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A toast to a man of taste

By Michael Baume - posted Wednesday, 23 August 2006


Maybe it was time for Len Evans to depart. The wine industry that he did so much to transform from a purveyor of plonk to the producer of some of the world’s top table wines (and from a minor player in world markets into the world’s fourth largest wine exporter) died aged 75 last week as the bulk of his beloved industry marched off to the tune of a different drummer.

If “quality” was the rock on which he built his obeisance to Bacchus, there was little for him to worship in the alternative God of volume that the beer barons, who own so much of the wine industry, are now imposing on a business dominated by their accountants and salesmen rather than by the traditional winemakers who find more to venerate in the grape than in the bottom line.

Takeovers have brought an inexorable slide of leading wine companies into the hands of those with less regard for the quality of what is contained behind the label than they have for its marketability: along with less understanding of the reality that the volume of sales of a good label made from top quality grapes cannot simply be doubled or trebled to suit a marketing strategy if the necessary grapes to do so are not there.

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Leonard Paul Evans, OBE, AO, had a Canute-like stance against this tide. He remained fixated, as do his many friends of like mind, on the primacy of quality above all else.

It is a fixation that has served him well, rewarding him not only with one of the greatest lives anyone could wish for, but also bringing him the financial benefits that, when I first met him more than 46 years ago, he could not have dreamed of.

A wonderful family of a loyal wife and three loving children, a spectacular self-designed home (Loggerheads) in the Hunter Valley overlooking his own vineyard and the Tower Estate of which he is chairman, with a more distant view of what had been his creation, the Rothbury Estate Winery (with its renowned cask hall where for years he was the grandest of hosts).He lost it in a hostile takeover by Fosters Beer; and cried all the way to the bank with his substantial payout.

But the number-crunchers got it wrong and Fosters has now sold off what had been Evans’ Rothbury empire which he had dedicated to the concept of quality but which is now just another label.

Like Rothbury, circumstances robbed him of another joy, his ground-breaking food and wine centre of excellence, the Bulletin Place tasting room/restaurant/wine merchant where he, accompanied by whichever of the world’s top wine people were in town, presided for years over an island of quality in a sea of mediocrity. Lunch in the Tasting Room on Mondays or Fridays was an experience both pleasurable and lengthy.

Those of us fortunate enough to be members of the Rothbury/Bulletin Place family under Len’s chairmanship witnessed at first hand the revolutionary changes he brought to the Australian wine industry - and enjoyed the fun as he spread the gospel of wine as a bringer of joy - and brilliantly told bawdy jokes.

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I first met L.P. Evans in 1960 after he and his wife Trish had come to Sydney from Mt Isa (where this London-Welsh immigrant had arrived after a spell as a forestry labourer in New Zealand to be the assistant golf professional).

He was washing glasses and doing the accounts at a Circular Quay pub while writing “humorous items” for some radio personalities when he submitted some short whimsical pieces to the Observer magazine that was edited (part time) by the late Donald Horne and staffed by Peter Coleman (later to be NSW State Opposition leader and then federal MP for Wentworth) and me.

After some months, an emergency meant that one of these items by the unknown L.P. Evans was needed to fill an unexpected hole. He was rewarded with the very modest payment that Sir Frank Packer, who owned the magazine, reluctantly allowed us to disburse. Much to my delight, this resulted in a grateful and exuberant Evans phoning to invite Coleman and me to lunch. On the appointed day he appeared in our cell-like office with two parcels which he deposited on the desk (with one typewriter) that Coleman and I shared. One parcel contained fish and chips; the other a bottle of French champagne. We became instant friends.

That was his initiation as a published writer; he then went on to write the widely acclaimed Cellarmaster column for the Bulletin magazine and then his witty Indulgence page for The Australian, interspersed with regular television appearances (including an ABC program he and I shared for five years with Jackie Weaver, Noelene Brown, Peter Lazar and the late Frank Hardy and Cyril Pearl called Would You Believe 30 or so years ago.

It was his sense of style, a remarkable palate, an incredible memory, a restless energy, a highly competitive streak (which was never diminished when competing with family and friends at anything from cards to croquet) and a commitment to his vision of the future that combined to make this multi-talented man such a leader.

When he first became professionally involved with wine, 46 years ago, it was as assistant beverage manager at the Chevron hotel at Kings Cross. There he developed Sydney’s best wine cellar, impressing visiting celebrities with bottles that belied Australia’s reputation for focusing on fortified wines like ports and sherries and producing indifferent table wines.

In those days Australia’s total wine production was no more than 150 million litres of which just under half was fortified. Production has now multiplied 10-fold, all due to table wine: fortifieds have been cut by two thirds. Wine has become a major export earner at more than $3 billion a year.

The role of Len Evans in this success cannot be overstated; he is recognised overseas as the Godfather of Australian wine, becoming Master of Ceremonies at the international wine showpiece in New York, the annual Wine Spectator magazine’s Wine Experience. Founding director of the Australian Wine Bureau, chairman of judging at the major Australian wine shows for many years and recognised as a world figure in wine, with leading wine institutions sending their brighter prospects to Australia to be mentored by Len Evans. This role as an educator (in which his renowned options game played such a part) was a key element in his advancing the status of Australian wine - and an appreciation of the world’s best.

But in our international trade, the latest trend has been away from quality, with the average export price per litre down from its peak of $4.76 five years ago to only $3.80, as an increasing proportion of exports is now made up of bulk wines rather than premium bottlings. This is not the sort of quality that Evans would countenance; his single bottle club dinners involved some of the world’s most historic (and expensive!) wines. This was self-indulgence with a purpose: to seek excellence and store the memory of it in order to be able to make better relative judgments about quality in the future.

Len Evans would have turned 76 next week. In the first edition in 1973 of his complete book on Australian and New Zealand wine, he said he became interested in wine, women and golf aged 14, but that now he had little time for golf. His birthdays were great excuses not just for a party, but for a spectacular celebration.

His 70th in 2000 saw Len and his wife Trish dressed as a very convincing Napoleon and Josephine; at his 75th he drank premier cru Bordeaux from the great 1929 vintage, the year in which he was (only just) conceived rather than the poor quality vintage of his birth year, 1930. Instead, next month, as the newspaper funeral notice stated, there will be a different party to celebrate his life - but a party nevertheless. It will be top quality.

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An edited version of this article was first published in the Australian Financial Review on August 21, 2006.



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About the Author

Michael Baume is a former Australian Financial Review investment editor and a former Liberal MP.

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All articles by Michael Baume

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