Viticulturist of the Year

VANYA CULLEN | CULLEN WINES | MARGARET RIVER | WESTERN AUSTRALIA

AFTER TAKING out the Winemaker of the Year title at the 2020 Halliday Wine Companion Awards, Vanya Cullen is grateful to receive the inaugural Viticulturalist award, but she acknowledges it’s about much more than her own work at Cullen Wines.

“There’s been a lot of hard work and belief in what we are doing to reach this tipping point in the Australian wine industry, where biodynamics and organics are recognised as the best way to produce quality fruit,” Vanya explains. “This is our 50th year at

Cullen and it’s very pleasing, on many levels, for myself and all the people who have contributed to this award – and there are many. I see this as a team effort, and I feel honoured.”

For Vanya, viticulture plays a vital role in the production of quality wine, with the winery long employing organic and biodynamic practices. “Viticulture is everything. Wine style is dictated by what happens in the vineyard,” Vanya says. “We say ‘the voice of the land is louder in the glass in biodynamics’. That means we don’t make any additions to our wine, so essentially, the style and quality come from the land. If you look after the land, you get better quality fruit.” When Vanya reflects on their past 50 years, she recalls a time when the land on which Cullen Wines rests was very different. Holding the philosophy they must leave the land they inhabit in a better condition than how they found it, the team has successfully transitioned from minimal chemical intervention to organic, and on to biodynamic. “This property was covered in ring-bark trees and the land was dead. We planted grape vines not knowing anything in 1971 and our whole journey is a lesson for everybody,” she says. “More and more people are going organic as they realise the quality of a wine is about the soil microbiology.”

Looking ahead, Vanya hopes to see more people follow the practices the team at Cullen has pioneered over the decades.

“My dream is to see everyone organic and biodynamic. You don’t need to put toxic chemicals on the earth to produce great wine,” she says. “In fact, it’s rather the opposite – you make better-quality wines if you’re organic and the vineyard is in balance. You don’t have to subtract or add things to the wine if it’s already balanced. Wines of the land are the way forward.”

Having also achieved carbon-neutral status, Vanya and the team are driving a carbon offset scheme that reinvests into state-based projects, which solidifies their position as climate-change leaders, further inspiring others across the industry.