DAN'S WINE BLOG- WINE ASSIST ANNIVERSARY

Friday, July 2, 2021

Twenty years ago yesterday, my wife Vicki and I founded, Wine Assist Pty Ltd, with the aim of assisting wineries with a wide range of services (other than winemaking). Given that eighty percent of new ventures fail within two years, we are pretty chuffed at achieving this milestone.

During this time we have been involved in a wide variety of activities from winery reviews and valuations, through assisting (over 12 months) in the re-commissioning of the Wickham Hill 20,000 tonne winery in Griffith, to assisting small wineries to export over 800 containers of wine (mainly to Asia and more specifically to China). Along the way we launched our own wine label, Fifth Element, before fortuitously seeing the GFC coming so that we wound it down just as the GFC hit.

The whole concept of Wine Assist came about from a discussion with my dear friend, Jim Irvine, whom I had met in early December 1999 when I became the General Manager of Yaldara Wines (when Simeon Wines bought the winery from Hermann Thumm). Jim was the consultant winemaker to Chateau Yaldara and very quickly we established a rapport as we sorted out the bulk wine stocks and the significant array of labels that Yaldara had under the previous owners.

Over the next eighteen months (until Simeon Wines sold Yaldara wines to McGuigan for corporate reasons), we streamlined the existing portfolio, created and launched new wines and brands, including the Barossa’s first varietal Petit Verdot.

I learned a massive amount from Jim and came to respect him not only for his encyclopaedic wine knowledge but for his charm as an exceptional human being. Yaldara was sold when we were eighteen months into a five-year plan to rebuild and rejuvenate the company. It was Jim who first suggested that rather than looking for another job, I consider starting my own business consulting to wineries to help them improve their performance. Thus Wine Assist was formed on July 1st, 2001.

For those who may not know Jim, in a career that spanned sixty-six years, he became known as, “Mr Merlot”, for having lifted Australian Merlot from a mere blending “filler”, to becoming recognised on the world stage, due to his winning “World’s Best Merlot Maker” in 1992 and 1996 – which included outgunning the world famous Bordeaux – Chateau Petrus. He is also a long standing “Baron of the Barossa” and used to own Irvine Wines until he retired in 2014.

So it was with great delight that I had planned that yesterday I was going to host lunch with Jim and three great wine mates of mine to celebrate Wine Assist’s 20th Anniversary. Alas, Covid-19 restrictions meant that it had to be deferred to later this year. Apart from enjoying some of Jim’s 1996 Irvine Grand Merlot and our Fifth Element 2004 Padthaway Riesling, we were also going to enjoy a bottle of 2018 Min Zeven Bruut & Bruizend, a smashing sparkling wine made at seven metres below sea level by a great lady friend of mine in the Netherlands, out of five hybrid grape varieties. In addition to the line-up there was to be a bottle of the 2015 Giribaldi Cento Uve (an Italian wine made from 132 different grape varieties) and we were going to finish with a bottle of 1975 Chateau Coutet Barsac, just to prove that old age can be a sweet thing. We always try to do things just a little differently.

Thank you Jim for being my inspiration, mentor and even more importantly, my dear friend. Also, a big thank you to all the people and companies who engaged with Wine Assist along the way, and to all of you who read my rantings each week. Cheers!