Destination Voyager Estate
There's a new winemaking breeze at Margaret River's Voyager Estate, and its name is Tim Shand.
In the grand world of Margaret River wine the arrival, in the past wee while, of Tim Shand as head winemaker at Voyager Estate is one of the more interesting developments. There was nothing wrong with the wines of Voyager Estate at the time of Shand’s arrival, it should be acknowledged, but two things: Shand brings a Yarra Valley or perhaps even a Burgundian sensibility to this Margaret River range. And secondly, Shand has a history of stepping into a winery and quickly shaking the whole range up.
Tim Shand is a winemaker with a big brain, who likes to make big changes.
The latter is exactly what he did at Punt Road in the Yarra Valley. Punt Road was in a good market position when Shand arrived but within 18 months it was an entirely different beast altogether. He basically made the whole Punt Road range more interesting, and better value. In the process, he made the range seem more confident.
You get the feeling that Shand is in the process of doing exactly the same thing at Voyager Estate. Shand is one of those people who sees a thousand balls flying through the air and just has the knack of knowing which ones to focus on. He sees the wood, in the trees. If he was a writer he would be a master of complex matters, written in simple words.
Indeed in trying to understand the winemaker that Tim Shand is, it’s telling that he felt far more at home in his winemaking journey at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy than he did at Château Margaux in Bordeaux. Shand doesn’t like working to a formula; he likes taking the world in, and responding in the right way. Shand is originally from Perth – Voyager is, in a way, a kind of coming home – but he has also worked with Kerri Thompson (at Hardy’s) and Steve Flamsteed (at Giant Steps). Both Thompson and Flamsteed, it pretty much goes without saying, know everything there is to be known about the maintenance of high standards, and you get the impression that in this respect Shand is cut from similar cloth.
It was interesting, then, that in his first season in charge at Voyager Estate (2023), Shand picked the estate’s shiraz two weeks earlier than most other producers of shiraz in the region. He admits, as a relative newbie to the area, that he watched on nervously (“I was shitting myself”) as those who had far more experience of the region then allowed their shiraz to hang out there for much longer. The resultant Voyager Estate wine though is as good an example of Margaret River shiraz as you could ever hope to encounter, all peppery and soft, herbal and fruit-sweet, yet delicate. It is vindication in a bottle. It is a beautiful wine.
As indeed is the 2024 Voyager Estate Chenin Blanc, which is a wine of such grip, detail, cohesion and finish that it instantly jumps into the top few examples of this variety in this country.
Voyager Estate though is best known of course for its cabernet sauvignon (and/or merlot blend), and for its chardonnay. Shand’s own versions of Voyager Estate cabernet sauvignon are still a couple of years from seeing the light of day, most probably. But the first Voyager Estate Chardonnay at Shand’s hand is now on show.
“This wine,” Shand said when I met him recently, “needs to be the best wine that it can be. It’s seventy bucks and it has to be worth that, wringing wet, every day, every time.”
As good as Voyager Estate Chardonnay routinely is, and always has been, there’s an argument that the excitement surrounding this wine has lessened over the past decade or so. It hasn’t dropped off a cliff; it’s just faded ever-so-slightly. I mentioned this to Shand and he said, “It might only be a half step, but that half step is everything, and it takes a whole lot extra.”
I’ve already reviewed the 2023 Voyager Estate Chardonnay to The Winefront site but suffice to say here that this release does indeed bring some excitement back to the table, or to my taste it does.
What is more certain though is that, with Shand at Voyager Estate’s helm, it is not going to be a case of business as usual.
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Recent reviews of Voyager Estate’s wines on The Winefront – available here.
Previous article on Tim Shand, during his time at Punt Road, can be read here.
