After 40 years devoted to creating and developing his award-winning vineyard and tourism complex, the time has come for Luigi Bazzani to retire.

LUIGI BAZZANI grew up in a vineyard in the Emilia Romagna region of Northern Italy. He has owned Warrenmang Vineyard in the Victorian Pyrenees wine region since the first commercial vintage in 1978 and has been involved in winemaking there in a ‘hands-on’ capacity ever since.

Bazzani has been both vigneron and restaurateur, while working in conjunction with high profile, professional winemakers.  Luigi often made the final decision on style, blending and food matching qualities of the wines, while he was also responsible for setting aside special release wines mark milestones and events at Warrenmang.

Bazzani was recently awarded The Medal of the Order of Australia for his contribution to the Wine and Tourism Industry in Victoria.

He believes in traditional winemaking processes (hand picking, hand plunging, hand pruning, basket pressing) and aimed to makes exceptional, intense wine with great character and continuity of style. He was not interested in following fads and fashions but had great faith in his own directions together with immense belief in the Pyrenees as Australia’s truly great wine producing region, particularly Shiraz and Cabernet.

His passion for winemaking was not motivated by profit, but by a desire to achieve the best possible results from each vintage and he is dedicated to extracting the concentrated flavours from his ultra-low yielding Pyrenees vines.

In 1988 Luigi Bazzani was honoured by the Victorian Government in the Victorian Wine Export Awards with a Special Commendation for his first vintage of Grand Pyrenees from 1985, a red Bordeaux style blend which was his first wine export to Europe.

Since those early days of exporting, Warrenmang has sold wines around the world (to Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and mainland China) and the wines have won numerous international and Australian accolades.

In July 2016, Bazzani dispatched 14 pallets (almost 600 dozen) of his premium and super premium five-star Pyrenees wines to Guangzhou in China. Although this was not the first time Bazzani has exported to China, it was his largest shipment.

“The Chinese market is starting to genuinely appreciate and seek out quality wines produced by small winemakers such as Warrenmang,” he said. “They respect that we employ traditional winemaking techniques to produce outstanding quality and full bodied, distinctive red wines, a style very much enjoyed by Chinese wine lovers.”

Now, with somewhat of a heavy heart and at 77, Bazzani is planning to sell his three Pyrenees vineyards together with the much loved Warrenmang Restaurant and resort and retires. 

While the 305 acre vineyard estate and winery,  together with the restaurant and resort, was set to be auctioned in mid-September it had already attracted serious interest from wine representatives across mainland China, Malaysia and also the United States.

Bazzani hopes whoever takes the reins of Warrenmang will recognise the incredible potential that exists in the 40-year-old multi award winning winery and take it to the next level. Bazzani said he looked forward to helping the new owners with a smooth transition and said it would be like “helping the new parents with their first grandchild”.

ACUTION TODAY:

Friday 16 September at 12pm at Colliers International Melbourne
Level 30, 367 Collins St, Melbourne

For more information contact:

Andrew Lewis

+61 418 508 908