By JESSE GRAHAM
YARRA Valley wines have again been recognised as a cut above the rest, taking out half of the trophies at this month’s Royal Melbourne Wine Awards.
The 2016 trophy winners were announced on Thursday, 15 October, with Innocent Bystander taking out the Trevor Mast Trophy for Best Shiraz with its Mea Culpa Syrah, 2014.
Coldstream Hills’ Reserve Chardonnay, 2014, received the Francois De Castella Trophy for Best Young White, while the Victorian Trophy for White Wines of Provenance went to TarraWarra Estate’s Chardonnay, 2014, 2008 and 2004.
Oakridge Wines’ Local Vineyard Series Barkala Ridge 2013 Chardonnay received the Douglas Seabrook Trophy for Best Single Vineyard Wine, and Yarra Valley wines were awarded 83 medals at the awards – 13 of which were gold, 27 silver and 46 bronze.
Innocent Bystander winemaker, Steve Flamsteed, said the trophy was one of the winery’s most prestigious to date.
“We’ve won a few competitions and a few trophies, but I think this is the most important, for shiraz particularly,” he said.
Mr Flamsteed, a winemaker for 36 years, said the namesake of the award was a guru in the world of winemaking.
“The guy that the trophy is named after, Trevor Mast, is a bit of a guru of ours, certainly a guru of mine,” he said.
“He planted Shiraz in The Grampians, along with a bunch of other people, and began to make really perfumed, pretty shirazes, that still had plenty of body and plenty of weight, but had a whole other spectrum of flavour.
“We used to visit him when we were young students, because this wine was so incredibly made.”
Mr Flamsteed said the Mea Culpa Syrah 2014 was a “bright and peppery, and highly perfumed” wine, made in a single vineyard.
“It’s a single-vat wine, on a single vineyard parcel, on a single site, so it’s very unique,” he said.
He said that awards such as those in the Royal Melbourne Wine Awards helped to promote the Yarra Valley’s wineries to an international market.
“In Australia, there’re 22 million people, and you only have access to a certain proportion of that population,” he said.
“If you want to be a really successful winery, you have to also be looking outside Australia – the world is your market now.”
