I met Bree Stock in Melbourne a decade and a half ago, and boy, has she gone a long way since then. Some 8,000 miles away now, she’s appended a pair of powerful initials to her new surname, become an authority on the wines of her adoptive home and fomented a mini-revolution in grape-growing in one of the most revered regions in the US.
Brisbane-born Bree was back from a first stint in the Pacific Northwest when our paths crossed in the classroom. She was an excellent teacher: engaging, encyclopaedic, perceptive and plain-speaking. She continues to teach, and some of these acronyms and colleagues crop up in our conversation. Like my former guests Andrea Pritzker, Steve Smith, Stephen Wong and Kym Milne, Bree is an MW, or Master of Wine.
She talks about the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), whose qualifications she and I still teach; the two fellow MWs she taught with in Melbourne, Meg Brodtmann (episode 9) and Kate McIntyre, do as well. She also mentions the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS), which she abbreviates as “the court,” and which offers four levels of professional certification for sommeliers and beverage professionals.
Other Australian contacts who crop up include Steve Webber and Leanne De Bortoli, whose influence is palpable in my article on Sarah Fagan. Bree also worked harvest with Yarra Valley winemaker Mac Forbes, who encouraged her to go to the UK to make contact with the likes of Justin Knock MW and Lenka Sedlackova MW.
Peter Marchant is a Queensland-based sommelier and podcaster with whom she tasted after her first long stint overseas, and Scott Wasley is the founder of Melbourne-based importer The Spanish Acquisition—and my guest on episode 40. And the Canberra estate Clonakilla is named in reference to a formative wine event Bree attended.
In Canada, Bree talks about the Okanagan Valley, a highly regarded wine region in British Columbia, and the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario. Barbara Philip is the MW she learned so much from while working in restaurants. Wine-growing in the cooler climes of northern North America gets us onto the topic of hybrid varieties, with Marquette and Phoenix mentioned in passing. For more on hybrids, check out my chat with Christina Pickard in episode 12.
Bree and I also talk a lot about non-mainstream grape varieties in the Willamette Valley, where Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris—both planted here by founding estate Eyrie Vineyards—are mainstays along with Chardonnay, but Bree mentions a whole host of other grapes she’s playing with. Many of them, such as Mencía and Godello, are prevalent in Northwest Spain, and you can learn more about them from my chat with Noah Chichester in episode 5. (Noah turns up in our chat, too.)
Bree’s boundary-pushing ideas on suitable grapes for Oregon are shared by her husband, Chad Stock. Chad had previously worked at the likes of Antica Terra in Amity and Johan in Willamette’s Van Duzer Corridor, while Bree worked an early harvest at Bethel Heights.
Chad used to make his own wines under the Minimus label, but these days he and Bree run the Limited Addition label, so named for the ideal of not interfering with the wines they’re making from a range of grape varieties and vineyards scattered across the Willamette Valley.
