In Conversation with Peter Gago
Penfolds, you know, never a wasted moment.
Peter launched his career as a chemistry and mathematics teacher before succumbing to a long-held interest in wine. After graduating as dux from a Bachelor of Applied Science (Oenology) at Roseworthy College, Peter joined the winemaking team in 1989, initially in the craftsmanship of sparkling wines, before moving on to reds as Penfolds Red Wine Oenologist. In 2002 Peter became the fourth ever Chief Winemaker for Penfolds.
First we really just started talking about Gago’s time in Vancouver.
I’ve been coming to Vancouver for over 30 years. We do so much work now in China, Taiwan, Vietnam and across Asia. I’d be here every second week if I could. I like Canada, and as do all Australians, there really are too many Australians here, he joked.
Why are you not in Australia making wine right now?
In the southern hemisphere our harvest is 6 months ahead of yours, so we start our whites usually in late January and we finish around April or May. Our reds usually start late February and end in May.
We have bought a winery in Ningxia, China (Stone & Moon), and we make wine in the high altitudes of Shangri-La (Yunnan Province). We also make Champagne – in conjunction with the House of Thiénot – a wonderful collaboration. The third property acquired in Bordeaux was Château Lannesan.
And, of course we’ve been releasing wines from our Californian vineyards (and growers) since the 2018 vintage.
Just to start things off lightly I decided to ask an entirely unrelated question. I meant to ask Peter who he took to prom but on searching it was likely that “prom” was not an Australian term so I meant to ask Graduation Dance (meaning high school) but seems I just said “who did you take to your graduation” to which he replied:
I took my wife, we’ve been married 43 yeas, meet 46 years ago, and her parents. My parents are from Melbourne and this all happens in Adelaide and as it occurred her parents were holidaying with us at the time. So her parents and my wife, my long suffering wife.
What did you do before becoming a winemaker?
I had another life, after Melbourne University, where I majored in Chemistry, I taught for a number of years, so loved that. You are not talking to a disenchanted teacher, I loved it, I could still be doing it but my next step would be a vice-principal but to be a principal or head master I would have had to wait about 20 years and I wasn’t going to wait that time.
My wife had gone back to university and she said well now it’s your turn. She didn’t realize that school was in another state.
Please tell us about your background in the wine industry.
In a few months I will have been at Penfolds for thirty-eight years where I started off as a sparkling winemaker day one, saw the advertisement, cut it out of the newspaper and then moved into the red wine department 33 years ago and became the red wine oncologist and became chief winemaker 25 years ago.
What is your education as it relates to winemaking?
The sadness was not as much as I’d hoped. When you attend university originally its a blur but I did quite well for the second degree as a mature student paying for it. I put the lecturers on notice, more, more, more. I thought Chemistry, that will be a piece of cake. Three weeks into the course I wanted to do a graduate diploma in one year, you have to work. It’s as different as organic chemistry is to inorganic. Chemistry one is a completely different branch. Some of the things were brand new, parts of the bio-chemistry, wine chemistry so I had to work. I came top of the course. I had to do the fast-track because I was competing with those young ankle biters.
Have you held any other roles in the wine industry?
I was on the advisory council at the University of Adelaide. I’ve done lots of different things. I received the Companion of the Order of Australia as a result of that work.
When did you make your first wine and which wine did you make?
In those days I worked on the brands that was within Penfolds; Seaview (incl. Edmond Mazure), Killawarra, Minchinbury & Kaiser Stuhl sparklings, but that’s over thirty years ago.
How did that go?
It was great, that’s the thing I love about winemaking. The tangibles are with wine you can actually see what you’ve done.
What did you learn from your first winemaking experience?
Just the fact that everything else being equal, and tomorrow you get run over by a truck, it’s a bit of a legacy. Philosophically I think teaching is wonderful but how do you measure it. With wine you can see, taste, feel. It’s something very tangible.
How big is the winemaking team at Penfolds?
We’ve got ten winemakers during harvesting.Young and old. I’m not the oldest but I am not the youngest anymore. I used to be the youngest. Once we were young.
Are you still hands on?
Less hands on than I used to be. I still go in to the estate where i have an office. Up until a few years ago I was actually more hands on then than when I started. To be honest now that we have winemaking operations in France, in China, as well as Australia my role can’t be as hands on as I would like it to be.
Certainly after harvest the most important part of the winemaking is the classification. The time-honoured Penfolds Classification Tastings (‘Classification’) occur asap after harvest. All wine parcels from the harvest are assessed blind – starting with Grange, and then working onto all other wines (Bins, Koonunga Hill, etc). The wines are tasted without knowing vineyards or volumes – and assembled to ‘stylistic templates’ and quality-levels that correspond to the desired styles. They are then blended, and matured in oak of various types and ages.
How many vineyards and plots does Penfolds have?
Thousands of acres. Having said that, some of the grapes come from growers and some of these multi-generational growers. The Gersch family, in 2020 these growers dropped off their 100th consecutive load of grapes across 100 vintages to Penfolds. These are long standing relationships
When you were still making wine was there any one particular blend or single variety that sticks out in your mind that gives you trouble, always more effort than you expect?
Not really, because I think Grenache can be as fickle as Pinot Noir. Easy to make Grenache, very, very difficult to make good Grenache. Same can be said of Pinot Noir. But you never know what you’ve got even when it’s in the barrel and you never quite know, whereas Syrah, Cabernet what you see is what you get. Not so with these other varietals.
Where do you see yourself and Penfolds in 5 years, 10 years, or even further into the future?
Well this year Penfolds is 182 years old. I see Penfolds having a lovely future but you can’t take it for granted. It has to be nurtured.. The branding, and it’s only as much as the people who work for it, most of my job is protecting it. We were family owned until the 1970’s and now corporate and if you have the right C.E.O., the right Chairman, the right Board, getting back, the school is only as good as the principal or head master. Seeing what happens over time. Part of my role is protecting Penfolds. I can only look at the past, almost 38 years
What are your personal goals?
We’re only as good as our last mistake so survival is not a bad goal, corporately, but in terms of winemaking there are many, many goals.
Have there been any surprises, unexpected circumstances, or challenges for you in the wine industry?
You have to be, I hate all those buzz words like “I’m pivoting during Covid, blah, blah, blah” what does that mean. I’ve always joked in winemaking “you bend your knees and you keep your back straight” The two best traits are literally resilience and tenacity.
Tell us something about yourself, maybe something no one, or very few, know about you, that would surprise people?
I started off as a winemaker, really as a wine lover, I don’t come from a wine family so wine lover, became a wine collector, and later became a winemaker. So what you see is what you get. In Australia and in America winemaking became a bit of a sexy thing to do. When I joined the industry it wasn’t and probably isn’t now.
I have other interests in life, I love music, I love lots of things. My wife was in Parliament for 16 years, she was a government minister for ten. So I do a lot of work in and around wine. Penfolds, you know never a wasted moment.
The world of wine we need everyone out there doing it because we hear the horror stories about wine and young people, the capacity obsession, body beautiful, alcohol is evil, alcohol gives you cancer so we know we need a little bit of promoting. My fear is the anti-alcohol movement is well funded and the link between alcohol and cancer is scary so my one big fear is you’ll have a little bit of a gap and that can happen. We don’t want a gap, we want the cycle to go down maybe but we don’t want a gap and that is my biggest fear at the moment.
