Dorham Mann with his unusual riddling machine. Huon Hooke
You’ve got to love the wine business—it has room for a tiny vineyard and winery that produces just two wines, both sparkling, sells them locally, makes one of them from a unique grapevine nobody else grows, and does it all in the most artisanal way. That’s the Mann Winery, in the Swan Valley. Dorham Mann OAM is the son of Jack Mann, the winemaker who, legend has it, put in 51 vintages at the winery formerly known as Houghton.
The rosé is made from his own cabernet sauvignon vines, the white from a variant of cabernet sauvignon that the Manns discovered, isolated, propagated up and planted out, and named Cygne Blanc (white swan).
Dorham is a Roseworthy qualified winemaker himself, who spent a lot of his life working for the WA Agriculture Department and consulting to others. He was winemaker at Sandalford for a lengthy period and if memory serves me, was the winemaker for those exciting 1970s rieslings that were the first vintages from the Great Southern region’s pioneer vineyard, Forest Hill at Mount Barker.
Dorham’s brand is Mann Wine, and his vineyard is planted only to cabernet sauvignon. This is the grape his father famously declared to be the only grape tolerated in heaven.
But if you assume he makes red sparkling wine, you’d be mistaken. There are just two bubblies, a white and a pink. The rosé is made from his own cabernet sauvignon vines, the white from
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
