STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/37

Full transcript of an interview with

DAVID DUNSTAN

on 29 November 2001

by Rob Linn

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

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OH 692/37 DAVID DUNSTAN

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

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OH 692/37 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

NATIONAL WINE CENTRE, WOLF BLASS FOUNDATION ORAL

HISTORY PROJECT.

Interview with Dr David Dunstan at Kew, Victoria, on 29th November, 2001.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

David, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where and when were you born?

DD: I was born in New York, strangely enough, of Australian parents. My

father was on assignment as a foreign correspondent for the Herald and

Weekly Times. And he then travelled to the UK -

And your father’s name?

DD: Keith Dunstan.

My associations with the wine industry have almost invariably been as an

observer, as a critic, a writer and a historian. In a lot of respects I’m not

really a participant in it, but I have been associated with it. I’ve earned my

living for various periods of my life as a wine writer, and I still write

extensively about wine as a researcher and consultant.

The family have a strong non-wine background. My father’s actually

written about it—wowsers—in one of his books. And it wasn’t really until

his father that any alcohol was consumed in the family at all.

And he used to buy wine from Eric Purbrick. He used to buy Marsanne in

demijohns, and probably also some red wine. I know my uncle still doesn’t

like Marsanne to this day because he said that he drank too much of it in

his youth in the 40’s.

You were talking about your father receiving the demijohns and -

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DD: This was my grandfather. He was chief accountant and managing

director of the Herald at one stage, [it is a] family business I suppose. We

joke about his newspapers, and writing.

But there was wine at the table. Really it was through my father’s influence

that I became interested in wine. I was the eldest son. I was born in

1950. I can remember that he became dead keen and interested in wine in

the early 60’s in particular—late 50’s/early 60’s. At that stage he was the

columnist, the daily columnist, for the Sun News Pictorial, a tabloid, which

was Melbourne’s largest selling newspaper. And he had enormous

influence. He’s written about his own wine experiences in a number of

books, and he’d be worth reflecting about in this context as well.

He’s actually written a book called My Life with the Demon, which is about

all his experiences, writing about wine, running a small vineyard and what

have you.

But in the 60’s he and his brother, Bill, who lived in Sydney at the time and

was also quite a keen wine man, helped plant Max Lake’s, Lakes’ Folly. He

knew Max, and he has always been very interested in Murray Tyrrell’s

wines. [It was a] fairly low key interest in the wine industry, but whenever

I went to Sydney, which was quite often when I began writing about wine,

I’d stay with him [Bill Dunstan] and we’d talk wine together and enjoy a

few bottles. So there’s a strong family association.

But back to the 60’s. Bill and my father shared an old ten gallon CUB—

Carlton United Brewery—beer drum, which they just had perpetually going

around the wineries of Australia being filled up. My father’s theory was

that Australian wine, at this stage, was so cheap, and so good, that he

would be mad not to buy twice as much as he could ever possibly expect to

drink. (Laughter) And between the two of them came a keen interest in

home bottling. There were a number of other home bottling circles around

Melbourne. A lot of people were quite skilled at it, and a number of them

used to send hogsheads around, and even puncheons.

But he had this ten gallon beer barrel, and it would go, most commonly, to

Brown Bros. It also went to Tahbilk. It also went to Lehmanns in the

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Barossa. It went, occasionally, to the Hunter but not all that often. Mostly

its contents were red. Sometimes they were white.

But the Brown Bros wines, in particular, that we bought from 1961 through

to 1965, were very, very good. And they were all made in small wax-lined

fermenters. They were hand-made wines. They were hand-plunged wines.

And the ‘62/63 wines, of which he had quite a lot, particularly those made

from Shiraz, Mondeuse and Cabernet—Mondeuse being a Swiss variety that

Francois de Castella, as I subsequently discovered, promoted and

encouraged John Brown senior to plant. This grape is a late ripener, with

high acid and low pH and these factors encouraged great longevity in those

wines. There’s been a bit of Mondeuse planted in the Riverland since, and

it is a wonderful grape for hot climates because it moderates the excessive

influences of Shiraz and Cabernet, in particular, and encourages longevity

in these particular wines. We know this because the straight wines made

from Shiraz and Cabernet and blends of the two, without Mondeuse, never

lasted as well nor had the quality of those with Mondeuse in it.

But the Browns changed fundamentally after 1966. They brought in Ron

Potter fermenters. They moved into production in a much bigger way. The

styles of wines changed completely.

The Dunstan family had huge stocks, (Laughs) through my father, of these

early 60’s wines, which we continued to drink until a few years ago.

My father was a moderate drinker. He was never, and still isn’t I would

say, what you’d call a heavy drinker, but he enjoyed wine with his meals.

Unlike a lot of journalists of that period he didn’t spend large amounts of

time in the pub. That probably explains why he’s still alive—because a lot

of them did drink very heavily indeed. But he enjoyed wine with his family,

and with his friends, and this home bottling scene was great fun.

And he would do [the bottling] on Saturday morning. He would go down to

Caulfield station, pick up a drum and we would bottle.

He’d also collect the empties. We’d clean the empties. And it was all a

very labour intensive cottage industry. Good fun. After we’d done it, we’d

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have a good lunch. And the wines would go into store. They were

fabulous wines.

And also through that, because he was a regular customer of the Browns,

we would go up and visit the Browns. He would also buy label bottles from

these people, who were still not terribly well connected with the Australian

public.

