Maker attuned to Tamar Riesling

Grant Dickson spent 15 years selling wines made by one of Australia's most celebrated producers. But before Rockford and the Barossa Valley, wines and vines were never intended to be waypoints along the Sydneysider's career path. Dickson was a talented woodwind player, destined for success. 

He'd studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. By the time he was 22 years of age, he was Principal Cor Anglais with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Yet somehow, wine has a habit of changing people's lives.

"When I moved to Adelaide to advance my music studies, I got a job in a hotel to help pay the bills," Dickson explains.

That brought opportunities to forge meaningful relationships with winegrowers and winemakers. It also introduced the former teetotaller to the sensory delights of the Riesling grape.

"I love Riesling," Dickson muses.

"I love the purity of fruit and the sense of place that it brings to its wines."

Dickson speaks with the voice of experience.

Plenty of good Riesling has passed his lips over the past quarter century. During his 15-year stint with Rockford as the company's wholesale sales manager, it went with the territory. Dickson travelled widely, not only as a salesperson and wine marketer but also as a regular concert performer and part-time music teacher.

Next came nine years of co-ownership of fermentAsian, an award-winning restaurant located at Tanunda in the heart of the Barossa Valley.

Today, Dickson's long-held passion for the noble German white variety is reflected in his latest wine venture. It's called Otherness Wines.

"Otherness is a premium micro-producer of fine wines from the Barossa," he says.

"It's basically a celebration of the range of connections and close friendships I've developed in the South Australian wine industry over the decades. The brief is a pretty simple one. It's about adopting a collaborative approach to winemaking in order to create the kinds of wines we like to drink."

Dickson's current portfolio includes three discretely different Rieslings. Each is created by a different winemaker using fruit sourced exclusively from the Clare Valley and the Eden Valley in South Australia, and from the Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania.

"Each wine is named after one of the three Norns popularised by Richard Wagner in his operatic Ring Cycle," Dickson adds.

"They're the three weird sisters of Norse mythology who rule over the fate of gods and men. The Clare Valley wine, Urth, is made with Neil Pike. Skuld, the Eden Valley wine, is made by Torbreck winemaker Ian Hongell. Verthandi is our Tamar Valley Riesling and that's made by Rieslingfreak winemaker John Hughes."

Four vintages of Urth and Skuld wines have been produced since Dickson first began his collaborative project.

"We've made those wines every year since 2018," he notes.

"Verthandi from the Tamar was added in 2019 after John Hughes expressed an interest in being involved with the project. We made one in 2020 as well. We expect our next release to come from the 2022 vintage."

The wine is created from Riesling sourced entirely from Kayena's Goaty Hill Vineyard.

The 18ha development on the West Tamar was first planted to Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir back in 1998. Vineyard founders Markus Maislinger, Kristine Grant and Tony and Natasha Nieuwhof became close friends after attending antenatal classes as expectant parents. 

In addition to producing fruit for their own single vineyard wines, the couples also took on contract growing for a handful of major industry players. These included Jansz Tasmania.

Tasmanian winemakers Natalie Fryar (Bellebonne) and Hugh McCullough (Wellington & Wolfe) played key roles in establishing the links between Dickson, Hughes and the owners of Goaty Hill. (Markus Maislinger and Natasha Nieuwhof are pictured above.)

Carefully selected fruit is handpicked and delivered to Hughes in the Barossa Valley as chilled juice. 

The 2019 vintage is an off-dry style, with its 35 grams of residual sugar neatly balanced by high natural acidity and 9.8 percent alcohol. Just days before it was harvested, Dickson travelled to the West Tamar to taste the fruit on the vine.

"The 2020 was picked a little earlier than the 2019 and I love the way that wine looks at the moment," he says.

"John reckons Verthandi has a cellaring potential of around 30 years."

That noted, the bloke who's put the notion of Otherness into full effect waxes lyrical about the enjoyment he derives from drinking each of these limited-release Tamar Valley wines right now. Again, it's their fruit purity and absence of winemaking artifice that provide their biggest drawcard.

"I always think making good Riesling is a bit like wildlife photography," Dickson says.

"It's about capturing a moment. If you're taking bird photographs, for example, just the slightest movement in time, the slightest change in shutter speed, changes the rendering of individual feathers into a blur in the resulting photo.

"That's very different from working with Chardonnay, for example. Making Chardonnay is almost like using Photoshop. You're constantly working with it, making subtle changes, until you finally come up with something you're happy with as the end result.

"For me, Riesling is one of the greatest wines you can make. Its place at the table alongside good food is second to none."

Indeed. Music to our ears.

www.otherness.com.au

First published 16 May 2021: The Examiner

Last page update: 14 January 2026