Jasper Hill Wines: Ron Laughton and Emily McNally’s key to success
With a strong connection to their land in Central Victoria, these vignerons produce wines of distinction. They tell us the recipe for success.
Ancient soil runs deep beneath the foundations of Jasper Hill Wines, operated by a discerning father-and-daughter duo with a strong connection to the land they farm.
The rich Cambrian soils of Heathcote have nurtured not only the Laughton family from childhood to adulthood, but the vines that yield 30,000 bottles of wine in an average year.
Ron Laughton and his wife, Elva, built the winery in 1981, with the winery’s first vintage bottled a year later in 1982.
But now they are stepping back from the daily operations of the business, making way for daughter Emily McNally, along with her husband Nick, to carry on the family name.
“Mum and Dad definitely started the business, and built it from the ground up,” Emily says.
This included the home and cellar at the heart of the 25ha estate, much of which Ron built himself.
The family for a while lived in the cellar of the house, while the building was constructed around them.
“Emily and her sister Georgia were little kids in this house. We built around them,” Ron says.
His passion for both family and the land they live on is evident everywhere you look, and is central to producing quality vintages of wine.
“We’re on a fault line right here. The vineyards are on soil that is pre-life on this earth, the Cambrian period,” Ron says.
Emily says the soil, and microclimate “are the key factors for what you would grow, why you would grow things in certain places, and your end product”.
With a background in chemistry and food science, Ron initially started his career in dairy manufacturing.
“After working in big business I realised we wanted to do something on our own, and we took that risk and that gamble,” he says.
“Maybe I was a bit of a smart-arse … we had been drinking European wines, Elva and I had worked in the UK for a number of years. I was thinking I could do better here.”
The family grow predominantly shiraz from vines that were already on the property when the family first bought the land, along with a shiraz cabernet franc blend produced from fruit grown in Emily’s Paddock.
“We also make a semillon wine,” Emily says.
Jasper Hill is spread across 25ha of vines, producing an average of 2500 dozen bottles in a normal year.
“The last two years haven’t been normal years,” Emily says.
“We made less wine in the summer of 2019-20. We had a couple of very below average rainfall years, and the summer of 2019-20 was horrendous, with hot wind. We weren’t affected by fires directly, but that extreme hot in a dry-grown vineyard was enough to send us to the edge.”
IRRIGATION-FREE
It is a cool Heathcote day when The Weekly Times visits the vineyard in July. And while the fire may be roaring inside, Emily and Nick are busy working in the lead-up to budburst in spring.
“You need to have everything wrapped down by the end of winter,” Emily says.
Ron says: “Running a small business like this, we are involved at every stage. From the growing through to the making and selling, it’s all done in-house,”.
The property is not irrigated, which Emily says is a key part of their business model of working closely with nature, instead of against it.
“We are small, boutique, and low-yielding. Mum and Dad when they began the business wanted to grow things as naturally as possible. If we have to irrigate, (the vines are) in the wrong place,” Emily says.
“Vines aren’t native to Australia, but we’re trying to put them in the most natural setting in this place. Everything we grow is on natural root stock. We’ve never been irrigated.”
Emily says it is the ancient soil from the Cambrian era that Jasper Hill is situated on that is the key to the flavour and integrity of the wines.
“That’s where your flavour comes from,” Emily says.
“The microclimate around the vine, whether it’s the soil or the sunlight, the amount of warm days you have to ripen the fruit … it’s highly important. The flavour and where you get it from, we can’t manufacture the flavour. You can manipulate wine so much as adding or detracting, but for us and the way I have been taught is to have that sense of place, and that’s the notion of terroir.
“Both paddocks (Georgia’s Paddock and Emily’s Paddock) are not far from each other, but the flavours are different.”
Preserving the integrity of the rich soil, which is so central to the vineyard is aided by the production of compost, which comprises waste products from the vineyard.
“The stalks of the grapes need to go somewhere … when we press off the wine, there are skins and pips. Every year we buy a truckload of manure, and all of the waste goes into that,” Emily says.
“When we prune, we go through with a mulcher and cut up all the cuttings. You’ve got to keep the soil alive, the microorganisms happy, otherwise it’ll turn into a desert.”
OLD VINES SHINE
Every single bottle of wine is grown, made, and bottled on the estate, using fruit from the original vines on the property, which were planted in the 1970s.
Jasper Hill releases new wines each August and also runs a cellar door.
January and February gives the family a period of respite and maintenance before starting that year’s vintage.
“We’re picking the fruit and putting it in the tank … we have a long maceration period. We keep the skins and pips, and put everything all in together for up to five weeks,” Emily says. “In March we’re picking and making wine, and throughout April and May.”
Wine is then placed in barrels, where it is left for 12 months.
June brings groundwork for the family, with pruning to start when the leaves fall off the canopy. Bottling of the wine also takes place as the winery gears up for the release of that year’s vintage in August.
The wines produced at Jasper Hill Wines are then exported, as well as snapped up by a cohort of savvy domestic consumers, many of whom are intergenerational regulars.
“We’ve had markets like the UK for about 30 years, with the same distributor,” Emily says.
“Export markets come and go. We exported to the US for a while, we have an agent who does Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. China was a new one for us, but that only lasted about 12 months before the tariffs came in.”
Emily says Australians who drink Jasper Hill wines increasingly care about the story behind the wines and actively engage in the process of how it is produced.
“The majority of our customers … the want to know where their food and wine comes from. They want a connection. They want to understand … they don’t want caged eggs, they want free-range. They’re concerned about additives in their wine,” Emily says.
“We grow organically, we make wine with as little intervention as possible. We use natural yeast, but we do add a small amount of sulphur. We keep sulphur levels of a minimum.
“That’s what we’ve always been.
“We’re not going to go and get organic certification.
“We only make a small amount of wine. We are minuscule.
“What we do is make a small amount of wine, all ourselves, and we make it the best we can. We’re not making a $20 bottle of wine, we’re making an $80 to $100 bottle of shiraz.”
MICRO MAGIC
There’s a humility and dignity to what Ron and Emily do.
Minimal interference with the wine, nurturing the soil, and looking after the land is at the forefront of their practice.
For Emily, it’s the grape that is the hero of this story, not her or her family.
“You can call me a winemaker, but I don’t make wine. Our world … is ruled by microorganisms,” Emily says.
“I don’t make wine, I can’t make wine, I don’t have the skills to turn sugar into alcohol. The micro-organisms do that. What I can do is choose when the fruit is picked, how long it’s kept in a barrel for.”
While there may be a deep link to ancient soils, the family is constantly looking to the future.
“We’re certainly not looking at getting any larger,” Emily says.
“Our vineyards are ageing, they’re about 45 years old. We’re looking at pulling out certain areas which take time to work on but don’t produce fruit.”
Emily says they are looking to plant another small vineyard in a few years, grown from budwood from original vines on rootstock.
“We’ll be continuing the same vineyards which have been here for more than 45 years,” Emily says.
“We’re trying to become more efficient, and more streamlined.”
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