All that changed with the red wine boom, with the publication of Max Lake’s

Classic Wines of Australia. The red wine boom coincided with the minerals

boom with the new wealth of Australia. Home bottling came to an end.

There were new plantings all across the country. It was a very exciting

time.

So my father did this as a hobby, and I think he reasoned that this

excellent wine, made by John Brown and others, was the equivalent of two

shillings a bottle at the time, which was very cheap. Subsequently good

Australian wine became cheap again at later times so it wasn’t an unusual

thing. But right throughout the 70’s and the 80’s we were able as a family

to drink these wonderful wines. We had some very happy associations with

that home bottling experience.

My father also, through his position as a publicist and as a writer, was very

much in demand from anyone in the industry to talk and to write about,

and he very quickly fell in with the wine crew. He was a popular gregarious

fellow, always welcome at vineyards and wineries.

He met up with Len Evans very early on. I was a teenager at the time,

living at our house in Central Park road. Len would turn up for lunch. I

can remember one day—I would’ve been, I think, fifteen—my father

produced one of his prized possessions, which was a bottle of Chateau

d’Yquem. He brought it out to show Evans. And, of course, quick as a

flash Evans had the top off it and - (Laughter) My father expected, I

think, to keep this for forty years. Evans very quickly disabused him of this

notion and convinced him of the need to drink glorious wines. My father

was appalled at this behaviour by this rowdy Welshman. But a week later,

a bottle of the same vintage arrived in the post. He replaced it.

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Yeah. That’s pretty typical.

DD: So my father and Evans became great mates. My father became

good friends with a whole circle of people—Hermann Schneider, Peter

Walker of Rhinecastle wines, Peter McMahon and he knew the Lilydale crew

with their Melbourne middle-class associations quite well. Peter McMahon

had been a doctor, my mother had been a theatre sister as a nurse with

him and knew him from way back in university days. So Peter McMahon’s

always been a good friend, and I still remain friends with him today.

My father was in and out of the Melbourne wine network. I wasn’t terribly

interested in wine. It was just there, and around us. And when we went

on holidays in the north east of Victoria we’d go and see the Brown Bros.

What are your memories of some of those visits to Rutherglen? To

places like the Browns?

DD: Well, the landscape always attracted me enormously. And I always

felt that vineyards were located in such interesting and amazing places.

One of my most potent memories of the north east—I was about

twelve/thirteen—is coming back on the Hume Highway in the car and

listening to the (couldn’t decipher name) Fifth Symphony, and thinking how

associative it was with the landscape.

But I didn’t really get interested in wine in a thinking or intellectual or

research way until the late 70’s after I’d finished my undergraduate degree

in history. I never expressed any interest at all in history of the industry as

an undergraduate. No-one was teaching it. No-one was interested in it.

There was no wine revival in Victoria to speak of. There were these

antiquated old wineries in Rutherglen and at Tahbilk, and we knew places

like Tahbilk very well. I didn’t understand how special they were at the

time, and how remarkable that a place like that had survived or what great

and extraordinary places the Rutherglen wineries were. I didn’t know

anything about the history of them. The only person who had written

anything at all about Victorian wine was Sam Benwell in that lovely little

book Journey to Wine in Victoria.

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Which came out—what?—about 1960 first off.

DD: ‘61, I think. But you could check. It was a memoir for a lost world.

Inadequate in some ways, but very good in others.

Was Sam the first one to record that?

DD: Francois de Castella wrote about the nineteenth century industry in his

two articles for the Victorian historical journal in the 1940’s. Back-to-back

articles …

So was he Hubert‘s son?

DD: He was Hubert’s son. But he was actually a product of the nineteenth

century who lived a long life and died in 1953. But he was really talking

about a world that had vanished to a small group of connoisseurs who

hadn’t. So he wasn’t really talking to the post-War affluent crowd who

were going to take the industry forward again. Benwell was a very

interesting man, and he was great a mate of Jimmy Watson. So he was a

member of the House of Lords at Watson’s. And Sam Benwell had a lot to

do with getting the Jimmy Watson trophy accepted by the RAS. You know

the story about the House on Lords?

No, I don’t know the story. I’ve heard of it.

DD: Oh, some drunk barged in one day and wanted to sit down and there

were all these people at the front bench at Jimmy’s window. [The drunk

was told] ‘You can’t sit here. This table’s reserved’. ‘Who do you think

you are, the bloody House of Lords?’ And from that time on they were

called the House of Lords. (Laughter)

So was your father involved with that?

DD: No. You had to be a regular of the House of Lords. You had to go

there pretty well every day.

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And just before we get on to your tertiary education, were you

schooled locally at Caulfield?

DD: Yes, I went to Caulfield Grammar.

Just briefly, I was born in New York, my parents came back to Australia at

the end of 1953. My father was in Brisbane from the beginning of 1953 to

the end of 1957. So I really only returned to Melbourne in 1958, although

he’d already been down here for some time. He did ‘A Place in the Sun’

from 1957. So he went back to the Herald and Weekly Times. I can tell

you a bit about his personal history: he’s been a journalist all his life and

he’s been a by-line journo since the 1940’s. He’s written over twenty

books. He’s one of the most published of Australian writers.

So he has always been at the centre of publicity and activity in this town

for as long as I can remember. In our house there was always a steady

crew of interesting people. People like Robin Boyd, people like Len Evans,

who’d breeze in and breeze out. I was lucky enough to grow up in this

environment.

