The Aussie Influencers – Leo Buring
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Before James Halliday, before Wolfgang Blass, even before the redoubtable Len Evans, lived one of the great wine influencers of the 20th century. A man who quietly, fastidiously, and comprehensively changed the landscape of Australian wine; and whose name today is the byword for pure and elegant, long-lived Riesling…
Hermann Paul Leopold Buring
It’s complicated. Hermann, whom everyone called Leo so as not to confuse him with his father, Hermann - whose name was actually Theodor (are you keeping up?) - was born in 1876 in Friedrichswalde, SA. Don’t believe those online biographers who reckon that Leo was born in Friedrichswalde, Germany. Our Friedrichswalde (which was renamed Tarnma during the Great War) is just up the road from Eudunda, and our Leo was a second-generation Aussie.
The Family Business
Leo’s father, Hermann (… Theodor!) worked as a distiller and a storekeeper, before establishing a successful career as a wine merchant. In 1889, he formed a partnership with his winemaking brother-in-law, to found H. Buring & Sobels Ltd - taking the name Quelltaler as the firm’s trademark. Hermann’s elder son, Adolph (known, naturally, as Rudi) designed the distinctive Quelltaler wine labels, and went on - years later - to become Managing Director.
Young Leo
The younger son of H. Buring fancied a career as a doctor, but his father thought otherwise, and Leo was packed off to Roseworthy Agricultural College, from which he emerged two years later - as Dux. (proving his father’s instincts infuriatingly correct). Leo furthered his oenological studies at Geisenheim, in Germany’s Rhinegau region, and Montpelier, in the south of France. Returning to Australia, he honed his skills at Spring Vale Wines in Watervale, before heading to Victoria to work at Rutherglen and Great Western. With young wife Ida (known as Nay, for obvious reasons), Leo forged even further north, to the outskirts of Sydney, where for many years he oversaw production of the famous Minchinbury Sparkling wines.
Olde Crusty
Australia in the 1930s was (mostly) a nation of beer drinkers (the blokes) and sippers of sweet fortifieds (the ladies). It was no place for sissy winemakers – which suited Leo just fine. He stared down the six o’clock swillers with an oak-laden, candle-dripped, atmospheric wine bar/ bottle shop - bang in the middle of Sydney. Ye Olde Crusty Cellars opened in 1931, serving, supplying and promoting premium Aussie table wines to an enthusiastic public. It remained a fixture on Sydney’s George Street for more than 40 years.
One Degree of Separation: When Ye Olde Crusty finally closed (quite some years after Leo’s death), the wine and spirit licence was picked up by one Len Evans - who transferred it to new premises at Bulletin Place.
DO what you do do well
In 1945, Leo and Nay went on a South Australian shopping spree, picking up a Tanunda winery and a vineyard in Watervale, into which they planted Palomino and Pedro Ximenes. (Leo had ‘liberated’ some flor yeast cultures during an earlier trip to Xerez - enabling him to establish an excellent flor-sherry solera). In 1955, probably anticipating a comfortable retirement, Leo hired hot-shot young Roseworthy graduate, John Vickery as winemaker - directing him to make Riesling from selected Clare and Eden Valley vineyards. It was a defining decision. Vickery’s gentle touch and cool fermentation techniques produced Riesling unlike any seen before in the country which set a new benchmark for Aussie table wines.
‘Winemaking isn’t a matter of life or death – it’s much more important than that!’ - LB
Sadly, the Buring-Vickery association proved brief: Leo passed away just 6 years after appointing Vickery, but their names will be forever linked: the young Riesling-Whisperer and the Visionary Vigneron who was under absolutely no illusion about the importance of winemakers.