The Wine Hunter

Australia’s first great winemaker was a Frenchman. He walked onto a hillside vineyard in the Hunter Valley north-west of Sydney in the early 1920s – fresh from study at Montpellier – and in a hot, soggy climate worked to craft a set of wines that, when finally opened as forty and fifty and sixty-year-olds, could make people gasp. He made these wines without electricity, without any kind of personal or professional convenience, and with a broken heart. It makes no sense that these wines should prove so good; what he managed was a miracle. He died without knowing of the legend he and his wines would become. This is the story of Maurice O’Shea, creator of Australia’s first fine wines.

Australia’s first great winemaker was a Frenchman. He walked onto a hillside vineyard in the Hunter Valley north-west of Sydney in the early 1920s – fresh from study at Montpellier – and in a hot, soggy climate worked to craft a set of wines that, when finally opened as forty and fifty and sixty-year-olds, could make people gasp. He made these wines without electricity, without any kind of personal or professional convenience, and with a broken heart. It makes no sense that these wines should prove so good; what he managed was a miracle. He died without knowing of the legend he and his wines would become. This is the story of Maurice O’Shea, creator of Australia’s first fine wines.

Campbell Mattinson is an Australian writer and editor. He’s the editor and chief writer of James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine, is a reviewer for the best-selling annual Wine Companion book, is the Australian correspondent for Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Guide, and since 2002 has been the publisher of the winefront.com.au website. He was the winner of the 1996 Best Australian Sports Writing Award, the 1995 Independent Young Writer of the Year Award, and has twice been named the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year (2005 and 2007). He lives, with his family, on a rural block of land a long way from anywhere.