Adrian Sparks
One morning in February 2022 – as I drove out to Mount Pleasant Wines in the Hunter Valley – I heard, when I stopped to grab a coffee, that my daughter had been in a car accident. It was dramatic news and there were dramatic repercussions already beginning to unfold but I thought that I was ok and I had an appointment to keep and so I kept going. I stepped into the brand new still-under-wraps Mount Pleasant cellar door, that unforgettable morning, and went to shake the hand of Mount Pleasant wines head winemaker Adrian Sparks. I got half-way towards him when I suddenly burst into tears. It was very unprofessional. I took the above photo and the below photo and a few others. Then I got out of there. Shortly after this I received an unexpected phone call from wine writer Tyson Stelzer and shortly after that a phone call from wine legend James Halliday. Both of these calls were about the soon-to-be-vacant position of chief editor of Halliday Wine Companion. As I spoke to Tyson and then to James the repercussions of my daughter’s car accident were still unfolding and internally, if not externally, I was an emotional wreck. I had a feeling that I’d be a disastrous choice as the chief editor of Halliday Wine Companion but I had a bigger feeling that I was going to need the money. I took the job, made some changes, did my best, left in tatters. I meant to use the above and below images in an article somewhere, sometime, but circumstances scurried away from me and I never did.
Mount Pleasant, I wrote in my Best Australian Wineries guide, is “the birthplace of fine Australian wine, the name on the label of many of the best Australian wines of all time. Mount Pleasant is a legend of both the past and of now.”
I believed that then and I believe that now.
I always thought that this photographic session with Adrian Sparks was a good one, despite my personal circumstances. I thought this because the light, particularly in the cellar door, was about as exquisite as it gets. And yet every time I look at these images I’m disappointed with them. I don’t know why. Adrian Sparks is a champion winemaker, Mount Pleasant is a champion estate, the light was good, so too the setting. I think maybe that I’m just too tangled up in blue to judge.
In any case, these are the images and, thanks to Adrian, the Mount Pleasant wines are as magnificent as ever.