I did a history degree at Monash University. I was taught by people like

Ian Turner, Duncan Waterson and Geoff Searle. I then went on and did a

doctorate at Melbourne University and taught two years as a tutor in the

history department there, working with people like Geoff Blainey, John

Lack, Lloyd Robson—the late Lloyd Robson—Graham Davison. And while I

was doing my PhD I faced the inevitable problem of post graduate students

who’ve acquired a family—a perennial lack of funds.

In 1979, my father was champing at the bit about having worked as a

columnist for over twenty years and done essentially the same thing. And

the Herald offered him a two year post as their American correspondent

based in Los Angeles. And on the eve of his departure, Max Sutch of the

Sydney Sun Herald asking him to write a wine column—a weekly wine

column. He knocked it back. I told him that I thought it was a foolish

thing to do. I said, ‘Why don’t we do it together?’

And by this stage, for about two years, I’d been interested in wine to a

greater extent. I’d been living in Prahran from 1974 to ‘78, in Chapel

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Street. And you had a whole string of wonderful old wine merchants. There

was Dan Murphy’s cellar in that marvellous great Victorian barn—the old

Prahran arcade—with a huge theatrical baroque exterior and huge interior.

It’s been the foundation of Dan Murphy’s cellar and all his other stores.

And it’s only recently that they’ve vacated it and moved across the road.

But an even more important place for me was Frank de Marchis’ Franeva

Cellars. And Frank had a very big store. He was a lovely man of Italian

background, and he would talk about wine. He wasn’t terribly interested in

Australian wine because he did not drink it. He only drank European wine.

Frank, in 1977, decided to close his business, and he’d been trading for

thirty or forty years. He’d been dealing, as all those merchants did, with

Great Western, with Milawa. He had enormous stocks of Colin Preece

wines, unlabelled, down under the cellar. He’d been keeping them,

thinking that they would come good, and he hadn’t looked at them for five

years/ten years. He just said, ‘Half price on everything until I go out of

business’.

And so I, and a group of other people, worked our way through his

European stocks, his German wines, his French wines, his old unlabelled

Great Westerns. We’d only buy one or two bottles a week. Some of them,

like the bottles of d’Yquem and their second growth Bordeauxs that we

bought, were quite expensive. It was even possible to buy them at that

stage. And, of course, the Australian dollar against the French franc was

much more favourable in those days.

Much more.

DD: Much more. When my first son was born in 1977 I went out and

bought a case of (couldn’t decipher name) to celebrate, and it wasn’t

something that broke the bank. And before Christmas I would buy a dozen

bottles of French champagne.

Actually I should’ve asked you, when were you married, David?

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DD: I was married in 1973. And Paula and I went back to Brisbane for a

year. I was still doing my undergraduate degree at that stage, and I came

back and did fourth year honours in ‘74. We bought a house together in

Peel Street, Windsor. I started doing my PhD in ‘75. And so from ‘74 we

were living around this Chapel Street area.

I should also mention that another great influence was Doug Crittenden,

who gave me my first job when I was thirteen. I’ve bypassed all this. And

he was friendly with my father. I was too young to sell liquor behind the

counter so I was sent down into the cellar with old Stan the liquor man. I

was his odd-job boy. I’d wash bottles. Stan’s job was breaking up Scotch

whisky, which Doug would sell under his buyer’s own brand.

The overproof Scotch?

DD: It was overproof but it had to be proof by the time it hit the bottle.

So he’d just break it down with water. He had a little bond store there and

Stan was pretty expert at that.

I also discovered that Madeira, sweet sherry, and one other, all came out

of the same vat. (Laughs) Doug had sold wonderful wines also under his

own bottlings—his Seven Oaks series. His Seven Oaks Riesling was lovely

South Australian [or some other] Riesling. He would buy Preece wines

from Great Western. Evans had a wonderful damning comment about

Doug—‘best grocer’s palate in the country’. (Laughs)

I think he was something more than that.

DD: Doug has an excellent palate.

Doug showed me many of the labels, and where he’d sourced the

wines from, and he must’ve been one of the first people who bottled under their own label who wasn’t afraid to actually put the

source vineyard, or even the estate vineyard in some cases.

DD: Well, he got small parcels of wine from Preece, and he would buy

Hunters, and he had a good eye for a bargain. And he had some wonderful

sales. I can remember when Saxonvale went bung he was selling good

quality Hunter red in bulk for 20¢ a bottle. And he was selling Yellow Label

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Mildaras for $1 a bottle. This would’ve been in the early 80’s or 70’s.

Anyway, tremendous sales.

But Doug, and working in the store with Stan and seeing all that, was

certainly an influence. These are all background experiences that only

really began to flower in my late twenties, but when this offer to write a

wine column came up I’d been reading the Wine and Spirit Buying Guide on

a regular basis. I’d go in and scour Frank de Marchis’ shop once a week. I

had a little baby boy in a carriage who had to be pushed around because

he was a very hyperactive boy and the only way that would stop him

driving his mother mad was to be pushed in a carriage. So we’d go up and

down Chapel Street. There weren’t as many interesting bookshops in those

days, but the wine shops were just as good. And so we’d talk to all these

people.

There was also Paul Lynch, the restaurateur’s brother. He’s since retired.

Long retired and gone to Queensland. He ran a little wine shop called

Windsor Cellars, up in the south end of Chapel Street, up near where I was

at Windsor. He only lasted about a year or so. But he wanted to deal in

exclusive wines, and he was very interested in what new Victorians were

around, and he sold me in 1978 my first Pyrenees wine, made by Neill

Robb.

