2023 Flaxman Valley

To say Callum Powell grew up around wine is an understatement. His first memory is when he was three years old, chasing mice around the small shed where his parents used to make wines for a little start-up called Torbreck. If the Powell last name sounds familiar, it’s because Callum is the son of Dave Powell, the larger-than-life personality who launched and used to own Torbreck. Callum was raised on that brand. He saw it from its infancy to its days of international acclaim and worked many o...Read More...

To say Callum Powell grew up around wine is an understatement. His first memory is when he was three years old, chasing mice around the small shed where his parents used to make wines for a little start-up called Torbreck. If the Powell last name sounds familiar, it’s because Callum is the son of Dave Powell, the larger-than-life personality who launched and used to own Torbreck. Callum was raised on that brand. He saw it from its infancy to its days of international acclaim and worked many of those vintages as they grew from 10 tons to 1500 in the span of 15 years.

After spending the first year out of high school working for the family business, Callum saved up enough money to do some classic Aussie hemisphere hopping. First stop: Jean-Louis Chave, a family friend in the Rhône Valley. “All of a sudden everything’s just this ridiculous slope and you can’t get a tractor up there. And you’re up at five, six in the morning with a backpack spraying sulfur and it’s very, very hard work,” he remembers. Besides the twisted ankles walking up those sloped vineyards, Callum has a distinct memory of learning about provenance, and the care that Jean-Louis took to “carry the weight of Hermitage on his shoulders. - Vine St Importers. 

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