Supporting Australian Wine
Medhurst’s Chief Winemaker, Rohan Smith, shares his unconventional path to winemaking, his passion for supporting the Australian wine industry and shares what he considers the most important decision in winemaking. Medhurst sits in the cool climate of the Yarra Valley, and with Rohan's skill, was awarded Best Value Winery in the 2027 Halliday Awards.
Read on for more.
Rohan Smith wasn’t supposed to be a winemaker. Despite being a classically trained musician, attending the Sydney Conservatorium and working a corporate job for over a decade, in the end his lifelong passion for wine won out.
“I always kind of wanted to be a winemaker. I don't know why. I think there's something about those wines in my dad's cellar that I loved, and I was just fascinated by how they were put together.”
He took the leap later in life, starting at the Cellar Door at Merrick’s General Wine Store, working his way across the Mornington Peninsula and into the Yarra Valley, absorbing all the knowledge he could along the way.
Medhurst Vineyard
Rohan isn’t just passionate about wine - he’s passionate about supporting the Australian wine industry, and urges everyone in the industry to play their part.
“I'd love to see Australian restaurants push more into Australian wine. Yes, it might be a little bit more expensive than what they import, but every spot on a restaurant list that doesn't have an Australian wine is a spot that hurts a producer, hurts a farmer, hurts a grower. It's a tough time for the industry… and I feel like we really need to support each other and support our own.”
Winemaking requires a massive long-term commitment to planting, farming and producing, all of which is at the whims of the supply chain. The industry needs all the support it can get, and those within it have an even greater responsibility to support, sell and drink more Australian products.
In his own life, Rohan, a self-described “massive Chardonnay fan”, practices this by drinking mainly Australian wines. If he had to pick an alternative? “I'd probably be going to Spain and drinking Sherry... I love a Fino or a Manzanilla or Amontillado. I love those wines and how they speak of the place they come from, in those amazing chalky soils. But I'm also very happy to be drinking an Australian Shiraz.”
Medhurst Vineyard
When the stakes are so high, how does a winemaker decide what to prioritise? And how much control can you really have over a vineyard? In Rohan’s opinion, the winemaker should always be there as a guiding hand. “Although we obviously want to express the site, sometimes to best express the site you need to give it a bit of a tweak along the way.” His current project at Medhurst is to create more clonal diversity in the vineyard, including grafting Pinot Noir onto different parts of the property.
Though there are a million factors at play in winemaking, Rohan’s most significant consideration is timing. It’s a calculation of phenolic ripeness, sugars, acid, pH, plus one big gamble on the weather. “When it's out there in the vineyard, you can have 80 mil of rain three days before your harvest and it can cause havoc.” Rohan says. “ We try to pick at optimal times, and if we have to hold our nerve through weather then we will.”
Or, more succinctly put: “The most important decision you ever make as a winemaker, I think, is when to pick, because you can't change that once you've done it.”