It was partly through these people, through reading Dan Murphy in the

Age, that we became slightly more aware of the potential and possibility of

Victorian wine. But I only got involved as a wine writer when this offer

from Max Sutch came through. My father wrote about, and I wrote about,

four or five columns together. I’ve still got all the columns. It wasn’t a

terribly amicable partnership because we had very different writing styles,

and wanted to say quite different things about wines and the industry. I

just kept on doing it from thereon.

Your father had gone to New York?

DD: He went to New York. He dropped out after a very short time. And

that weekly column I wrote from 1979 until 1984, when I gave it up. And

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it was one of the happiest associations of my life. I should never have

given it up.

And the Sydney Sun Herald, a weekend paper, was Australia’s biggest

circulating newspaper, with a circulation of over 600,000. And it also

meant that I had to make pretty regular trips to Sydney because I had a

Sydney presence. I was suddenly on the list of all the PR conscious wine

companies.

Within a month of this happening, Dan Murphy also fell on his sword at the

Age because he really couldn’t be a city’s leading wine critic and its leading

retailer at the same time. Dan had managed to straddle that contradiction

for some years. Prior to that their Age wine writer had been Walter James.

But Walter gave it up in the 50’s when he wanted to go back to England for

a stint, and Dan secured it then. And the Age was only too happy for

someone in the 50’s to write wine notes. But he kept on doing it, and the

industry grew and his business grew, and others in the industry I think felt

that you couldn’t really be dispassionate if you’re flogging the products as

well. And Dan had a particular affection for Wynns products. And he also

sold an awful lot of them.

I think Dan Murphy’s books are very good, particularly those ones of the

60’s. I read them all—the Australian Wine Guide. They were hugely

influential, and possibly second only to Classic Wines of Australia. I’ve

actually done a little study on this about the circulation of wine books of

that period, and I do believe that Evans, Lake, Murphy and a few others

are as much responsible for the wine boom as anyone else. And certainly

Classic Wines of Australia helped define the Australian wine industry at a

critical phase.

But there’s only a few of them, David, I think, -

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

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I was just going to say very quickly, David, of all those books published around that period there really were only a handful of the

writers who were anything more than picture painters; who really

knew what they were talking about, and they were some of the ones that you’ve described. Lake.

DD: Halliday was appearing in the Epicurean, and my father also wrote for

the Epicurean. He was writing by that stage but he certainly wasn’t the

huge influence he subsequently became.

Ian Hickinbotham was quite an influence, and he was, again, another

family friend. My parents knew his and Judy’s restaurant, Jeannies. The

restaurant scene was quite influential in terms of the interface between

wine and food. People like Leon (couldn’t decipher name) were quite

important. Leon ran Tollanos(?) later on, but before Leon there was

George Mora. So there was a link between art and wine and food. George

Mora’s dead now. He was a lovely man. But Tollanos was in St Kilda.

There was the Balzac, which I think was an earlier incarnation of his in East

Melbourne, and that was a fantastic restaurant.

There was the famous one in Collins Street—the Florentino. And, of

course, Watsons.

Was Two Faces going by then?

DD: My word! We went to all these places. I was taken there as a

teenager. Not very often, but we went. So I suppose when I got this

opportunity to write about wine there was a lot of background there

already. And I was very interested in what John Parkinson was doing, and

(couldn’t decipher name) Guy was doing, with The Wine and Spirit Buying

Guide, for which I also subsequently wrote. So when I started writing in

the Sun Herald, I also started sending them articles on a regular basis,

which they were keen to publish. It was the Melbourne end of the Sydney

wine Mafia.

Through my father, through my uncle, I was also enormously interested in

Hunter wines. And also Coonawarra wines. And my father, in the early

60’s, was a very big fan of the Redman wines, and those Rouge Homme

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wines that Alan Redman made in that time. They were just fabulous. They

were astonishing wines. And even then I think we knew that Coonawarra

was the Australian red wine district, and there was a fascination with

Coonawarra right from the early 60’s.

And with Hunter Semillon and with regional styles—it was much harder

even then to get hold of good Hunter reds, but it was possible. But we

went out of our way to pursue Hunter Semillon, The Rothbury Estate

Society was founded. The Dunstans were all keen members. I never got a

purple ribbon but we got our ribbons up to that level.

This is the frequent flyers’ club for Rothbury, is it?

DD: Oh, it was great fun. And when I became a wine writer I became

even more plugged into that scene and enjoyed it immensely.

But Rothbury’s whites were wonderful in that time, and also the special

deals. One of the great regrets of my life is that I didn’t go to Chateau

Rahoul(?) for a vintage. I was invited but I had young children at the time

and I had to find an airfare. Evans said, ‘You’ll all be put up for two weeks

and you work over vintage’. Various other people went. Paul Lloyd went.

Croser, of course, went but spent all the time working—isolating yeasts and

what have you out in the vineyard. If the same offer came tomorrow, I’d

be off like a shot. (Laughs)

Anyway, back to 1979. Within a month, before I knew it, I was the wine

writer for the Age. Peter (couldn’t decipher name) at the Age offered me

exactly the same deal as I was getting for the Sydney Sun Herald. So what

had happened with my university job was that I was a full time tutor in

1979. This was also in history at Melbourne University. In days when

there were such things then. There are no such things as full time tutors

any longer.

But it was also the year of the razor gang, and my job was cut in half. So

in 1980 I had a .5 job. And my scholarship had run out. I hadn’t finished

my thesis. So I had to find another source of income, quick smart. And

suddenly there it was on a plate—wine writing. And in the course of 1980 I

16

got more and more involved, and I just gave up university teaching at the

end of 1980 completely. I returned to it towards the end of 1983.

