Raising the profile of Tempranillo

Louisa Rose is convinced that if Tem­pranillo had been brought to Australia in the 1820s instead of Shiraz, the coun­try would now be a sea of Tempranillo. The chief winemaker for Yalumba and Hill Smith Family Vineyards likes to paint a picture of a “parallel universe” in which the father of the Australian wine industry, James Busby, brought out cuttings of Tem­pranillo from Spain instead of Shiraz from France. And she ponders what the industry might have been like today if winemaking pioneers John Macarthur and George Wyn­dham had planted Tempranillo instead of Shiraz, reports Hospitality Magazine.