Photo: Winemaker Ben Bryant
Ben Bryant, an Australian winemaker with an exceptional
resumé, has joined Mission Hill Family Estates as chief winemaker.
There has been no formal announcement even though he arrived
in the Okanagan in August. It seems with everything else on its plate, the
winery decided to sit on the announcement until the Vancouver International
Wine Festival in February.
Ben succeeds another Australian, Darryl Brooker, now Mission
Hill’s general manager, who in turn succeeded John Simes who retired in 2014
after running Mission Hill’s cellar since 1992.
“I found Ben through contacts in Australia,” Darryl says.
“It took me a year to convince him to come.” He succeeded after flying Ben and
his wife to the Okanagan. Here, Ben was swept away by the Okanagan’s beauty,
the winemaking opportunities and the passion of Mission Hill’s owner, Anthony
von Mandl.
“To me, it is endless opportunity that is untapped,” Ben
says in an interview. “There is a fair element of personal challenge to come
and put the place on the map. It is about the wine. You never find a region
where you have two regions in one. You have the classic Bordeaux varieties in
the south and then you have the Burgundian varieties in the north.”
As well, the Bryants “have a young family and we want to
expose them to international places. They lived in Asia with us. Canada is a
country that is very similar to Australia in terms of societal values.”
The 2018 vintage in the Okanagan got him off on the right
foot. “Super impressed,” Ben says. “It was such a mild growing season that
everything was able to ripen naturally. The Cabernet Sauvignon is an example:
there is no green, there is no herbaceousness. There is a leafiness. Everything
has amazingly fresh acid structure. There is a brightness and a purity to the
fruit. It is the perfect vintage to start.”
Darryl draws a parallel between Ben and John Simes, who is
now retired. When Mission Hill recruited John in 1992, he was already the
senior winemaker with New Zealand’s largest winery. Ben, who is about to turn
40, has risen rapidly through the winemaking ranks in Australia and had become
the chief winemaker in Australia for Pernod Ricard Group.
On his LinkedIn profile, Ben writes: “Pernod Ricard Winemakers is
the global brand owner and distributor of premium wines from multiple countries
of origin, including Jacob’s Creek, Wyndham Estate and St Hugo (Australia), Brancott
Estate and Stoneleigh (New Zealand), Campo Viejo (Spain) and Graffigna (Argentina).”
He does not come from a winegrowing family. “We were
originally a farming family,” Ben says. “I left school and sort of fell into
wine because I liked the agricultural side of it. I was offered a job and never
left. I was in Mudgee at the time, working in the cellar. At the end of
vintage, I was offered a job. I thought it was too good and I never left.”
Ben was profiled in a 2017 wine article by Wine Australia:
“Ben grew up on a
farm close to Mudgee,
one of Australia’s most exciting cool climate wine regions. From a young age,
whenever Ben wasn’t at school or working on the family farm, he was working in
one of the local vineyards pruning, picking or whatever other seasonal work
needed to be done. At first, he did it for extra cash to spend
after school but soon a passion for working the land emerged. Rather than
heading to university straight from school, Ben got work as a cellar hand for a
vintage at Poet’s Corner in Mudgee.”
Then he enrolled in the wine science program at Charles
Sturt University, where he graduated in 2005. He had joined Orlando Wines (a
predecessor to Pernod Ricard) where he became the chief winemaker at Wyndham
Estate in 2010, moving on to a senior marketing role in 2013.
That same year, Pernod Ricard sent him to Hong Kong for an
18-month stint as a brand development manager. He returned to Australia in the
fall of 2014 as chief winemaker for the Pernod Ricard group, including Jacob’s
Creek.
It is clear from that background that Mission Hill has
landed a chief winemaker with both extensive technical experience as well as
business experience.
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