With exacting standards for his The Standish Wine Co label, he never uses more than 30% of the barrels, ‘guaranteeing that only the best of the best fruit ends up in the bottle’. So he must have been particularly frustrated that his average yields were down by 55% in 2019 and 70% in 2020. With minuscule allocations in the pipeline, it’s a good time to take a look at Standish’s 2017 and 2018 releases.
Preferring to court growers, not the press (whom Standish has ‘pretty much spent the last 20 years avoiding’), information about The Standish Wine Co is thin on the ground for a producer of his ilk. We met in 2004 at Barossa winery Torbreck, where Standish worked at the time but, until now, we had never discussed his own project.
Standish established his eponymous company in 1999, the same year he joined Torbreck, and just two years after graduating in chemical engineering. Standish is a sixthgeneration Barossan and, at age six, learned to prune vines at his grandfather’s knee. He has taught himself winemaking ‘hands-on’ too – as well as wine appreciation (though he credits his wife Nicole, Australia’s Sommelier of the Year 2001, with having the better palate).
THE STANDISH WINE CO: THE FACTS
Owners Dan & Nicole Standish
Founded 1999
Winery location Light Pass, Barossa Valley
Annual production 12,000-28,000 bottles
This story is from the December 2020 edition of Decanter.
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This story is from the December 2020 edition of Decanter.
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