The Wine Hunter by Campbell Mattinson

Australia’s first great winemaker was a Frenchman. He walked onto a hillside vineyard in the Hunter Valley north-west of Sydney in the early 1920s – fresh from study at Montpellier – and in a hot, soggy climate worked to craft a set of wines that, when finally opened as forty and fifty and sixty-year-olds, could make people gasp. He made these wines without electricity, without any kind of personal or professional convenience, and with a broken heart. It makes no sense that these wines should prove so good; what he managed was a miracle. He died without knowing of the legend he and his wines would become. This is the story of Maurice O’Shea, creator of Australia’s first fine wines. Reviews James Halliday, The Weekend Australian: “One of the most remarkable wine books to come my way … It will capture anyone who reads it: this is not a wine geek book but an epic.” Jancis Robinson: "Campbell Mattinson (who) is arguably Australia’s most literate, and certainly most literary, wine writer. I have never met him, incidentally, but admire his monograph on the Hunter Valley pioneer Maurice O’Shea immensely.” Max Allen, The Australian Magazine: “This is the best book on wine to be published in Australia for many, many years”. Paddy Kendlar, Melbourne Herald-Sun: “I started reading a wine book last weekend and finished it on the Sunday night. Literally couldn’t put it down, except to take a break when the story became somewhat sad … It’s a wonderful story with a perception and sensitivity almost matching that of the subject. Campbell Mattinson has captured the essence of a great Australian artist. I heartily commend this remarkable book.” Jeni Port, The Age: “Wine Hunter is a breakthrough wine book: an astonishing, cerebral, emotional entanglement of fact and dramatisation, of tender detail and beautiful, expressive words. Has there ever been a wine book written quite this way?”