Vinery Stud heads to Riverside with its bar significantly raised

At Vinery Stud on Wednesday morning, between heavy showers slapping much of Australia’s eastern seaboard, the last of the Vinery yearlings departed for Riverside. Briefly, there was a quiet lull for Peter Orton, the operation’s general manager, before he too joined his platoon heading south.

Vinery has 17 young horses in its draft for next week’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, and they represent 14 respective stallions.

There’s a half-brother among them to Blue Diamond winner Artorius (Flying Artie), and another from a half-sister to Eremein (Timber Country {USA}). There’s also a colt from a half-sister to Russian Revolution.

As expected of the Vinery Stud product, they are an exceptional set of yearlings and, by most accounts, they’ve been reared in an exceptional season too.

Since January, record levels of water have swamped New South Wales and, while Vinery hasn’t endured flooding or evacuation, it’s a tiring experience raising horses in the mud and the damp.

“All the reserves are full, so every time we get rain now it stays,” Orton said. “We got an inch overnight and it just lies everywhere, but luckily the farm is very undulating so only a couple of our low-lying paddocks have been very affected. Otherwise we’ve been alright.”

Orton mentions the little things that affect a yearling draft in a season like this one.

“The feel of winter has come in a lot earlier this year,” he said. “We’ve had to deal with that at different times, depending where Easter falls, because they start putting up a coat and we’re mindful of that. So we keep lights on at night and we put heavier rugs on, but even exercising them becomes a little bit more manual.”

The arrival of that ‘winter feel’ has been earlier than usual, possibly due to the consistent La Niña pattern dropping seasonal temperatures this year. In some places across the state, the seasonal temperatures are reading four and five degrees below average.

“But even when we were in summer this year, it felt like an early autumn,” Orton said. “And we’ve only done the first month of autumn and yet it feels like winter is here already, so the horses are sensing that and they’re getting prepared.”

In all his years in the business, Orton doesn’t remember a season like it.

“I don’t remember anything like it in terms of the extremes we’ve had,” he said. “Certainly over the last four years, we’ve gone from droughts and fires to this. I’ve seen floods before, but we got as good a rain this year as we’ve seen in this area as long as most of us can remember.”

Backing up after last year

Be it livestock, bloodstock or tillage, farming will do that to you. It will force your attention to the weather, and you’ll talk about it until the sun goes down, something Orton readily admits.

“If we didn’t have all this extreme weather, what would we talk about?” he said.

However, the reality is that Vinery Stud always has something to talk about, be it upcoming foals by Ole Kirk this spring, or upcoming yearlings by Exceedance at the same time. Right now, it’s all about the Easter Sale and, after a ding-busting, record-setting Sale this time last year, Vinery has raised its own bar significantly.

At the 2021 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, the operation sold three million-dollar lots on Day One alone.

The best of them was the Exceed And Excel colt from Peace Force (Bernardini {USA}), which sold to Tony Fung Investments for $2.1 million. The others were a $1.25 million filly by I Am Invincible and a $1.15 million colt by Snitzel.

Gallery: Some of Vinery Stud's 2021 top lots

In the 21-year history of Vinery Stud in Australia, it was far and away the most successful sale day for the operation. Its yearling average was a remarkable $816,250 by the close of trade on Day One and, by the close of the Sale altogether, Vinery was third-leading vendor by average and third overall by aggregate.

So how does the operation approach Riverside next week off the back of such results last year?

“We approach it the exact same way as we’ve always approached it,” Orton said. “Last year was incredible and something of a perfect storm. We had nice horses with very good pedigrees and the right market, and those three things all came together.

“I think we’re in as good a physical position this year as we’ve ever been with good staff and a good property, and even the small changes count. Our feed routine in the last five years has changed and we’ve seen great results from that. So we’re working constantly from a very solid base, and it comes together every year really well.”

Goals kicked, benchmarks set

Last year’s Easter results are still fresh in Orton’s mind, and he remembers clearly why the 18-strong Vinery draft did so well with its four million-dollar lots.

