Creating Hunter wines with heart

I have to rub my eyes to make sure I am awake and not seeing things. It starts with two. Then two become four and four turn to six.

It is like an alien invasion, albeit a peaceful one.

And they aren’t going anywhere but up. At least not at first.

The vibrantly-coloured hot air balloons rise above the treetops beyond our humble back patio and neighbouring cow paddock from 6.30am.

They remain gently suspended in the air – no doubt to give passengers their money’s worth of the majestic Hunter Valley panorama.

I feel a sudden pang of jealousy: the only time I have ever contemplated a balloon ride was in ‘the Hunter’ more than a decade ago, but a 4.30am operator cancellation call (due to unfavourable high winds) burst my bubble.

Now, here I am, returning the waves of those lucky souls in the long, rectangular baskets as they pass to our left and right, with the unmistakable ‘whoosh’ of the intermittent burners sounding like the static of the old black and white TVs. It’s certainly a pleasant morning after the night before in Pokolbin, where I may have taken the ‘eat, drink and be merry’ idiom a little  too far.

But there’s a lot to be said for staying ‘on site’ at a vineyard. Indulging in a late-afternoon wine tasting and partaking of more alcoholic beverages over a twilight dinner is that much sweeter when your pillow is only a short stroll away.

I booked Harkham Lodge for this very reason, knowing that Harkham Wines’ cellar door and wine bar with food menu were right at our doorstep.

I soon discover there is plenty to learn about this special family-owned and operated winery.

Founder and chief winemaker Richie Harkham has turned modern winemaking trends on their head since putting his name to the brand in 2005.

All the high-quality drops are preservative-free and only 5000 bottles of each style are produced every year, sold through cellar door and online  sales only.

All the fruit (20-25 tonnes per year) is farmed sustainably, handpicked and wild fermented with minimal intervention – with no fining or filtration.

By creating wine in this more traditional style with minimal  intrusion in production, the team lets the fruit and the terroir do the talking.

“Harkham has focused on making wines that are honest to their origins and whose personalities roam free,” a note in the lodge compendium says.

“Wine to us is a living thing, a snapshot of a particular vineyard which has produced fruit in a particular year from the nutrients in the soil, from the sun, the rain, the entire living environment in which those grapes were grown – not a manufactured product but a product of nature, a thing of beauty with a unique personality that should be embraced and never censored.”

So, it’s no surprise that the Harkham Wines team T-shirts have the slogan: “In grapes we trust”.

Richie found his passion for winemaking at a young age, inspired by his grandmother Aziza’s lifelong hobby.

Aziza, whose name appears on all the Harkham flagship wines, “only made wine for fun”, he says.

Richie points us in the direction of a photo of himself as a teen with Aziza (right), drinking chardonnay from her favourite circular champagne glasses “to let the wine breathe”.

Israeli-born, she moved to Australia for a better life in 1967.

Richie tells me her favourite wine was chardonnay, although she also made cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, and enjoyed experimenting – even making some wine in clay pots like the ancient Georgian winemakers.

Aziza’s legacy is in every drop of her namesake wine, which Richie says comes from an older vineyard and is “classic Hunter Valley”, producing wines with more spice and less fruitiness.

The 2023 Aziza Semillon “swimming through time”, the 2023 Aziza Chardonnay “with all the trimmings” and the 2022 Aziza Shiraz “meat on the bones” (my pick) are part of this particular eight-strong tasting that also boasts an Indulgence chocolate liqueur.

But somewhat surprisingly, the ‘entry-level’ Hark Angel Shiraz – with its distinctive gold-winged label – is what steals the conversation limelight, more for what it is creating on a global scale than necessarily how it is created locally.

A portion of proceeds of sales of the drop are donated to the Hark Angel Foundation annually to build schools in some of the world’s most vulnerable areas, such as Cambodia.

Hark Angel Foundation has already built a dozen educational facilities overseas as a direct result of sales.

“Each year we make Hark Angel the wine, we donate $10,000 to Hark Angel Foundation,” Richie says.

“A school in Cambodia costs  $AUD85,000.”

Richie started this end-to-end  charity to ensure funds went directly  to the builder, bypassing any  bureaucratic red tape or possible  political corruption.

This is now Richie and Harkham’s legacy. Grandma would be proud.