He Took The Cup

A little drop of heaven
By Jeni Port

July 8, 2008
A Jesuit brother's longevity as a winemaker is ending, writes Jeni Port. At Br. John May's table you say grace, even if that table happens to be in a one-hat South Yarra restaurant hundreds of kilometres away from his Jesuit order in the Clare Valley. So there we were - atheists, Christians, the odd agnostic or possibly Buddhist, who knows - bowing heads and listening to a verse of thanks to a greater force unknown to many of us. It was an act that seemed entirely appropriate. This was Brother John's moment, not ours. The gentle, pious 78-year-old Jesuit was being inducted into a rare club among Australian winemakers. This year he celebrated his 45th vintage at Sevenhill Cellars, a Jesuit-founded vineyard from the 1850s that once produced more sweet sacramental wine than table wine, but no longer. The curiosity with which some Australian drinkers looked upon Sevenhill and its Jesuit order has slowly dissipated under Brother May's tenure.

Over the years, visitors to the cellars have more than likely been met by the good brother on his tractor or doing a spot of maintenance around the winery that he built - he's a carpenter by trade.

In the early days of the cellar door, he would guide visitors through a tasting of his Clare Valley "Rhine" riesling, traminer/frontignac, cabernet and fortifieds. He embraced wine lovers and they embraced him and his wines. Of the seven winemakers Sevenhill has had since the 1850s, he has been the first to enjoy - and clearly delight in - such a high public profile.

He's also the first to have a wine named in his honour, something the Jesuit in him didn't necessarily approve of. "My first reaction was to say no," he said.

But the marketer in him took hold. "If it sells some wine why not?" Brother May is, above all, a practical man. Jesuits have to eat, too. The man who raised the idea of a commemorative wine was clearly not a member of the Jesuit Society of Jesus. He is Neville Rowe, ex-Mitchelton, ex-Domaine Chandon winemaker, who arrived at Sevenhill two years ago as general manager. His arrival was a watershed.

The Jesuits who had been involved in running the cellars were getting older and were not being replaced by a younger generation. In fact, Brother May is reportedly one of fewer than 200 Jesuits in Australia.

It was, suggested Brother May, time to recruit some lay people. Besides Rowe, a Barossa Valley-born nurse turned winemaker, Liz Heidenreich, stepped in for the 2005 vintage as Brother May slowly retreated from daily hands-on winery work. "There is no sexism in choosing lay people," Brother May said of Heidenreich's appointment. She is the first female winemaker in Sevenhill's 157-year history. She is also the first professionally trained winemaker at Sevenhill - a nice counterpoint to Brother May being one of the longest serving untrained winemakers in the land. It was Heidenreich who had the job of the final blending of the '04 shiraz. It was made by Brother May and Tim Gniel, and was considered a special parcel, worthy of a reserve label. Sourced from a block of vines, some going back 140 years, the winemaking had been kept simple: open vat fermentation, basket pressing, no tannin addition, 18 months in new and older French oak. The 2004 vintage, a naturally blessed season across most of Australia, is the perfect homage to Brother May, even if the wine is priced at a slightly immodest (at least by Jesuit standards) $60 a bottle.

The '04 Brother May shiraz has an honest, almost rustic personality driven by plenty of blueberry/dark berries and earthiness upfront, finishing soft and velvety.

The background eucalypt presence is very Clare, very Sevenhill. It's bigger and richer than any of the usual commercial Sevenhill reds, so can it be duplicated every year? The simple answer is: no. There will be no Brother May shiraz in 2007, but '06 is definitely a goer. Heidenreich is keeping her options open with the '05 and '08. Heidenreich isn't new to the ways of religion or its connection with wine. She was born and raised among the Lutheran-rich communities of the Barossa Valley and for the past four vintages has been winemaker for the saintly pop muppet Sir Cliff Richard and his Vida Nova wine label in Portugal. "I tell people one of my bosses is the Pope and the other is Cliff Richard," she quips. One of Vida Nova's biggest successes is the unusual, and by all accounts "delicious" blend of verdelho and viognier. She makes a rose and some reds based around shiraz, mourvedre and alicante on Sir Cliff's property in the Algarve, but is excited by the future prospect of touriga - a grape better known for port production - which is now being planted. It mirrors her work with Australia's David Baverstock at nearby Esporao winery in the Alentejo region; he has reinvented the grape as an exciting dry red. She's even trialling some touriga dry reds at Sevenhill. Perhaps one day Brother May's name may appear on a reserve Sevenhill touriga. Brother May still leads historical tours of Sevenhill's old cellars, cemetery and vineyards twice a week (2pm on Tuesday and Thursday).

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