Julian Langworthy, Chief Winemaker & General Manager, Deep Woods Estate

You've made wine in France, Canada, the Clare Valley, Barossa and Coonawarra.

Looking back, which region taught you the lesson that still shapes your winemaking today?

I think it's always an amalgam of all your experience in these things.

Probably the most formative time I spent was my probably five years at Wins in Coonawarra.

Sue Hodder, who's still at Wins today, was an amazing boss.

Very empowering and very motivational for a young winemaker as I was then.

And probably I learned a lot about making Cabernet, but probably learned more about leading teams and fostering good culture, which in any workplace is super important and particularly so in wineries.

And, you know, the terroir is quite different in all those places.

I guess, did that give you like a technical advantage, sort of looking how you can approach wine?

To a certain degree.

Like winemakers, I think you need to have a certain tenure in an area or even with a vineyard.

Like five years in wine, it's not a long time.

Vineyards grow slowly.

Wine programs evolve slowly.

So...

My history and my background from around the world and interstate was really important, but then you've got to get to grips with what you're doing in your own soil.

So I've been 16 and a half years at Deepwoods now, and it's been an amazing journey, and I can't believe it's been that long gone by in a heartbeat.

But I came to Deepwoods with a passion for wine, and I really knew what I wanted to achieve, and that was to make the world's greatest wines.

And I strongly believe Marga River is the place within Australia that we can actually do that.

So you returned home to Margaret River, as you said, in 2011, I believe.

Yep.

What was it that excited you about joining Deepwood Estate?

Well, it's interesting.

It was, I guess it was a sort of a relatively unknown winery at that juncture.

I first visited, I was the head winemaker at Napstein in the Clare Valley at that stage.