Profile
Stuart Pigott, a world authority on riesling, wrote after a visit to Grosset Wines that riesling wines are ‘dramatic images of the places where they grew and the seasons during which the grapes ripened'. But Grosset's wines, he said, are interfused not only with that sense of place and season, but with something he calls ‘the spirit of Jeff Grosset', a phenomenon that occurs by a means that ‘science has yet to explain'.
These words evoke the drama of the journey that Jeffrey Grosset has made in the past two decades. Unremitting dedication to a process that is for him a combination of the creative – often beyond explanation – and the application of technique, experience and technology has brought him to the top of his profession. His immensely disciplined approach to winemaking involves meticulous attention at every stage, from the choice of the very earth itself, as in his selection of the famous windswept site for the Gaia, to the fine tuning during pressing and fermentation.
Similarly, his leading role in the quest to improve the closure of wine bottles was part of his recognition that technology and tradition had to meet and be reconciled. Confronting the problems of closure, Jeffrey put his own wines into screwcap. The screwcap initiative, a milestone in wine closures, culminated in the London launch in May 2005 of Taming the Screw, a screwcap manual, by Tyson Stelzer, to which Jeffrey was a contributing editor. In Grosset's own words: ‘The widespread use of an inert wine closure that works is exciting for those who love wine. No more pouring down the drain wine that the closure has made undrinkable! We can look forward now to enjoying great wine not just great bottles.'
But none of his openness to technology and innovation has been at the expense of tradition or of his most deeply held convictions about his craft. Hand picking prevails exclusively in both his Clare Valley and Adelaide Hills vineyards. His pickers, many of whom have worked for him for many years, are committed to his standards, and the close working relationship that Jeffrey has with his vineyard team is indispensable to the successful management of each harvest.
All of which helps you to understand how thoroughly deserved have been his many accolades, from Jeffrey's being voted the Inaugural Volvo/ Wine Magazine Australian Winemaker of the Year and International Riesling Winemaker of the Year at the Riesling Summit II, Hamburg, both in 1998, to being listed as one of the fifty most influential winemakers in the world in Wine and Spirits, US, in 2005.
In February 2001, the same magazine published Rod Smith's tribute: ‘Jeffrey Grosset's Polish Hill riesling … tastes as though the grape juice were made of water that was filtered through layers of glacial gravel, slate and shale – which, in fact, it was (not incidentally, the vines are not grafted, but growing on their own roots). Producing the terroir-driven Polish Hill riesling has for the past two decades been a journey toward enlightenment for Jeffrey Grosset …'
But Grosset takes the concept of terroir further than Smith implies. ‘ Terroir', he said, in giving the inaugural New South Wales Wine Press Club lecture, ‘is the French word for what some have known in Australia for thousands of years as 'pangkarra'. Pangkarra is an Aboriginal word … that represents a concept that has no English translation but encompasses the characteristics of a specific place – the climate, sunshine, rain, geology and the soil–water relations. About the closest we can get in English is to refer to “the site”, but even that doesn't cover the major components of terroir, or pangkarra, being the soil and local topography.'
This intellectual reach wedded to experience, intuition, and an indefinable touch of genius has brought Jeffrey Grosset to the peak of his art and profession. When, in May 2005, Grosset wines produced from the Clare Valley became 100 per cent estate grown, Jeffrey reached not the destination of his journey but a new and exciting stage. Already his achievements for Grosset Wines have been translated into advantages for the Australian wine industry generally. As an acknowledged winemaker par excellence, he can – and unquestionably will – devote himself to the continuing challenge of seeking perfection for the wine lover.