A Week That Rewires a Palate: Notes from a 2022 Len Evans Tutorial Scholar...

If you work in Australian wine long enough, you hear whispers about the Len Evans Tutorial - that intense, humbling, career-shaping week in the Hunter. In 2022, the Tutorial’s 20th anniversary, we gathered at Spicer's Guesthouse for five days that tuned my palate like a string. 

I was lucky to be one of twelve: Frank Butera; Penny Grant; Ben Harris; Erin Larkin; Dylan McMahon; Genevieve Mann; Ed Merrison; Ben Mullen; Tim Pelquest-Hunt; Andrea Pritzker MW and Nadja Wallington. Andrea Pritzker MW was awarded the Basil Sellers Prize for Dux at the presentation lunch that concluded the week.

You arrive with an industry CV and a cache of show judging experience, but it doesn't prepare you for what's to come. When it concludes, you leave with a new operating system and after about a week, you want to do it all again - this time empowered and more confident. Each morning is judging - your scores scrutinised across brackets of some of not only the finest wines of the Old World but cult icons of the New World. The tutors keep a seasoned tempo, structure, consensus. Afternoons bring masterclasses, unless you've got a double judging day (a pourers nightmare), think the most distinguished Champagnes with Tyson Stelzer or a short tour of Burgundy with Philip Rich. Evenings bring fine dining with civility, a touch of old-fashioned etiquette and options games with wines from your wildest dreams. For me the thunderclap came with a taste of my first ever Maurice O’Shea wine. I mean I have been lucky enough to taste some of Karl Stockhausen's great wines of the past, but never an O'Shea. It came in the form of a 1952 Rhine Castle Hermitage made in Junee NSW and bottled in Newcastle - bottle 328 of 750. 1952 also happened to be the same year J.K. (Jonnie) Walker purchased Rhine Castle distributors outright. "Jonnie" looks to have signed the back label, noting it to be one of O'Shea's greatest wines.

Personally, the written dissertation on 4 wines served blind became a pivotal moment, it crystalised a variety and confirmed a style I love and it ultimately became the catalyst for Duff Wines. The 4 wines were all grenache, I didn't nail all 4 regions, i got 3 and although all the wines were precise, the McLaren Vale wines spoke to me. I did manage to knit in song lyrics to all the tasting notes at the suggestion of the ever-cheeky Sue Bell. Lines from Prince's "Little Red Corvette", "Purple Rain" and "Raspberry Berret" I hope at least got a smirk out of Riggs and Hill Smith. Our minimal-intervention Blewitt Springs grenache was born out of this and made in tiny volumes for Duff Wines. That through-line - study > calibration > action - is the Tutorial at its best. The development of Duff Wines may have transpired throughout Wine Australia's Future Leaders program (AND Jade Duff), but its conception was on that Thursday in November of 2022.

The grenache dissertation forced me to articulate what I value in the variety, fragrance over extract and whole-bunch for shape - although I do like when it screams from the glass too. Tannin's that read as graphite more than grit and alcohol that supports, not leads. That thinking is now in the glass with Duff grenache - sourced from Blewitt Springs, made with a light touch and minimal intervention for Duff Wines. If you're a grenache person (or grenache-curious), this is the chapter we always wanted to write. 

The capstone of the week of course it the Friday and DRC-Day. The entire morning is committed to a vertical of wines, 7 if its 2009 and younger, 6 if its 2008 and older. We had 7 wines; there was the first piece in the puzzle.  The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti vertical of Corton, Grands-Échézeaux, Échézeaux, Romanée-Saint-Vivant (Marey-Monge), Romanée-Conti, Richebourg and La Tâche was surreal. Tasked with writing tasting notes along with guessing vintages and allocating the correct Cru to the correct glass was a mammoth task, but the hardest task is staying in the moment to see what you will quite possibly never see again, especially all in the one flight of wines. The vintage was 2014; a tricky season in Burgundy indeed.

Weeks like this don’t happen by accident. They happen because a community shows up: tutors, pourers, sponsors and the LET board who keep Len’s vision alive—opening wines that are otherwise out of reach so scholars can recalibrate and then take that calibration back to their vineyards, wineries and judging tables. If you've ever wanted to apply, don't wait - do it now; it took me 10years of applications to finally get in.