AFTER almost two decades in the wine industry, Coonawarra resident Peta Baverstock’s passion project has come to fruition in the form of her sparkling wine label Cuvée Co Wines.
Ms Baverstock launched Cuvée Co last month with two wines in her range, The Kenneth and Ivy Elliot, which both won acclaim at the annual Limestone Coast wine show.
The winemaker – who has specialised in sparkling wine for the better part of her career – sat down with The Pennant to tell the story behind the brand.
“Sparkling wine has been my career for almost 20 years and for about 10 of those years I worked in a corporate winery – Hardys in McLaren Vale,” she said.
“Ed Carr – who is a guru of Australian sparkling wine – was my boss so I had this amazing apprenticeship under his guidance.
“I had classical training in how to use the same technique the French use to make champagne.”
It was during a stint at Domaine Chandon where Ms Baverstock learnt about the branding of sparkling wine.
“Working for a luxury brand owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy I developed a taste for branding and began to understand the attention to detail,” she said.
“With sparkling there are two fermentations instead of one and a lot of love goes into these wines.
“In 2009 I had my first son and at the same time my husband was promoted to live in the South East, so we moved from McLaren Vale to Robe.”
While she was on maternity leave, a number of people asked Ms Baverstock to make their sparkling wine for them and Cuvée Consult was born.
“For the next eight years I focused on consulting through my freelance sparkling wine business Cuvée Consult,” she said.
“Cuvée is a French word for blend – when we make sparkling we take a lot of components and blend together to get complexity.
“Consulting was fantastic and built my confidence up to return to the workplace.”
Another promotion for her husband prompted a move to Coonawarra, where Ms Baverstock noticed the chalk soils of the vineyards were reminiscent of those in France.
“The vineyards here reminded me of the soil types I saw in Champagne when I worked at Bollinger,” she said.
“I thought, why not give it a go and try to make some sparkling here in my backyard?
“I picked two tonne of fruit in 2015 and after the wine was on the yeast for three years I decided it was time to bring it to the market space.”
The two wines in her portfolio placed exceptionally well in the Limestone Coast Wine Show (a silver medal for The Kenneth and a bronze for the Ivy Elliot).
“It was really exciting to have that third party endorsement,” Ms Baverstock said.
“I really want to champion sparkling wine, not necessarily a region or a grape variety – for me it is about the style of wine.”
While she did take cues from champagne branding – including the use of family names for the wines – Ms Baverstock was careful to make the distinction between champagne and sparkling wine.
“There is only one champagne – from the Champagne region in France, to the east of Paris,” she said.
“We make Australian sparkling wine.
“I love drinking champagne but I’m really proud to be an Australian sparkling wine maker.
“The Kenneth is named after my children’s great grandfather who would have been 100 next year and Ivy Elliot is my nanna.
“The champagne houses use family names and I wanted to do something similar.”
The labels feature artwork by Adelaide-based artist Dan Tomkins.
“He was exhibiting at the Coonawarra Arts Festival and I fell in love with his work,” Ms Baverstock said.
“I paid for the rights to be able to reproduce a couple of his paintings for my labels.
“Everything down to the packaging has been quite bespoke – these wines are a luxury offering at a realistic price point.
“Coonawarra is not really known for sparkling so it is quite exciting, I have been challenging a few norms and the support has been amazing.”
“You do not launch your own wine label to make billions of dollars – it is more about having a fire in the belly and giving it a red hot go.”
Cuvée Co Wines are available for purchase at The Royal Oak, Coonawarra Store, Bellwether Wines cellar door and Cuvée Co website.
