BLOODWOOD WINERY
Rhonda and Stephen Doyle

It’s vintage time at Bloodwood Winery in Orange, central NSW, and there’s a wonderfully yeasty smell in the air. Winemaker and owner Stephen Doyle has just wandered inside after checking the grapes and is looking a little fretful.
“The Cabernet are hanging in the balance,” he remarks. “The Shiraz are beautiful. If it doesn't rain for the next six weeks, I reckon we’ll get some reasonable reds, but if we get any wet weather it’ll split the skins and wash out the flavour.”
It’s ironic that in one of the worst droughts ever he’d be worrying about the effects of rain. 
“We both worry,” says wife Rhonda, who is busy taking an upside-down apricot cake from the oven.  “But we do it in a different way.  I raid the fridge and he doesn’t sleep.”
“I haven’t slept since 1983,” adds Stephen cheekily.
It’s been a difficult vintage at Bloodwood not just because of the drought but also because the birds have been getting in under the nets, the tractor split in half and the power washer (which cleans out the barrels and tanks) broke.
The Doyles, however, remain resilient and manage to retain their delightfully dry sense of humour. 
“You have no control over what’s going on,” muses Stephen. “In the 2000 vintage it started raining and we said 'we'd better pick some grapes'.  It didn't stop until November. The reds were awful. So we picked what we could out of it and  I made it into rosé which was about all it was good for, and we explained to people it was a pretty dodgy wine, but it's the best we could do, and we called it Big Men in Tights.”

Originally called Rose of Malbec, Stephen decided to rename it after the very wet 2000 vintage.  “I thought it needed a bit of help,” he says grinning.  “And people love it though sometimes it makes them think we’re not so serious about our winemaking.” 
Playing around with the names of their wines brings much mirth. Their sparkling wine is called Chirac, after the French president supported nuclear testing in the Pacific (“the biggest fizz in the Pacific”) and their reserve chardonnay and cabernet are called Schubert and Maurice respectively, out of respect for two of Stephen’s winemaking heroes, Max Schubert and Maurice O’Shea.
They also have a lot of fun with their annual ‘Bloodwood Bible’ newsletter.  Last year subscribers were invited to join the Doyles at the “2006 Miracle Of Turning Water Into Wine.”
“As usual,” it declared, “Rhonda will be mixing and matching some suitable aquatic foods with the new releases.  Stephen will be hiding in the winery mumbling to himself and pretending drought is something that happens to other people; but feel free to ignore him, he’s only the winemaker; what would he know about water.”
Although they make light of hard times, their frivolity belies a very serious approach to winemaking.  Last year the Australian Wine Journal nominated ‘Big Men in Tights’ as one of the three best rosés in Australia and Jancis Robinson put it on her web page in the UK, as ‘her wine of the week’.
Established in 1983, Bloodwood is the oldest winery in the region. It’s also quite small – just 10 hectares of grapes – but has a hard won reputation for quality and is central to the blossoming of food and wine in the Orange region. When they first moved to the area, there were no wine grapes, only table grapes. 
“We fell in love with wine during the 1970s and thought of buying a property in the Yarra but couldn’t afford it,” says Rhonda.  “We were only public servants, and the doctors and lawyers were well established there so we decided on this cool climate area of Orange.”
For the first eight years, they lived in the shed. “Actually we lived amongst the redbacks,” laughs Rhonda. “We had a two Bunsen burner, and a little oven that had a grill on top. I also had a 44 gallon drum that you put hot plates on. You could cook casseroles on it and soups and stews, and interestingly enough, I even baked a carrot cake on it once.  And I made home-made mascarpone.”
These days Rhonda’s menus are far more sophisticated.  For this year’s annual F.O.O.D festival dinner, she devised a tantalising menu based around the theme of angels (Rhonda confesses to being besotted by angels) which included Asian-style devils on horseback, celestial angel hair pasta, an ethereal goat’s cheese dish, manna from heaven and divine berries. She’s been dubbed a true culinary pioneer and the “unsung doyenne of regional tucker”.
The Doyles live and breathe wine and food so much so that their tasting room and cellar door sales are now part of their spacious modern house. While Stephen entertains and pours the wines (with his thick mop of hair, beard and spectacles, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Rolf Harris), Rhonda gently talks through the wines.
“I decided we’d best sell mostly from home,” she says. “It's obviously much better to have personal relationship with the customers so we sit down and give time and have various wine tastings. That’s because I had a car accident and I couldn't do any work in the vineyards.  The only thing I could do was sit and talk to people.”
Their colourful eccentric take on life is reflected in a large mural by Wayne Harris which frames Rhonda’s impressive kitchen.
“He’s a friend of ours and he used to listen to our stories,” says Rhonda. “He’s put in all the elements – lightning and wind, the sun god, the rain god and the hail god.
“And then this part of the story over here tells the story of how one Christmas when the water tank was down to its last rung, Stephen went out and watered the poplars.  I couldn't work out what he was doing but he said 'you always have to have an act of sacrifice' . It was a ridiculous thing to do to water the poplars in the drought, instead of watering the grapes. But it did actually rain straight after that. That’s Stephen doing the rain dance there.”
Whether he can make the rain fall at just the right time to produce some fabulous 2007 reds remains, though,  in the lap of the gods.

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