Australian led Moet’s drive to develop sparkling wines in new, exotic locations

Tony Jordan, who has died aged 75, was a leading Australian oenologist who specialised in the development of sparkling wines in new and exotic locations around the world. Jordan was best known in his role as chief executive of the Australian arm of Domaine Chandon. The champagne house of Moet & Chandon had first taken its brand and expertise abroad as Domaine Chandon to Argentina and California; in 1985 Jordan, then an independent consultant, was asked to help find a suitable vineyard in Australia.

He identified a former dairy farm at Coldstream in Yarra Valley, Victoria, as having the ideal soil and climate, and was made managing director of the project in 1987.

From 2003 until his official retirement in 2008, he was also chief executive of Moet Hennessy’s wineries at Cape Mentelle in Western Australia and Cloudy Bay in New Zealand, as well as the Domaine Chandon operation.

Jordan was a regular wine judge in New Zealand, and had been a consultant with Marlborough wineries since the 1980s. Cloudy Bay technical director Jim White, who was one of about six Kiwis from the wine industry who travelled to Australia for Jordan’s memorial on Monday, said he left an important stamp on New Zealand wineries through his involvement with them.

‘‘He was a lovely guy, he was very supportive of his team. He was a man who, once you garnered his respect, he gave you every opportunity to do your job well and further your career. He had a dry sense of humour and a wry smile, but always questioned everything, and asked that of his team, to pursue quality, ultimately. He was a pretty unique person.’’

Quiet, thoughtful and precise, Jordan was one of the most influential and respected voices in the Australian wine industry during an era in which it raised itself from an earlier reputation as a commercial mass-producer to become a source of finer, more innovative wines of all types.

He also helped achieved worldwide recognition for a new generation of sparkling wines and told an interviewer that his biggest challenge had been ‘‘educating the winedrinking world that [sparkling wine] is not what you buy when you can’t afford champagne . . . There is real excellence that deserves to be appreciated’’.

Anthony Douglas Jordan was born in Perth, Western Australia, moving with his family to Melbourne when he was 7. After postdoctoral work at University College London, he took up a lectureship in wine science at Riverina College in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, later part of Charles Sturt University. Having developed the college’s oenology course, he left in 1978 to start a consultancy business, Oenotec.