There’s a changing of the guard going on at Jim Barry Wines with two sons – Tom and Sam – taking the reins while current managing director Peter Barry is re-working his job description.
“I’ll never retire,” Peter said. “I enjoy the winery my parents created, the wines and the vineyards – I can’t imagine living anywhere else other than the Clare Valley.
“But there are also some rewards in taking a senior role – it’s a bit less hands on and you can take a bigger picture view,” Peter said.
Part of this senior role is the “Keeper of Quality”: the bench marker who makes the call where the buck stops, the arbitrator of quality assurance in the true sense of the word.
Together, the father and sons have created ‘VETO’, a range of wines that represent the best of Jim Barry wines: Riesling, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.
“VETO began with Tom wanting to ferment a few exceptional parcels of fruit separately in our micro winery,” Peter says. “We go to extraordinary lengths to nurture our vines and we treat the fruit with the respect it deserves during the winemaking process to show the true expression of site.
“The right to veto is a father’s prerogative in family business. Working with my sons gives me great pleasure, every now and then I like to challenge them by exercising this right. The only thing we did not agree on was the name…but I vetoed them on that!”
Tom and Sam acknowledge that the expectation to perform brings out their entrepreneurial spirit.
“Given what Dad and Grandpa have achieved so far, it can sometimes be quite hard to take the next step and to be confident that we are doing the right thing,” Sam said. “We often find ourselves sitting on the fence.”
Sam said their father has always been there to give them a little push towards the right decision.
“He has always been very supportive and he’s still a real innovator, so it is not as if he’s against change,” Sam said. “It really is what winemaking at Jim Barry is all about – constant experimentation and self improvement with the knowledge that Dad is there to give his final opinion.”
Tom said the VETO Riesling is a style unlike anything they have ever produced.
“We identified a small parcel of outstanding fruit on our Lodge Hill Vineyard and let the grapes hang on the vine for an extra week as the natural acidity was very high. This developed a completely different flavour spectrum to our Lodge Hill Riesling, which is why it has been selected for our first VETO Riesling.”
The Riesling juice was cold settled and unfiltered, then 10 per cent was placed into pre-used French oak barrels for cool fermentation. Following fermentation the wine was sulphured and left on gross lees for six weeks, while the remaining juice was fermented in stainless steel tanks and also left on gross lees for six weeks, before the two wines were blended together.
“The barrel fermentation has added a new dimension to the wine,” Tom said. “It has created a complex textural mouthfeel and coupled with the primary fruit and riper flavours, makes it taste very different to our other Rieslings.”
The VETO Cabernet was picked from the Jim Barry Coonawarra Cricket Ground vineyard during the 2013 vintage.
“This was the best fruit we had seen since planting the vineyard in 1999,” Peter said. “It has great intensity without the austerity we sometimes get in Coonawarra. We took the Cabernet Sauvignon out of barrel after nine months to accentuate the purity and vibrancy of the fruit, while providing structure and aging potential.
“The VETO Clare Valley Shiraz was selected from our Lodge Hill Vineyard, which at 480 metres, is one of the highest points in the Valley. We selected the grapes from a north-facing slope which has given the wine added complexity and fruit concentration.”
The 2013 VETO Clare Valley Shiraz, the 2013 VETO Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2015 VETO Clare Valley Riesling will be released around Australia on the 20th of July 2015 to the on-premise and independent retailer market.
