Generation next: all in the family

There's a new generation of young wine people moving into the family wineries of NSW. People such as Daniel Shaw, of Philip Shaw Wines at Orange, and Christina Tulloch, of Tulloch Wines in the Hunter Valley, are bringing new energy and the skills of a new generation to bear on established wine companies. At Tyrrell's Wines in the Hunter, it's the fifth generation in the form of Christopher and Jane; at Freeman Vineyards in the Hilltops region it's the daughters of founder Brian Freeman, Xanthe and Marcelle, who are taking the business into the second generation.

After graduating from winemaking, Daniel Shaw, 41, spent 10 years working in wineries overseas - six in the US and four in New Zealand - before his father Philip sat him down and asked him if he was ready to come home.

"I always wanted to come home and be the next generation, but never assumed it would happen. I wanted him to ask me, rather than the other way round. When it happened, it was the right time for both of us."

With Daniel running the day-to-day winemaking and his brother Damian, 43, in charge of sales and marketing, the family seems to work well together. They are building a new cellar door at the winery on Shiralee Road, two kilometres outside Orange. They plan to open it by the end of April. The cellar door has been at Philip and Dianne's home, at their Koomooloo vineyard.

"Working in a family business, you have a common goal,'' Daniel says. ''You're all trying to achieve the same things. For the present, I'm following dad's legacy, but I have my own views, and as time goes by I'll put more of my own input into the wines."

One of the bigger groups of ''generation next'' is at Riverina winery Calabria Family Wines, formerly Westend Estate. Four members of the third generation are now in the business, the children of Bill and Lena Calabria. They've already made a major change, switching the winery name back to Calabria. The kids thought it was better to use the family name … and Westend does sound like an Adelaide beer. Today Frank Calabria, 37, Michael, 36, Andrew, 30, and Elizabeth, 25, all play fulltime roles in the family business.

"We don't really have titles; we are all multi-skilled, as dad doesn't believe in doing just one job," Andrew says. "There was never any pressure put on us to go into the family business. But it's interesting that all four of us are working fulltime in it."

The Calabrias already have a sound strategy, thanks to father Bill. They now own two vineyards in the Barossa, to make old-vine Barossa shiraz; and the pursuit of Italian varietals is already well established. They make prosecco, aglianico, pinot grigio, pinot bianco, and - although it's not an Italian varietal it is an ''alternative'' variety: durif. "Twelve years ago Riverina durif was a gamble," Andrew says. ''Now it's our best-selling varietal."

Christina Tulloch won the Hunter's first Rising Star award in 2007, and is now chief executive of Tulloch Wines. Fourth generation, she is 36 and a mother of two. She works two days a week in the Hunter Valley and three in her Sydney office - shared with Tulloch's distributor Inglewood Wines. This enables her to keep closely connected to the market.

Her father Jay (''JY'') Tulloch is managing director and oversees both winemaking and vineyard. There is poignancy as the family bought back their trading name in 2001 after losing it many years earlier. And next year they'll celebrate their 120th anniversary.

"There's nothing quite like getting up in the morning and working for a company where your name is on the label," Christina says.

Also in the Hunter Valley, Jerome (pronounced Jeremy) Scarborough and his sister Sally are the two children of founders Ian and Merralea Scarborough, and both work in the business. Sally, 40, looks after sales and marketing, and Jerome, 43, is general manager and winemaker, although his father still has daily involvement. Sally did a communications degree in Newcastle while Jerome studied viticulture at Roseworthy, where he met his wife Liz Riley, who has her own viticultural consultancy, Vitibit.

Sally's job is a complex one as Scarborough wines have always been self-distributed. They handle wholesaling from the Hunter and distribute wine from warehouses in the eastern state capitals. Not only do they not give away part of the profit to middlemen, they can control the price in the retail and restaurant trades. "We do sell to the big retailers, but it's on the same basis as everyone else. We've stood our ground with regard to discounts, rebates, etc; we've never bought into all that," Sally says.

The big news at Scarborough is that they've taken a long-term lease on the Roxburgh vineyard in the Upper Hunter made famous many years ago by Rosemount. "Roxburgh has been really important to our fuller style of chardonnay for some time. Lots of Upper Hunter vineyards have been pulled out, but we are trying to ensure this vineyard continues."

At Tyrrell's, Jane, John and Christopher are the fifth generation to take roles in the family winery, noted as one of the most successful and distinguished in Australia, famous far and wide for its awesome array of dry white semillons and shirazes.

Chris, 31, has been a member of the winemaking team since 2006 and Jane, 34, recently stepped back from being NSW manager to be key accounts manager, following her marriage and move to western NSW. Their brother John, 32, spends a lot of time in the vineyards and is nicknamed Minister for Morale.

I spoke to Chris after he'd harvested the Four Acres, a shiraz vineyard his great-great-grandfather Edward Tyrrell planted in 1879. "It's incredibly humbling to have this role. It reminds you how easy we have it now: in [second generation] Dan Tyrrell's day, he didn't even have electricity.

''I have a lot of pride in my job; I love it. The challenge is to keep making it better. In many ways we're going back to what we used to do, but we're doing it better."

NSW wines go on show for the NSW Food and Wine Festival (Feb 21 to March 21).

The festival program will be in next week's issue of Good Food. See nswfoodandwine.com.au