It’s difficult to think of a wine-producing country that takes more trouble to educate up-and-coming wine professionals, certainly winemakers, than Australia.
For such a large country, thousands of times more extensive than Burgundy for instance, it’s quite extraordinary how tight-knit the wine community is there. One major conduit for communication and education is the Australian show system. Experienced judges routinely pass on their knowledge (and sometimes prejudices) to associate judges during the big annual wine shows (competitions) in state capitals. In my experience of Australian wine shows, a certain amount of deference towards senior judges is expected of associate judges. Dissidents need not apply.
The super-judge during his lifetime was Len Evans AO OBE (who did not tolerate fools or cheek). When he retired from a long wine-judging career in 2001 he instituted the annual Len Evans Tutorial (LET) during which 12 hand-picked candidates would be exposed to some of Australia’s and the world’s best wines while being schooled in blind tasting and assessing wine quality. Evans was passionate about Australian wine specifically and the stated aim of the LET is ‘to equip scholars with the tools and skills to evolve the quality of Australian wines in terms of style and technical attributes and to give them the confidence to broadcast the incredible quality of Australian wine both locally and abroad.’
Thanks to generous sponsors and its patron, philanthropist Basil Sellers, LET continues and flourishes as a memorial to Evans’ legacy since his sudden demise in 2006, with Iain Riggs AM of Brokenwood playing a major part. Len’s daughter Sally is chair of LET and described it recently as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our 12 scholars. It has proved to be an invaluable training ground for our 264 alumni, many of whom have gone on to become influential industry leaders, wine show chairs and senior wine judges. While sharing, tasting and talking about wine quality is a key focus of the LET, it has also become a vital hub for sharing Australia's wine stories and rich wine history. It contributes to the industry in many ways, improving the calibre of Australian wine professionals and, ultimately, the quality of Australian wine. My father achieved many things in his life, but the LET is perhaps his most meaningful legacy.’
Every year the top LET student in what is a distinctly classroom atmosphere is crowned Dux, which is a big deal in the Australian wine community. Past Duces include Tom Carson of Yabby Lake (now a LET tutor), Sue Bell, Julian Grounds and Masters of Wine Ned Goodwin and Andrea Pritzker.
The picture above captures the moment when Lauren Hansen learned that she was recipient of the Basil Sellers Prize for Dux of the Len Evans Tutorial 2024 at a presentation lunch at Spicers Guesthouse in the Hunter Valley. To judge from the reactions of her fellow students, including Rohan Smith of Yarra Valley’s Medhurst Wines next to her, she was a popular choice. (It’s historically significant, by the way, that there is no female version of the Latin word dux.)
The comments of Sam Connew, a LET tutor and trustee, give some flavour of what’s expected of the scholars. ‘Lauren's performance across the week was remarkably consistent, as has been par for the course for all LET previous duxes. She was in the top three scholars in all of the judging brackets, using her golds sparingly but precisely. Her language when talking about the wines was concise and succinct, focussing in on all of the wine's aspects that needed to be covered. In addition, she was one of the top two performers in the written exercise.’
When I learned that Hansen is based in Coonawarra, a tiny, isolated settlement (population 135) in the far south-east corner of South Australia, I couldn’t understand how on earth she would have sufficient experience of the glamorous array of wines shown at the LET (see below). I discovered that she actually lives with her Labrador Morrie in nearby Penola but, with a population 1,376, Penola is hardly a metropolis.
But then I learned more, and it confirmed the special emphasis given to wine experience and education in Australia. Like most of her winemaking peers, Hansen has considerable ‘OE’ (overseas experience). She has worked in Bordeaux, New Zealand, Austria and at several wineries in Australia including Brokenwood. According to Iain Riggs, now retired from Brokenwood, ‘we have a full-time chef over the harvest and many themed dinners featuring the world’s great wine regions’. So Australia’s cellar rats work like crazy during the day and are then expected to be blind-tasting wine students at night. This mirrors the LET timetable, when the days sweating over tastings are followed by blind-tasting dinners and the options game, another Evans legacy.
Because LET is meant to be a celebration of Australian wine history, with exposure to some of the great vintages the country has produced, all LET scholars this year were given a copy of Andrew Caillard MW’s magisterial three-volume Australian Ark.
But the Dux is also awarded a business-class flight to and from Europe, thanks to sponsor Singapore Airlines, to visit some of the world's most famous wine-producing regions and producers. This is not Hansen’s first Dux award – she was apparently the Dux of the Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology course at the University of Adelaide when she graduated in 2012 – but this was obviously a thrilling achievement for her. She wrote to me, ‘Gosh, it’s been an incredible but overwhelming few days since the announcement. LET was so much fun though – what an opportunity to taste so many incredible wines in just one week.’ You can get a taste for the standard of wines shown at LET (always featuring a blind tasting of DRC wines at the end!) below.
Hansen is not only winemaker at Penley Estate, with Kate Goodman, but has her own one-woman business, Bloomfield Wine. As she describes it, ‘it’s a little side project I’ve started this year, making tiny parcels from interesting grape varieties around the Limestone Coast. “Humble, honest, fun” is my tagline – just trying to keep learning and creating! I’ve made a Grüner Veltliner from Mount Benson, a chilled red style of Petit Verdot from Wrattonbully, and a Mencía from the northern end of the Limestone Coast. Still working on artwork and labels at the moment, but it’s slowly coming together – and has been a lot of fun having full creative freedom!’
Photo credit Elfes Images.
