Traditionally, Australians planted every conceivable vine variety in the one vineyard, and wondered why most of them made ordinary wine, while one or two might have flourished. Many have followed him, usually just buying grapes from specific regions – Semillon from the Hunter, Clare Riesling, Coonawarra Cabernet, and so on – but back in the 1970s this was quite radical. He was the first to suit grape varieties to regions and plant his vineyards directly from that premise. He’s in a higher league than most of his contemporaries in Australia. Croser has always been a leader, even when he was a school prefect. ‘He always knew what he wanted and how to get there,’ says Michael Hill Smith, of Shaw & Smith Wines.

Talk to those close to him and the word visionary keeps cropping up. It’s not that he wants to influence you or persuade you to write a story: he is simply way ahead of the pack, and he needs to explain things to the rest of us mere mortals. It is hard to imagine him searching his soul, wracked with self-doubt.

Croser, 55, is a self-contained, self-absorbed, supremely confident man. He is an introvert and introverts are often accused of arrogance when it’s more often shyness. And you realise you have been Crosered.ĭecanter’s 2004 Man of the Year, Brian Croser, is one of the most outstanding, but also enigmatic and misunderstood, figures in Australian wine. An hour later you emerge with a new perspective on some detail of viticulture or winemaking that Ben Croser is obsessed with. ‘There’s something I want you to understand about what I’m trying to do,’ he says. The host fixes you with a steady, penetrating gaze over the top of his reading glasses. HUON HOOKE meets Decanter’s Man of the Year 2004Īs you enter the tasting room, there are rows of bottles and wines in glasses. Petaluma founder, mentor to winemaking students, and visionary winemaker, Brian Croser is one of the leaders of the Australian wine world.

Man of the year download