Between 1981 and the end of 1983 I lived solely by writing about wine.

I’d had this training and interest in history, my PhD thesis was on the

history of Melbourne City Council and urban politics, a completely non-wine

related topic. It was also at that stage that I conceived the prospect of

doing a national history of the Australian wine industry. It seemed to me

that writing about the industry from a contemporary perspective also

provided a marvellous focus to visit all the key regions, and research the

history as well. And so from quite early on I began photographing,

interviewing on tape, and trying to document as much of the history of the

industry as I possibly could.

So who were some of the people you would’ve seen then?

DD: Colin Haselgrove, who died soon afterwards. I interviewed him. I

never got to meet Ron Haselgrove, but I did meet Colin.

John Brown, at that stage. John is still alive, but very old and very frail.

The Draytons, I certainly went up to see. I had several interview meetings

with Murray [Tyrrell]. I was equally interested in younger people. I

interviewed Ray Kidd when he was at the height of his fame and powers.

Mick Morris, I developed a special interest in and wrote a little book on Mick

quite early. It was my first book—first published book—Morris of

Rutherglen.

There were a number of South Australians. Lehmann I interviewed a

number of times. Like everyone, I got on well with Peter and Marg.

Did you do any of the Redmans?

DD: Yes.

Bill, was it?

DD: I never met Bill. I’ve heard tapes of him. Owen I did a number of

times. I have to get myself to think of all the people. And the fellow [Peter

17

Lehmann] bought his vineyard from—Arthur Hoffman—I interviewed.

Arthur is now dead.

The Cliffords at Yallum Park, I interviewed. David Wynn, I had a lot to do

with, and became very friendly with. I went up to Mount Eden.

Ian Hickinbotham, I became very friendly with. Ian had a particular and

interesting view on the industry, which has been quite well documented

now.

I got interested in the burgeoning Yarra Valley scene. McMahon.

Middleton. I got interested in remnants of the Great Western scene. Leo

Hurley, for example. I tracked and followed what happened with the

Pyrenees, virtually from the time I got interested in wine. I made that first

visit up there in 1979. We’ve been continuing to go back there ever since,

and I’ve written a major book on the area. So all this went on.

In 1983 I got an offer of some university teaching at Deakin, and there was

also the prospect of doing some sustained work on my thesis to finish it.

And I did, over 1983/1984. So I tapered off the wine writing and gave it

up—gave the Sun Herald up completely in 1984. I gave the Age up in

1982. It just seemed to me that I had to choose between either becoming

a full time wine writer and abandoning my academic career or trying to

keep one alive. It seemed to me silly to have been three-quarters of a way

through a PhD and not finish it.

Was wine writing quite consuming in terms of having to keep up

with tastings and the like.

DD: Oh, hugely so. And when I was doing it on a full time basis I would

be expected to go to two/three/four lunches a week, and an equivalent

number of tastings in the evening. And there were constant offers of trips.

Peter Walker was very keen to take me to the Hunter, very early on, and I

went up there and, of course, had to go and see the companies that Peter

was agent for—the Draytons and what have you. But you also got to see

the other people, like Murray Tyrrell, but he [Peter] recognised that.

I made frequent trips to South Australia. Became quite good mates with

Paul Lloyd, who was writing for the Advertiser at the time.

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I went to Clare. I went to Coonawarra several times. I went to the

Barossa many, many times. I never went to Western Australia. I had

made my own independent wine pilgrimage through South Australia before

I became a wine writer, travelling through Langhorne Creek and the

Barossa and elsewhere. So I was sufficiently interested in wine to do it

entirely off my own bat.

Was that before your marriage, David?

DD: No. Oh, yes, I made one trip to South Australia before I was married.

I went to South Australia before I was married, and knew a little bit about

wine, and made a conscious wine pilgrimage together. Paula lived in South

Australia in ‘72. We got married in ‘74. I knew lots of student types and

figures in South Australia so I was backwards and forwards. I was always

surprised by the fact that I was taken slightly more seriously in Adelaide

than I was in Melbourne. It’s not the case now, I can assure you.

(Laughs)

But it was really in the 1980’s that I had developed twin research

interests, one in wine—I was still working towards this idea of a national

history of the wine industry. And by 1984 I had large manuscripts on

Victoria, on the history of Coonawarra, and James Halliday saw the early

manuscript, which he drew on for his book on Coonawarra.

Yes, I remember he acknowledged that in the book.

DD: Yes, which was generous of him. I’d done a lot of interviews with

people like David Wynn—these people. And even though I’d missed out on

talking to Bill Redman I had access to material. I thought I knew a bit

about it. When the Coonawarra case came up we discovered how little we

knew and how much more there was to find out.

It quickly became apparent to me that the national history of the industry

that I wanted to write couldn’t possibly be 70 or even 90,000 words. It

would probably end up at about 300,000 words, or preoccupy me full time

for two or three or four years.

19

Anyway, in 1983 I got my PhD. I was given a full time job teaching at

Deakin University to tutor in Australian studies—senior tutor in Australian

studies. In October 1984 I joined the heritage branch of the Victorian

Government and I became one of the heritage police. So I worked with the

Victorian Historic Buildings Council, and I was a Victorian public servant

from 1984 till the end of 1993. I did some wine writing in that time—I

wrote occasionally about articles for the Age. Mainly on history topics—

wine history topics. I’d written quite a bit, even before then, on the theme

of wine and history, which I developed as a special area of interest.

