The smiling faces of Marcus Satchell and Lisa Sartori are synonymous with Gippsland food and wine. Anyone who’s taken off from Melbourne Airport in recent years will have seen them beaming down from a billboard above the freeway. Their flagbearer status has been earned from a buzzing cellar door championing local produce and from the array of award-winning wines that Marcus—or Satchy, as everyone knows him—has produced from an unprecedented array of fruit sources across this scattered region.
For Marcus, there is both a general and specific side to Dirty Three. In the former camp, you have the unstinting determination to push Gippsland forward, driven by the excellence of its food, drink and tourism offerings. He also sees that the cellar door experience is not just about wine, but an overriding sense of good hospitality at which Lisa is innately gifted. Community enjoyment, fuelled by music, is vital.
And on the specific side, Satchy has taken his unique insight on Gippsland grapes, gleaned over years as an itinerant and contract winemaker, and turned it into wines that shine a light on the commonalities and singularities of the region’s sites, with Pinot Noir the key medium.
Marcus was born in Wonthaggi, about 130km southeast of Melbourne, and these days the Dirty Three cellar door is about 13km east of there. Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with Gippsland geography—most people are—so we cover it atlength in the interview.
Marcus refers to his early musical days, including enrolling at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). His band that burst onto the scene is Cranky; check out this clip. Contemporaries he references include Skunkhour, Regurgitator and TISM, while The Cat Empire is jazz-funk outfit that people have cited as a latter-day pseudo-progression of Cranky’s genre-defying music.
Marcus’s early years in winemaking took place in the Yarra Valley, where he mentions several peers and mentors. Former AFL player Rob ‘Sticks’ Dolan is one of those. Dolan was working at the corporate-owned Yarra Ridge winery at the time. In those days, Satchy worked with the likes of Paul Bridgeman (now marking wine at Levantine Hill while playing in the Yarra Valley-based Yeastie Boys band), Caroline Mooney (Bird on a Wire), Travis Bush (Punt Road), Tom Belford (Bobar), Rob Hall (Rob Hall Wines) and the late Adam Marks of Bress. Dave Bicknell of Oakridge and Applecross, and previous podcast guests Steve Flamsteed (Decades) and Tim Shand (Voyager), are also mentioned. Dominique Portet is the France-born founder of the eponymous estate in Coldstream, where Marcus scored his first gig as winemaker.
Providing a link between the Yarra and Gippsland are Denise and Graeme Miller, who sold their vineyard to De Bortoli to kickstart that family’s momentous foray in the Valley. (Steve Webber, like Rob Dolan, is referenced as a prodigious fosterer of young talent, which is also acknowledged in this interview with Sarah Fagan.) Then there are Cam Mackenzie and Stuart Gregor, original partners in Dirty Three, who exited to focus on their phenomenal success with the Yarra Valley-based gin brand Four Pillars.
A couple of other Gippsland names to know are Rick Lacey, founder of the successful Purple Hen label on Phillip Island, and Phillip Jones of Bass Phillip Estate, whose dogged pursuit of Burgundian Pinot put Gippsland on the map for many wine-lovers.
Talking about the idea for Lisa and Marcus’s cellar door, Jo Marsh’s name crops up. Jo and her partner, Glenn James, grow the Billy Button wines in and around Victoria’s Alpine Valleys. California’s Randall Grahm, founder of Bonny Doon, is also mentioned.
As for the name, Dirty Three, we discuss a few allusions. There are the three original partners, the love of music giving a nod to the music of Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White, and the idea of showcasing Pinot Noir from three distinct patches of dirt. The dirt has shifted a bit—Gippsland is a tricky place to grow grapes and secure fruit, as you’ll hear—but Satchy and Lisa continue to raise beautiful, articulate, layered wines from their beloved dirts.
