I’ve always joked with him about his huge hands. Watching those hands shake can be tough. But knowing a slap on the back can still put me through a wall is soothing reassurance that not even this bastard disease can break Marty Edwards.
SILVER LINING SAUVIGNON BLANC 2023
$25
Passionfruit skins and grapefruit, some dried lime and lemon thyme. Just a smidge of pulpy flesh to offset the tight, tangy acidity. Real energy and verve. A wine that shows the vast experience Edwards has with the variety and his ability to tune it for peak performance.
12.5 % abv, 90 points
SILVER LINING CHARDONNAY 2023
$30
White peach, grapefruit pith, warmed honey and a smear of sour cream. Flickers of smoky oak nestled beneath. A wine with infinitely better balance than the bloke who made it. (And yes, I’ve made that joke to his face.) Precisely weighted, a core of layered flavour stitched in by a fine acid line.
13% abv; 92 points
SILVER LINING SYRAH 2023
$35
Brambly fruit, co-mingled berries of blue and red, some bitter chocolate and a sprinkling of souk spices. An effortless, slippery momentum across the palate. Satiny fruit wrapped around a finely interlocked tannin lattice. A brilliant example of the aromatic exoticism and refined grace of Adelaide Hills syrah.
14% abv; 95 points
