David Hohnen belongs to a genre of winemakers who have profoundly changed the way we think and look at the Australian and New Zealand wine landscape. With remarkable perception, a beautiful mind and physical toughness, he has brought a discipline and vision splendid to contemporary and New World fine winemaking. Cape Mentelle and Cloudy Bay – both his creations – are successes that have led both Margaret River and Marlborough out of obscurity into the classic wine regions they are regarded as today.

Hohnen’s leadership style is inclusive, generous, imaginative and selfless. His modesty, integrity and decency are legendary. Indeed, he is a winemaker’s winemaker – true to origin, utterly focused on quality, deeply concerned about environment and meaning of place. His ambitions for himself are as vital as his hopes and aspirations for others.

Hohnen once said, "I want to make one of the defining styles of Margaret River cabernet; a great Australian cabernet; a wine that outlasts me and helps consolidate the region as a premium wine producer for future generations." He will argue that his two successive Jimmy Watson Trophy-winning wines, the 1982 and 1983 cabernets, which put Cape Mentelle on the map, were unfinished works rather than completed canvases. For almost 20 years he worked on the development of this important single-vineyard wine, even benchmarking it against other great wines of the world in his annual cabernet tasting.

Hohnen was the first to produce a labelled Margaret River semillon-sauvignon blend and the first to make a half-decent Margaret River shiraz – a recognised foil to the more concentrated and deep-set shirazes of the Barossa and McLaren Vale. He championed the obscure variety zinfandel and made it special and seductive. He pioneered the highly evocative, rammed-earth architecture style that’s now inextricably linked to the Margaret River vernacular. And he made Marlborough sauvignon blanc into a truly international wine style through the extraordinary commercialisation of the Cloudy Bay brand.

Hohnen’s growing empire was acquired by Veuve Clicquot in 1990. True to form, he allowed his lieutenants to take ownership of their ambit of responsibilities, never taking credit for their achievements but always backing them up. Convinced of Margaret River’s potential, he found ways of making his wine region, and the state of WA, a more meaningful player in the world of fine wine. The Great Estates of Western Australia – a group of grand marque and pioneering wine producers – was formed under his patronage.

The continuing brilliance of Cloudy Bay and Cape Mentelle wines, sheer coherence and clarity of styles are a legacy and testament to his profound leadership. In 2003, when LMVH rationalised its organisation, Hohnen hung up his corporate bootstraps, passed on the baton and left his extraordinary enterprise without rancour or disillusionment.

The California-trained winemaker was first recognised as an outstanding talent in the ’70s when he planted the Taltarni vineyard in the Pyrenees district of Central Victoria. Having moved back to Margaret River in ’76, Hohnen built up an inspirational, marvellously idiosyncratic and interesting wine culture. It will continue in the form of a new winemaking venture with brother in-law Murray McHenry and daughter Freya. These exciting wines, under the McHenry Hohnen label, are astonishingly fresh and pristine.

Hohnen’s "grandpa" farming practices are based on old, low-input philosophies. His privacy starts at his unassuming farm gate, where a zephyr of ordinariness greets you. His pork and lamb – sold exclusively to the local community – embrace the enduring wine industry-led principles of regional definition and character. While farming livestock is unsentimental, his environmental sensibility is obvious by the expanse of man-made wetlands and myriad birdlife on his property.

David Hohnen is a worthy recipient of the inaugural Len Evans Award. His imagination and unswerving belief in the future of fine Australian and New Zealand wine have inspired a generation of winemakers and marketers. Through determination, personality, courage and tenacity he has made an enduring difference to the perception and enjoyment of fine wine. ANDREW CAILLARD MW