Union Square | Takeover with Tim Smith of Barossa Valley

Please join Corkbuzz in welcoming Tim Smith Wines from Barossa, Australia!

When: Monday, September 9, 2024 5-7 pm

Where: 13 E. 13th Street, New York, NY 10003

What: Featured Flights & Wines by the Glass from Tim Smith

About Tim:

Tim Smith is a Barossa Valley-based winemaker and one of Australia’s most awarded boutique producers. He focuses on making wines from the Barossa region’s time proven varietals of Mataro, Grenache and Shiraz, and also sources exceptional parcels of Shiraz, Riesling and Viognier fruit from Eden Valley. Tim’s story started, like many, with a bottle of wine and a dream. The early 1980’s Yarra Yering Dry Red #2, with its heady perfume and rich fruity sweetness, seduced him and he decided he simply had to make his own. His first wine industry role was as a cellar hand at Yalumba in 1987. Fifteen years later, with considerable support from the Yalumba team, he became Winemaker with a wine science degree under his belt and won the Winemaker Exchange Scholarship as part of the Barossa Valley/Rhône Valley Winemaker Exchange Program. He spent a watershed vintage period in the North and South Rhône Valleys, where he was able to shadow a few of the region’s most dynamic winemakers including Thierry Boudinaud and Alberic Mazoyer. This gave him the inspiration to form his own wine company to make the wines he truly enjoys drinking, and on a sunny afternoon drinking Condrieu at the foot of the famous Chapel in Tain L’Hermitage, he promptly repaid his then employers’ generosity by resigning. Returning to Australia he formed Tim Smith Wines, producing the first vintage in 2002. Since then, he has worked as a Winemaker at St Hallett, Tatachilla and Chateau Tanunda. Tim has also worked on numerous Northern hemisphere vintages, most notably in Portugal’s Alentejo region with Cortes de Cima and Azamor and in France with Chapoutier and Gabriel Meffre. He chose God’s-Own-Barossa as his home, on account of its dream combination of the right region and the right varieties. Within this region, old vine Mataro, Grenache, Shiraz and Riesling are found in small pockets, and Tim turns these ‘gardens’ into something special. A combination of age old varieties and clones, plus the myriad of soil structures and elevations within this famous region, makes it a winemakers’ playground. “We are still unashamedly heavily influenced by the wines of the Rhône Valley, but with a very healthy respect for our regional Barossa wine style. We see no point in trying to reinvent the wheel when the wine styles and regionality we enjoy in the Barossa has been around for nearly 180 years; the region must be doing something right. However-the wine geek in me cant help tinkering and responding to our different yearly vintage challenges.” All Tim Smith wines are made with small select parcels of high-quality fruit and are made in small batches of 250-700 cases. The mantra for the brand is that if it does not bear the Tim Smith ‘Thumbprint’ then it is does not meet the quality standard. In 2019 Tim was awarded Barossa Winemaker of the Year and inducted into the Barons of the Barossa fraternity alongside acclaimed winemakers like Stephen Henschke & Peter Gago. 

Reservations are encouraged, but not required.  Our full wine list and dinner menu are available.