PETER GAGO

As Gerrie Lim finds out, PETER GAGO’S illustrious 30-year winemaking career has only got better with age

Peter Gago will be celebrating 30 years with Penfolds come November this year, a stint that started when he joined the Australian wine producer as a sparkling-wine maker in 1989. Its Chief Winemaker since 2002, Gago is renowned for his red wines – particularly the Penfolds Grange, the St Henri, the RWT series, and acclaimed bottlings such as Bin 369, Bin 707 and Bin 407 – and when I ask him in Bangkok, where he’s officiating at a launch ushering in the new Penfolds Collection, what that feels like, he replies with a joke that could only matter to him.

“If I can get to November, it won’t be 30 years at Penfolds. It’ll be 30 years without a sick day at Penfolds,” he says. “Not one in 30 years – imagine that! I’ve had colds and the flu – thankfully, I can isolate myself at work and not infect other people – but that’s the worst I’ve had, so I’ve been extraordinarily lucky! I don’t want to tempt the gods before the 30 years happen, but that’s how it is and I’m getting very excited – that’s an accomplishment!”

This current trip has taken the 2012 Winemaker’s Winemaker – a title conferred to him by the Institute of Masters of Wine – to New York, New Orleans, Tokyo and now Bangkok. What does he think of all the travelling, I ask. “There are issues when you’re away from home for a while,” he muses [incidentally, his wife Gail bought a house in Melbourne to be closer to his parents while he was in Bangkok], “and you’re thinking, why do this? If you own the business, then you’ve got a vested interest and if you’re part of a family business, you can see it being passed down. But with Penfolds, it’s another brand.”

So what is it that drives him? Primarily, he notes, it is his love for wine and, in the case of Penfolds, the dual goal of “accessibility and propensity to age, because of the structure of the wine – the fact that the tannin isn’t over-extracted by getting wines or skins or seeds early and picking up those green phenolics. They have the right tannin, not the one you have to wait for, but the right one with the right structure and the right balance. That’s all you need for agreeability. You don’t need massive alcohol, you need balance.”

To deliver on the promise of a good drop, he shares, the key thing to know is when the right time is. “A lot of people release wines that are pretty when released, and a lot are powerful but not necessarily pretty, so there’s a difference,” he says.

I then remind him of something he told me when we met in Hong Kong in 2012, when he reflected on his lifestyle: “Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it very enjoyable? Immensely. Is it very important? Profoundly.” Now, where on earth did he get that?

He laughs and says: “Well, the thing is, you couldn’t do a job like this if you didn’t enjoy it. The last five-and-a-half weeks, for instance, have been gruelling. I only got in from Tokyo late last night and now I’m heading for an eight-hour flight [he flies home the next day]. It’s been like this every

day and every night. If you don’t believe in it, if you’re looking at your watch, then there would be issues. At the end of the day, it’s not about me, but about having a role. And last night, before dinner, I hit the gym and I think one hour in the gym is worth four hours sleep. You’re not getting much sleep, so that helps because we’re flying in these incubators called aeroplanes.”

The fact that he does enjoy it – immensely – comes through when he goes down the grand list of wines in the Penfolds family. “Bin 407,” he shares, “is a young wine in our stable, while Bin 389, also known as ‘Baby Grange’, was the most cellared red wine in Australia in 2017. These wines get better as they get older – 1967, 1971, 1990. Then there’s the St Henri – the first ones made come from the Auldana estate in 1890 and the house style is still the same now, with the use of large vats that haven’t changed from last century.”

And it’s evident Gago has his pulse on everything Penfolds – despite him being in Bangkok, he can still describe a Penfolds launch in New York “with Julianne Moore, who’s a favourite of mine – how cool is that?”

Apart from this collection, there are new bottlings such as Lot 518, described as a spirited wine with baijiu, an experimental hybrid. Gago himself explains it: “Lot 518 was created for our much-valued and increasing global Chinese following. It’s a two-stage fortification, with the second using baijiu, offering a spirited wine option.”

By the time I emerge from my interview with Gago, the Penfolds Grange 2014 is gone, drunk by the crowd at this function. But I manage to taste the wine I really wanted: the St Henri 2015 – made from 93 percent shiraz and 7 percent cabernet sauvignon. The quality of fruit collected is exceptional, all dark berries with buoyancy and luminosity suggesting venison and game meats.

It takes me back to Singapore in 2007, when I first met Gago, who gave me a luscious bottle of 1985 St Henri and said: “My motto is to drink widely, to taste different grape varietals. People ask me why I joined Penfolds, when ‘big is bad’ and all that. I did it for the history and tradition, and the library of some of the best wines in Australia. And I’ve never had a regret.”