It says sustainable on the wine label, so it must be legit, right? Not always, said Prue Henschke.
The 71-year-old Australian knows a few things. As the chief viticulturist and fifth-generation co-owner of South Australian winery Henschke, she helped preserve their sustainable approach to farming the vineyards while transforming it with organic and biodynamic techniques. She also practices regenerative farming by planting native grasses to rehabilitate the land, and trial new grape varieties that thrive in the Adelaide Hill’s cool climate.
Today, the over 150-year-old winery has been given numerous sustainability awards in Australia. Henschke’s wines are also highly sought-after, most notably the flagship Hill of Grace Vineyard, a shiraz with intense flavours of dark berries and signature notes of pepper and sage. In Singapore, a bottle will cost you at least a thousand dollars, if you can even find one.
Henschke was in town late last year for the Wine Pinnacle Awards’ Wine Industry Symposium, and we talked to her about regenerative farming, why certification matters, and what to look for when buying sustainable wine.
How did Hill of Grace taste before and after the switch to regenerative farming?
“Through the 1990s I experimented with straw mulch and composts under the vines and this has led to deeper colour and beautiful silky mature tannins in the grapes by preserving the soil moisture and cooler conditions in mid summer, important around veraison (grape ripening). While some warmth helps ripening, stress after veraison results in jammy wines and our goal is to find the beautiful savoury spiciness of shiraz that the Hill of Grace vineyard expresses so well.”
How has climate change affected your vineyards, and what steps have you taken to make your vineyards more resilient?
“In the temperate wine regions of Australia, climate change has meant more extreme weather conditions with a lot of variability through the seasons. A dry winter followed by a wet spring, a frosty spring followed by a heatwave in mid summer. An increase in the occurrence of thunderstorms in late summer, which is magical for the developing grapes, to a La Niña wet cool year like the last three years. There is no doubt that there is an underlying trend to warmer average temperatures, but their impact is blurred by the bigger swings in our seasonal weather.”
“It does make it a challenge to prepare for climate change, but my thoughts are to keep the soil in our vineyards as healthy as possible by building up the organic matter with compost under the vines and grassed mid-rows. An actively living soil teeming with mycorrhizal fungi can supply moisture and nutrients to the vines for an extended period over the season.”
You are a member of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia. How does certification benefit you and wine consumers?
“Sustainability is a huge topic to cover and having a standard to be certified against gives us the ability to say that we are a sustainable wine producer without 65 pages of the reasons why! It is also a great way to benchmark against other producers and regions across the world. It takes time to be certified organic and biodynamic as we need to develop the land management skills. It is more of an internal guide and a very personal approach to an overall healthy lifestyle.”
“Biodynamics in Australia has a wonderful attitude to get producers started and allow them to integrate the biodynamic principles slowly, with full understanding, into their farming practices. That feeling of satisfaction of working the land productively and healthily is what we want to pass on to our consumers, not a certificate on the wall.”
What advise do you have for someone new to sustainable wines?
“Websites are a wonderful source of information. The discussion on social media at the 2022 Wine Pinnacle Awards’ Wine Industry Symposium showed what an important tool this is for the next generation. By looking through the stories and the visuals of a biodynamic wine producer, the accent is often on how they look after their land, the vines, and the contentment of making a wine that has flavour, balance, and an interesting representation of a grape variety. There are so many wine writers across the world who love to connect with a biodynamic producer’s story that often their reviews are a great source of descriptors for anyone looking to select and purchase a biodynamic wine.”
(Hero and feature images credit: Henschke / Facebook)
Jethro Kang
Jethro enjoys wine, biking, and climbing, and he’s terrible at all three. In between them, he drinks commercial lagers, and eats dumplings and gelati.
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