The heart land

For Patrick Sullivan, the farm is where the heart is, and his love for the land shines through his eponymous range of wines.

Hear how Patrick Sullivan chose his special spot in Victoria's west Gippsland.

“I love all wine. I just identify with Australian wine

and great farming.”

Patrick Sullivan is in the thick of it when we speak in early February. “There has been smoke around, hail, and a bit of rain over the past week, so we’ve had to get on top of the vineyards,” he says. With the severe conditions faced by the Australian winemaking and grape-growing community in recent years, Patrick has been luckier than most. “We’ve had bushfires the past three or four years in a row. In 2019, they were on either side of us, so one was near Melbourne and the other closer to Sale, and the smoke was pretty powerful. Fortunately, the fires came late enough that we could pull all the fruit off before it was affected, and this year, harvest came late enough that we weren’t impacted. We’ve had 100ml of rain in the past five days, so we know there’s going to be enough wet ground in the forest to mean we’re out of fire danger.”

LAND OF PLENTY

It’s not all about luck, though. Patrick’s decision to settle in the Baw Baw Shire of west Gippsland in Victoria was a considered one, taking into account both now and the future. “I grew up in central Victoria and the Goulburn Valley during the great drought that started in the late-’90s and lasted for more than a decade. My formative years were spent seeing farmers struggle, and I saw what not having water did to those communities,” he explains.

It was during a university lecture with Dr Peter Dry AM, a leading viticultural scientist, that Patrick discovered how this could be avoided. “He brought up the climate-change map of Australia, and on it, there was a circle around this one area. When I asked what it was, he didn’t know, so we took a closer look and found that this area, the Baw Baw Shire, had an arrow to it saying it would not change. It indicated that even if the rest of Australia were in drought, that place would not be affected, as its weather patterns are so unique to the rest of the country. The other aspects it had to satisfy were rainfall, moisture in the air and volcanic soils.”

This revelation led Patrick to find out if anyone was making wine there. “The only person I could find was [well-known pinot producer] William Downie, which is how we met.” In 2008, Patrick decided he wanted to live in the Baw Baw Shire, and by 2014, he had a deposit on a farm. “I guess the rest is history,” he says.

TRUE CALLING

Patrick grew up in Victoria’s Heathcote in the ’90s, when wine was beginning to boom in the region. It was then that his interest in it started to form. “My father had a friend who had a winery, and we spent a lot of time there, so in the back of my mind from when I was eight or nine years old, there was something that struck a chord. We then moved to the Goulburn Valley, and I started working in vineyards during school holidays, which I loved,” he says.

As an 18-year-old, while Patrick’s mates were drinking beer, he was drinking wine. “I was just really into it – I liked the stories and agriculture of it.” Not long after, while living in London, Patrick’s curiosity continued to grow. “I got a job in wine retail and met a gentleman named Neil, who taught me a great deal about wine – he introduced me to the Australian classics and also taught me about Old World styles. He was a big influence on me realising what I loved about wine.”

Despite this obvious infatuation, Patrick was at a crossroads.

“I was muttering about going back to Australia and enrolling in medicine – I was interested in science, and members of my family had worked in hospitals – and my girlfriend at the time said, ‘But you’re so interested in wine, why wouldn’t you do that?’” And that’s when it clicked.

Patrick enrolled in winemaking at Adelaide University. Unfortunately, he found it quite dull. “I switched to viticulture instead. I understood wine, and I was a wine lover. I still am. But the soils, the botany, the flowers – that’s the side of wine that excites me. I ended up studying that, and that’s what kicked off the bug.”

TOP TEACHERS

After Adelaide, Patrick headed to Melbourne and began making his own wines at just 22. It turned out to be fortuitous that he’d reached out to William “Bill” Downie to find out more about west Gippsland, as the pair ended up working together, and continue to collaborate today. “Bill taught me to push boundaries and not listen to what anybody else says – to pick my own path and that one day if I loved wine enough and was passionate enough, people would understand. He’s supported my journey all the way through,” Patrick says.

