USHER TINKLER

USHER TINKLER WINES, HUNTER VALLEY, NSW

Farming is in the Tinkler family, with Usher the third generation to tend to the same vines his grandparents planted. Under his own label, and at his winery and cellar door, Usher is doing things his way.

ON 2020:

The biggest issue is our drought conditions. These are some of the lowest crops we’ve ever seen, so there’s not a lot of grapes around – we just physically ran out of water after four years of drought – but the quality is really good. We’ve got concentrated chardonnay and shiraz, and it’s looking like it’s shaping up to be a really sound year.

ON THE EXCITEMENT:

For us, it’s about trying to push the boundaries and keep things interesting by making wines that are different. I’ve made wines that I’ve thought people wouldn’t understand, but they get excited about wines that are a little different, and that gives people a totally new experience. That excites me because, firstly, it sells, but also because it opens up a different type of thinking. There’s a lot of room for contemporary wines and fluid producers.

ON HIS FAVOURITE BITS:

Probably the start of harvest – and the end! There’s the optimism at the start, and the relief of the finish. It’s challenging and every year is different, and it changes every day. You start with the whites, then the reds come in, then you’ve got the chardonnay ferments in barrel. I’m a bit more chilled and relaxed about the process these days – if something happens, I try not to let it stress me. It’s different for me because I’m not playing for wine shows. I’m trying to make interesting wines that people get excited about.

ON HIS LEAST FAVOURITE BITS:

Managing the weather is always the stressful part. It doesn’t matter what region you’re in, it’s either too hot, too dry, or the rain comes and you’ve got to change your plan. Or then drought comes, like we have now. It all dictates when you pick – a few days either way can be the difference between fresh grapes and overripeness. Trying to manage the whole vineyard in a very timely manner is the hardest bit.

ON THE HOURS:

I used to work for a big winery, and harvest would start in January and finish after Easter, and we made wines from all over Australia. It used to be a really long and painful drag. Now I only use fruit from my own family vineyards, and while we make a lot of wine, it’s a short window – we go hard for about four weeks. Then you lock everything down and take a holiday!

ON PREVIOUS DISASTERS:

We ran out of coffee one year! Maybe the biggest problem has been staying up too late and drinking too much nice wine, but winemaking-wise, we have been lucky.

ON FAVOURITE MEMORIES:

As a kid, one of the last things we would do in the school holidays was pick the pinot noir and chardonnay for Mount Pleasant sparklings into buckets and then ride on the back of the truck and hand-load the grapes straight into the press. That was with [former Mount Pleasant winemaker] Phil Ryan about 30 years ago!

ON THE CURRENT FOCUS:

We’ve got some interesting wines, like

The Enneagram, which is a blend of nine varieties. It’s like an abstract piece of art, where everyone sees something different in it. We label that with artwork and no writing, so it makes people think. In the vineyards, we’ve been doing a lot to convert to organic, and I also started a project about six years ago with wild-grown shiraz. We let it grow wild and see how far we can push the boundaries. We bottled the first wine from those vines last year, and there’s a graphite concentration that I don’t see in commercial shiraz wines. In years like this one, there’s no fruit to pick [from those vines], but maybe in some years, we’ll make a rosé or light-bodied red with it, and that’s fine with me because it shows the year and the vineyard.

There’s the optimism at the start, and the relief of the finish. It’s challenging and every year is different, and it changes every day.

Usher Tinkler