by Graeme Leith
I’d write out the invoice, have a coffee or a taste of something they’d recently opened, then off to the next one and so on, until the ute was empty and I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Kingower. No typed invoices, no computer involvement, just a hand-written invoice in an invoice book with a carbon copy back-up. Good wines and goodwill! The sense of achievement was intoxicating; there was our wine on the shelves beside some of the best!
As I’ve mentioned, regarding Victorian wineries—and indeed Australian wineries in general—there were not many small vineyards operating then. We were at the genesis of the ‘boutique bubble’ when enthusiastic amateurs like me (but usually better equipped) were trying their hands and risking their resources to pursue the dream to make great wine. Many of the earlier established vineyards at Geelong, Bendigo and the Yarra Valley had been eliminated by economic considerations, or by the scourge of phylloxera, the vine-root sucking louse, around the turn of the century. Some Yarra Valley boutique wineries were making impressive products, and Stuart Anderson was forging the renaissance of Bendigo wine at Balgownie, as was Phil Leamon at Chateau Leamon, although if one sought the ‘Chateau’ one sought in vain. The mainstays of the small (and indeed the large) vineyards and wineries were at Rutherglen and the Goulburn Valley, where the phylloxera had failed to invade. The Barossa and Southern Vales in South Australia and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales provided most of our wine from interstate.
Thus, at that time, there was a small and exclusive club of boutique winemakers and we were aspiring to join it. We needed wine of exemplary quality, the recognition of the wine judges and the wine writers to achieve that goal. It was always going to be a challenge for a retired sparky and a journalist, but we seemed to be getting there!
At about that time, in 1982, Stuart Anderson brought Kit Stevens MW (Master of Wine) on a surprise visit to the winery on a 41-degree day. I’d hurt my back doing something stupid with the Furphy tank and was lying down when Sue said there were two men at the tasting room, so I limped over to greet Stuart and be introduced to Kit. There was no air-conditioning in the tasting room back then, and the glasses were warm to the touch, but they tasted and approved.
They tasted the pinot first, moving Kit to say, ‘This is not pinot noir!’
‘It’s 100 per cent pinot noir,’ I responded.
To which he replied, ‘That’s not what I meant.’
But of course I knew what he meant, for the pinot noir grape and a climate that produces summer days of 41 degrees Celsius are not natural bedfellows. However, he was very impressed with the shiraz cabernet and asked if he could take a bottle, for he was doing an ‘options’ game tasting with James Halliday, Len Evans and others in Sydney the next day, and thought he could have some fun with a wine from a vineyard of which no one had ever heard.
A few days later, Rod Whiteway, a friend from Canberra, rang and said he’d attended a talk given by Kit Stevens, who said that he had recently had the best pinot noir he’d ever tasted from the Southern Hemisphere—and it was from a vineyard in Central Victoria called Passing Clouds!
The fate of the 1980 bottle of shiraz cabernet that Kit Stevens took to Sydney was later revealed, for I was given a report on that options game. I don’t know who thought up this game, but it’s a fun way of testing people’s analytic skills quickly. Contestants taste wine before being asked questions about it. If they are wrong they drop out; if their answers are correct, they carry on to the next question until only one person, the winner, remains.
The preliminaries were gone through—Country of origin? Then which part of that country? and so on—and ended up with Bendigo. James Halliday appears to have been the last man standing and was asked, ‘Balgownie, Chateau Leamon or Blanche Barkly?’ He responded, ‘A nice one from Blanche Barkly,’ and it was revealed as Passing Clouds. He had picked the wine from a vineyard he had never heard of, half a mile from Blanche Barkly, from which he’d probably only tasted one or two wines. I guess that’s why he’s a leading authority and wine judge and we are merely winemakers.
With the tasting room operating, the ’82 wine in barrel and the vineyard pretty well sorted, we weren’t looking too bad.
