Rathbone's Prize Pickings
Newcastle Herald
Wednesday April 9, 2008
Rathbone's prize pickings
THE Parker Estate vineyard at Coonawarra, now part of the Rathbone Wine Group, has had strong links with the Hunter Valley.Parker Estate was set up in 1988 by accountant John Parker, a former director of Barclays Bank in Australia and chairman and one of the founders in the early 1960s of the original Hunter-based Hungerford Hill wine company. For a number of years the Parker wines were made by Chris Cameron at the Pepper Tree winery at Pokolbin and Pepper Tree used Parker grapes for some of its own wines.John Parker died in 2002 aged 71 and the Parker Estate business was continued by his wife Fay and members of his family up to the time of the RWG purchase in 2004.RWG is headed by Doug Rathbone, the managing director of the international Nufarm agricultural chemical company, who launched his family involvement in wine in 1995 with the purchase of Yering Station at Yarra Glen in the Yarra Valley. Yering Station has a significant place in Victorian history part of the property was used in 1838 by William, Donald and James Ryrie for the state's first wine grape plantings.In 2002 the RWG empire expanded to Victoria's Grampians area with the purchase of the Mount Langi Ghiran operation. This was followed by Parker Estate in 2004 and in 2005 by the Margaret River-based Xanadu Wines, at a reported price of $26.2 million.New head at Wingara DIEGO Jimenez, a member of the Ferrer family which owns Spain's Freixenet Group, has become the chief executive officer of the Australian Wingara Wine Group. He succeeds Wingara's founder, Melbourne lawyer David Yunghanns, who has resigned "to pursue other business interests". Freixenet, the world's largest producer of methode champenoise sparkling wines, is Wingara's majority shareholder. Wingara is the parent company for the popular Katnook Estate, Katnook Founder's Block, Deakin Estate, and Crackerjack wine brands and was founded in 1967 by David Yunghanns and family. In 2001 the Yunghanns family sold a controlling 75 per cent stake in Wingara to Freixenet.Wingara produces 500,000 cases of wine annually at its Deakin Estate winery in Red Cliffs, Victoria, and Katnook Estate Winery at Coonawarra, South Australia.Diego Jimenez holds an MBA from IESE, Spain. From 1997 to 2001 he was managing director of Freixenet in the US. From 2004 to 2007 he was the director of Freixenet, Argentina. He is now based at Wingara's head office in South Melbourne and says he is greatly impressed with Australian viticulture, winemaking and marketing.Dinner 'an experience'THERE are still a few places left for the Semillon Experience Dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hunter Valley on Friday, April 18. The dinner is the opening highlight of the 2008 Hunter Seafood and Semillon weekend and the cost is $145 per person. Bookings are essential: phone 4991 0970. The food in the four-course degustation menu will be matched with such wines as the Tyrrell's 2007 Stevens Semillon, the McWilliam's Mount Pleasant 2007 Phil Ryan Semillon, the Mount Pleasant 2001 Lovedale Semillon, the Tyrrell's 1998 Vat 1 Semillon, the Mount Pleasant 1999 Old Paddock and Old Hill Shiraz and the Tyrrell's 1998 Vat 9 Shiraz.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
