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His name is Justin, he is a winegeek

Regional Food, Summer 2008

March 2006... Sweat lodges, hot cups, insomnia and scary monsters under the bed - these are just a few of the topics McLaren Vale-based winemaker Justin Lane covered monologue-style during the first 52 seconds of a late Friday night phone call. 

"I'm fairly wired most of the time," he confessed. "I do a lot of coffee. But I'm a fairly healthy dude. I ride my bike every day. I go to the sweat lodge once a month. They get the hot cups and suck all the alcohol (and coffee?) out. You can come along with us if you want?"

Although attracted to the idea of interviewing a coffee and alcohol-free Justin, I declined the sweat lodge offer, pointing out that I am just not a fan of public nudity. My excuse caused Justin to pause and ponder for roughly half a second before charging the conversation on to my needing to read the "Justin Lane Lonely Planet Handbook" before I arrive to have a look at his "puppies".

"I promise I won't drink any coffee the day you are to arrive," he promised. "I'm trustable. I come from a good, sensible Catholic upbringing. Come and have a look at the show. We're in vintage. You're going to turn up right in the middle of the mayhem. You might even get to see me wrestle a big, old Italian grower. It will be just like a Country Practice."

The feeling of exhaustion has replaced any apprehension as we pull up next to a battered Kermit-green combi van in the RedHeads Wine Studio car-park. The anticipated five hour road-trip from Mildura to McLaren Vale took us seven hours, due to a dislodged weight on the tailpipe which was thankfully removed by Gawler's Gomer Pyle look-a-like mobile mechanic. 

The entrance to the two-story RedHeads mudbrick corner-block building says ‘closed', so I walk around to the tall sheds at the back of the building. I approach a 30-something man who is covered head-to-toe in red wine pulp and stains. "Justin?" I ask.

No, not Justin, but Adam Hooper, RedHeads newly acquired in-house winemaker. Adam points behind him to a shed filled with tubs and tubs of leaky red grapes. Justin, also covered head-to-toe in red wine pulp and stains, emerges from the shed and walks towards me with an outstretched hand.

I hesitate to return the handshake. His hand is purple. I tentatively place my hand in his and find that it is dry, not wet as I had expected, and extremely rough and worn. I look at the purple hands of the other five winemakers busily making their wine during the out-of-work hours on this sunny Saturday - the occupational hazard of independent winemaking.

Justin leads the way inside to the RedHeads bar with the promise of good coffee. But first, he shows his visiting parents through the building. Lyn and John Lane arrived this morning from Kangaroo Island, and will soon make their way back home to the Hunter Valley via Mildura.

The RedHeads bar is not yet licensed to serve the public, but has entertained a great number of apparently "wild" and local parties in the past. It resembles a 20-something bachelor's bedroom with the scavenged street signs nailed in pastiche under the rough red gum bar, and the pop art painting of a big-nippled 40s film siren (by friend and resident DJ Justin Smith) hangs behind the bar.

A soft-pack of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes sits atop a portable stereo next to a tiny toy duck. A copy of the relatively disturbing film '12 Monkeys' and the Metallica ‘Some kind of Monster' DVD rest nearby on the mammoth rough-cut plank that is the bar top. The four-door glass fridge to the left holds a jumble of wine vats, milk, and take-away containers filled with food.

Returning to the bar area, Justin swings two year-old Oscar over his shoulder. Six month-old Noah is today home with Justin's "adorable wife" Emma. "She's a vintage widow at the moment," Justin says, swinging cute and blonde Oscar back to the floor.

Parents John and Lyn have visited their son (he is one of four) in McLaren Vale around 20 times over the last six to seven years. Like Justin, the proud dad also loves to chat. "I can tell you the story," John begins, ready to reminisce on Justin's journey from Hunter Valley boy to McLaren Vale winemaking entrepreneur.

"He was working for me in retail, in my menswear shop. He's a great salesman. He had a friend at McGuigan Wines and was offered a job working as a (cellar door) salesman one day a week on Sunday. He was so good at it that they offered him full-time. Then they asked him to help out with the winemaking. He drove the tractor, did the spraying, etc. Then he did the winemaking course in Currie.

"When he graduated I said ‘go to South Australia as that's where all the jobs are'. He went and rang me and said ‘I've got a job!'. I asked ‘who?', and he said ‘Hardy's'. Well I said ‘you can't get bigger than that!'."