There was a man named Dennis Carstairs who had a wine shop in Banana Alley, one of those subterranean vaults under the train line south of Flinders Street Station. The location of his business put him geographically close to the money end of town, and he exploited it magnificently, being recognised as the best telephone salesman for wine in Melbourne. It was as well, perhaps, that he was brilliant on the telephone for, in his enthusiasm to telephone-sell wine, he often dropped the odd bit of pie and sauce onto his tie and shirt, earning himself in some quarters the unfortunate epithet of ‘Dirty Dennis’.
Dennis had a fantastic list of contacts so he must have known about the reference to the wine. He rang me to ask how much 1980 pinot noir I’d made. I replied that there would be about fifteen dozen to sell from the barrique. He said, ‘Okay; I’ll take the lot!’ Later, when it was bottled and labelled, a sample was sent to Nation Review for review. A couple of Saturdays later, I was surprised to see a car at the tasting room at about half-past eight in the morning. Its driver turned out to be Dennis Carstairs.
After greetings were exchanged he said, ‘I’m here to collect the wine; I’m buying it all, remember?’
I said, ‘Yes, we agreed on that, but not on the price.’
‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked, and I gave him the outrageously high price of $120 a dozen.
‘Okay,’ he said, pulling a huge roll of notes from his pocket and peeling off the cash. We loaded his car, he had a coffee and off he went on his two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Melbourne.
People rang me later in the day about the ‘rave’ review the Passing Clouds Pinot Noir had been given in the Nation Review. Dennis’s contacts were good indeed. We both had a win there; he charged a very healthy price for the wine and some of it was sold in Sydney for more than $20 per bottle, a hefty price then.
So, ironically, the grape that shouldn’t have been grown here was the most sought after, no doubt mainly because of the novelty of its great weight, colour and general character. It wasn’t long before people were growing pinot in more appropriate areas, and also started using better trellising techniques and limiting the crop, leaving us far behind. For instance, we have been making our Passing Clouds Pinot Noir from fruit that we’ve been purchasing from Robert and Vanessa McKernan at Coldstream, in the Yarra Valley, since 2000. The valley is a much cooler and more appropriate site for growing pinot noir than the roasting shiraz-friendly vineyard at Kingower.
There had been snow at Kingower at the end of the growing season of 1981–82, an unheard-of occurrence. It built up on the pine trees and roofs and Sebastian woke me one morning by throwing a snowball at me as I lay in bed. That was the end of the precipitation for a while.
And then came our first taste of real drought, the 1983–84 season. It heralded another era: hungry wallabies knocking over flowerpots on the verandahs and insufficient water to grow as many vegetables as we wanted, for the dams had shrunk rapidly. Our vines struggled to produce a crop; we only succeeded in making two barrels that year, so we turned our minds to building.
Sebastian had taken a year off school prior to his HSC and was working with me on the vineyard in 1983. He remembers watering some chardonnay vines outside the tasting room when the world went dark. He glanced up to see a giant dust cloud obscuring the sky. It looked as if half of the Mallee’s topsoil was blowing towards Melbourne. It transpired that the dust cloud not only travelled to Melbourne but also across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand where red rain fell on motor cars and clotheslines.
The double garage near the house had morphed into a winery and had generally grown like Topsy. Things had to be rationalised, so Seb and I dismantled the structure, carried it all across the dry creek and re-erected it on an open patch of ground, about 150 metres from the house, adding an additional area for barre
l storage, as the barrels were now maturing on the front verandah of the house, or in the tasting room. This not only provided the opportunity for future expansion—perhaps concrete, in our wildest dreams a forklift—but also freed up the area close to the house for the next project—the brick guest wing, bathroom and toilet!
Rats in the rafters
The house was still as primitive as ever so I had decided to build a couple of nice solid brick rooms onto it, still keeping to the lovely old roofline and including a bathroom and toilet. In the years until then we had cleaned ourselves by filling a camp shower with warm water and suspending it above the bath, for in those days we didn’t have plumbing as it is known. There was no pressurised water—only one rainwater tank on an elevated stand outside the bathroom that supplied water to the kitchen and to a tap above the bath, which was fairly useless as there was no hot water to mix with it.
