A conversation about rewriting history and shaping futures with co-founders Paul Vandenbergh and Damien Smith.
This year, McLaren Vale celebrates its centenary as a township. For one of Australia’s formative wine regions, the milestone is a mighty one. And yet, its hundred years are few enough to fill but the final page of a story older than any township. Can a short blurb on a McLaren Vale wine label tell us more about what happened first? We sat down with the founders of Munda Wines to find out.
Australia is a diverse place. It’s home to over 500 First Nations countries and more than 250 languages. In the Wirangu language, Munda means ‘land’. For the Wirangu people, it’s an idea that represents over 2,000 generations of continuous custodianship. “Look after munda, and munda will look after you,” says Paul Vandenbergh. “It’s always been the mentality of Aboriginal people.” It’s also the word Paul and his team use in place of terroir. “And it’s easy to spell,” he adds with a laugh. An essential quality for any business name and a fitting one for Australia’s newest Indigenous-owned wine label.
Paul is a proud Wirangu and Kokatha man. He wears many hats. National Diversity Talent Manager for the AFL, founding board member of the Tjindu Foundation, founder and Group Director of Wanna Mar – Australia’s first 100% Indigenous-owned commercial fishing venture, but more on that later – and most recently, co-founder of Munda Wines. He’s also a former NBL player with the Canberra Cannons.
Paul wears so many hats, it’s been said by people who know him that he would topple over if he wore any more. But chatting with him, it’s plain to see he’s on a dogged mission to tell big, culture-shifting stories, and Munda Wines is his next chapter.
“I’ve always dabbled in – I wouldn’t say entrepreneurship – but setting up businesses and using that as a platform to have conversations,” he says. “What does reconciliation mean to people? What does a new Australia look like in terms of relationship building? What does changing the date actually mean? Let’s sit around a fire, enjoy some Munda, and have these conversations.”
His partner in wine is Damien Smith – a non-Indigenous Australian wine industry veteran (including senior stints at Chapel Hill and Möet Hennessy) and entrepreneurial dabbler in his own right. Where their stories converge, however, is at Port Adelaide Football Club. “I’d been in the wine industry for a long time,” Damien says. “Burnt out from the travel, I took on a commercial role with AFL and was really fortunate to meet Pauly there.” That was five years ago. Today, the close mates are rewriting whitewashed histories and securing a more equitable future for First Nations people along the way.
Their first coup was penetrating South Australia’s tuna industry. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long been living off the land, but it was clear there was a serious lack of Indigenous ownership and employment within commercial fishing. So they set to work, and after three years of sweat, they were able to purchase a 25-tonne tuna quota (the amount of fish that any one fishery is allowed to catch). “Damien was a big part of this,” Paul says. “And now we can say we are the first Indigenous people to own a tuna quota.” Then came the wine.
According to Damien, the idea for Munda was born over seared tuna. “We were joking around about how we needed a great wine to wash it down,” he says. That’s when the penny dropped. The idea that they could challenge the wine establishment, just as they had with tuna, presented an opportunity to have the kinds of conversations Paul was chasing. “We just sort of looked at each other and went, ‘Let’s do this’,” he says. “We thought if there’s no one out there telling Indigenous stories, let’s try to do it differently and have an impact.”
Produced in close partnership with some of Australia’s top winemakers – Paul and Damien are careful to work only with those who champion both exquisite craftsmanship and respect for the land – Munda’s debut drops have already been met with high praise from the critics. Premium Australian wines made with a modern, sophisticated bent is what drinkers can expect from the young label. But for an industry so obsessed with history, terroir and storytelling, the glaring omission of Indigenous stories from Australian wine is stark. Munda’s goal is to change that.
Eschewing the use of foreign oaks and conventional Geographic Indicators, their wines reflect the traditional countries from which they are harvested. Their first release – a delicious syrah made in collaboration with Chalk Hill – proudly wears its Kaurna Country provenance (AKA McLaren Vale) on the front label. The grapes are handpicked and fermented in wild yeast for 10 days, leading to a vibrant, full-bodied wine, bursting with blueberry, plum and dark cherry flavours. In the glass, a premium, faithful expression of the wine’s munda is the north star.
According to Paul, it’s all about bringing First Nations languages and stories into the conversation. “Yes, McLaren Vale and Barossa and Clare Valley built the industry,” he says. “We get that, and we want to acknowledge that. But is there a possibility to actually acknowledge the traditional owners on the front label?”
Damien agrees. He pulls out a bottle of their second release for reference. “Let’s say you come out to lunch, and I put a bottle of Walgalu Country Chardonnay on the table. It’s like, ‘Walgalu? What’s this?’ Immediately there’s intrigue, so let’s talk about it,” he says. “Munda is this beautiful vehicle to help articulate stories from this amazing culture over a glass of wine.” Walgalu is the traditional name for Tumbarumba, by the way. The wine itself uses high quality grapes from the low-yielding 2022 vintage, traditionally fermented in seasoned French oak barriques, with 100% malolactic fermentation. The result is a full-flavoured and textural drop with mouth-watering aromas of white flowers, beeswax and toasted muesli.
Their third release, Ngadjuri + Peramangk Country Grenache, comes from the regions known to many Australians as Barossa and Eden Valley. Made alongside Marco Cirillo of Cirillo Wines, it’s an earthy number with balanced waves of spicy fruit and generous texture. It takes deft artistry to spark critical conversations or produce finely tuned wines – Munda are doing both.
But it’s where these conversations lead that matters most. One example is Australia’s status as the only nation in the UN that doesn’t have a treaty with its First Nations people. Dispelling the myths of Australia’s colonial history is another. Most of us were never taught about the cider-like drink made from fermented eucalyptus sap that proves Aboriginal peoples had been making alcohol for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. “It’s the truth-telling part of our history,” Paul says.
Representation within the wine industry is another conversation that Munda is leading. There isn’t a single Indigenous head winemaker in Australia, something the duo is working hard to change. They’ve partnered with Paul’s Tjindu Foundation to secure two scholarships for First Nations winemakers at the University of Adelaide. “Our goal is to have an Indigenous senior winemaker at Munda within the next five years,” Damien says. For Paul, equity is key. “Creating those opportunities around further education or employment is paramount,” he says. “If we can get Indigenous kids into university, we can stop talking about the gap. That’s a big part of the dream.”
And according to both, the Australian wine industry also has a lot to learn from Indigenous partnerships and participation. “Think about how the Country Fire Service is starting to use Aboriginal knowledge to improve burn-offs,” Paul says. “To have that sort of influence in the wine industry would be really special.” But there are further innovations to explore. Munda is already experimenting with using native woods like red gum in place of French or American oak. Watch this space.
Two years on from launch, Munda Wines has already shifted some major paradigms. For its founders, their partnership is a glimpse into the power of the relationship-building Paul alluded to earlier. “Bringing our experiences together creates an unbelievable partnership,” Paul says. “We’re the same, and we’re different. We’ve got big ideas, and we move fast. What we can achieve when we work together speaks volumes about what a new Australia could look like.”
Though Munda Wines may be young, munda is ancient. The nourishment it provides and the stories it tells have guided its faithful custodians for more than 65,000 years. If the conversations Paul Vandenbergh and Damien Smith can start over seared tuna and wine tell us anything, it’s look after munda, and munda looks after you.