Now 31, Justin was in his mid-20s when he arrived in McLaren Vale in October 1998. Being a talker has helped the aspirational winemaker achieve a great deal in a short time. After three years working at Tatachilla Winery, Justin manoeuvred his way into a southern Italian winery in 2000.

"I wanted to go to southern Italy. I didn't care who it was with. I applied everywhere. It was hard because I didn't have a degree in winemaking. Then Michael Fragos, the chief winemaker for Chapel Hill (McLaren Vale), introduced me to Jean Marc Sauboua who employed me as an assistant winemaker."

The Italy leg-in was leveraged by the informal flying winemaker scheme started in the'70s by industry stalwart Tony Laithwaite, who runs the mega UK-based mail-order company, Direct Wines. Justin then convinced Direct Wines' owner into funding the RedHeads concept: a micro winery to utilise small producers in the region, and foster the burgeoning winemaker talents of independents or those employed at the larger wineries.

A stroke of good fortune, the Kangarilla Road building came up for sale at the same time the RedHeads funding came through. A French restaurant called ‘Devine' twelve years ago, and more recently a curry house, the building underwent considerable renovations to bring it to the modern, floor-boarded high standard of ‘frat boy' house it is today.

But there is still work to be done. When the RedHeads bar and restaurant finally opens, maybe next year, it will be the hub for those in their 20s and 30s still living in the Vale. "One of the ideas behind the RedHeads wine bar is to have a few barrels and you can try wines straight out of the barrels," Justin says.

The RedHeads co-operative of winemakers stream in one-by-one while Justin brews espresso-after-espresso using the industrial-sized La San Marco coffee machine. Bottles materialise from all around until there are well over a dozen lining the bar, all waiting to be acknowledged.

But first, the winemakers. The man behind the Longwood label, Phil Christiansen, walks behind the three metre-long red gum bar and rests on his elbow. Regarded by RedHeads as ‘the godfather of garage', his Longwood Shiraz with the unique minty scent of river gums is a best seller. 

Nat McMutrie joins Phil behind the bar, turns to the four-door fridge and grabs a Cooper's Pale Ale. His red label is Pikkara, made from the fruit harvested from his property on McMutrie Road. Various Vale McMutries still produce wine grapes on ancient (for Australia) family vineyards, but the impressive federation family home is now the up-market Salopian Inn restaurant.

Bulgarian Elena Golakova sits on the stool to my right and offers me an easy, beautiful smile - I finally feel at ease. A full-time winemaker at a big Vale winery called Maxwells, Elena and fiancé Adam, who she met while being interviewed for a job at Tatachilla Winery, are behind the La Curio premium reds in sexy bottles.

Adam places another bottle on the bar. "This is one that Elena and I made together. What's particularly unique to this region are the old grenache and shiraz vines. They're the old style of vines without the trellis that grow up like a candelabra, with no irrigation. McLaren Vale has some of the oldest vines in the world."

The Viottolo Senteiro 2004 is Justin's (flagship) wine. Robert M Parker Jr, one of the most influential wine critics in the world and editor of the industry Wine Advocate magazine, not only gave Viottolo 95 Parker Points (yes, a high ranking) but compared its winemaker Justin Lane to the exciting northern Italian winemaker, Elio Altare.

"Elio Altare is a controversial winemaker," Justin enthuses, squinting his right eye for dramatic emphasis. "He made a wine called La Villa - masculine and flamboyant. But he looks nothing like me. He's a lot older."

Coffee-making completed, Justin walks around the bar and into the centre of the room. He is the leader, the salesman, the entertainer - the focus of attention naturally falls to him. "Have you seen the light above the front door?," he asks, "It says ‘on air'. When RedHeads started there was talk that this was a crack-house brothel. One guy came up to me and asked ‘can you sort me out?'."

Guided past the indoor vats of fermenting grapes and back out to the sheds, I wonder what the possibly conservative McLaren Vale community of around 5,000 people thought of this young-ish and eager band of progressive winemakers when they first came together in 2003. Last night, they worked feverishly until 1am, no doubt with music pumping through the wine and cellar sheds.

