Louis Latour Agencies

Winemaker Series: Adam Eggins pt 1

08 September 2014

Adam Eggins is Wakefield Wines chief winemaker. He recently took the time to tell us about his approach to winemaking and the wines he makes.

Can you tell us more about how you see the role of a winemaker?

Wow. Perfecting the Vision. I read a book called Sommelier and it spoke about creating in your mind’s eye an image of perfection for every wine style on earth. You should be able to see the image of say a perfect Chardonnay or Riesling. Perfect the vision. That’s what winemakers do and they should focus on it every day. In the design of the winery, when harvesting fruit, when fermenting, when blending and when doing pre-bottling assessments. Focus on perfecting what we produce. The most enjoyable part is trying to make wines continually better. We have a saying ‘equal or better than before’. So our biggest competitor is ultimately ourselves. The hardest part are the subtleties like perfecting the aromatic expression of Pinot Gris or Pinot noir or honing the palate structure of a great Riesling or length on a great Chardonnay.

Can you tell us about the vineyard where you work?

The Wakefield Wines Clare Valley estate is a special place. The vineyard is located in the hills so that little valleys exist across the property. This brings diversity of flavour. Vines in the wind behave differently to vines out of it and this changes flavour and palate expression. We then use these differences to blend our final wines. Clare is also special because it is a hot valley yet has cold nights due to its elevation so it is one of the few places on earth that can perfect Riesling, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon in the same region.

How do you handle the harvest at Wakefield wines?

Harvest due to the size of our property is largely done by machine but there are a few tricks in this too. Our vineyard is designed for machine harvesting with VSP systems in place and very narrow fruit zones. We also use gentle and fast machines so the plant gets minimal damage. Further we have been experimenting with fruit handling post-harvest to minimise fruit damage. To that end since 2004 we have not crushed a grape. We de-stem red grapes and whole berry press white fruit. The resultant wines are remarkably soft and have natural delicacy. Machine harvesting also gives you the capacity to go fast which means you can hold out to our peak flavour moment and bring a lot in quickly. Machine harvesting is also performed in the dead of night which is quite cold often around 10-12 degrees Celsius which is ideal for fruit handling.

How do you go about making your wines?

Sadly there is not one answer here if we had to give one it would be as gentle as possible. White grapes are pressed, settled with no enzyme and then fermented in stainless steel or barrels for our Chardonnay wines, also a little for our Pinot Gris. Red wines are destemmed then fermented in a range of different size fermenters from our smallest which is 200 kilograms up to our larger vessels of around 60 ton. Some reds wines see skin contact for ~ 7-10 days whilst others can run out to ~30-60 days on skins depending on the variety and what we are trying to make. We have a minimal movement philosophy followed by gentle natural fining and minimal filtration.

What are the biggest challenges in your winemaking?

New varieties can always be a challenge in trying to understand where the new variety is trying to go. Even when you think you have perfected it this doesn’t always translate into sales in the real world. So the alignment with the market place can be a big challenge. Also improving the known can be difficult. Chardonnay is a great example and there is a lot of ordinary Chardonnay in the market. Making wines that stand above normal and that people like and are drawn to can be challenging.