Fruitful Venture
Published in Treadlie issue 24, March 2019
MATT EAST’S LOVE OF CYCLING AND PASSION FOR WINE LEAD HIM TO ESTABLISH HIS OWN LABEL, WHICH COMBINES THE TWO.
Matt East’s love of cycling and love of wine both started in the same place – the family farm in Coldstream, Victoria. Growing up at the base of Mount Mary, cycling was the best way to get around. “I hated walking up the drive, which was two and a half kilometres long,” Matt says. “So I rode my pushie every day and threw the bike in the garage in the paddock and walked behind the bus shelter to catch the bus. That’s where I started riding my bike.”
As for the wine, Matt’s first job was planting vines on the farm. Matt’s dad – a TAA pilot who paid for his training by modelling for Marlboro cigarettes – had met wine critic James Halliday who convinced him that the farm was in a good spot to grow some Pinot.
“I was really young and my job was to plant vine cuttings in the ground,” Matt says. “It took me a long time to do it. Dad went out to check on my handiwork, and I’d planted them all upside down. So I had to go out and re-plant the bulbs.”
Matt worked at the family vineyard and other local wineries for 10 years, eventually trying his hand at making his own drop.
“I made some wine in the shed. A lot of it was pretty bad, but some of it was okay. I know Dad pushed through a few bottles with an odd look on his face.”
Later, Matt headed to South Australia to work at wineries in McLaren Vale, riding 50 kilometres to work and back each day, mulling over plans for his own wine venture. And when his father passed away, he knew it was time to take that dream seriously. Unfortunately, no vineyards in McLaren Vale wanted to deal with his small batch requirements. Until one day, he bonded with a fellow cyclist.
“I was riding my bike through the Vale back to Adelaide and I jumped this fence to check out a vineyard,” he says. “The owner approached me and at first he was like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ but he used to ride a bit himself and we got chatting, and eventually he gave me some fruit.”
Rolling through the hills and chatting to growers became Matt’s strategy for building relationships and buying fruit. Then, in 2015, he took the leap, quitting his McLaren Vale job and heading back to Melbourne to launch his business. His label, Rouleur Wine Co., brings together fruit sourced from Victoria and South Australia and celebrates Matt’s love of cycling.
The first vintage included fruit from the old farm in Coldstream, which the family sold shortly before Matt’s father passed away. The new owners even let Matt use the shed and old equipment he’d left there.
“That first vintage, I was running between South Australia and Victoria,” Matt says. “It was all real fly-by-the-seat-of-yourpants type stuff. I was lucky that it was a good vintage.”
Now, Matt makes his wine with other small-batch winemakers at the Craft and Co. farm in Bangholme in Melbourne’s south east. He has a cellar door in the works in an old milk bar in North Melbourne, as well as a 20-year lease on a vineyard that was planted in 1981 in the town of Wesburn in the Yarra Ranges. The vineyard looks out towards Mount Donna Buang, where Matt often goes for a ride to the summit (sometimes on the bitumen, sometimes on the trails) to clear his head.
“It’s a great outlet,” he says. “There are so many things going on in my head, if I get on the bike it’s a great way to centre myself.”
