The Rothbury Estate
We‘re frequently reminded of the ever-changing world in which we live in (to quote one of the most awful bits of lyric writing in the annals of popular music). I found further evidence of that when I went on to Google to check on some of the formative influences on the development of Hughesy’s palate.
Anyone who’s familiar with the quirks of my personality would realise that once I’d acquired an interest in wine I wouldn’t be content to just drink the stuff, and, predictably, apart from whatever interesting bottles I could afford, I was also buying magazines and books about Australian wine.
How else is a bloke going to find out which bottles are likely to be interesting?
These days, of course, if you’re in a relatively sophisticated neck of the woods there are in-store tastings, and you can find articles and reviews once or twice a week in reasonable newspapers. Townsville in the 1970s was hardly a relatively sophisticated neck of the woods so it was a case of tracking down books and magazines, which weren’t exactly thick on the ground.
My emerging interest in wine coincided with the publication of Len Evans’ Complete Guide to Australian Wine in 1973 so it’s hardly surprising a certain rather hefty tome (at somewhere around 500 pages in hard cover, how else could you describe it?) became Hughesy’s starting reference for most matters to do with Australian wine.
That copy disappeared long ago, so I’m working from memory, hardly the most reliable of conveyances, but in the course of repeated re-readings I built up my own iconography of Australian wine - the terra rossa soils of Coonawarra, Tahbilk Marsanne, Bill Chambers and Rutherglen Muscat, Lake’s Folly and The Rothbury Estate, to rattle a few of the obvious ones off the top of my head. There were others, but that list gives an indication of the things that interested me.
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