LARRY CHERUBINO

Larry and wife Edwina established their wine label in 2005, and have since won many awards. Their fruit comes from sites in the Great Southern and Margaret River, where they also recently opened a cellar door.

ON 2020:

In some regions of Western Australia, we’re at least a month ahead of ’17 and ’19, which were very mild years. When we had the warm weather in early December, it coincided with a stage of growth, which propelled the southwest. It’s going to be a fairly compressed vintage – crops are certainly going to be lower. It’s been a fairly dry season and crops will be light, but they’re going to be pretty intense, so that could make some very good wines, particularly from the vineyards that have had plenty of water on hand. They have that combination of excellent yields and excellent quality.

ON THE EXCITEMENT:

It kicks in when the siren goes. Once things start, everyone spends a huge amount of time in the vineyard. We’ve made investments in clonal material and with tonnes of mulch in the vineyards, and there are other things we’ve done in the vines, so it’s exciting to see some of those initiatives come to fruition. You can make a difference in a year, but if you really want to get it from the ground up, you do it from the vines, and those lead times are so long.

ON HIS FAVOURITE BITS:

The end! No, I do enjoy it. There is a lot of distance to cover, but I’ve been doing it so long, I know I have to be up in northern Margaret River and then shoot across to Porongurup. Not that I’m much of a sportsman, but it’s a bit like when you play so many games of football – you just know where to turn up on the field. Once you’ve been working with your blocks for a while, you tend to know how they’re going to fare.

ON HIS LEAST FAVOURITE BITS:

When the ripening isn’t spread out and it’s all compressed, so it’s all about managing that and making sure you’re picking at the right times. Sometimes you just can’t pick it fast enough. You invest in your vines over nine or 10 months, and you’ve got two months to bring that in. It can go wrong! There are some years when you think it’s all going to fail and you’ll have to ask people where you can park your caravan.

ON THE HOURS:

Sometimes you go in from 5am and do the rounds, go through to dinner, then get on the computer after that. They’re pretty long hours and you go into high alert.

ON PREVIOUS DISASTERS:

Sometimes when they’re pumping over the reds, the hose can go back into the wrong tank, but you try to react before that happens. And one time, my father-in-law’s sheep got into the vineyard and ate our best cabernet – that made for an awkward Christmas! In the past, we’ve had hail and fires, and last year we got frost and lost a lot of fruit. We’ve also lost vast tracts of fruit to smoke taint and the most heartbreaking thing is when you’re looking at perfectly healthy fruit that’s rendered useless.

ON THE CURRENT FOCUS:

We’ve been investing huge amounts in our vineyards and chardonnay program. Our shiraz has been pretty strong, and cabernet and chardonnay are really starting to kick, too. We don’t want the wines to be good, we want them to be great. And whether it rains or not, we all need to be using less water. The longer we don’t have to irrigate, the better.

Our shiraz has been pretty strong, and cabernet and chardonnay are really starting to kick, too. We don’t want them to be good, we want them to be great.

Larry Cherubino