One of Australia's most renowned winemakers, Barossa-based Tim Smith, also happens to be a Flatiron favorite. When we found out he'd be in town for a few days, we jumped at the chance to get him on our mezzanine. On Sunday, August 20, 2023 at 5:30pm, Tim will join us for what promises to be an enlightening seminar that touches on Australia's never-more-exciting current wine industry, its future, and maybe a few library treats for a glimpse of the past.
Tim's bio is pretty great:
Tim’s story started, like many, with a bottle of wine and a dream. The early 1980’s Yarra Yering Dry Red #2, with its heady perfume and rich fruity sweetness, seduced him and he decided he simply had to make his own. His first wine industry role was as a cellar hand at Yalumba in 1987. Fifteen years later, with considerable support from the Yalumba team, he became winemaker with a wine science degree under his belt and won the Winemaker Exchange Scholarship as part of the Barossa Valley/Rhone Valley Winemaker Exchange Program.
He spent a watershed vintage period in the North and South Rhone Valleys, where he was able to shadow a few of the region’s most dynamic winemakers including Thierry Boudinaud and Alberic Mazoyer. This gave him the inspiration to form his own wine company to make the wines he truly enjoys drinking, and on a sunny afternoon drinking Condrieu at the foot of the famous Chapel in Tain L’Hermitage, he promptly repaid his then employers’ generosity by resigning. Returning to Australia he formed Tim Smith Wines, producing the first vintage in 2002. Since then, he has worked as a winemaker at St Hallett, Tatachilla and Chateau Tanunda.
Tim has also worked on numerous Northern hemisphere vintages, most notably in Portugal’s Alentejo region with Cortes de Cima and Azamor and in France with Chapoutier and Gabriel Meffre.
He chose God’s-Own-Barossa as his home, on account of its dream combination of the right region and the right varieties. Within this region, old vine Mataro, Grenache, Shiraz and Riesling are found in small pockets, and Tim turns these ‘gardens’ into something special. A combination of age old varieties and clones, plus the myriad of soil structures and elevations within this famous region, makes it a winemakers’ playground.
“We are still unashamedly heavily influenced by the wines of the Rhone Valley, but with a very healthy respect for our regional Barossa wine style. We see no point in trying to reinvent the wheel when the wine styles and regionality we enjoy in the Barossa has been around for nearly 180 years; the region must be doing something right. However-the wine geek in me can't help tinkering and responding to our different yearly vintage challenges.”
Seating is very limited. The cost of this seminar is $30 and a $20 credit at the store will be extended to each guest for a future purchase. We hope you can join us Sunday, August 20 starting at 5:30 on our mezzanine for this very special event.
