Yarra’s gentleman passes on

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Very sad news that Dr Bailey Carrodus, founder of Yarra Yering and pioneer of Australia’s now hugely signficant Yarra Valley, died on Friday after a short illness.

Like Didier Dagueneau of Pouilly-Fumé, who pre-deceased him by only a few days, he was highly independent, idiosyncratic and a pioneer – although there the similarities ended. Bailey Balfour Carrodus was first and foremost a gentleman and a scholar. He was a plant physiologist at All Souls, Oxford, the intellectual hothouse of a college that admits no undergraduates – and has a mind-boggling cellar.

Nick and I once went to lunch with him...