Jeffrey Grosset
RIESLING REVIVALIST
Jeffrey Grosset is a star of Australian Riesling and widely recognised as one of the country’s most influential winemakers. He’s never shied away from shaking things up.
The Australian wine community would look very different without Jeffrey Grosset. When he was 15, he tasted a Riesling his father brought home and was mesmerised. On his 16th birthday he enrolled to study winemaking and agriculture. A perfectionist and passionate wine grower and maker, he’s challenged traditions, introduced innovations and helped lead the resurgence of Riesling in Australia. Today he’s one of Australia’s great winemakers, internationally acclaimed for his brilliant, benchmark wines.
A driving force in Australian wine
By the time he was just 26, Jeffrey was a senior winemaker. But he wanted more. In the early 1980s, the quietly spoken yet fiercely determined producer founded his own winery, Grosset, and his passion for wine crossed the border into obsession. He’d decided on South Australia’s small but influential Clare Valley wine region, and focused on Riesling, his first wine love.
“Riesling to me stands with the greatest of wines, equal to outstanding Chardonnay, Pinot, Cabernet,” says Jeffrey. “I thought that it deserved a place there but was often overlooked or certainly under-appreciated.”
Jeffrey Grosset is the undisputed star of Australian Riesling and widely recognised as one of the country’s most influential winemakers. He’s never shied away from shaking things up.
Riesling’s reputation has since soared in Australia. But Jeffrey is also recognised for his Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and more recently has been trialling alternative varieties in his organic and biodynamic vineyards.
Taking care of the land he farms is a major focus.
“The Clare Valley is incredibly old, hundreds of millions of years, and I see it in some ways as quite fragile,” he says. “It’s a matter now of taking care of it and learning to work with it so that we can sustain it.”
Finding better ways to do things is what Jeffrey does best. He campaigned in the 1980s for only true Riesling wine to be labelled as such, helped lead a crusade to introduce the screw cap closure to protect wine quality, and has funded research into wine maturation.
He’s been named one of the world’s top 10 white winemakers by Decanter magazine, awarded International Riesling Winemaker of the Year and inducted as a legend into the Clare Valley Winemakers’ Hall of Fame.
“I couldn’t imagine life without wine,” says Jeffrey. “It’s a beverage that represents the toil, and sometimes the pain, dealing with the weather, dealing with unpredictable conditions, to make something that will be different every year, but hopefully give a lot of enjoyment.”
“Riesling to me stands with the greatest of wines, equal to outstanding Chardonnay, Pinot, Cabernet.” – Jeffrey Grosset
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