Pioneering winemaker Julie Mortlock has been given a rousing send off.
Mortlock has just retired after 35 years with the De Bortoli family at Bilbul in the Riverina, and has been in charge of making Australia's premier dessert wine, Noble One, for many years.
The De Bortoli team described the departure of their senior executive winemaker as a "a sad but very special day".
"After 35 years Julie has made the decision to retire and leaves behind a wonderful legacy that the De Bortoli family is so very proud of," the company said.
"She will forever be known as a wonderful role model for women in wine, a multiple award winner, and a humble and hard-working employee of De Bortoli Wines."
Last Friday night Mortlock was honoured with the 'Riverina Legend Award' at the Rivernina Winemakers Wine Show Awards.
Mortlock grew up on a dairy farm and had ambitions to be a chef. Instead her passion for science kicked in and for the next 10 years she became a self-confessed “dairy lab rat”, a qualified tester of cream and milk.
She later became a lab assistant in the quality control labs at De Bortoli.
Mortlock later started working as a winemaker’s assistant (“doing the jobs they didn’t want to do,” she says) and began studying, firstly for a Bachelor degree in Wine Science and then another in Wine Business, both from Charles Sturt University.
Mortlock began looking after all the white wines produced at Bilbul, then moved onto the reds and fortified wines.
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