Australian family-run winemaker seeks future in Korea


Born into the wine industry, Peter Barry tasted his first glass of wine around the age of 6.

“I loved watching people taste wines, smile, and ask, ‘Where is this from?” said the Australian winemaker during an interview on Monday in southern Seoul.

He started working at the wine company founded by his father Jim Barry, which the brand was named after, in 1982. His father passed away in 2002, leaving Barry the managing director and proprietor of Jim Barry Wines. Now he runs the company with his two sons, Tom, a winemaker, and Sam, who is in charge of marketing.

Jim Barry is one of the few family-run winemakers in Australia, where 20 wine conglomerates take up over 80 percent of the industry. The brand owns a 250 hectare-wide vineyard in Clare Valley, a small region in southern Australia especially known for Riesling wines. Though the region takes up only 1.3 percent of the nation, it produces 25 percent of the country’s Riesling wines.

While recognizing the efforts of big wine companies that promoted Australian wine to the world, Barry emphasized that family-run wines are special, made to be proud to the very last drop. 

“A public company must return a dividend to the shareholders, so their wines are commercial. They are sweet, so that the mass market can drink. But we can make wines that we like to drink, and then we find the consumers that like our wine. We make more sophisticated wines for less consumers but for the intellectual palate,” said Barry.

While most big companies try to squeeze out everything they can out of the same amount of grapes, Barry explained that Jim Barry presses gently, and only takes the good juice and discards the rest.

“Less juice means less profit. But it also means better flavor,” said Barry.

Delicateness and earnestness, of course, is another characteristic of family-run wineries.

“I’ve been in charge for 35 years, and I have always been there. There were no more than five days that I did not want to go to work. We are driven to make wine that makes people smile. The personal ego is more than money.”

One of the most representative Jim Barry wines is the Armagh Shiraz, which was highly-praised among wine critics including the famous Robert Parker soon after its launch. Other wines including the Lodge Hill Shiraz are also acclaimed, receiving awards from various international competitions.

But the awards do not matter, said Barry, because what matters is the bottle that is right here, today.

“The core philosophy (that runs down the family) is that you will only be remembered by how good the last bottle your consumer tasted was. So you should always be true and give the consumer the best wine,” he said.

“Even if you won the Oscars, what does it mean if the last movie you were in was terrible?”

Barry led many innovations in the industry. He was the chairman of the Clare Valley Winemakers in 2000, when wine producers of the region first decided to put screw caps on wine bottles instead of corks.

“I was very worried about young consumers who might taste wine for the first time and the cork was taint and would say, ‘Eww, that tastes like cardboard,’ and would be gone forever,” he said.

The new technology, which Barry called the “click of quality,” pleasingly prevented cork taints. Now 90 percent of the wines produced in Australia use screw caps, he said.

Another pioneering step he took was to start exporting Jim Barry wines overseas, six years ago. Now, exports take up about 45 percent of the total sales. The start of the world economic crisis, which Barry sensed about four years ago, opened his eyes to Asia.

“The world recession was scary. I thought it would last two years, and now we are four years into it. I think it will last 10 years. I don’t think America will be the future for Australia again. I think the countries in Asia are the future. Because you are humble, you don’t say you are the best in the world, and are active, always working,” he said.

Korea is yet only a small market for Jim Barry, but the proprietor said that he expects a fantastic future from it.

“Many people see China as the future. I see China as doing business in quick sand. But here (in Korea) we can do sophisticated business, respectful business. This is the beginning of the future,” he said.

By Park Min-young  (claire@heraldcorp.com)