There they were, two of the most renowned French names scrabbling about in Australia more than forty years ago. Remy Martin, famous for the world’s most expensive and arguably best Cognac – Louis XIII, and Krug – arguably the world’s greatest Champagne. You’d think they would be perfectly happy at home. But there are always other challenges, different horizons and new peaks to conquer – Australia’s Pyrenees!
So what was the reason for this venture?! Perhaps our French forebears should be credited for realizing long before the rest of the vinous world woke up, that Australia is where it’s really happening.
John Robb, previously manager of the legendary Maurice O’Shea’s Mount Pleasant in the Hunter Valley was appointed manager in 1962. The winery was built in 1963 with advice from Colin Preece, a man credited with making many of the great Seppelt’s wines from the 1930s to the 1950s.
The original plantings were white wine grapes for brandy but a few experimental red rows were planted too – Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Malbec and Pinot Noir. Management soon realized that the quality of the white grapes were too good for brandy, so with brandy consumption in decline and consumer preference drifting to table wines, production focus moved to producing sparkling wine and dry reds with the old vines for the brandy grafted over to Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Merlot and Pinot Noir.
In 1968 John Robb made the first experimental batches of Château Remy “Champagne” and dry reds.
Originally a joint venture between the French company Remy Martin and an Australian wine and spirit merchant, Nathan & Wyeth, in 1979 Château Remy became wholly owned by Remy Martin with a transition between the old and new order in the 1980s. Bordeaux trained Christian Morlaes worked alongside John Robb with some assistance by Alsace trained Michel Dietrich.
In 1982, the first Blue Pyrenees wine was born. When other Australian wineries were thinking only of straight varietal wines, this company decided to adopt a philosophy similar to the great chateaux of Bordeaux, creating a blended wine (out of Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot and Shiraz) and rather than putting the varietal names on the label, naming it after the Estate itself. The packaging concept of a blue label on a red wine created considerable controversy in its day, but immediately won packaging awards in Australia and the United States.
Colin Richardson (himself part of the history of Blue Pyrenees) recalled that “Francois Henri was visiting here at the Lakehouse one night and the hills were very blue in the moonlight. He just had this idea for this wine. People though he was crazy, blue having a somewhat nightmarish connotation. But before long he had this painting done and this became our prestige label.”
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