9 Feb 2008

Paul always denied that the reason he married Kat in 1978 was WINE. She ‘came’ with a vineyard and her great-great father’s 200 year old house up on the hills of Szentimre. Next spring Grandma entrusted the grapes onto his hands and he set out pruning with much enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that Grandma started crying when rounding the corner out of the village saw the severely pruned grapes. ‘You Boy destroyed them all! You won’t get a bottle off them now’. He just smiled with the knowledge of several viticulture books behind him. ‘Nobody prunes like this in this village for the last 400 years’- lamented Grandma. ‘We’ll see, Grandma, we’ll see…’ said Paul. That harvest saw the best and biggest production in our vineyard. From then on Grandma never questioned the Boy’s viticultural and winemaking philosophy of marrying- not only Kat but- the centuries old tradition of the village’s viticulture and winemaking with modern practices learned out of books.

After an eventful journey Paul arrived to Australia as a political refugee in 1988. Kat followed with Eszter and Janos and they settled in Pemberton, WA. They opened Woodawn, a fine woodcraft and furniture gallery selling Paul’s work. It wasn’t long before Kat couldn’t resist the lure of the GRAPES and started working in the local vineyards. They nursed a dream of planting their own one day.

Friends who moved to Tasmania were telling about Paradise found. So the Molnars packed the kids and the cat into a campervan and seachanged in 1998. They found their weed-overgrown, not-a-handkerchief-size-flat-land, 135 year old farm Paradise close to the Very End of the Road. The nursery was planted in the front yard. Next spring neighbour John’s old tractor wrestled the matted pasture into a ground for the first Pinots. St. Imre vineyard was born.

St. Imre (Henricus, Emeric, Emerick, Emmerich, Emericus, Americus) - the son of Hungary’s first king – was born in 1007. He died in 1031 in a hunting accident – gored by a wild boar- in the forest surrounding Kat’s village. The village was named Szentimre for the prince to be forever remembered. He was a pious, celibate person now revered as the patron saint of young men and travellers.

It wasn’t hard to decide the name of vineyard. Grapes and wine, history and travel link us ALL.

The vineyard is managed with the use of sulphur and copper. Pest control is done by the Poultry Patrol. Paul makes the wine according to his Marriage Philosophy: time-honoured practices, minimal intervention, use of old oak only combined with new research, love and passion.