By Derek Schlennstedt
How to convey the meaning of the name James Halliday? A savant, renaissance vigneron, and pre-eminent wine critic – all are titles which could be associated with Australia’s most senior and well-known wine writer.
For those who have endeavoured on a serious study of understanding wine he is a teacher, but to the many who stare vacantly at the wine list wondering which best matches our meal he is also a guiding voice.
When it comes to choosing a wine to accompany your cheese platter, or to complement your seared barramundi there’s only one book that can help decipher the riddle and with over 700 pages filled with various wines and their respective flavours, James Halliday’s Wine Companion has become a wine bible.
His most recent book, the 2018 Halliday Wine Companion, was released on 2 August and The Mail spoke with the critic on his life as a wine-critic, the new book, and what’s in store for the future of Yarra Valley vignerons.
“I am really proud of this edition, my 12th, and love that Australia is returning to produce the classic varieties of chardonnay and shiraz, with pinot noir the rising star.”
Featuring more than 1200 wineries including 78 new ones, the book contains around 6840 individual wine ratings and is considered the definitive guide to Australian wines.
Each year a new edition is released with completely new wines and James said that while wine tasting and writing may seem like a lavish job he works six days a week from seven in the morning until seven at night.
“I used to taste 140 wines now being older I taste 70 wines a day,” he said.
“People think it must be the best job in the world, but I get up every morning in time to be down and starting tasting at 7am in the morning.”
“I taste though unbroken until 12.30pm when I have lunch and then I return to the tasting room at 1pm and taste again until 3.15pm … then at 5pm I go back down to the tasting room and taste through until 7pm.”
Having completed over 70 books all relating to wine, it was no surprise that James, a Sydneysider from birth would eventually move to the glistening Yarra Valley in 1983, and set-up his own winery in Coldstream thereafter.
Of the move he said he always expected Yarra Valley would become a contestant in the world stage of wine and always wanted to create pinot.
“In ’83 I came to Melbourne for my law firm, but the other reason for my coming was it gave me an opportunity to get close to the Yarra Valley and make pinot.”
“It was while researching books in the early 1980s that I came down here and looked at around 16 or so wineries that were in existence in the Yarra Valley – now there are around 170.”
“From quite early on I had a reasonable shred of idea that it would – I think I knew the opportunity in the Yarra Valley was and remains virtually unlimited,” he said.
At 78 his phenomenal dedication to the wine industry is yet to deteriorate and his phenomenal body of works continue to grow. As the industry becomes mechanised and Australian wine exports to China continue to surge James said he predicts the Yarra Valley will become a pre-eminent wine producer.
“They (China) certainly should be aware of all the upsides of the Yarra.”
“The Yarra Valley is only about making very good to great wine, it’s far too difficult here to make ordinary wine,” he said.
