My first year helping out at vintage at Picardy was 2014. In late winter the year prior my (now wife) and I had been on a long and exploratory camping trip & on our way through Pemberton we managed to get an appointment at the winery. I’d recently become an admirer of their wines & also enjoyed Bills fantastic book. There I met Dan Pannell for the first time & he took the time to show us around, tasting various wines from bottle and barrel. I can still remember me naively asking in the barrel room ‘so are you sticking with the cork then?’ and receiving a fairly stern reply about oxygen ingress & the like. At that moment I knew I was in the right spot: this was my kind of place. A few days later we drank an intoxicatingly good bottle of 2011 Picardy Shiraz down at Shelley Beach: it a special ’time and place’ bottle, memorable for all the right reasons. Despite having no connection to Picardy or any understanding on how it all worked I made the decision I would offer to help out for the next vintage & see what happened.
As it so happened I’d lucked out, as the 2014 vintage was a rather special one. I arrived late in the day one afternoon in early March to mild panic relating to the cooling in the barrel room (which was promptly dealt with) and three or four people standing around and chatting about a Pinot ferment.
My social anxiety quickly subsided & the week flew by as like a jazz club late on Saturday night, things were in full swing. The starts were early, bringing in pristine Chardonnay fruit in the cool mornings & then working in the winery in the afternoon. On reflection I was probably very little help, mostly getting in the way & asking annoying questions (which no one seemed to mind). Lunchtime was a real highlight: each day Sandra would cook up something wonderful & then frustratingly be forced to expel the same amount of energy trying to get Bill and Dan to sit down & eat when all they wanted to do was move onto the next job. As much as I laughed, I was also more than happy to sit down as each day we would sample some amazing bottles: Cote Roties & Burgundys were mixed in with back vintage Picardy wines & special bottles made by friends. Sometimes after lunch I’d sit with Sandra and chat about all different things & as you can imagine being a (lets face it – slightly strange) kid from a remote part of WA they were the kinds of conversations I don’t have often enough but desperately need. Each day I’d leave the table with some acquired wisdom and a refreshing sense of well being about the world and my own place in it.
Late in the day, exhausted, we would go and smell the different ferments from different plots, opinions proffered and decisions made as the aromas progressed and changed day by day. I was very much made to feel a part of it all. Late at night two or three of us would wander down to the winery and plunge the Pinot ferments. I remember being lucky enough to plunge the 2014 Tete du Cuvee a few times & I can vividly remember the spellbinding aromas that emanated. Even without context I knew this was a special wine in the making, and it still delivers on that promise. Indeed despite my modest involvement that year I still feel a real connection to those 2014 wines, & without a doubt learnt more about wine in that week than I had in the many years prior.
That was nearly a decade ago & most years since I have managed to maneuver my work scheldule so that I can go back for the best part of a week & play a small part in the vintage. 2018 was memorable given the quality of fruit & subsequent wines but looking back I think the 2021 vintage was perhaps the most enjoyable of all. Without doubt it was because of the mix of people there last year. Notably a sizeable crew of ‘semi-retired’ volunteers had staked their turf, with impressive set ups & caravans overlooking the dam. They’d be up bright and early to help pick & manage to keep a smile on their faces the whole morning. After lunch they’d disappear to their “glamp city”, only to emerge with fresh faces in the late afternoon and well and truly ready for some laughs and a concomitant glass of Picardy Sem Sav. There was also the adventurous young backpacker who had spent his last few months living a bit like Leonardo Di-Caprio in The Beach. Him and his crew had found a remote spot somewhere near the Fitzgerald River & once a fortnight or so would send someone to journey into town for supplies.
Generally in the mornings I’m on the tractor bringing in fruit to the winery but on one day I spent the morning picking, only to luck out with my picking partner. It was the best ‘podcast’ I have listened to: a fascinating life story about his time in Russia, designing his own bottling line & becoming the second commercial operator in Western Australia. Given the breadth of his friends and contacts in the industry he could have been helping out at any vineyard across the state, including Margaret River much closer to where he lived. That he was there at Picardy spoke volumes (to me at least), of the place and the people.
The Romance of Wine
One of my strongest memories of my time at Picardy is one morning after the pick was finished I was absolutely soaked from head to toe as a result of washing buckets (not my favourite job!). The legendary & still very much hands-on Bill Pannell looked me up and down, laughed to himself and drily remarked ‘and people talk about the romance of wine’. In that moment, it was hard to argue.
Like my temporary state of wetness, romance is by its very nature, fleeting. Accompanying the start of any relationship are romantic feelings, gestures and the like: a flutter of the heart or a beautiful moment in time to draw back on. The longevity that accompanies a successful relationship however, is not built on romance alone but instead, on substance. And when I think about Picardy, it is the substance of the place that makes it so special. The entirety of the property was built around a single-minded goal to create great Pinot Noir, stemming from a deep passion for that grape. Every year, every vintage, a new chapter is added to that story. The vineyard is of course picturesque and the buildings all have a majestic character to them, more than capable of making the heart flutter in a special moment. But there is not a fleeting moment here to be found: there is a substance of hard work & patience & knowledge behind it (and generosity to share this) coupled with a complete lack of pretention.
It resonates deeply with me and draws me back each year.
The Wine Accomplice 