Howard Park’s Rich Burch on 40 years, a sense of place, and the long game.
Forty years is a long time in wine. It is long enough to watch a region find its feet, long enough to see the climate shift beneath you, long enough to know which decisions were right and which ones just felt right at the time. Rich Burch is the second generation of the family that built Howard Park into one of Western Australia’s most considered estates, working across Margaret River, the Great Southern and Pemberton with a philosophy that has remained unusually consistent: take the wine to the place, not the other way around.
Ahead of the winery’s 40th anniversary, we sat down with Rich to talk about what stewardship means at scale, the risks that have paid off, and why the next decade might be the most interesting yet.
Howard Park is marking 40 years, a meaningful arc in any agricultural enterprise. How has your understanding of stewardship evolved over that time, and how do you define it today?
When the Burch family planted their first vines, stewardship probably meant “don’t kill the vines.” Forty years on, it means something far more layered: looking after the land across multiple regions, the people who work it, the communities around our cellar doors, and the integrity of what goes in the bottle. We’re certified with Sustainable Winegrowing Australia, which gives that a formal framework, but the deeper shift is cultural. It’s about an underlying intention to leave the land better than you found it. You stop thinking in vintages and start thinking in decades. Once that clicks, every decision changes.
As a second-generation winemaker, how do you navigate the tension between preserving the founding vision and reshaping the estate for a different era?
Carefully, and with a decent amount of family dinner table debate, which I’d argue is the right governance structure for a family business. James Halliday once described Howard Park as “a mini Penfolds,” and I think he meant it as a compliment, but the distinction is worth making. Where Penfolds sources the best fruit from any region to create a consistent house style, we’ve done the opposite: we go to the regions and produce the best possible wine from what each specific place gives us. That’s a fundamentally different philosophy, and it’s one that hasn’t changed in 40 years. Consumer tastes, climate realities, global competition: none of that stands still, and we’ve had to adapt. But the founding principle, best wine from the best place for each variety, is a surprisingly durable compass. It doesn’t tell you what to make. It tells you how to think about it.
You often reference “passion over profit”. How is that philosophy applied in practice, particularly in challenging vintages where commercial pressures might suggest a different course?
I’ll be honest: as the person who looks at the commercial side of this business, “passion over profit” keeps me up at night occasionally. But it’s not actually anti-commercial. It means we don’t release wines we’re not proud of just to fill an order. In a tough vintage, that might mean pulling back volume, redirecting fruit, or simply accepting a smaller yield. The short-term hit is real. The alternative, training your customers to expect less, costs far more over time. Forty years of reputation is a hell of a thing to protect. And a hell of a thing to have.
Your early commitment to Pinot Noir in the Great Southern was a considered risk. What specific climatic and soil indicators gave you confidence in the region’s suitability, and how have those assumptions held up with time and data?
The vineyard that stands out most in my time with this business is undoubtedly Mount Barrow. When it was established in 2004, there wasn’t much Pinot Noir planted in Western Australia at all. The decision to import specialised clones, with the help of Pascal Marchand, our Burgundy-based partner in Marchand & Burch, and plant them on a challenging site in a region considered difficult even by Great Southern standards, required, as Jeff described it at the time, “incredible conviction and commercial courage.” In the early years the yields were tiny, the bunches so small that there were genuine moments of doubt. The bet was on cool nights, a long slow ripening season, and ancient soils that could deliver Pinot Noir with real expression. Fast forward to today and those vines are producing fruit with character and finesse. As global appreciation for Pinot Noir has grown, it’s clear the decision was right. But it didn’t feel that way for quite a few harvests.
When you assess Great Southern Pinot Noir today, what distinguishes it structurally and stylistically in a global context, and where do you see its identity still forming?
