Andrew Pirie is one of Australia’s most reknown winemakers and has made a significant contribution to the current success of the Australian wine industry. In particular, he has made a name for himself as the most influential person in Tasmanian viticulture over the past 40 years by founding some of the largest and most important wineries on the island, such as Pipers Brook (along with his brother David) in 1974, Pirie Sparkling in 1999 and Apogee 2007.

As the continent’s first graduated winegrower and founder of Pipers Brook, Dr. Andrew Pirie led Tasmanian wine on the world stage of winemakers with his 1994 Ninth Island Chardonnay, with which he won the white wine trophy at the International Wine Challenge in London. Josef Cromy and others would follow later …

In 2001 he was accepted as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to the Tasmanian wine and tourism industry. In recognition of his expertise and innovative strength, he was given the rare honor of being nominated as a finalist in the Winemaker of the Year category by Qantas / Australian Gourmet Traveler in both 2002 and 2003. His name still appears today on the label of the 1996 Vintage Pirie wine, which Matthew Jukes calls the “ greatest sparkling wine outside of Champagne”.

Andrew Pirie has been conducting climate research for years and has also developed an index to predict grapevine ripening in cool climates. Following this approach, he founded the Apogee winery (which stands for “highest point”) in 2007. It is situated in an area that corresponds to a Grand Cru sparkling wine location in every aspect (hillside location, soil and proximity to the sea) and – according to Andrew’s own confession – will also be the creative exclamation mark. In the Australian Sparkling Wine Report 2020, Tyson Stelzer rated the 2016 Apogee Deluxe Rose among the top 3 prestige sparkling wines in Australia (and that given the other two were late disgorged vintages of 2006 and 2010…) !

We visited Andrew a few times before we could convince him to let us have a small rosé contingent to share with you. We not only love his excellent Apogee Deluxe Vintage Rosé, but also Olli, who is certainly one of the most cuddly dogs at all.