By Casey Neill
“I wasn’t very well last year.”
This is one heck of an understatement from Healesville winemaker Kate Goodman.
She was crowned the Winemaker of the Year at the Australian Women in Wine Awards in Sydney on Friday 16 November.
A year earlier, she was finishing treatment for breast cancer.
Ms Goodman squirms in her seat as she speaks about the moment she was diagnosed, around June last year.
She doesn’t seem uncomfortable talking about the experience so much as conscious of not overplaying it.
“I feel like I got off better than many,” she said.
“I had some surgery and then I had a whole lot of radiation.
“I got it early and my take home from that is ‘look after your health and take notice of yourself, and do something about it and get checked out’.
“You’re better off being told there’s nothing wrong than the opposite.
“I took it as an opportunity to assess my lifestyle and what things are important, how you want to spend your time, rather than dwelling on the downside.”
Ms Goodman said this attitude made all the difference to her recovery.
“I work here with an awesome colleague (in Caroline Mooney). She helped pick up the pieces and helped me look after my wines,” she said.
“Having a great network of friends and colleagues around definitely helped, too.”
She explains her feelings using an analogy about vine pest phylloxera entering the Yarra Valley.
“For the region it’s a massive opportunity to change grape varieties and replant vines with even better material than was there before,” she said.
Judges for the Winemaker of the Year nod knew nothing of Ms Goodman’s battle.
“It’s awesome to be recognised for the hard work that I do,” she said.
“You just chug along and do your own thing so it’s kind of nice to have an external source stand up and say ‘you’re doing OK’.”
She said the award was based not only on wine quality.
“It’s also based on your involvement in the wine community and what you give back,” she said.
“Up until a week ago I was on the committee of management at the Yarra Valley Wine Growers Association. I don’ have enough time to go for another year.
“I’m a founding member of the Yarra Valley Wine Women, which is a collective of local wine women to have a louder voice and a different perspective.”
She does a lot of wine show judging, though “I did step back a bit from that in the past 12 months. I wasn’t very well last year.”
Ms Goodman is the chief winemaker at Penley Estate in Coonawarra, South Australia.
“I fly over there every fortnight, generally,” she said.
“I’ve been working with them since 2016.
“I’ve known the owner (Ang Tolley) for a very long time and she asked me to come on board and really help to turn their business around, and make more modern, relevant wines.
“We pick earlier, we use less oak.
“We’re just wanting the vineyards to really shine rather than the hand of the winemaker.
“It’s working so far.
“We’ve had some great success in a few short years.”
Their 2016 phoenix cabernet placed in the Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines two years running.
“It’s not bad for a $20 wine,” Ms Goodman said.
In Healesville, where she lives with her partner and seven-year-old son, Ms Goodman operates two labels.
Goodman Wines is her range of individual vineyard wines, and Nikkal Wines are “a blend of a couple of vineyards to try to pick up the best of the Yarra Valley”.
