Swan Valley winemaker, James Talijancich, believes the generations of winemakers who have gone before him would be delighted at how the Perth wine-growing region has evolved.
James, a second-generation winemaker can’t imagine a better place for creating the wines he loves.
“I didn’t always feel this way but I think as time has gone on just how lucky we are to be in this place,” James says.
“I’ve got colleagues who make wine in Margaret River, some of the state’s better wines from certain varieties. And I love those wines, I love the region, I love what’s coming out of parts of the Great Southern, but then I like what’s happening in different parts of the eastern states.
“But I always come back to this place because if I could pick up the winery and move it anywhere, I’d probably put it right back where it is.”
Part of James’ love for the region is because of its capacity to produce really good table wines and some of the best fortified wines in the world, something that James says is almost unique to the Swan Valley.
“It’s reached a stage now, it’s been elevated to the point where there’s so much more investment in the valley and young winemakers want to work with warm climate fruit.
“And that’s so pleasing to see after what the Valley has been through, say 40 years ago.
“To see it now coming out of that and to see more and more tourists coming through the valley and to see the wines that are being made, it is really heartening because while it’s a beautiful industry, it takes a lot of hard work to make it happen.
“And on the back of that, when you see the response from the public and from the media about how the Swan Valley is today, it really puts a smile on your face. It’s pleasing for people like my parents and that generation. People like Dorham Mann and his family and all of those that have been around for a few generations.
“I think they would look back and the previous generation, like our grandparents, I think they look at us now and would be really very, very pleased with how it’s evolved.”
While much of Talijancich Wines production is based around traditional time-worn methods, the winery was one of the earliest to adopt a bio-dynamic approach to the vineyard, turning to the system around 18 years ago.
James says they don’t follow the process rigidly and do cultivate the vineyard once a year in April or May when the first rains come and don’t touch it again for the rest of the year.
The connection with previous generations is being maintained through a register of the Swan Valley’s oldest vines.
Grapevines between 35 and 125 years old are being registered and preserved, with signage created along with branding for wine labels.
James said they aimed to get four or five wineries on board, all releasing one wine.
“We thought that’s half a dozen wines in the first few years, that would be great. But no, it’s 95 per cent of the wineries all putting whatever category their vineyards are in, with the words Swan Valley Old Vine and the logo on their labels.
“And that was just wonderful. And we had an official launch for that at Sandalford about two months ago.”
James, Arch Kosovich and Damian Hutton are the driving force behind the Old Vine Charter, aiming to maintain the old vines and to tell the story of the region.
The Swan Valley is Australia’s second oldest wine producing region behind the Hunter Valley in NSW and has some of Australia’s oldest continuously producing grapevines.
They include Mandoon Estate’s 125-year-old Verdelho vineyard.
James says most winemakers prefer to work with fruit from older vines, which have low yields but high intensity of flavour and complexity.
There are some elements of running a family business that previous generations didn’t have to cope with – like the red tape that James says confounds everyone who runs a business, particularly in hospitality.
“I don’t know whether the government does this deliberately. It seems like they do, but I like to think they don’t do it deliberately. I think it’s a group of people who make decisions for whatever reason, to gather more information on us.
“Running a winery is really something, on one hand, very special. And we still feel the romance is attached to it. We really do.”
But James says simplifying government rules and regulations to get rid of some of the red tape would make running the business more satisfying.
“It can be simplified, I know as we speak, they’ve just thrown away 25 or 30 of the legal licensing rules to make the liquor licensing aspect of a business easier. And we haven’t seen that before. So maybe they’ve started to realise and getting enough feedback from business owners that things have to change in that area.
“But as for the production of wine and the making and the selling and marketing of it, yeah that’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of hard work. If it wasn’t for the love of making wine, I’m not sure if you would do it.
“There has to be that passion in almost anything we do.”