What makes our position genuinely interesting is the clonal material. Our Mount Barrow Pinot Noir was built around Burgundian clones sourced through Pascal Marchand, our business partner in Marchand & Burch, that are completely unique and exclusive to us in WA. That’s not a small thing. In stylistic terms, Great Southern Pinot sits in a fascinating space: more structured and less overtly fruity than Central Otago or Tasmania, less austerely Burgundian than you might expect, with a style and structure that is genuinely its own. The identity is still forming, which I think is exciting rather than concerning. We’re not trying to be Burgundy. We’re trying to be Great Southern, and increasingly, the world is paying attention to what that means.
You’ve played a role in positioning Western Australian sparkling more seriously on the world stage. From a technical standpoint, what vineyard conditions give WA an edge in traditional method production?
A few things converge nicely. The cool growing conditions in the Great Southern and Pemberton give you acid retention you simply can’t fake and can’t add back once it’s gone. The diurnal range preserves freshness in the fruit profile without sacrificing complexity. And crucially, WA sparkling isn’t fighting a reputation that locks it into a particular style: we get to define what it should be, not imitate what it’s been elsewhere. Our Jete range came directly from that question, what does WA sparkling look like on its own terms? Jete Rose being named Australia’s Best Sparkling Rose at the Australian Sparkling Wine Show in 2025 suggests we’re on the right track.
In comparative terms, how does WA sparkling perform alongside Champagne or leading Australian regions like Tasmania? Where does it excel, and where is there still ground to make up?
Tasmania has done extraordinary work and deserves every accolade it gets. Champagne is Champagne: it has 300 years of brand equity and an appellation that does a lot of the marketing for them. Where Western Australia holds its own is in flavour generosity alongside structural precision. There’s a richness here that cooler climates sometimes sacrifice. Where there’s still ground to make up is awareness outside of Western Australia. The wines are exceptional. The story is compelling. We just need more people to try them, which is honestly the most solvable problem of the three.
Over four decades, what have been the most meaningful climatic or environmental shifts in your vineyards, and how have they influenced your approach to viticulture and picking decisions?
The seasons are different. Full stop. Harvest windows have compressed, ripening is earlier, and the margin for error on picking decisions has narrowed considerably. We’ve responded by investing more deeply in vineyard monitoring and becoming more agile in how we read each season. The Mount Barrow development, which required designing an innovative sub-surface irrigation system just to make the site viable, is a good example of building for climate reality rather than hoping it won’t apply to you. There’s also been a meaningful shift in how we think about water: not just as a resource, but as a responsibility. Our sustainability commitments reflect that, but so does every decision we make in the vineyard.
The cellar door has evolved into a broader expression of place and culture. How do you approach hospitality at Howard Park in a way that feels distinctly Western Australian?
We actively resist the instinct to polish everything into blandness. Howard Park’s hospitality has always been rooted in the fact that we operate across multiple regions, Margaret River, the Great Southern and Pemberton, and our cellar doors reflect that breadth. You’re not visiting a theme park version of a winery. You’re visiting a business that is genuinely connected to those communities and landscapes. Today the experience is focused on giving people something real: great tasting, great stories, great service. There is a humility and casualness to it, a sense that you’re in on something rather than being sold it. World-class wine in a relaxed room. That’s the ambition.
Looking ahead, what would you like Howard Park to represent at the 50-year mark, beyond the wines themselves?
As future custodians of the business, my sister Nat and I would like Howard Park to be recognised as a winery that championed wines of place in Western Australia. From the beginning we took a slightly different path, working across both Margaret River and the Great Southern rather than anchoring to one region, because we believed the best wine comes from matching each variety to the site where it truly excels. That approach wasn’t always the obvious commercial choice, but it’s defined everything we’ve done.
We would also love to see Howard Park recognised for helping pioneer WA Pinot Noir and traditional-method sparkling: wines that represent a spirit of exploration that has always been part of this story. Jeff and Amy receiving the Jack Mann Medal in 2025 was a recognition of exactly that kind of long-game thinking. Many of our vineyards are only now reaching full maturity, which means in many ways it still feels like we’re only getting started. Every bottle is a time capsule that tells of time and place, and we’re still writing those stories.