Nick Farr: A Chip Off the Old Block

First published in 2011. Edited & Updated in 2026.

When Nick Farr was 18 he wanted to be a tennis coach. He was born into a wine family but he planned to study human movement. He was on the tennis court five days a week, lived and breathed it, and played footy too, on weekends. It was on the footy field that the course of his life was suddenly and dramatically altered – courtesy of an incident where a rival player landed so hard on his shoulder that it took 40 minutes to re-set the dislocation. Nick Farr has not – by necessity rather than by choice – set foot on a tennis court since. He hasn’t because he can’t lift his left arm much above shoulder height; he might be able to play, but he can’t serve. One afternoon he was a tennis-coach-in-training; the next he needed a whole new career.

His father Gary is – it’s no exaggeration to say – a pioneering legend of Australian pinot noir. Gary Farr put the iconic Bannockburn winery on the map, before establishing the similarly prestigious By Farr next door. Farr senior didn’t just make great pinot noir and chardonnay; along with Bass Phillip, he brought, and ‘popularised’, a Burgundian sensibility to aspects of Australian wine growing. When Farr senior won Gourmet Traveller WINE's Winemaker of the Year in 2001 it was widely considered that a more appropriate title for the award would have been Vigneron of the Year.

Nick though – the oldest of three Farr children – had grown up in this all-encompassing, whole-of-estate approach to life. But he was a sports nut. Even now, during vintage, he can’t wait to get back out and away; his interest in water-skiing isn’t far off obsession. “The thing I miss about footy isn’t so much the games, but the times after the games, just sitting around with the guys,” he says.

Forced into a career change, Nick Farr did not study wine. He edged closed to it, rather than jumping straight in: he studied agricultural science (“mostly about broad-acre farming but it’s good training for helping you understand the soil”). When he finished his studies though, he succumbed to expectation and dug straight in. He did not start as an underling; instead, he started under his own steam and his own name. At 21 – in 2001 – he started his own Farr Rising brand. There was nowhere to hide: if the wines were good, he would get the credit; if they were awful, he would look like an upstart.

The Farr name is famous in wine circles. It was a brave decision; his wines were always going to be scrutinised.

“I was straight out of uni, I was 21, as far as I was concerned – I could conquer the world,” he now says.

As it turned out, his initial wines were well received – and ever since, he’s been on his way.

Matters have advanced from there. Nick is now (in 2011), at 32, in charge of winemaking of his dad’s By Farr range too; he has been since the 2009 vintage. Each year Nick makes chardonnay, rose, shiraz and a range of pinot noir under his own Farr Rising name (from 2014 onwards he added a Gamay); the By Farr range is all those plus viognier. It’s a long time now since the Farr Rising wines were a learning experience; they are now routinely excellent in their own right (as The Winefront review of Farr Rising Saignée Rosé 2025 shows).

But pinot noir is and always will be the holy grail of the winemaking Farrs. “Dad doesn’t have a winemaking degree (though he did study wine marketing) and neither do I. We reckon the best makers of pinot noir aren’t formally trained,” Nick says. Smiling.

“Dad was always very clear that if I was going to make wine, then the only real way to learn was by making mistakes. So he let me make them. I look back on the first wines I made and if I had to pinpoint what I did wrong, or what I’d now do differently, I’d sum it up by saying that I used to be too eager. I did too much. I think that’s the thing that visits to Burgundy have taught me: just that opportunity to taste the fermenting wines each morning, knowing what the end wines will eventually taste like. You start to see what needs to be done, and what will occur naturally if you let it,” he says.

His dad Gary, though, remains “90 per cent” of Nick’s winemaking inspiration. “I admire and respect greatly what he has achieved in 30 years of growing and making wine in Geelong. Without being able to call on that knowledge, it would have been really hard,” he says. “I’m now responsible for making the wine, but really, the Farr family makes the wine. I can’t make them without Dad – or without Mum, for that matter.”

Nick’s decision to go out on his own, at such a young age, is interesting for another reason: Gary Farr’s wines have always had a swagger to them. Nick has therefore been generally regarded as a chip off the old block, from the start.

“There’s no doubt that I’m dad’s son,” he laughs. “I have the same short fuse. It doesn’t take a lot for the abrupt, arrogant side to come out – especially in public. I’m the sort of person though that would rather fail a subject at uni than have to do a talk to the class. I hate that sort of thing. I’m not a good manager of people; I just want to be out there on the land.”

Great wines, prestige labels, flashy pricing – it can seem like a high life. But it often doesn’t feel that way to Nick. “I’m like my dad. I don’t really see a difference between winemaking and wine growing. You can’t have one without the other. And that suits me, because I’m a farmer at heart. I’m a farm boy and that’s where I’m most comfortable, and at my happiest. I love growing things more than I love making wine. That’s why I chose Ag Science,” he says.

“You know – the paddock we grow our vines on, it used to be covered in box thorns with a few cows roaming around it. We cleared it, we ripped it, spread chicken poo over it, planted it, and now we tend it, grow grapes, and get to see them all the way through to the bottle. I love that about what I do. I love the fact that everything we do is all from scratch.”

It’s interesting, given the above, that Nick wasn’t always hellbent on winemaking. “The scariest moment of my life was the day of the hailstorm of 1998,” he says. “Dad was out in the vineyard with a shotgun, firing it at the sky, cursing the fate of the weather. We lost AU$200,000 worth of grapes in five minutes. But I also remember a day when I was probably about 17. Dad used to go to all these wine tastings and one time I went along with him. I remember there being all this free wine that you could help yourself to, and all this great food that was just there to be enjoyed. I thought to myself, ‘I can see the appeal of this lifestyle’”.

Nick is quick to admit that he’s not the kind of wine person who wants to take notes on and remember every wine he’s ever had. “I just want to enjoy the wine I’m drinking at the time. That’s all it’s about for me,” he says. “I’m not a technical taster. Always, I’m just in the moment, and that’s all. Dad [who, on the outside, is seen as fastidious] calls himself a lazy winemaker and I’d like to be that way too. We keep everything as clean as we possibly can, in the vineyard and in the winery, and then wait. Patience is so important. From there it’s just a matter of staying true to the style you want to grow and make.”

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When Nick Farr was named Gourmet Traveller WINE's Winemaker of the Year in 2020 it was the first time that both a parent–offspring had both won, separately and individually, the award that was, at the time, the most prestigious winemaker award in Australia.

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Since this article was written, 15 years ago, Nick Farr and the wines of both Farr Rising and By Farr have done nothing but excel and, if anything, improve. The Farr’s, as pointed out above, are the inspiration behind much of modern Australian Burgundy-inspired wine growing, and therefore could be described as part of Australian wine’s establishment. Gary Farr himself is as important a wine figure as any other in the land. And yet, even as they sit in the centre of Australian wine, they also sit outside it. They are the Farrs of Bannockburn, in the Geelong region. They grow and make great wine. They are themselves. They don’t talk much about it. They just do.

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There are [109 By Farr Reviews] on The Winefront site.
There are [7 Farr Rising Gamay Reviews] on The Winefront site.
By Farr make a wine called Irrewarra. There are [10 Irrewarra Reviews] on The Winefront site.
[By Farr is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery]