Multi tasker
There’s no such thing as a quiet day at the office for Jeremy Dineen, chief winemaker and general manager of Tasmania’s Josef Chromy Wines. And that’s just the way he likes it.
Meet Jeremy Dineen from Tasmania’s Josef Chromy Wines.
When Tasmanian winemaker Jeremy Dineen is discussing the indie albums that best accompany the different stages of “trying to make good booze”, you could easily forget he's helped build one of the state’s most successful wineries from the ground up. That is until he dashes off to help prep for 3000 visitors to the vineyard’s Day on the Green concert or check that the 300 tonnes of fruit being processed for others are being as carefully handled as the estate’s own. “This is the easy part of the job,” says Jeremy. “We can pick and press our fruit before the other wineries have delivered theirs to us, and by doing so, we’re getting the most value possible out of our kit.”
Meat and wine tycoon Josef Chromy has spared no expense on the sprawling production facility or slick cellar door and restaurant outside of Launceston. “We have what we need here to control every stage of the winemaking process, from pressing to packaging, which is a luxury few people have. But most of what we do still comes back to old-school techniques,” Jeremy says.
This year’s harvest was the earliest Jeremy has experienced since joining the nascent Josef Chromy Wines full-time in 2005, but he says we should see some smart wines out of 2018. “The fruit for our table wines is in small concentrated bunches and the pinot noir juice for our sparkling, comparable to that of the 2008 vintage, has these delicate red apple notes coming through that I find really appealing,” he says.
Pure focus
Terms like ‘effortless’ and ‘reliable’ regularly appear in tasting notes for Josef Chromy Wines. Jeremy attributes this to his team’s focus on expressing the varieties and terroir rather than trends, and doing justice to the quality Tamar Valley fruit. Sometimes that means holding off on making a signature wine or waiting longer than normal to release it. “With our flagship Zdar range, we might plan to make 1000 cases, but drop that to 500 during picking if the fruit is not of the right standard, and ultimately make only 100 cases,” Jeremy says. “Joe [Chromy] doesn’t hold back in calling me an idiot when I take him ideas, but he does put a lot of faith in me, and that freedom is evident in the fact that the 2012 Zdar Pinot Noir is our current release. Few commercial wineries could give it that bottle age.”
This level of trust allows Jeremy to leave wines like the 2005 Zdar Sparkling on lees for 10 years, hand-bottle a single standout barrel (as with the 2014 Josef Chromy Block 17
Pinot Noir), and produce little-understood styles like the high-acid, low-alcohol Delikat SGR Riesling.
While whole-bunch fermentation or reductive winemaking techniques might be at play in the Zdar wines, such thoughtprovoking characteristics are left out of the everyday Pepik range for maximum food-friendliness. The Pepik Pinot Noir even made its way on tap last year after Jeremy became incensed by the cost and carbon footprint associated with importing glass bottles from overseas, only to send back the empties from the winery restaurant across the Bass Strait for recycling a few days later. “The manual process of filling the keg is not itself a cheap process, and outside venues are more inclined to serve sauvignon blanc this way, but anything we can do to reduce our energy consumption is worthwhile and the taste is the same.”
All that sparkles
When it comes to traditional method sparkling wines, it is the dominance of pinot noir rather than chardonnay that sets their house style apart. “Our wines don’t see oak or go through malolactic fermentation, which others might call risky because you can overdo the acidity, but that’s how we keep the freshness in pinot-dominant wine,” Jeremy says.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of Effervescence Tasmania, the annual festival of Tasmanian sparkling wine hosted by Josef Chromy Wines each November. “Even as someone immersed in sparkling wine, I can see there’s a lot of bollocks perpetuated about it, so we’re trying to break down the jargon for people, as well as give connoisseurs the details they crave,” Jeremy says. He hints that eastern seaboard residents should watch this space, with plans in motion to take Effervescence on the road this summer.
The Josef Chromy team, including winemakers Ockie Myburgh and Stewart Byrne, launched an Art of Sparkling masterclass late last year that sees visitors playing with different dosage levels in the lab before deciding on their own blend to be bottled. Designed to engage newcomers to Tasmanian sparkling and devotees alike, Jeremy says the first masterclasses have already encouraged repeat visits from those wanting to personalise the dosage rate for wine at their wedding.
Full of fun
Jeremy divides the wines he collects for research purposes and pure enjoyment between his 72-bottle office cabinet and an underground home cellar for 100 dozen. “When I moved into my current house I allocated about 70 per cent of the underground garage to wine, and filled that in about five minutes, so the bottles now extend into my workshop,”
Jeremy says.
“My most precious bottles came out of my grandfather’s cellar, including a couple of pretty old wines from Moorilla Estate.
And although most of my collection is Tasmanian, I have pinot noir and riesling from a whole range of places,” he adds.
Besides the occasional Dauvissat Chablis, it’s safe to assume riesling takes up the lion’s share of Jeremy’s Old World whites. It was while working under influential contract winemaker Andrew Hood in the early 2000s that his love of off-dry riesling was cemented. “When Hoody and I realised we both loved high-acid, low-alcohol riesling in that serious Kabinett style, we tried making a few cases for ourselves – at about 14g/l residual sugar – using fruit from the coldest part of the state, and that set me on a path I’ve followed since.
“I’ve got the alcohol level down to 6.5% in the Josef Chromy Delikat SGR Riesling without having to match the 60g/l residual sugar with enamel-stripping acidity, and the 2017 vintage is one I’m particularly excited about.”
Making sekt is another project he enjoys immensely, not least because no one else in Australia seems to be making sparkling riesling using bottle fermentation. “I love making it because it’s such an unusual style in this country; it’s vibrant, has character, and has texture. But that doesn’t mean we sell much of it,” he adds.
Add to these vinous explorations a textural field blend made using 50 per cent whole bunches, and zweigeltrebe (or zweigelt) in honour of Josef Chromy’s Czech heritage, and there doesn’t seem much time left for the overseas sales trips, wine dinners and vineyard management duties that also fill Jeremy’s diary. The quick-thinking and technical skills he picked up from winemakers like Andrew Hood and David Noon on his path to Josef Chromy Wines are clearly holding him in good stead.
In pursuit of progress
Compared with the industry he returned to after studying in
South Australia more than 20 years ago, Jeremy says Tasmanian winemaking has taken a giant leap forward. “When I started out, there were people like Andrew Pirie, Fred Peacock and Stefano Lubiana doing great things, but Tasmania wasn’t anywhere near the hot property it is now,” he explains. “And when Joe came to me, then in his mid-70s, about starting up a new operation, I don’t think either of us imagined it would grow so fast in those first 10 years.”
Now with stockists across Australia and significant exports to North America, Japan, the UK and Scandinavia, the brand has come a long way since Jeremy was delivering boxes of wine in his station wagon and living above what is now the cellar door.
It's likely there will be a few more visitors to the cellar door when Josef’s $450m Launceston hotel development is complete too.
“It’s been a stunning rate of growth for us; exciting, challenging, fun and exhausting. There are times when I wish I could just turn up the music and make wine for myself again, but a lot of Chinese teas, a cold beer at the end of the day and the adrenaline of it all keeps me going.”
“We have what we need here to control every stage of the winemaking process, from pressing to packaging, which is a luxury few people have. But most of what we do still comes back to old-school techniques.”