A short time ago I was invited up to meet Marcello (Marsh) Brini who has a small estate vineyard in the higher altitude sub region of Blewitt Springs in McLaren Vale. This is a wonderful part of McLaren Vale, it’s cooler with a unique soil structure around ironstone outcrops so establishing a vineyard would have been quite a feat for his father Sebastiano when he arrived in 1950. This terroir attributes to the elegance and concentration of the wines, with a highlight for me being the bush grown Grenache. But then again, McLaren Vale Grenache is a bit of a fave of mine…
I like to mix up my approach by using a macro lens to draw attention to the more basic elements of the vineyard. Below you can see the vibrant pinks, reds and ochres in the exposed ironstone which is unique to this part of the Vales.
Marcello has a collection of tractors, some almost museum pieces, that have traversed the undulating vineyard for decades. He himself works tirelessly and on the day I visited he could hardly stop to pose for a shot. Or maybe he was just avoiding me…
I couldn’t help but admire his dedication to this patch of land that his family established 70 years earlier; it is a tiny jewel amongst some of the larger players in the region. There was no glamour, it was just bloody hard work. His wines are a true expression of the place, and his understanding of the terroir and it’s nuances have been a generational education.
As I left, as is so typical of the wonderful family generosity of the Italian culture, he plucked out a dozen mixed wines and sent me on my way. Salute!
The wine industry is a particular interest of mine, it has been for many years.
I visited Marcello on two occasions a few months apart and this is just a selection of the images I captured. A shoot of this nature only takes a few hours and can yield a strong suite of images that convey the story of the place (terroir) and its people which gives the consumer a more personal insight into the business. This is visual content that can be used across all marketing media applications.