But the bath was good for soaking vine rootlings before planting, the idea being to steep them for a couple of days in water with some seaweed concentrate added, which produced a jolly dark tea-coloured brew smelling strongly of rotting kelp.
A visiting architect’s wife once strayed into the cement sheet and corrugated iron lean-to which rejoiced in the name of bathroom, only because of the presence of the old white enamelled bath, and to her horror found the bundles of stick-like rootlings luxuriating in their pre-planting mode. To her credit she never mentioned it to us, but a few years later another visitor, a charming young woman, was most interested to see ‘the bath’ that her Aunt Phyllis had spoken of, for apparently she’d been entertaining people for years with the story.
Little did Aunt Phyllis know that she could have provided additional entertainment had she seen our other visitor that day. As we were all having a cup of tea at the kitchen table in the ironbark slab and mud-walled kitchen, under the roof of split shingles supported by timber poles selected from the bush by the Taigs, the original builders, a rat had decided to make its way across the room on a horizontal beam a metre above our guests’ heads. As hosts, it was quite a tense moment. I caught the look in Sue’s eyes as she spotted it, one not quite of horror, but certainly of concern. I glanced up quickly and saw the rat pursuing its journey along the beam. Why it had chosen to venture forth in such circumstances, with four noisy humans just below, I’ll never know, but it did. I was telling a story at the time and made my voice louder, my gestures more expansive, to hold our visitors’ attention until the rat completed its crossing and was gone. David and Phyllis never knew how close to nature they were—and how close nature was to them!
As well as a rat or two, we always had geese, and when they had goslings, if the kitchen was quiet, they’d bring the young ones in, for all the world as if they were saying, ‘See, this is the big house, where the people live!’ They would inspect everything and solemnly exit, leaving you to continue reading your newspaper or making out invoices.
While there was water in the dam the geese were safe enough from the predations of foxes. They apparently had one awake on watch at night and if Brer Fox was detected they would all jump into the water with a cacophony of honking, similar to that which saved Rome in ancient times. However, nesting time made them vulnerable, for the female would be sitting on the eggs. In the daytime she relied on her camouflage for protection, her grey blending her with the surrounding bush, while the male, poor sap, having done his job fertilising the eggs, paraded around in his white finery, a pushover for predators. At this point it was then necessary to put the females into the ‘maternity ward’, a good-sized fox-proof pen, organised so they could enter and exit during the day for feeding or a swim, and could be safe at night. The rest of the flock stayed on the dam bank as usual, protected by the now rapidly diminishing water.
The goose is an awkward bird, too much for one, but not enough for two (echoing the words of Trollope), which we discovered when we ate our first. From then on we made sure that we had three for two people. They were delicious, especially when cold, the day after cooking.
The foxes were not bothered by such niceties but simply bit them on the neck for a quick kill then dragged them off. But if the fox gets into the chook pen it’s a different story—feathers and bodies everywhere, the legacy of indiscriminate slaughter. It is the fox’s nature to return as often as it can during a night to remove more carcasses for burial elsewhere. We never lost a fowl to foxes over many years—our memories were good enough to ensure that the gate was closed at night and I kept the pens in good repair. But I know plenty of people who were confronted with a bloody mess of feathers on one or more unpleasant mornings.
Foxes were particularly active during cubbing time when the vixens would take greater risks than normal to feed their young. Strychnine was used to poison foxes in those days and a technique was used to target the vixen, the rationale being that if she died the cubs would most likely die, too, and the opportunity for further litters would therefore be reduced. The practice was to secrete strychnine inside a ball of butter and freeze it, then place it later that night on one of her tracks. If she took the bait she would try to take it back to the cubs, but it would melt in her mouth and she would be more or less obliged to eat it, and die. I bought the strychnine from our friendly old pharmacist, Mr Jones, and on one occasion gave him a conspiratorial wink as I said, ‘Don’t tell Sue!’
