The Story

Over the years I have come across winemakers with degrees in atomic science, doctors with specialties spanning every human condition, town planners, sculptors and painters, and Rory Lane adds yet another to the list: a degree in ancient Greek literature. He says that after completing his degree, and desperately wanting to delay an entry into the real world, I stumbled across and enrolled in a postgraduate wine technology and marketing course at Monash University, where I soon became hooked on ... the wondrous connection between land, human and liquid. Vintages in Australia and Oregon germinated the seed, and he zeroed in on the Grampians, where he purchases small parcels of high-quality grapes for his Shirazs, making the wines in a small factory where he has assembled a basket press, a few open fermenters, a mono pump and some decent French oak. JAMES HALLIDAY