Winemaker: WILLIAM RIKARD-BELL
(Source:
Newcastle Herald)
Introduction
In 2008 winemaker William Rikard-Bell was involved in a terrible
accident.
A vat of ethanol exploded inside the processing shed at a Hunter Valley
winery, killing winemaker Trevor Drayton and welder Eddie Orgo.
Will was knocked off his feet by the blast, but he managed to crawl
out of the shed, jump over a barbed wire fence and plunge into a nearby dam.
He had burns to 70% of his body, and as part of his recovery he needed many
painful skin grafts.
Will says the accident altered his attitude to risk.
Will and his wife, Kimberley, now operate
Australia's highest altitude vineyard Rikard Wines, based in Nashdale on the
outskirts of Orange, in NSW. She’s the business manager
and very much drives its success, on top of her veterinary work. They have
two daughters Adelaide was born in 2014 and Olivia in 2016.
Will and Kimberley Rikard-Bell
(Source:
SMH 7 February 2020)
Early Life
Will was born and raised in West Wyalong. He is the
son of a doctor and a pharmacist.
Education
"While at uni, I worked in a bottle shop.
I’d been exposed to great wine but never thought of it as a career.
At the end of 2000, I took a break from uni and travelled around
Australia. I met some wonderful people at wine tastings. By 2001, I
was studying winemaking at Wagga Wagga’s Charles Sturt University. I
loved how it combined the academic, the physical and the creative."
2001 - 2005 - BA Applied Science (Wine Science)
Charles Sturt University
Employment & Training
"After uni, Kimberley worked as a vet
in Singleton, north-west of Sydney, and I was assistant winemaker at
nearby Drayton’s winery. We were thrilled to get jobs in the same
place."
Subsequent years were spent working in Mudgee,
Orange, Yarra Valley, Bordeaux and the Hunter Valley as well as
judging in many regional and national wine shows.
Experiences
& Opportunities
Rikard-Bell and his veterinarian
wife Kimberley have also bought a 10 hectare-block at an elevation of 1050
metres near Mount Canobolas where they will raise their two daughters and
nurture their business. A plan has been submitted
to council to build a cellar door and winery so Rikard-Bell can continue his
bread and butter as a contract winemaker for about 16 labels. He founded the
contract business Chill Wine Co with winemaker Charlie Svenson of respected
vineyard De Salis before buying him out.
The land acquisition will allow him to plant several clones of their pinot
and chardonnay, and later some riesling - so he can build on the success of
Rikard Wines.
“The vineyard will be going in in November [2018] and it’s three years
before we get a crop and up to seven before we get a decent crop, so I am
trying to source fruit of similar growing conditions [in the interim] so
that when we do finally transition across to our own fruit it is not a huge
jump in style,” he says. “I’m not here to make wine for other
people, even though I rely on them liking it and buying it, I make it
because that’s what I like to drink and I kind of hope that people like what
I make."
“The future is looking pretty rosy: we’ve just had a really good vintage.”
Kimberley Rikard-Bell says her
husband’s “one mindedness” has allowed him to achieve a dream he has held
since switching from a medical degree to wine-making degree in his mid-20s
(he’s now 41 in 2021).
“If you asked him at the start of his degree what he wanted to do it
would have been building his own label, he wouldn’t have otherwise been
satisfied,” she says of his pluck. “The way he makes wine – every grape that
comes in is handpicked and put in a 10-kilogram basket and everyone thinks
we are crazy because it costs three times as much compared to [traditional]
machine picking, but the quality is so much better..”
The single-mindedness that has led to singularity in winemaking also stood
the young winemaker in good stead when tragedy struck at Hunter winery
Draytons on a rainy summer’s day in January, 2008. An assistant winemaker
under leading vigneron Trevor Drayton, Rikard-Bell arrived on site and was
standing inside the main processing shed when an explosion ripped through
it. "I’d worked two vintages at Drayton’s before this accident."
Trevor Drayton, mere footsteps from Rikard-Bell at the time of the
explosion, was killed alongside Eddie Orgo, a contract worker who was
welding near near a metal wine vat, unaware that it contained flammable
liquid before he began working.
“I remember it very clearly, it’s amazing how slow everything is when
that sort of thing happens, I remember everything except the noise,”
says Rikard-Bell, who was blown off his feet. Protected by an empty wine vat
that nonetheless toppled, he was set alight but managed to crawl out of the
shed and run to a dam, where he waited for paramedics to arrive.
