“It’s quite a place,” said Mann of Newton Winery, his temporary, new home. “And, quiet small. I think this year well make 60,000 cases.”
“I can’t believe how beautiful Napa is,” he added. “We don’t have hills at home. It’s quite flat, so it’s nice to see mountains. The winery is perched on top of a mountain with St. Helena off to the side.”
We caught up with Robert Mann working in Napa Valley at Newton Winery, where he was on loan from his job as winemaker for Cape Mentelle Vineyards.
Rob offered us a window in to wine making in Western Australia.
Robert Mann
You grew up in a family of winemakers. What effect did that have on your vision of yourself?
I don’t know if it had an effect on me wanting me on to a winemaker. We just had wine with every meal—a little wine in the bottom of a glass topped up with water and ice. As kids, it was just part of our life. I worked in my auntie’s winery since I was about 8 years old and never thought too much about it. It’s just what we did.
When you are about fifteen in an Australia, you have to select your preferences at high-school that will lead you to whatever you want to do at uni(versity). So, you have to have a rough idea. Any kid that’s got ideas of being a fireman, well you have to think a little more seriously. I had no idea really.
My mum, suggested, why don’t you do what your grandfather did and be a winemaker? And, it was this moment clarity. It just seemed like the logical thing to do.
I was actually prompted by my mother.
You guys are out in the west.
Yeah, my family’s been making wine in Western Australia for about a hundred years.
And now that you are in charge of your own vineyard, how much of it is where you are, getting the most out of the land, innovating with the grapes you have?
I would say that 95% is site and everything that goes with it – which is what, I guess, you call terroir.
And is there room for a winemaker’s voice in all that?
Yeah, there is. As a young winemaker, you want to put your mark on everything. As you get older you want to let the vineyard speak for itself. It’s more respectful. And I find, the older I get, and the more I learn—the less you do.
The best wine you make in a vintage is the one you do the least amount to. A good vineyard: you pick it, it ferments, it goes to barrel and it’s done. There’s no tricks or anything.
It’s the more commercial, more difficult wines, off young vineyards, off variable topographies, that are much more difficult to make. Your best wine is the easiest to make.
Do you think with experience you find you have a feel for the terroir?
Yeah, definitely. The fundamentals of picking grapes is learning how they react to different weather, what impacts the climate has on the variety, how the tannins mature, whether they get better, whether they get worse, whether the sugar accumulates really quickly, or really slowly.
Experience is the best way to understand the individuality of the vineyard. It takes at least five years of making wine from a vineyard to get to understand it’s intricacies a little, and then probably another fifty years to understand it a lot.
Those are the wines that excite you, that give you a little window into... what the grapes tasted like
With Justin McNamee we were talking about harmony and balance, when you are talking about fifty years, is that what you are looking for?
Well I think Justin has a bit of a holistic view about everything. Harmony and balance are something you look for in everything – not just wine.
It’s the food you eat and the stuff you hang on your wall, everything needs to be in balance.
In wine, it’s no different balance is the key. It’s balance of all the different aspects of acidity, of alcohol, of flavor and tannin. When you achieve balance the wine smiles. That’s what you try and do, make the wine smile. That’s what I was always told by my grandfather—you know when the wine is balanced because it smiles at you.
Is that when you know you’ve been successful? When the wine is smiling?
Well you can make the most balanced wine in the world and no one drinks it.
I define success on a more personal level. Knowing what you want to achieve in terms of a wine style, growing the grapes, managing the vineyards to achieve the flavor spectrum, and then transferring that into the wine.
Success to my grandfather was that he could sit down with his family, we could all sit around the table, and drink the wine that he made 50 years ago. He could talk about the vintage. And, everyone’s talking about how the wine is fabulous. I think that’s a good sign of success.
Now when you are drinking your wine, or someone else’s are there things that inspire you?
How to describe it maybe a bit more difficult. Wines that are exciting have the character of that region. Like a German Riesling that has this quartz-y minerality to it. You can imagine exactly what that soil is like, and the aspect that vineyard is on. And, I think the winemaker has done a pretty good job at preserving all those things.
Those are the wines that excite you, that give you a little window into what the winemaker was doing, and what the grapes tasted like.
So then, tell me about being out west in Australia. What is it your showing the world through your window?
The beauty of Western Australia is it’s a very diverse place. But in the southwest, where we grow grapes it has a pronounced Mediterranean climate. It’s very similar in some aspects to California—warm, dry summers and cold, wet winters.
It’s the freshness, vibrancy of the climate and the region that you want to convey in your wines a real freshness, cleanness, and the purity of it all.
I think that’s what’s great about living in the W.A., it’s unspoiled. Isolation has its benefits and it’s negatives I guess.
If you were interviewing winemakers, then who would you like to talk to?
There’s a few people I’d like to hear what they have to say about wine.
One is Tony Brady from Wendouree Cellars. It’s the coolest winery in South Australia. I would love to hear his philosophy on wine. He is the most gentle and friendly guy. He’s the best living Cab and Shiraz maker.
Another is Tim Kirk from Clonakilla. He introduced Australia to the benchmark Shiraz Viognier blends. I think he’s an ex-chaplain. He has a cool philosophy on balancing life.
