TWO of the best-known names in WA wine are striking out on their own, partly to have a bit of fun but also to start a new business, and possibly to help launch the career of a brilliant young winemaker.
Two of the best-known names in WA wine are striking out on their own, partly to have a bit of fun but also to start a new business, and possibly to help launch the career of a brilliant young winemaker.
Brothers-in-law, David Hohnen and Murray McHenry have created McHenry Hohnen Wines. The Margaret River-based business will initially use grapes taken from vineyards owned separately by the two and produce wine under contract at the Alexandra Bridge winery, which was once part of the Hotham Valley vineyard. First vintage, under the McHenry Hohnen label, will be about 3,500 cases of shiraz, chardonnay and cabernet.
However, if the plan unfurls to its full extent that will be just the start. The big picture includes building a winery and growing the business into a serious Margaret River wine label, hopefully with the wine making in the hands of David’s 27 year old daughter Freya Hohnen, who is already a widely-respected name in the wine world.
For anyone not familiar with the history of wine in WA, David Hohnen created Cape Mentelle in the early 1970s, building it into a producer of some of the world’s best wines.
Murray McHenry is also a big name in the drinks business as owner of the famous Steve’s (Nedlands Park) Hotel and a grape grower in the Margaret River area. His sister, Sandy, is married to David, so Freya is a dinkum “McHenry Hohnen”.
Neither Murray nor David will talk in detail about the grand plan but they are definitely proceeding with stage one, the making of their own wine. Each step after that will be taken carefully, with Freya Hohnen understood to have not yet made up her mind about whether to accept the offer of being winemaker to McHenry Hohnen.
If all goes well, the new wine business plans to move to its own winery sometime next year with plans currently before the Margaret River Shire Council. The designer, in keeping with the family-nature of the affair, is David’s brother, Giles Hohnen.
For Margaret River, which is getting close to celebrating its 40th anniversary as a wine-producing district, the McHenry Hohnen label is something of a coming-of-age development, being one of a handful of wine businesses to hand-up to a second generation, and potentially creating a wine dynasty as is commonly seen in old-world wine regions.
To understand how McHenry Hohnen got to where it is, a little more history. David, as well as helping put Margaret River on the world wine map, is viewed as a hero in New Zealand. The Cloudy Bay vineyard he created routinely produces cold-climate whites that knock the socks of the most prejudiced Frenchman. It is the French who indirectly led to this second generation Hohnen wine business. About three years ago, David completed the sale of Cape Mentelle and Cloudy Bay to the French luxury goods maker, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) and last year switched from wine to more conventional farming.
Friends say he is content to work with sheep and pigs – which is a bit hard to believe, especially as he made an offer to buy back Cape Mentelle just before departing. “Non” was the French reply, “but you can have the Ironstone label”, an offer likely to be declined as LVMH has been using it as a discount leader in the all-important British market and cheap wine is not where McHenry Hohnen wants to position itself.
The aim, according to family friends, is for Freya to follow in father’s footsteps, a journey she has already started, earning a reputation for excellence at a number of wineries, including Janet Holmes a Court’s Vasse Felix where she is currently helping with the vintage.
Interest in the wine world about the generational change-up and the launch of Freya Hohnen as a winemaker for the family label, is growing. Distributors are lining up to get their hands on the limited first vintage. From next year, when production expands to around 17,000 cases, there will be a lot more to go around.
For Margaret River, which is suffering like the rest of the wine world from chronic over-production of grapes, the McHenry Hohnen adventure could be just the tonic to restore falling confidence.
Distress sales of vineyards across the south of WA are increasing and high-profile wineries are in financial strife. This means the launch of McHenry Hohnen could be an extremely timely move, especially as the names carry so much weight and their will be no shortage of material for a bit of early experimentation. The only difficult part of the emerging McHenry Hohnen picture is that of David working his pigs while someone else makes the wine – now that will be a challenge for a perfectionist.
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SPEAKING of the wine business, Briefcase is following (from a distance) the fate of Palandri, which is talking about listing on the secondary board of the London Stock Exchange, the Alternative Investment Market.
The move, to borrow a word from Sir Humphrey Appleby, of Yes, Minister, is courageous – though daring to be different is in keeping with the Palandri style.
Followers of Palandri will remember that it started by flipping around the normal way a wine business is developed by first creating a marketing strategy and then bringing through the products. Briefcase saw it done by the mining company, WMC, which developed a fertiliser distribution business and then introduced its own products, and by Boral, which started a natural gas trading operation before starting gas production. WMC and Boral have succeeded with their reverse business start-up strategy. It has been fascinating to watch Palandri try to do the same with wine and now even more fascinating as it takes an equally courageous step by becoming the first Australian wine company to seek an AIM listing.
