Steph Dutton has been to Singapore several times, but she never gets tired of the sky-high views. On her last trip, 67 Pall Mall dazzled with a panorama of Orchard Road; this time, she has a bird’s-eye ocean view of Marina Bay South from High House.
Dutton is in town to present a very special release: the new Bin 180 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz 2021, created to celebrate Penfolds’s 180th year. Alongside the usual 750ml and magnum formats, the brand created just eight units of the Bin 180 in the rare jeroboam (3-litre) size, enclosed in a limited-edition art piece by South Australian artisan Andrew Bartlett. The fluid design utilises Penfolds French oak barrels, representing 18 decades of brand history.
“This wine is one of those that just lands on your doorstep,” Dutton explains. “In 2021, it was a great vintage for Coonawara. Our heritage Block 10 Cabernet Sauvignon and Block 5 Shiraz did equally well. We thought, what if we put the two pieces together? We realised that they always meant to belong together—the result was elegant, graceful and incredibly proportionate. The Bin 180 is a reminder of our past, while there’s a lot of modernity that reminds us where we are going.”
Journey of the winemaker
Dutton has spent 17 years with Penfolds, 14 of those as a winemaker. She is a Melbourne girl at heart, having grown up with the diversity of living in a big city. It was while pursuing a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne that her interest was piqued by an Italian Barolo. Enamoured with wine, after graduation, she headed to Adelaide to take up a Masters in Oenology.
Dutton assumed she would eventually return home for a wine role closer to Melbourne. However, while working part-time at the Penfolds Cellar Door and Magill Estate Restaurant in 2007, she was privy to the Rewards of Patience tasting—Penfolds’s meticulous evaluation of everything they make, dating back decades.
“That was the moment I knew this was the brand I wanted to be part of,” Dutton shares. “I saw the art of how you could admire wine, but also how something should never be so rare and so special that it’s not drunk. They poured every vintage of Grange ever made, even if there were only one or two bottles left.”
14 years later, Dutton is now an important part of the team that makes the historic Grange, hailed as Australia’s most iconic red wine. It also means that she is firmly entrenched in small town Tanunda in the Barossa, an admittedly big adjustment.
“It took a long time to appreciate the perks of regional living, which provides a more secure, community minded lifestyle, especially now that my children are seven and four years old,” she reflects. “When you understand what agriculture means to Australia, it is really rewarding to be here.”
A global new era of wine
Dutton describes the history of Penfolds as encompassing different eras. Prior to 1950, it was the fortified wine era where the knowledge of blending wines was honed. From the 1950s to the 2000s, there was a flowering of new wines as it moved into its modern winemaking era, which included experimentation with white wine.
Now, Penfolds is making wine in four countries—Australia, US, France and China. “It feels like we are on the cusp of entering a new era, one of global excellence,” Dutton says. “We say that Penfolds is anchored in Australia but chasing pedigree in fine vineyards around the world.”
One of those regions is California, where Penfolds first purchased land in 1997. In 2018, Dutton was assigned to the northern hemisphere team as she landed on the ground for an extended period of time. After 25 years of winemaking trials, Penfolds released its inaugural US collection in 2021 comprising four wines from the 2018 vintage.
Dutton discovered that winemaking in the North and South hemispheres appeared to be mirror images of each other. “For example, generally speaking, mountain fruit in Napa Valley is big and tannic, while in Australia, mountain fruit would often be medium bodied and lighter.” Though Dutton still makes an annual trip to California, she is gradually moving her attention to China, where Penfolds works with growers in Yunnan and Ningxia.
Having the winemaking team spread across two hemispheres has increased the pace of learning and collaboration within the 10-strong winemaker team, led by chief winemaker Peter Gago. Dutton’s role in the red wine team includes blending wine—one which she says you can’t learn from textbooks alone.
“What I love about the art of blending is that you bolster the building blocks you have to create something multi-dimensional that wasn’t possible before. You also have to know when not to blend, and when to hero the single vineyard wines. You learn to identify which wines are stronger together and which have strength on their own.”
With such a strong foundation at Penfolds, it’s no surprise that Dutton turns to her team members when asked for her role models. She names Fiona Donald as an early influence, who had been named Barossa Winemaker of the Year in 2012 and is now the chief winemaker at Seppeltsfield. She finds herself emulating Donald’s clear and effective communication style. She also cites being inspired by current team member Shavaughn Wells for her passion in Grenache, as well as Shauna Bastow who joined in 2018 and is now based in Bordeaux.
“There’s been a beautiful growth in female representation in the industry, but we need more growth in the viticulture space, which is a focus and priority for me,” Dutton highlights. “We engage with University of Adelaide students in their final year of oenology, where we try to bring them in contact with our team. Viticulture can seem labour intensive but new technology has made it easier for women to find their space.”
Perhaps one day soon, those students will also find themselves taking in the view from high above, as they, in turn, bring the next generation of wines from Australia to the world.
Find out more about the 2021 Bin 180 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz here.
