10 wines that tell the Averys story - Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay,

6. Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay

Next up in our ‘10 wines that tell the Averys story’ is Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay, the wine that put Australian Chardonnay on the world wine map.

It’s hard to believe that fifty years ago, you couldn’t buy a bottle of Australian Chardonnay – even in Australia – it simply didn’t exist.

The first commercially released Australian Chardonnay was Tyrrell’s Vat 47 1971. The story goes that Murray Tyrrell jumped the fence of the Penfolds HVD Pokolbin vineyard in the middle of the night to steal vine cuttings of Chardonnay (he’d already asked politely but as they’d refused, this was his only other option!) These cuttings reputedly went on to become the basis for Vat 47. Whether this is true or not is debatable but it certainly makes a good story!

Since then, Tyrrell’s has become an Australian wine legend and that’s thanks in no small part to our very own John Avery.

“The connection with the Avery family went back into the 1950s and John played a major role in setting the initial styles of Vat 47 and Vat 6.” www.tyrrells.com.au

 John was already a good friend of Murray’s in the early 70s and he took a shipment of the 1973 Vat 47 – the first Australian Chardonnay in the UK. He was also said to have helped put the early blends of Vat 47 Chardonnay and Vat 6 Pinot Noir together.

Bruce, FJA and Murray

But John’s support for his Aussie mates didn’t end there. In 1979, he entered the 1976 Tyrrell’s Vat 6 Pinot Noir in the 1979 Wine Olympiad in France. Much to the dismay of the French, it won the Pinot Noir group beating several top Burgundies.

As you can imagine, this was big news in the world of wine and indeed, it even made it onto the front page of The New York Times. However, asked what the reaction had been back home in the Hunter Valley, Murray Tyrrell replied

“Slow. We made it to the front page of The New York Times, but only managed page 12 of the local paper!”

Interestingly, even in the early 80s, Murray was convinced “Chardonnay will always be perceived by the public as a fad wine”. How wrong he was! Australian Chardonnay saw huge growth in the 1990s when the world simply couldn’t get enough of these sunshine-filled whites. And today, Chardonnay accounts for over half of white wine production in Australia. Not bad for a fad!

Chris,Mimi, Bruce and Sarah Avery