A side of beef, a Hohnen and some grapes
Cape Mentelle vineyard, on Wallcliffe Road on the southern edge of Margaret River, is an international company with world-wide sales.
But, said David Hohnen, founder, everything was very humble at the start.
There were four Hohnen brothers: Mark, David, Giles and John. Their father, also John, knew and liked early wine made by Tom Cullity.
As the 60’s ended, Mark was managing three farms brought together in an attempt to make them viable. David was studying winemaking at Fresno, California. In 1970, while he was still away, three acres of cabernet grapes were planted. They sold the first grapes to other people.
The local economy was hardly vibrant. Cattle prices had gone ‘through the floor’, with predictable effect on farms. David came back.
“We lived in an old Group Settlement house, paying $2 a week rent,” he said.
“We paid $1 an hour for labour.”
David went off again in 1972 to work at Taltarni in Victoria.
Between 1972 and 1974, 14 more acres of vines were planted at Cape Mentelle. One of the less joyous times was when a gate was left open and a mob of cows leveled two-year-old vines.
Giles, who had been in Vietnam, came back to manage the vineyard. John Kosovich of Westfield Wines in the Swan Valley remembers discovering, one morning in March 1974, a ute at his backdoor. In it was Mark Hohnen, fast asleep, his head on a slab of beef and on the back of the ute tomato crates filled with cabernet grapes he had driven from Margaret River. After breakfast the grapes were crushed and stored in a wax-lined petrol drum before transfer to a small oak barrel in Kosovich’s cool underground cellar.
Six months later a ‘few dozen’ bottles were filled and Margaret River’s fourth winery (after Vasse Felix, Moss Wood and Cullen’s) was in business.
David came back to make the 1976 vintage.
“We made it in the tractor shed with a home winemaker’s crush and an old press from Olive Farm winery,” he said.
Mark began subdividing farm land, moving towards property development that would become his sometimes-controversial specialty. Giles, with partner Tom Roberts, began to concentrate on building in rammed earth. They built the original winery in 1978. It was substantially remodeled and enlarged in 1997.
“The first wine to get us noticed was the 1978 cabernet. James Halliday included it among the best wines he named in the National Review. It got us into the Sydney market,” David said.
During 1977, 78, 79 and 80 David traveled, selling wine.
“Someone with experience said to me: ‘When you go to wine shows, take your own glass; some of them don’t have them; and never leave a bottle you haven’t sold.’ I carved some foam plastic so it would take two bottles, bought a little invoice book from the local newsagency and off I went.”
In 1983 and 1984, Cape Mentelle had double triumph, winning the Jimmy Watson Trophy for red wines in a national competition.
The New Zealand expansion came about after some New Zealand winemakers, having been to a conference in Perth, came south and David met them. In 1985 he hired New Zealand winemaker Kevin Judd. Mark did the hard work in acquiring a NZ$1 million loan, and in due course Cloudy Bay Vineyards became part of the Cape Mentelle stable, though the wine is always sold as distinct in its own right.
“There was a lot of controversy because we were going beyond the concept of locally grown and made, but I didn’t get any hate mail,” said David.
In 1987 Mark reduced his interest in the company, which acquired a wider shareholder base and in 1990 Veuve Cliquot came in.
David sees the future of the Margaret River area tied inextricably to wine,
“It is the only commodity that can underpin the prosperity of this area,” he said.
“It combines primary production, manufacture and marketing. Margaret River has a name out of all proportion to the size of wine production. We can be the Bordeaux of Australia.”