“It was ‘I’m on fire, let’s get out of the building, got to get to
water, there’s the dam, that’ll do, no um-ing and ah-ing,” he says. “I
had no idea, I thought I would be back at work a couple of weeks later … I
thought ‘I am missing some skin, I have some burns, I didn’t realise the
full extent of it. Burns are funny, it hurts but everything else works –
your mind, your breathing, you don’t feel injured. “It was only
once I was in the dam waiting for the helicopter that I started to swell up
and get stiff and sore and once the paramedics said ‘we are not coming in to
get you, you have to walk out’ when I went, ‘Oh, this isn’t good’.
(Source:
Daily Telegraph 4 May 2008)
Flown to the John Hunter Hospital with burns to 70 per cent of his body –
his chest, face and feet untouched – he was transferred to the burns unit in
Concord Hospital. “I got an infection a couple of weeks in, I mean you
are lying there with no skin for weeks and it’s near impossible to keep the
bugs out,” Rikard-Bell says.
Finding it tough not to be able to have hugs from family, he was determined
not to let his injuries “define” him, as he saw other burns victims allow
themselves to do. “It was ‘Right, focus, this [recovery] is your job for
the next two years,” he recalls. “I like that sort of challenge; I
was always the one vomiting at the end of the day at footy training because
I tried so hard. “I was very lucky to have a medical family that
took care of absolutely everything around me and so all I had to focus on
was getting up, physio and so on.”
Rikard-Bell endured multiple skin grafting operations over two months in
hospital and spent another two months as an out patient in Sydney before
returning to Singleton. Eleven months later, he wed Kimberley, who says her
training as a vet allowed her to assist him with the constant and lengthy
dressing changes.
“You don’t panic, there’s no ‘Woe is me’,” she says, while
conceding it was difficult to see the man she met as a student at 22 at
Sydney University in such pain. “We are both country people and that has
something to do with it. When bad things happen you just deal with it and
keep going.”
Rikard-Bell returned to Draytons to assume the role of chief winemaker – the
first person not directed related to the family to do so – something he said
he feels proud to have done to honour his late boss. “They were very
supportive, just to give me a job back and have the faith in me after five
generations of family wine-making,” he says.
Rikard-Bell did vintages in 2009 and 2010 before heading to Orange, where he
planned to buy winemaker Murray Smith’s operation Canobolas-Smith. When the
deal fell over (“It was just a business decision, Murray and I are still
fine”), he set up his contract business with Svenson before making his
own first Rikard vintage – a pinot – in 2015. “I had been making a
barrel each year since 2012 that was drunk by family and friends but the
first commercial vintage was 2015 and we didn’t release that until the 2016
vintage was ready so we had a ‘range’,” he says with a grin.
Rikard-Bell’s winemaking philosophy focuses on highlighting flavour,
complexity, balance, texture and length. It’s all about gentleness –
hand-picking grapes, minimal intervention, a bit “old world”, ventures the
man behind the wine.
William is also a Chief Steward
for Wine Tasting at the Orange Wine Show.
Chair of the 2018 Orange Wine Show committee
Justin Byrne and Chief Steward William Rikard-Bell
(Source:
Central Western Daily)
Awards
2018:
Named one
of the Top 50 Young Guns of Wine
Links
Ripped
from the Headlines? A Community of Inquiry
Primary
Middle
Secondary
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Critical & Creative Thinking
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Literacy
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding
Philosophy
1. As a class, you are going to conduct a
Community of
Inquiry.
Teacher Process:
2. Get the students to form a circle
with their chairs or directly on the floor. Everyone is to be in the circle
including the Teacher.
3. Using
the
stimulus material
below, read the story by asking the students to
take turns to read out loud each paragraph.
4. Set up a
Question Quadrant on the floor or on a whiteboard:
5. Get the students, in pairs, to come
up with 4 questions - one for each quadrant about the stimulus material.
The
Questions for Thinking are
the hardest to come up with – but that is what we are aiming for.
6. List all the questions on the
board from this 4th Quadrant "Questions for Thinking" and put the students' names next to their question.
7. Ask the students to think about grouping the
questions - the ones that are the same or similar - together.
8. Start the discussion
with the most asked question.