Today, reggae blares from the RedHeads speakers. I hate reggae. The dishevelled winemakers stand around arguing the benefits of reggae for a few minutes before heading off to busily tend to their wines.

The paved area between the RedHeads building and the sheds is polka dotted with purple splodges. The musky smell of the oak barrels fills the air. Phil materialises a not-so-clean wine glass, scoops some lumpy fluid from one of the rainwater tanks and holds it out for me to smell. "Smell that - it's grenache. It smells like raspberry jam. Yesterday, it smelt like musk sticks."

They pile in the cellar shed and onto barrels of last year's wine to pose for a group photo. Justin points to the many dozen barrels tacked from floor to ceiling and claims them to be the "united nations of varieties". Reds, of course.

This is old-school wine-making. Standing by his tank of juice and pulp with plunger in hand, Adam explains. "The old crusher we have here doesn't have rollers. So the whole berries go through and ferment, so it's sweeter. It's called carbonic maceration. In France they get whole berries, let them ferment and then stamp them."

Adam pushes the top-layer of skin down with the plunger to allow the fluid to rise to the surface. "The is shiraz," he informs. "I love shiraz," I say. His easy-going manner is replaced by near Justin-enthusiasm. "Do you???" he says before running off and quickly returning with a glass of the newly mixed shiraz. "We've just blended our shiraz. Do you want to taste?"

I take the grape pulp-covered glass from the now enthusiastic winemaker and take a sip of the smooth wine. "We are calling the blend ‘nubile', like ‘nubile young nymph," he says, watching my face for the taste reaction.

Nearby, Justin finishes calling around to find us somewhere for us to go for dinner. "He's a talented little bugger," Justin says as he reaches my side, watching Adam walk back to the latest shiraz. The two young winemakers worked together for three years at Tatachilla. Adam worked for Maxwells until Justin convinced him to be the full-time RedHeads winemaker.

Honourably choosing to spend time with his ‘vintage widow' and young children, Justin misses out on the dinner at the fine-dining Salopian Inn. I am served the ‘Panfried Kingfish with White Bean Puree, Crispy Prosciutto, Salmon Roe and Watercress', and drink from a selection of RedHeads wines in what was Nat McMutrie's old bedroom.

Justin and I meet back at RedHeads early the next morning. He is already dishevelled and wine-stained, but his energy is still running hot. Holding up a bottle with a mock-up ‘Satellite Gore' cartoon-art label, he makes it clear that we are now to talk about his on-the-side projects.

"Every year the RedHeads US importer/distributor, Ronnie Sanders, chooses one the best from his portfolio of winemakers and teams them up with artists and designers," he says, moving the bottle from his left hand to right and then back again. "Satellite Gore is my alter-ego. Why can't winemakers be like superheroes?.

"Ronny and I laughed ourselves senseless for five days straight when we came up with the idea. Then we decided that Henry Laithwaite (big boss Tony Laithwaite's son) would be the sidekick Sparrow Keet. We rang Henry 3am in the morning to tell him - he had no idea what was going on. Its boy humour - silly shit. It makes no sense at all."

Only 400 cases of the premium Satellite Gore will be produced, and will only be available in the US. "This project is about fun, not just about money," he explains. "This is for a target audience, not crusty connoisseurs. It'll be priced at the US$25 and aimed at the rich kid New York college market."

He wants to talk about other projects, the TV miniseries script based on a merry band of mad winemakers (sound familiar?), and the RedHeads magazine, but my head is full and I've had too much coffee (three mighty strong espressos). "Ok, sum it up in a sentence," I say in response to his pleading.

Justin's one sentence becomes a paragraph, then two, then three. "Shhh," I command, resting my forehead into my hands. He pauses and leans forward onto his forearms, then continues his story in a whisper. "Justin!" I say with exasperation. "Whispering won't help me take in anymore more information!"

Out in the car-park, past Adam's ‘Chlamydia Jane' Kermit-green combi ("it's been around the block a few times"), we say our goodbyes. Justin holds my shoulders in a tight best-friend bear-hug. He wants to keep me and photographer Kerryn here, to be part of his RedHeads empire, to help out with world winemaking domination plans.

"We'll be back," I hear myself promising the odd blonde-tipped hyperactive winemaker who donned a rally-car suit for a final farewell photo session. He smiles - placated - then runs back into the RedHeads building to tackle the next project.

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