Louis Latour Agencies

David Hohnen: Intuitive winemaking

07 March 2015

David Hohnen, co-founder of McHenry Hohnen, writes about Australian winemaking history and, McHenry Hohnen's own winemaking philosophy which values intution over a reliance on science. 

In the early 1980’s, the Australian winemaking community picked up on and embraced work published by an Australian wine scientist, Dr Roger Boulton from the University of California at Davis.

In simple terms, Dr Boulton is a proponent for lowering PH levels in wine, in particular red wines, by the addition of tartaric acid (the acid of grapes). The result, in warmer climates such as ours, is a greater colour stability, better resistance to unwanted yeast and bacteria and an altogether more stable wine.

For two generations we have been drinking the results. The wines are stable, the colour is bright but for some of us that added acid has a bite.

Our fearless winemaker, T.rex (Trent Carroll) with a growing number of young winemakers, is up for less science and more intuition in his approach. It started with our first winemaker Freya Hohnen back in 2004 and T.rex continues to refine the hands off approach.

The results speak for themselves. In combination with our biological grape growing, the non-interventionist winemaking is resulting in wines that resonate. They are expressive of their varieties and the minerality of the soils and this are wines with personality.