And while I was with the Historic Buildings Council I worked with architects.

We worked with historic houses and properties. I maintained some of my

interest in the wine industry. So some of the Victorian wine industry

buildings, which were on the register of historic buildings, were in effect

there because of me. And that was welcomed in some instances. It was

treated somewhat sceptically by others. People like Gill de Pury accepted

that they were the holders of a national treasure. And if you know the

winery out at Yeringberg it’s an 1870’s timber winery. It’s an astonishing

thing. A purpose built, gravitational winery. And there are some

remarkable buildings from the nineteenth century. And Victoria’s heritage

of wine is quite extensive. You know there are some winery buildings like

the (couldn’t decipher name) winery of (sounds like, Griffin-hargen), up

near Bendigo. If it was in South Australia it would be a national treasure.

But because it’s off the beaten track, outside Bendigo, nobody knows about

it.

So I was helpful, I think, in having those buildings recognised, registered

and also, in some cases, given financial assistance. Some owners of

winery properties actually resented any controls over their buildings, and

had a very laissez-faire attitude to their property. They insisted upon their

right to do what they wanted with their property. Pull it down if necessary.

And all that’s part and parcel of the ongoing battle about heritage

conservation in this country, which is much more accepted now I think than

20

it probably was in the 1980’s or 1990’s or the new millennium. But it still

has to battle.

I spent six years with them and then got a transfer to the Museum of

Victoria, in a very turbulent phase of that institution’s history. And I’d only

taken partial interest in wine in those years. I hadn’t obsessed myself with

heritage buildings at all. I was equally involved with the central goldfields,

with the western suburbs of Melbourne, with classic mansions, whatever

heritage battle came up, and with conservation studies for municipalities.

But I was deeply involved in the heritage movement. I’d been a member

of the National Trust. I’d sat on one of their expert committees. And so

the interest in heritage and material culture is another of my strong

interests. I joined the Museum because it felt to me that historic buildings

were only part of a jigsaw, that material culture, artefacts, objects, were

equally important. So I wanted to do some work there.

And while I was there I did a lot with John Sharples, the curator of

numismatics—coins and medals collection. I worked with Andrew Reeves,

who was director of the human services. But it was effectively history.

Archaeology, Aboriginal studies, conservation, it was that division of the

museum. He went off to become Director of the Westralian Museum.

And the museum also had a strong interest in industrial heritage, and in

agriculture, and in rural Victoria, which all coalesced with the wine industry.

Sharples and Reeves were also interested in my interest in the wine

industry, and we were planning for the museum’s new campus at

Southbank, and I became heavily involved in that. And that, of course,

was scuttled by the Kennett government when they came in in 1992. And

it was largely as a consequence of that and the recession of that time and

the massive cuts in the public service that I left the public service and went

back to contract history writing and university in 1994, which I suppose

freed me up a bit.

But it was in 1993, when there was absolutely nothing happening at the

museum and no work to do, that I was working on a wine exhibition with

John Sharples for the museum, which subsequently came off but with a

21

very limited budget. James Halliday opened it. It was an attempt at a

museum exhibition that depicted the history of wine in Victoria. ‘A sip in

time’, it was called.

We had a wine advisory committee at the museum with people like Frank

Devine on it. Later David Wynns’s right-hand man at Wynns. Lovely man.

Doug Crittenden. I think one of the Purbricks was involved. People like

that would come down once every two months, and we were trying to build

up a collection.

We were involved with All Saints. This was with Mike Fallon. Mike Fallon

was keenly interested in developing a wine museum up at All Saints. And

all that came to an end when he dropped dead over lunch one day. And All

Saints fell in a colossal heap. But we were actually working towards having

All Saints as an unofficial campus of the Museum of Victoria, as a vehicle

for the museum’s budding wine collection.

So the wine interest also surfaced quite strongly at the Museum of Victoria,

and that rekindled my aspirations to write a history book. So the idea was

to produce a book in association with the exhibition. But when things got

nasty under Jeff Kennett, and my job with the Southbank unit was

abolished, I had nothing to do, apart from help John with the exhibition of

which he was principal manager and write this book, which I did. So

instead of sitting in a corridor and twiddling my thumbs, as some public

servants did at that stage, I got out the notes and worked very intensively

on the book, which was published in time for the exhibition. And this is

where I met Nick Walker.

I was in charge of the publishing programme for the Southbank campus.

What happened was that Kennett scuttled the Southbank campus, turned it

into Jeff’s shed—commercial exhibition centre. $25,000,000 of taxpayer’s

money was absolutely wasted as a consequence. And a prime museum

site—better than the one they’ve got—squandered for the purposes of the

casino and the commercial exhibition centre.

But it was through developing a whole range of projector titles for the

opening of each of these new exhibitions—you know, dealing with the

22

environment, dealing with natural history, dealing with Australian history,

suburban culture, Melbourne, the works, what have you—that I began to

work closely with Nick. And the idea of a history of wine in Victoria was put

to the museum as a book to be done in conjunction with this wine

exhibition that Sharples and I were also working on. And they knocked it

back.

So Nick and I decided that we would do it together. And the museum

agreed to take sufficient proportion of the print run to make it viable and

help us pay our printer’s bills. We would have enough copies for the trade.

1993 was a very grim time in Melbourne. The real estate market collapsed.

Central city properties were available for a song. There was no traffic on

the roads. (Laughs) it was immensely depressing.

Not like today.

DD: Not like today. And if you were smart you would’ve bought as much

as you could at those prices at that time.