9. Make sure the students follow
the rules of Philosophy in Schools:
- Only one person speaks at a
time
- Pay attention to the person
who is speaking
- Give other people a chance
to speak
- Build upon other people's
ideas
No put-downs
(Source: Associate Prof. Phil Cam)
10. Discussion should involve students in
critical, creative and caring thinking:
Critical |
Creative |
Caring |
give reasons
explore
disagreement
consider implications
apply criteria
weigh evidence |
generate questions
raise suggestions
imagine alternatives
formulate criteria
make connections
build on ideas |
listen to other's points of
view
consider other's reasons
explore disagreements considerately
build on other's ideas
explore other's opinions
help to synthesise suggestions |
11. Provide Closure:
wrap up the discussion but leave the questions on the board or
copy them so that the other unanswered questions can be used in the next
lessons.
Let's Start the CoI:
As a class, read the following article as your stimulus
material and then follow the process outlined above.
TV Tonight
5 April 2009
Last week Hunter Valley winemaker Trevor Drayton and William
Rikard-Bell had no idea a chapter in their lives was about to be
reflected in an episode of All Saints.
Over twelve months ago Drayton and Rikard-Bell were left fighting
for their lives following an explosion at Drayton’s Family Wines at
Pokolbin.
“I certainly don’t intend on seeing it tomorrow on telly,” Mr
Rikard-Bell said last week.
It’s commonly known in the industry as ‘ripped from the headlines’.
Real-life stories in the newspapers become the inspiration for
television screenplays. But what about those whose lives are set to
unfold as prime-time entertainment? They can relive unwelcome
memories. There’s no compunction on the part of producers to advise
them, let alone compensate, of what they may unwittingly view.
All Saints was promoted “one heart-stopping hour”, showing a man
with burns to 70 per cent of his body found writhing in a pool of
water. They were the same extensive burns suffered by Mr
Rikard-Bell, who was found in a dam after the Drayton blast.
“It is inappropriate, especially if there is a coronial inquiry
going on and it’s still fresh in the minds of the family,” Mr
Rikard-Bell said.
John Drayton said he was upset the program’s producers did not tell
him or his family they were using the blast that killed his brother
for inspiration.
“I didn’t know anything about it until this morning . . . a friend
told me,” Mr Drayton said yesterday. “They [producers] didn’t tell
us anything about it. My parents don’t know and I don’t want them
to, for obvious reasons.”
Last month an episode of City Homicide involved the shooting of a
suburban mother by criminals who bungled the address, not dissimilar
to a famous case of what police believe was mistaken identity some
years ago in Melbourne.
Last year SBS pulled an episode of Swift and Shift Couriers after
complaints from the family of Private Jake Kovco an episode with the
accidental death of “Soldier David Cobbgrove” was too similar.
The series is currently in repeat but SBS looks set to skip the two
part storyline this time round.
And what of the journalists who may have put in hours of work in
reporting the original story? One US journo says an episode of Law
and Order: SVU wasn’t so much ripped from the headlines as ‘ripped
off the headlines.’ It took him three years to investigate his
original story about violent police who had served in the Army
Reserve unit in Afghanistan.
“No, I did not get a dime,” he later noted. “And no one from NBC
even called to say how truly inspiring my work was, or how the truth
really can be stranger than fiction — or even that the damn episode
existed. Instead, my dad saw a commercial for it on TV and sent me
an e-mail.”
In 2004 a Manhattan lawyer, filed a lawsuit in 2004 against Dick
Wolf arguing that a Law and Order plot defamed him by including an
unsavory character which was modelled on him. He filed his lawsuit
under a doctrine known as libel-in-fiction. To win his case, he had
to demonstrate that the identities of the real and fictional
characters “must be so complete that the defamatory material”
becomes a “plausible aspect” of the plaintiff’s real life.
He lost.
But producers defend their right to use newspapers and real-life
incidents as drama. Episodes are careful to clarify that
similarities are coincidental.
All Saints producer Bill Hughes, said his episode was based on the
idea of the winery explosion and characters did not relate to
Drayton blast victims.
“We googled in ‘unusual explosion’ and from that we got ‘wine
factory explosion’. We thought OK, let’s do a wine factory explosion
and that’s about it,” Mr Hughes said.
But the show has been criticised for depicting a real-life incident
that is still raw for those who lived through it.
Hughes said he hoped it did not offend the Draytons or Mr
Rikard-Bell.
“I suppose in a way the Drayton’s explosion is closer to this
episode than most of our research usually is. We usually pull out
things that happened many, many years ago.
“But if we were to steer away from every single thing that’s ever
happened so we didn’t offend someone, we wouldn’t have a show.”
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Material sourced from
Conversations with Richard Fidler
Newcastle Herald 19 June 2018
Daily Telegraph 4 May 2008
Sydney Morning Herald 7 February 2020
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