In Western Australia the foxes have become so sophisticated that the only way they’ll take a bait is if it is put into a dead parrot, the parrot buried with a feather or two showing above the ground in the manner that foxes bury them. In this case the fox finds the buried parrot, assumes it’s the hidden booty of another fox and eats it. If anyone thinks this is cruel, let them see a lamb that has been attacked by a fox and left alive with its tongue eaten out.
While admiring their guile, cunning and perseverance, I dislike foxes intensely. They do not belong in Australia, and a pox on the memory of those who introduced them. One year, a particular fox had been eating noticeable amounts of shiraz grapes. Even if it didn’t eat the whole bunch, it would ruin it by tearing the berries and leaving saliva on the remainder. I determined to shoot it, as I had shot several others before. I could see the track it had worn over the creek bed and into the shiraz, so one very early morning when the moon was bright and the breeze put me downwind of the fox, I put my plan into action and lay out on the ground on the other side of the creek bed opposite the shiraz with my rifle at the ready. The fox didn’t come along so when it was quite light, far too late for it to break cover, I returned to the house for breakfast then went to the vineyard to do some work. Coming back I was amazed to see the fox, bold as brass, walking down the middle of the bitumen road on its way home—having out-waited and outwitted me!
Kangaroos, too, became an increasing problem in drought times. Their numbers were growing as they had become protected and people weren’t shooting them anymore to protect their crops, or to gain cheap dog food, and the vineyards were very green!
But droughts don’t last forever, and that one had really only lasted over the growing season of 1982–83, breaking spectacularly with a 4-inch rain prior to the 1983–84 growing season. We lost some topsoil then for I was cultivating as recommended by the agriculture department, so that the whole vineyard looked almost like a carpet and I was proud of my housework. But that sort of horticultural practice leaves the vineyard vulnerable to the depredations of soil erosion, and I’ve kept grass roots in the soil since. Perhaps it doesn’t look as good, and it does require some soil water to keep it going, but it retains the soil structure and the whole biological balance. In the old days in the Barossa Valley, and doubtless other places, they would ‘sheep’ the vineyard right up to budburst after which time it was too dry on the surface for much grass growth to occur—an effective, organic weed control. This is done increasingly now, but one always has to be aware of where the sheep come from because of the risk of spreading that nasty louse phylloxera.
Denouement of the dunny
I had
managed to complete the building of not just one but two new rooms with bathrooms and toilets, and had pondered the destruction of the old ‘thunderbox’ toilet. I hated the thing. The job of emptying it was mine and mine alone—and I particularly hated it when the influx of visiting little girls and their mothers would fill it at an astonishing and unexpected rate. Often this was not revealed to me until it had reached or overreached capacity.
Of all of the jobs associated with country life, that was the most onerous and odious, and after the ‘box’ became redundant it was used occasionally as a tool shed. Still I resented it, lurking there as a reminder of my past miseries. But I never quite knew what to do with it.
One day Dorothy Reading returned from Singapore with some novel fireworks in her suitcase (those were the days!) and presented us with some rockets and catherine wheels. In that package we also discovered three little cardboard tanks. All that was necessary was to light the wick and these little critters would propel themselves forward, their cardboard guns shooting flames ahead.
The means of disposal of the dunny came in a sudden inspirational flash. As the glorious Kingower sunset of apricot and china blue faded, and night fell, we were sitting on chairs a safe distance from the doomed dunny, armed with glasses of bubbly. I had laid a nice wide plank from the ground outside to the dunny seat (over which I had laboured and gagged for years). I had liberally splashed the weatherboard walls of the despised edifice with diesel fuel and when all was ready threw a dog-food can full of petrol onto the seat. All that remained now was to light the touch paper on the little tanks and watch them do their work.