So I worked on this book that became the History of Wine in Victoria, and I

think it is now the standard reference on the subject. It’s now out of print,

seven years later. It’s still in demand and we’ve got to do another edition.

From that point, you go back to teaching at Monash after the

museum. Is that right, David?

DD: No. I left the public service in disgust at what had been done to it

and what was being planned, and I had a job to go to as historian of the

Exhibition Building, which was another long-standing area of interest.

Lynton (couldn’t decipher name), whom I had known through association

with the Historic Buildings Council), was the director at the Royal Exhibition

Building. I think the Royal Exhibition Building is one of two or three of the

most important heritage sites in the country, because of its association

with the Melbourne international exhibition of 1880/‘81, the last of the

world’s great exhibition halls of the nineteenth century. A tremendous

asset for the city. And it had all these different uses over the years,

including a lot of association with the wine industry through the great

23

exhibitions. The cellars of the exhibition buildings were where wines were

stored, displayed and tasted. Better than Pomard actually examines in

some detail the ways in which Victorian and Australian wines appeared and

were assessed and judged through the show circuit that surrounded that

culture.

So my brief was that I would write the history of the Exhibition Building

before the trustees were due to go out of existence, which was at the end

of 1996. At the same time, quite out of the blue, I was offered a job by

Graham Davison, A .5 position teaching their master in public history

degree at Monash. So after some discussion it was agreed that I could try

and do both. It was very difficult, but I did it, and I taught that

programme with Jan Penny, for three years, and that turned out to be a

very happy association. I never expected to be an academic again, after

having spent ten years out of it as a public servant, and having dabbled in

the wine industry and what have you. But that was really the basis for me

moving back into university life. And at the end of 1996 I was approached

by Peter Spearitt to teach tourism with the National Centre for Australian

Studies, which I did and have been doing ever since. And that became a

full time appointment in 1997.

And now, quite unexpectedly, I find myself senior lecturer at the university

teaching Australian Studies again after all these years. But with enormous

freedom now to teach and research in whatever areas I want. So I’ve been

able to maintain a fairly active interest with the wine industry—to do some

consultancy work. I don’t write regular wine columns on what people

should be drinking. I think other people do that much better now, and

more capably than I do, but I think I have something to offer in terms of

some depth of experience and involvement with the industry over a long

period and a real commitment and interest in its history and culture. And

so at various stages I’ve given academic papers and working up various

topics in association with the industry and its history. I’m quite interested

in the history of Australian wine export. You know, not the boom since the

1980’s but the decline of the earlier market that we had.

24

The 1880’s and the 1890’s market?

DD: Yes. From about the 1880’s through to the 1950’s. And I gave a

paper on that subject to the British Australian Studies Conference in

London last year.

So I have a number of projects on the go. I was quite keen to be involved

with the Coonawarra investigation. I was keen to see the Pyrenees book

back in print, because at various stages I had been involved in updating

that. And I’m now keen to try and get another edition of Better Than

Pomard out. I’m also working on a guide to the Peninsula wineries.

I should also mention that my father bought a property down the

Mornington Peninsula in 1986, and together we started playing around with

vines. And of course, this became something more. In 1988 we planted a

vineyard properly, and he made wine. It was his vineyard and his winery.

He made wine there from 1990—that was our first vintage of any quantity.

1996/7 was the last one he made.

He made sparkling wine. Hand-made. Greg Gallagher at Taltarni—whom I

knew—encouraged us to make sparkling wine. We had a lot of fun. We

made a couple of bottles of good Pinot Noir. We made some thin, watery

Cabernet. It’s very hard to grow good Cabernet down there. It’s too cold.

So the whole business of making wine as well was got out of our system

through that.

25

TAPE 2 - SIDE A

NATIONAL WINE CENTRE ORAL HISTORY.

Interview with Dr David Dunstan on 29th November, 2001.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

DD: I think if you make wine yourself, and you are committed to a

particular wine region, through association, it makes it very hard for you to

be a truly dispassionate critic. And I suppose being involved with the

vineyard on the Peninsula meant that any possibility of rejuvenating your

career as a wine critic was killed off.

But I find myself in reasonable demand as a commentator or observer.

I’ve helped a number of people with museum displays. (Sounds like Bel-

garn-ie), up at Bendigo, I just put in a little museum, and I wrote the text

for that. When the National Wine Museum, as it was then called, was first

mooted, I put in a bid for that, and a feasibility study. And we came

second. It was a fairly intense couple of days in Adelaide doing that, and

we did a presentation. But I think they were more concerned about the

economics of it, and so it went to Peat Marwick or somebody.

And they didn’t want any association with a museum or what museums do,

which I think is a pity because I think that they should’ve become a

collecting institution, and I argued so at the time. There’s a desperate

need, particularly with modern scanning technology and digitisation, for a

museum or collection for photographs and images. And even retention of

negatives and some prints. There is a desperate need for somebody to

start conserving visual imagery relating to the wine industry. Much more

important than any other source. And much more important than

collecting old wine pressers, which was what we were doing at the Museum

of Victoria.

The other thing that I think is important to do is for the industry to develop

a register of heritage assets so that it knows where they are and under

26

what particular care and protection. And it should encourage donation of

some assets to relevant collecting institutions, like the Australian Museum,

like the Museum of Victoria, like the South Australian Museum. But know

where those things are, and what they are, and how they can be accessed,

and what they’re worth.

And it astonishes me that an industry with a history, and with such a

conspicuous involvement with heritage—heritage is actually part of its

marketing thrust, and an important part—[should have done so little].

