Hunter-based Saddler's Creek launches Single Suitcase range of wines to honour Italian migrants

The farm boy from Castelcucco, in northern Italy's alpine foothills, founded what has become a wine industry icon from growing vegetables while living in a Griffith tin shed under a water tank stand. Similar scenarios played out in the giant Calabria and Casella wine companies, with Domenico Calabria and his son Francesco in 1927 and 1929 and Filppos and Maria Casella in 1957.

The energy and resourcefulness of these and numerous other wine producers of Italian origin is now being celebrated by the Hunter-based Saddler's Creek wine company. It has launched a Single Suitcase range of wines that honour Italian migrants who came to Australia to build a better life "with only a handful of dreams and a single suitcase".

Saddler's Creek is owned by the Laureti family, whose father Alessandro Laureti migrated to Sydney in 1955 with a single suitcase. At home in Italy's Abruzzo area he had made wine and in Sydney worked as a labourer and driver for a roof tile manufacturer, raising enough funds in 1958 to bring his wife Maria and eldest son Serge to join him.

Saddler's Creek's Single Suitcase launch is being accompanied by a $65-per person two-hour Food and Wine Experience at the Pokolbin cellar door between 11am and 1pm each Sunday in October and November (bookings: saddlerscreek.com).

A two-course lunch by chef Jonathan Heath will be matched with tastings of the new-release Saddler's Creek 2022 Semillon, 2022 Verdelho and 2020 Riesling and the 2021 Single Suitcase Aglianico, Barbera, Sagrantino and Montepulciano. The menu begins with a first course of salmon carpaccio with gremolata and capers, a second course of slow-cooked beef cheek croquette on caponata prosciutto, rocket and grilled artichoke salad and a finish of berry sorbet. Each guest will receive a Cook Like An Italian booklet with recipes from Laureti family members matriarch Maria (Nonna's sugo with polpette), Frank (spaghetti alle vongole) and wife Wendy Laureti (risotto ai funghi and ricotta frittelle, brother Serge (bruschetta al pomodoro) and sister Letty Mufale (polenta al rag).

The Saddler's Creek Single Suitcase reds provide a fascinating array of Italian-origin grape varieties.

The $45 20021 Montepulciano, Barbera, Sagrantino and Aglianico are at saddlerscreek.com and the Marrowbone Road, Pokolbin, winery.

Crafted by head winemaker Brett Woodward and assistant winemaker Sam Rumpit they come from fruit grown in South Australia's Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale regions. The montepulciano variety is native to Abruzzo and is Italy's second most planted grape.

After sangiovese and montepulciano, barbera is the country's third most planted red variety, with 50,000 hectares of vines largely in the north-western Piedmont Region.

Australia's first barbera vines were planted 41 years ago by Carlo Corino, the Italian-born winemaker for the then-Carlo Salteri and Franca Belgiorno-Nettis-owned Montrose-Craigmoor company at Mudgee. The variety has since caught on with our winemakers, notably Andrew Margan, who established the first Hunter plantings in 1998, using cuttings from Carlo Corino's vines.

Sagrantino is most common in central Italy's Umbria Region and its Australian plantings are still small, as are those of aglianico, a variety of Greek origins, but now with 98 per cent of world plantings in southern Italy's Basilicata and Campania areas

Saddler's Creek was established at Pokolbin in 1990 on a 20-hectare site on the corner of Marrowbone and Oakey Creek roads by Steve Allen and Craig Brown-Thomas, who ran the Vinkem wine supplies company. In 1996 they sold to Sydney wine packaging products and oak barrel importation businessman John Johnstone, under whose control Saddler's Creek collected numerous wine show awards.

In 2015 John put the winery, vineyard, cellar door and the Bluegrass, Equus, Marrowbone and Ryan's Reserve brands up for sale and found avid purchasers in Sydney businessman Frank Laureti and his family, who had been members of the Equus mail order wine club for 10 years and were great fans of Bluegrass wines.

Saddler's Creek is now owned by Frank and his wife Wendy, who are proprietors of the Lighting and Living homewares business in Wetherill Park, and Frank's accountant brother Serge and his wife Irina. Wendy, who is Saddler's Creek managing director, and the rest of the partners see the Single Suitcase and Alessandro and Maria Reserve label wines as due homage to a love of wine, family traditions and culture.

REGISTERING a hefty 15.8% alcohol, this Saddler's Creek 2021 Winemaker's Craft Single Suitcase Sagrantino is purple-tinted crimson in the glass and has potpourri aromas and spicy black cherry front-palate flavour. The middle palate features mulberry, briar, peppermint and cedary oak and the finish has ferric tannins.

PRICE: $45.

DRINK WITH: char-grilled kangaroo fillet.

AGEING: eight years.

RATING: 4.5 stars

THIS plush, multi-faceted Saddler's Creek 2021 Winemaker's Craft Single Suitcase Barbera has 14.5% alcohol, bright garnet hues and berry pastille scents. Intense blackberry flavour shows on the front of the palate, the middle palate introduces bramble jelly, blueberry, spice and savoury oak and minty tannins play at the finish.

PRICE: $45.

DRINK WITH: chicken cacciatore.

AGEING: five years.

RATING: 4.5 stars

PACKED with vibrant fruit characters, the Saddler's Creek 2021 Winemaker's Craft Single Suitcase Montepulciano glows deep purple and has 14.2% alcohol and gamey scents. The front palate has expressive, ripe plum flavour, the middle palate Maraschino cherry, quince jelly, capers and mocha oak and peppery tannins show at the finish.

PRICE: $45.

DRINK WITH: veal stroganoff.

AGEING: nine years.

RATING: 5 stars

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