Professor Robert Lusby (AM), to give him his full title, was a pioneering vascular surgeon based at Sydney University and Concord Hospital, Sydney. In the early nineties he and his family purchased a property on Hermitage Road, Pokolbin, Hunter Valley (Tintilla Estate) and set about producing wines in homage to the Europeans, especially the Tuscans and Burgundians, who had shown the way to integrate family, wine and food.
Now “retired”, Bob, pursues his passion for wine and food living full time in the Hunter Valley. Bob’s passion for wine is not only in the making and drinking of it, but also in the history of how Australian Wines and in particular the Hunter Valley Wines came to be and continue to be some of the best wines in the world. Bob’s Blog tells that story.
‘Good wine starts in the vineyard’ is a familiar quote and certainly holds true when it comes to quality, but what does it mean. We were recently asked to make a short video for the Around Hermitage News Desk about spring in the vineyard and there were many facets that came to mind that we…
Remembrance Day, Concord Hospital, 2017 “Passchendaele 1917” Robert Lusby AM “The bodies of the fallen were consumed by the mud rising up to engulf them”, noted Winston Churchill referring to the horrors of the Western Front. Words I clearly recalled when seeing the bodies of the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. Half buried in…
It used to be that the characteristic of Hunter Reds was a “sweaty saddle” nose that would signal Hunter! Not anymore, with great perseverance, the Hunter wine industry has got rid of Brettanomyces (Brett) – the organism that was spoiling our wines. Although for years it wasn’t recognized, the flavour can be attractive to some.…
About 25 years ago, not long after buying our block on Hermitage Road, I was invited to help write a book on Carotid Artery disease (my special interest) on the island of Cyprus by Professor Andrew Nicolaides of London, a Greek Cypriote. It was a successful collaboration and importantly for me, an introduction to the…
With the recent announcement of the reopening of Lindeman’s Ben Ean winery by the McGuigan and Peterson families I thought it might be timely to look again at Henry Lindeman and his family and their great contribution to the Hunter and Australian wines more generally. Ben Ean is shown on Lindemans label Restoring the Ben…
Mitchell Library and the Hunter: Bob’s Blog Standing in the courtyard of Estate Tuscany at the opening of the Hermitage Road Cycle Way on 30th August 2017, I mentioned to George Souris, Chairman of the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association, that we were overlooking the old Rothbury Estate owned by David Scott Mitchell (1836-1907)…
It is not by any accident of fate that the Hunter Valley was established as a fine wine producer. From the early days, wine making was modeled on the French example and Fine table wines were the object of our pioneers. The exchange of experiences and ideas was a key reason for establishing the Hunter…
While this is stating the obvious it is becoming more important than ever to define our region as a fine wine producer in order to distinguish us from the flat land large acre industrial vineyards that produce so much of the “brand Australia” every day drinking wines. Following on from my last blog where I…
How many times have you read wine writers comments on the Hunter Valley and its lack of suitability for wine grape growing. It’s as if one uninformed writer years ago said it was climatically unsuitable despite the empirical evidence and all the rest have repeated what is essentially “false news”. In making this claim they…
With Bastille Day coming up it might be time to look again at that great gift from Burgundy – Chardonnay. This ubiquitous wine when rediscovered back in the 1970’s, spearheaded the conversion of many red wine drinkers to the lighter and brighter side of life. It is a wine that has changed considerably over the…