‘I’ve always wanted to have a duel with Dan Murphy, with a couple of muscats.’ Len Evans. It was an enviable life, if indeed a demanding one. Australian wine needed a catalyst, an agent provocateur, and in Len Evans it found one of the highest order. If Shane Warne likens his life to a soap opera, then Evans’ was perhaps more akin to a cross between a cooking show, a travel documentary, an oenological version of Dallas and a Royal Command performance. Frankly, while he (very) occasionally tried to redress the balance and slow down, it was virtually impossible for Evans to take his foot off the pedal, even thirty years ago. Back in the Bulletin Place days, his then secretary Annie Tyrrell once told him that nobody was expected for lunch that day. ‘Thank God for that’, said Evans. ‘Just fix me a cold beef sandwich and a glass of Champagne.’ Before long he had been joined by a French winemaker, a friend from the Napa Valley, a ballet dancer and perpetual Bulletin Place inhabitant, John Beeston. By the time lunch was over, Evans counted fourteen people around his table. He was that kind of a magnet. It was a matter of great pride to Evans that he sold more Krug than anyone else in Australia from the tiny rooms in Bulletin Place. ‘We lived life to the full and drank an enormous quantity of champagne. It was the drink. I’d knock off a bottle every day before lunch with somebody. In 1984, my last full-time year at Bulletin Place, the champagne bill for internal consumption, my parties and give-aways was $30,000. No wonder I never made a profit.’ Humour was always close to the surface with Evans, whether as a laser-sharp retort or as a carefully cultivated set-up. Last summer he called me while I was driving away from a game from cricket, during which I had actually broken bones in the feet of two batsman. ‘One more and you would have got a foot-trick’ he shot back, as I tried to keep control of my car. Many years ago he was introducing one of his more famous prot̩g̩s, Anders Ousback, to one of his own mentors, the Sydney art dealer Rudy Komon. Komon knew how to intimidate, and handed Ousback a mean pour of a glass of red. Ousback smelled the wine and correctly identified it as a Bordeaux, then as a St Estephe. ‘Chateau?’ asked Komon. ‘Well, it’s not a First Growth’ replied Ousback. ‘Of course it’s not a First Growth! There aren’t any First Growths in St Estephe, Ousback. You should know that!’ ‘It’s a second. It’s a Cos… it’s a Montrose.’ ‘Yes, absolutely right. Vintage?’ ‘It’s umm, it’s pre-war.’ ‘Which war?’ ‘First World War.’ ‘Yes, correct.’ ‘This century.’ ‘Yes, that’s right.’ ‘Can I taste it now?’ ‘Yes, all right. Have a taste.’ Taking a sip Ousback said: ‘It’s not a 1910 or 1912. It’s difficult… First decade?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘1908 Montrose?’ ‘Yes, very good.’ ‘Thanks, Mr Komon. It was very nice to meet you.’ Anders Ousback told me that it was very likely Komon never realised that Evans had arranged the wine, from Komon’s birth year, as a present for his 60th birthday, and that Ousback had himself decanted the bottle. For the rest of his life, however, he showed Ousback uncommon respect. On another occasion Evans, Halliday and Beeston were entertaining the global head of Coca-Cola to lunch. Approaching four in the afternoon, Evans opened a final bottle of red for an options game. It was an old Burgundy, and the only one who correctly guessed its age was the American businessman, who picked its age with some conviction. Evans, apparently, had asked him his age a short while earlier, a gesture not entirely wasted on his guest. His life was littered with such acts of style and generosity. Evans, however, wasn’t beyond occasionally changing the rules. Playing wine options at Bulletin Place at a ‘great’ wine day, he craftily outfoxed his table by serving a 1962 Ducru Beaucaillou, a second growth and clearly not a great wine. His defence, which failed to convince James Halliday and the others around the table, was that it was fetching more than any other second growth at auction, that it was a very famous wine in London and everyone was talking about it. Several years ago I was instructed to bring a ‘great’ bottle of Australian wine to lunch with Evans and the English Burgundy specialist, Anthony Hanson. Just for a reaction, I told him I would bring a Giaconda Pinot Noir 1992. ‘That is not a great Australian wine’, snapped Evans. ‘That is an interesting Australian wine. A great Australian wine is an old Grange from a great vintage, a mature Penfolds Special Bin Number red, or perhaps a great year of a mature Henschke single vineyard red.’ So, having presented and poured a Penfolds Bin 7, I also opened a fabulous bottle of the 1992 Giaconda, which Evans tried desperately not to like, taking forty minutes to declare it tasted too plummy to resemble top-drawer Burgundy. Revenge, however, was his, since having offered to deliver me to my at my next appointment in his chauffeur-driven limousine, he dumped me more than a mile from my destination in the midst of the worst rain squall I have ever seen in Sydney. You showed him up at your peril. Evans, Halliday, Tony Albert and Beeston had collectively bought a case of a very great wine, the 1948 La Tache, from Christies in London, but when the time came to collect it from Bulletin Place, it simply wasn’t there. At the time, Evans had made a habit of pouring Domaine de la Roman̩e-Conti at options games, despite the fact that James Halliday had also made a habit of identifying most of them. Halliday attributes this to Evans’ innate Welsh stubbornness. Several years later, a bottle of 1948 La Tache emerged in an options game, much to the injury and chagrin of those present. Put politely, his audience wanted to know where on earth the 1948 La Tache had come from, to which Evans immediately feigned shock, horror and ignorance. ‘I promise you it just turned up. I really have no idea’, he said. Two months later, the same thing happened to another chorus of outrage and injury, calls of theft and misappropriation. A few months later, up came the 1948 La Tache again. Once the uproar had died down, Evans confessed that he had in fact opened all he could find. ‘If it is the stuff that went astray, you’ve shared it with me, and I haven’t really taken it from you at all.’ Even after that, remembers Halliday, there would occasionally be another bottle. ‘It became an absolute cause c̩l’bre’, says Halliday, ‘which he milked it for all it was worth, revelling in every moment.’ Dining in England with Murray Tyrrell and Anders Ousback as a guest of Michael Broadbent, Evans was poured an old white. Tyrrell identified it as German, Evans as a Mosel, Ousback as a Bernkasteler. Tyrrell then picked it as a Bernkasteler Graben, Evans correctly nominated the vintage of 1964, before Ousback identified its shipper. Broadbent was not amused. In a flash, the next wine was picked as a Pomerol by Tyrrell, by Evans as a Petrus and by Ousback as 1964. Broadbent then moved to another red, which he was sure would escape identification. It was picked as a Pauillac by Tyrrell and by Evans as Lafite, before Ousback took a punt with the vintage, guessing 1951. A furious Broadbent went to his sideboard, grabbing a brace of brimming decanters which plonked on the table. ‘All right’, he said. ‘Stuff you all. That is 1893 Musigny and that is 1882 Chambolle something or other’. In the early 1980s John Avery, one of the United Kingdom’s leading wine merchants and palates put up a tasting of three Bordeaux wines in front of Evans and several Bristol wine merchants, including John Harvey. ‘I think they’re very good’, he said. ‘They’re from the same vintage, but that’s the only thing I’m going to tell you.’ ‘I picked up the three wines’, Evans remembers, ‘and had no idea what the first was. I knew the second wine instantly. I had tasted it before, a typical Pauillac, a beautiful Mouton. Cedar, and that lovely rich fruit character, violets and rose petals. I knew it was Mouton and I knew it was ’49.’ ‘That gave me a clue about the other two. The more I looked at them the more I realised they weren’t Haut-Medoc wines. Having established that, I thought they were probably a Saint-Emilion and a Pomerol. If the first was in fact ’49 Mouton, they were bound to be Cheval Blanc and Petrus – which in fact they were.’ Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Perpetually restless, Evans said he could never help but get involved in things. Neither did he want to waste a minute. ‘If there is a key to me it is my energy’, he said. ‘Never ambition, always energy. Although I have a better understanding of my limitations as I get older, I still cannot waste time.’ Famously, in 1976 Evans proclaimed he was getting older, and since he might only drink another 8,000 bottles, they had all better be good ones. ‘Under the law of capability there may only be 2,500 succulent steaks left to me’, he intoned and, with sinking voice, ‘I might make love only another 5,000 times’. Will there ever be a person who lives more for the moment? Sadly, I shall now never know the truth behind a mystery Evans created especially for me. Staying at Loggerheads in 1991, I had asked him, a former golf professional, to examine my swing. Beginning with my grip, its many and various flaws were then detected and graphically conveyed. Having hit some forty golf balls between us from his lawn onto the paddock that doubles as driving range and short golf course, he suggested I take out the bucket and retrieve the balls. It was late afternoon and since champagne was beckoning, much to his angst I instead accompanied him inside for a couple of glasses. ‘Didn’t you see that large crow?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t like the look of it and I reckon it had an eye on some of those balls.’ Before long I was comfortably ensconced, my feet were up and the sun was about to go down. I argued with Evans that having played golf on many courses around the world teeming with crows, I had never been bothered by one yet. The balls could wait. Evans, however, wouldn’t stop fidgeting and talking about the balls so I eventually relented and, bucket in hand, climbed over the style and into the paddock. It contained a miserly six golf balls, and I immediately felt ill. Yes, they were old balls, some of them cut, but it’s impolite for guests to lose thirty-four golf balls, regardless of their condition. To me, then, it suddenly clicked. Evans had clearly rung one of his staff, telling them to collect most of the balls, leaving just a few scattered around. So I thought I’d just play along. I was greeted by a glare and a question, to which I replied that I’d found the lot. Eventually, under Evans’ evil, doubting gaze I wilted, and accused him of arranging the removal of the balls. I’d hardly finished the sentence, let alone the Bollinger, when I was hauled straight into his Pajero, to spend the next ninety futile minutes driving around all forty hectares of the Evans block and considerably more of those surrounding it, peering into the fading half-light for traces of enormous crows, their nests or for the tell-tale droppings of golf balls. I still don’t know what happened to those balls, and I never will. Evans denied foul play all along, but others reckon I was set up. More and more I think I was, but then again I did see a very large black bird…
