Wild at heart: Vasse Felix chief winemaker Virginia Willcock
I wrote this feature on Vasse Felix Chief Winemaker Virginia Willcock in 2013. It remains an article worth reading.
By CAMPBELL MATTINSON.
It’s almost amusing. When I ask Virginia Willcock whether she’s a surfer – having worked in Margaret River for over a decade and grown up a leg rope’s distance from South City Beach in Perth – she has an interesting answer. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s girls weren't really accepted on boards out the back, so body surfing was the only thing I got into,” she says.
The irony is that the girl who was kept out of the boys’ club of the surf break is now the general manager and chief winemaker of one of the most important and indeed iconic wineries in Margaret River: Vasse Felix. I think it’s called having the last laugh. “In no way did I ever think I would be GM of such a stunning winery in such a stunning place,” she says.
Virginia has taken the head role at Vasse Felix for all the right reasons. While growing up, her family shared a property north of the Swan Valley (at Bindoon, near Chittering) with three other families. Each family had four kids and so an old shearing shed was converted into a dormitory. The families referred to the property as the Four Fools. There was a hobby vineyard on it and each year the families would make rough-and-ready wine from it – for personal consumption.
“Sixteen kids, all between 10 and 16 years old. We were allowed to run feral and we just loved it. By the time I was 15 I knew that I definitely wanted to be a winemaker,” she says.
“It was just so much fun. I loved the idea of growing something and then turning it into something else. Something that could be beautiful and would give people enjoyment.”
Back then, when Virginia thought of winemaking, it ran more along the lines of “making wine in a tin shed somewhere in the Swan Valley and loving it.” It’s safe to say that where she’s now landed is a lot more sophisticated.
Since graduating, Virginia has worked as winemaker at Cape Mentelle, Cloudy Bay, Evans & Tate and as chief winemaker at Alexander Bridge. I asked her how she went from playing contentedly in a bush vineyard to being head honcho at one of the brightest wine names in Australia.
“I just think I have always wanted better. You get better and funnily enough you still want better. So I guess the re-setting of goals happens every day; it's been a progressive thing.”
Importantly, she still loves the hard labour of winemaking. “I love vintage. Always have and always will. It’s my favourite time of the year. I love how you get to create things. At school my favourite subjects were art and chemistry – mix them together, and that’s winemaking,” she says.
“The first I ever heard of Vasse Felix, I was at Roseworthy [winemaking college]. I became good mates of [winemaker] Steve Pannell – the Pannells being a big part of the Margaret River beginnings. One uni holiday, we came down to Margaret River and met David Gregg at this cute, dinky little winery called Vasse Felix. I think it must have been 1987 or 1988,” she recalls.
“It’s funny how I got the job here, actually. Basically there are five wineries in Margaret River that you’d really love to work for – the ones with the oldest vines. The established brands. The ones that are owned by families or private companies. I had a good winemaking position when I was contacted by an employment agency and asked to submit my CV. I asked them who the job was with and they simply said, ‘Trust us, you’ll want to apply’. So I went through the process and there were four separate interviews, and I was very much given the third degree. Then they finally told me that the job was at Vasse Felix. I just thought it was a brilliant opportunity.”
The Vasse Felix range of wines has never been anything other than high quality, but even so, it’s fair to say that since Virginia took over in 2007, she has methodically but surely revolutionised the place. Arguably, the wines have never tasted better – they’ve certainly slayed them on the wine show circuit over the past 18 months – and there’s now an irresistible vibrancy to them. The wines are more complex too. Wilder. No more added tannin. Lots more use of small, one-tonne fermentations. In short: more modern. More hands-on.
“There are a lot of people doing it really hard in the Australian wine industry at the moment but we feel like we’re one of the only ones not whingeing. We’re happy with where things are at – sales are good, our wines are good, we’re excited about the future,” she says.
“Our story over the past few years – our success, if you like – is proof that consumers shouldn’t ever be underestimated. I’ve had winemaking jobs where we’ve always been trying to second-guess consumers and what they want. It should be the other way around. It’s so much better to make the wines that are exciting to us. So many times I’ve heard sales and marketing people say, ‘Just because you like it, doesn’t mean that people will buy it’. But I think that’s wrong. We’re grown up now. You’ve got to make the kinds of wines that you genuinely love to make. You have to be able to stand up and talk about the wines you’ve made and genuinely believe that it’s a really good wine,” she says.
As the saying goes, the problem with common sense is that it’s not that common. In a world where it seems as though there’s an Exciting New Brand born every minute, what does this mean for the established players? “We’ve changed our thinking away from the short-term and onto questions like: What is Vasse Felix going to be in 50 years? What will it mean to Margaret River? What will it mean to the wine world? It changes your whole perspective on how you should be doing things and what decisions you should be making. The picture becomes clearer.”
While the pointy end of the Vasse Felix range becomes ever more impressive – made up of Heytesbury Chardonnay and Heytesbury Cabernet Sauvignon (now Cullity)– the changes to the estate’s offerings run deep. The range has been simplified – there are no longer ‘export only’ wines – and the ‘standard’ or non-reserve offerings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Semillon Sauvignon Blanc and Classic Dry White are now increasingly made from estate-grown grapes.
When Vasse Felix started life in 1967, it was as a single vineyard in the heart of the Margaret River region, in the famed Wilyabrup sub-region. But over the past 15 to 20 years, in the search for added production volume, grapes had been brought in from a wide range of vineyards, regions and sub-regions.
Vasse Felix is now bringing many of its wines back home. It’s a wonderful thing; it puts the heart back into the wines. “In the past five years, we’ve gone from having 11 hectares of vines in Wilyabrup to having 45 hectares today,” Virginia says. “We’re no longer buying fruit from other regions. We now have 235 hectares of vineyard in Margaret River. This is a really significant change in what Vasse Felix is. 2010 was the first time that Heytesbury Chardonnay has been made from 100 percent estate-grown fruit. Think of what a change that is! We’re not interested in markets or volume for the sake of it – we’re only interested in putting our best foot forward.”
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Virginia Willcock on … cabernet sauvignon:
“Cabernet is a wine for grown-ups. It’s for people who can handle a bit of structure. For people who can handle wine as they’re enjoying food. It’s perfumed and beautiful, and age-worthy.”