“This is an industry that goes up and down fashion-wise,” he said. “Our yearlings last year were all by stallions that were well-regarded and in-mode at the time. They were also by a group of mares that were young and active, so it was a combination of all that.

“But we’ve been producing really sound horses too, and people were happy to be buying off the farm. People do grade that quite often, so they were very happy to go and look at the yearlings knowing their backgrounds were all sound. They were then looking at the yearlings for what they were.”

This year, Vinery’s draft features three of its mares from last year. They are Ballet Rose (Exceed And Excel), Peace Force and Turbo Miss (Sebring). Two of these mares’ offspring brought seven figures last year, so the benchmark is high.

“Last year was where we are always striving to be at, as far as the operation goes,” Orton said. “If, from a bloodstock management side of it, we happen to have the right pedigrees and the right horses at the right time, then that’s another task that we’ve met.”

The star

Orton said this year’s draft isn’t especially different from any other years, albeit variety is stronger this time among his yearlings.

With 14 individual sires represented among them, only two yearlings represent Vinery Stud residents, and they’re a colt by Star Turn (Lot 54) and a filly by All Too Hard (Lot 272).

Gallery: Some of Vinery Stud's yearlings

“We’ve got more of a spread across stallions, and a few unproved ones too,” Orton said. “Sire power is pretty strong right now, but probably not as much as it was last year.

“I believe we've got a really strong set of horses this year on type. They’re going to create interest regardless of their pedigrees and, while I don’t think we’ve got the pedigree power that we did last year, we’ve certainly got the types, and there are two or three real stars that will create a bit of drama.”

One of these is Lot 198, a handsome bay colt by Written Tycoon. He has an unusual speckling of white on his nearside, but more significantly, he’s the half-brother to G1 Blue Diamond winner Artorius.

“I particularly like this fellow from Gracie’s Lass,” Orton said. “There’s a timing thing with him. You’ve got a Blue Diamond winner from last year, and Written Tycoon is really emerging as a good sire of sires for colt buyers and partnerships to go after. So it’s the right time for him, and he’s just a beautiful and special colt.”

Pedigree, type and a hot market on the stallion’s end... those are the boxes that Lot 198 is ticking.

His dam, Gracie’s Lass, is a daughter of Redoute’s Choice, and her dam in turn is Grace And Power (USA) (More Than Ready {USA}), who is the dam of the G1 Darley Classic winner Delectation (Shamardal {USA}) and who is still kicking along (in foal to Written Tycoon).

“In this colt’s case (Lot 198), if you’re selling a yearling and the mare already has a Group 1 winner the season before, it’s pretty good on its own,” Orton said. “But then you’ve got a stallion behind it like Written Tycoon, and that makes it better still.

“People are hot and cold on stallions all the time, and it happens throughout the year regularly. But Written Tycoon has proved a very good stallion and a very good sire of sires, so they’re important factors to get you over the line too.”

With a vast spread of sires in the Vinery draft this week, Orton said that it wasn’t a case of not supporting his own roster, but more a case of managing a broodmare set as good as this draft features, and getting the most from it.

“Broodmare bands at this level, you try and support your own stallions with them, but you’ve also got to look at each individual mare and where they’re best suited,” he said.

Like almost every year in the last 20, Orton will head to Riverside with a cup full of anticipation and a remote feeling of familiarity. He knows the Easter Sale as one of the elite auctions in the calendar year, and he's know it for a long time.

“This is a select-group Sale, a boutique-type Sale,” he said. “It’s where the (progeny of) blue-hen mares basically all sell and are appreciated for what they are, and when you’re going through and selecting yearlings for a sale, you’re looking at them and saying; ‘That’s an Easter yearling, that’s a Magic Millions yearling’.

“Going into the barn when all the Easter yearlings had come in this year, it was like walking into a first-grade football team. There was just something about the atmosphere. That’s what Easter’s got, that aura.”