Australian Wine History

Captain Arthur Phillip introduced grapevines to Australia in 1788 on the First Fleet. Unfortunately the original vines fell victim to neglect and disease before a single wine was made, but by 1791 Phillip had planted three acres of vines at Parramatta River, near Sydney, New South Wales.

Australian wine took a long time to get underway, but soon had enough to send by sea to England. Australia became known as ‘John Bull’s Vineyard’.

New South Wales

George Blaxland is another pioneer of Australian wine. He planted some land with the ‘claret’ grape between 1816 and 1818 and shipped a barrel of port to England in 1822, which was awarded a Silver Medal, setting the trend for Australia’s considerable overseas wine success. Five years later Blaxland’s wines won Gold Medals in London.

In 1820 John MacArthur founded Australia’s first commercial vineyard on his return and had twenty acres under vine at Penrith. By 1827 his vineyard was producing around 20,000 gallons, or ten thousand cases of wine in modern terms.

James Busby studied winemaking and viticulture in France and arrived in Sydney with a collection of vines which was finally planted in the Botanic Gardens. MacArthur procured some cuttings, and others went to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, where they provided much of the early material for South Australia’s wine beginnings. Busby was an important contributor to the education of many early vignerons, and published helpful and practical manuals to assist the would-be winemaker of the day. One of his books was titled “The Culture of the Vine and the Art of Wine Making”.

Busby’s first recorded plantings in the Hunter Valley were in 1830, as were George Wyndham’s. There were 461 acres of vines planted in the Hunter Valley by 1852, with an annual production of around 60,000 gallons of wine and 1000 gallons of brandy.


Victoria

William Ryrie planted Victoria’s first vines at Yering in the Yarra Valley in 1838. By 1868 over 3,000 acres were planted in Victoria, establishing Victoria as the premier wine state of the day. Many vineyards were planted around Geelong and Bendigo by the middle of the century and the first plantings in Victoria’s north-east were around Rutherglen in the 1850’s. By 1860 Rutherglen was Victoria’s main wine region, with its full-flavoured sweetish table and fortified wines.

The vine disease, phylloxera, which had recently devastated the vineyards of Europe, was unwittingly infiltrated into Australia. By 1875 it had moved from Geelong to Bendigo and to the State’s north-east. This problem was made worse by the excess of vineyards and wine in Victoria at the time. Thanks to a worldwide depression the overseas market had dropped off and the colonial population, which was still too small to support its wine industry, preferred the sweeter, stronger wines of Rutherglen the lighter wines of the State’s southern regions.

South Australia

In the face of phylloxera South Australia imposed a quarantine law on all incoming grapevine material and managed to escape the disease. As a result South Australia now dominates the Australian wine industry. John Reynell and Richard Hamilton were the first to make wine in South Australia, close to the centre of Adelaide. Both had vineyards by 1840.

The Barossa Valley was first planted in 1847 when Johann Gramp planted his first vines at Rowland flat in 1847 and Samuel Smith, an English Brewer, founded Yalumba in 1849.

South Australia asserted its fortunate position by exporting wine interstate in the early 1900’s, at prices that could not be matched by the other States. This contributed to the industry’s decline in other areas, particularly the Hunter Valley.

In 1914 the Commonwealth Government established a scheme with the State Governments of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia to create the huge irrigation area between Blanchetown in South Australia and Swan Hill in Victoria. This huge wine region now produces most of Australia’s wine. Around Griffith, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme has created another large ‘riverland’ area suited to the production of large volumes of quality commercial wine.


Other States

Although much of its development has been in the past twenty years, especially with the revival of the Margaret River by Tom Cullity, Western Australia has been a wine producer since the 1840’s. Wine was made in Tasmania during the very early days of its settlement, but the emergence of a viable, stable industry is relatively recent. Its real rebirth was the first planting of Claude Alcorso’s Moorilla Estate, near Berriedale, Hobart, in 1960.

Before Len Evans joined the Australian Wine Board on January 1, 1965 as its first National Promotions Executive, the promotion of Australian wine was primitive at best, as indeed was its consumption. Six bottles of fortified wine were sold each year for one bottle of table wine, with an average national wine consumption around 5.5 litres per head per year.

Doug Crittenden remembers that in the early ‘sixties it was almost impossible to sell white wine. Recognising this, Murray Tyrrell would sell his red only on the condition that buyers also bought white. Red was itself in short supply.

first editor, to start a wine and food column, and that he had nominated Baker as its writer. “Then I had to train Neville how to write”, says Evans. “But that’s the way we got wine going.”

James Halliday remembers buying the Sunday Telegraph in the mid ’60s for no other reason than to read ‘Frank Margan’s Choice’, a tiny little box of 40-50 words. “I had no idea at the time that Evans was the man behind Margan getting that slot”, he says. In this sort of fashion, the activities of the Wine Bureau impacted indirectly on Halliday and on everyone else interested in wine.

But the path the Wine Board Committee would have Evans tread was littered with mines. To begin with, it was the Committee’s original intention that no particular brand or wine be mentioned in its publicity – that while it was OK to promote wine as Hunter Valley white or Barossa Valley red, to mention any wine or winery by name was simply not on!

“What would happen if the Hunter got more publicity than Coonawarra?” they asked Evans. In the Len Evans Cookbook, he writes that “sheer persistence finally won that day, and we were able to give editors the copy they wanted, instead of the copy the industry thought would be the most suitable”.

One Evans’ plan for a nationwide rose promotion was knocked back on the irrational basis that not every wine company in Australia made one.

Despite the antediluvean approach of his masters, Evans’ approach was succeeding. Red wine stocks around the country quickly became depleted. Instead of seizing the hour and the initiative, the Wine Board then refused to support more promotions for red wine, convinced that since Australia was selling all it could make, any further effort would only aid the cause of imported wine.

“It was a big boom time”, Evans reflects. “In the mid ’60s to early ’70s, sherry was the biggest seller in Australia. Then Wine Bureau promoted table wines and they sold out. When red wine consumption overtook sherry a memo was sent out to our staff asking them to promote white wine, and then look at what happened.” Please login to post comment