Another mentor is Eric Narioo of UK importer and retailer Caves de Pyrene, a trailblazer of the natural wine movement. “I credit

Eric with showing me all the fun facets of wine that you don’t regularly see – the bits in between, the nuances, the individual expressions. While Neil introduced me to the classics, Eric showed me the vanguards,” he says. “Seeing the full spectrum of what wine could be, and learning not to feel constrained by any of the ideas before me, also helped me understand that Australian wine doesn’t need to mimic somewhere else – it can truly be the best on the planet without needing an external reference. Comparisons to places like France are irrelevant here, as we live on the other side of the world. We should be thinking about what Australian wine tastes like, forgetting the artefact and chasing that.”

HI-FI WINE

Given Patrick’s long-held interest and diverse influences, he’s not rigid in his opinion of what wine “should” be. “I love all wine – I’d quite happily drink a bottle of Wolf Blass. The larger companies and the small make delicious stuff. I just identify with Australian wine and great farming.”

For anyone who has seen or tried Patrick Sullivan wines, they are striking. Despite their distinctive style and emphasis on organic farming, his philosophy doesn’t necessarily parallel with the more extreme side of natural winemaking or the lo-fi guys. “What I’m into is ‘high intervention’, particularly in the vineyard. I want to make sure I’ve got the healthiest, most beautiful sites possible. More than anything, I believe my impact on the planet should be a positive one, and that the vineyards or land that I tend are made better for the next generation. That’s what I’m really passionate about.”

Naturally, this is an attitude that has evolved with time. “I started my own business when I was 22. I’m 34 now, and there’s an evolution that happens in your skills and the way you see things. In the beginning, I was buying fruit from grape growers who were doing the best they could to achieve quality, but they also needed to make a profit. When you buy fruit from a grape grower, you need to have the same quality of fruit as if you were growing it yourself, as your goal is to sell wine, not grapes. I guess trying to be lo-fi,

I’ve purchased fruit, and it just doesn’t work. Sometimes I learnt that the hard way.”

A PATCH OF HIS OWN

Making the switch from buying to growing grapes is the best decision Patrick has made. “It was equally the most difficult decision I’ve made because it cost so much and took so much out of me. I’m a first-generation farmer growing grapes in west Gippsland where it’s incredibly wet and challenging. Due to the rainfall, it’s possibly the most challenging place in Australia to grow organic grapes. But the quality is there, and it’s worth it because it’s given me the confidence to say, ‘You know what, I’m doing what I always said I would and what’s important to me, and I’m doing it the hard way, but what I’m going to achieve is so much greater than if I was still buying fruit’.”

As part of this shift, Patrick has planted vineyards on the farm he bought in 2014. “We have high-density pinot noir and chardonnay there, and hopefully we’ll get our first crop in 2021. Seeing that come to fruition – all of the investment and hard work – and knowing that soon we’ll have wines from vines we planted ourselves is pretty exciting. Back in 2016, we planted a hectare with about 17,000 vines at home, which is quite a lot more than normal, and I can’t wait to see what the farm we chose and moved to and live at is going to produce.”

Patrick plans to put in another three hectares this year. “Being able to make wines from sites I’ve planted and farmed in a particular way since the beginning is definitely the next evolution,” he says.

COOL CLASSICS

With a renewed commitment to making wine only from grapes he’s grown himself, for the past couple of years, Patrick’s range has been wholly chardonnay. “I love chardonnay and white wine. That’s what I’ve been focused on for the past four or five years, and I’m getting it right and doing it well.”

This year, however, Patrick is bringing pinot noir back into play. “We started our viticulture program in 2017 across five sites, and we’ve been doing a lot of grafting and bits and pieces, and so now we finally have enough fruit to make pinot again.” The majority of the vineyards Patrick works with are more than 30 years old. As a result of this vine age and his thoughtful approach to farming, the wines Patrick has been achieving are layered and gorgeous. You’ll need to get in quick to try them, though – the range has a cult following and sells out in a snap each year.

“What I’m into is ‘ high intervention’, particularly in the vineyard. I want to make sure I’ve got the healthiest, most beautiful sites possible. More than anything, I believe my impact on the planet should be a positive one. ”