There was a study done a few years ago, and I think Penfolds

commissioned it and quoted it, about Australian wines vis-a-vis French

wines on the UK market. And Australian wines fell down because

sophisticated European consumers thought there was a heritage about

European wines that Australian wines totally lacked. They were new world

wines. They were the product of recent development. They were obsessed

with technology to the exclusion of tradition.

People like you and I know differently. We know about the Busby

collection. We know about pre phylloxera vines. We know that the

industry has a history that goes back over 150 years. That there are

individual wine traditions, like Hunter Semillon, that go back to the 1850’s.

Styles that have been fashioned out here in distinctive and interesting

ways. The industry seems to be much more neglectful of that. In a

professional sense, it’s quite happy to tout it on the back of a label, or in a

commercial sense, but at some point it seems to me it’s got to start talking

to, or even employing, historians, curators, specialists in the field.

David, you’re talking about hoped-for changes that we’d all like to

see. Were there significant changes in the time that you were both

writing and then researching about wine within the industry?

DD: Huge changes. Huge changes. I think I welcomed and heralded

some of those changes. Right from the start I was very enthusiastic about

cool climate viticulture, and Nat White on the Mornington Peninsula has

privately paid me the compliment of saying that some of my early articles

inspired him to really take it seriously and push on with it.

27

I can remember at a Melbourne Show in the early 1980’s a senior

winemaker from a South Australian Barossa company, of which you’re very

closely associated but shall remain nameless, said to me that the industry

would never invest, or take seriously, any plantings or activities south of

the Great Dividing Range. (Laughs)

And now I think the mainstream industry in the early 80’s regarded a lot of

those people as hobbyists and faddists, who would never amount to very

much. We now see an explosion of wine growing and winemaking

everywhere. You know, all over the place. We are now seeing distinctive

styles emerging from places that had no nineteenth century heritage to

speak of. It’s been wonderful to see the rebirth of the Yarra Valley. When

I started writing it was a place where a couple of doctors and architects

and lawyers had vineyards, and that was just a bit of fun for them. Now,

of course, it is a major theatre of the Australian industry, producing high

quality styles for which people are paying a lot of money.

And wine tourism is a huge concern there as well. I’ve observed things like

Domaine Chandon taking off. I wrote about people like Garry Crittenden

for Business Review Weekly. I should also add that I wrote regularly on a

monthly basis for Business Review Weekly up until 1997. And I

moonlighted under various pseudonyms at various stages. I was quite

prolific. I wrote for Age Weekender under the name of Jenny Bunn. It was

quite fun writing as a woman. I got propositioned once (Laughs) by a

male. I wrote under a pseudonym for the National Times when I was a

public servant. I wrote under the name of Matthew Flinders. So it did

keep on going longer than some people would think.

But in terms of styles—wine styles—I certainly noticed enormous changes

in white wine. The red wines—Australian red wines—broadly speaking,

were good when I started writing and I felt that they fell in a trough in

terms of quality, largely because of new plantings and inexperienced

makers. I thought in the late 70’s Australian red wine was probably at its

lowest ebb. And this was as a direct consequence of the red wine boom.

There were still good red wines to be had and found, but I saw the tail end

28

of that wonderful era of the 60’s when the classic red wines coming off old

vines were being hand-made. And they were fabulous wines. John

Brown’s wines, Redman’s wines, the Tyrrell wines, the Drayton wines. The

Tulloch wines—Hector Tulloch’s red wines off the homestead block were

just fabulous. And Lindemans.

What relation is Hector to Jay?

DD: I think he was his uncle.

So I saw and tasted all those wines, largely because my father was saying,

‘You should think about this. You should taste this’.

The end of his working week would happen on Thursday—Thursday evening

he always had to write a column for the next day. The Saturday one got

written in advance because it was a feature piece. And so Friday was his

day off, and then Saturday, and he was back at work on Sunday. So the

bottle of wine would come out on Thursday evening.

And, of course, I was at school. I was fifteen. He subscribed to the

theory—the French theory—that moderate consumption of alcohol is more

likely to produce a responsible drinker than otherwise. I’m not certain

that’s true. I haven’t followed the same principle. I’ve got two sons who

are both deeply interested in wine. The third one enjoys it. The eldest,

Jack, does a great trade buying and selling wine at Langtons, which I don’t,

and he ended up as assistant manager from doing it as a student with

Quaffers, one of the big liquor barns here, for a while. He’s out of the

industry now. He’s gone back to nursing. But he could’ve had a career in

the retail side of the industry. And he’s very knowledgeable.

But that also came about through the winery and vineyard on the

Mornington Peninsula. They got interested, I think, through working in the

vineyard and making wine, which is great fun.

Your father sold that in the end? I should’ve asked that.

DD: He sold it in 1997. There’s a great experience about the wine

industry. You’re talking about styles but you could also talk about the

29

economy. There’s the cycles that it’s gone through. Cycles of boom and

bust in the economy. I can remember the period of economic trough for

the Victorian industry, in particular, was in the 1980’s, which was quite

depressing. And then the doldrums that the whole industry went through

with heavy discounting right up until the mid 90’s. Great for the consumer

but it’s only really been in the last five years that the industry’s been

profitable and healthy and a success story from the industry point of view.

What I find personally depressing about the current situation is the tax

regime. It virtually makes it impossible for ordinary Australians to discover

quality Australian wine unless they’re prepared to travel. They can buy

good quality cheap Australian wine but there’s not that opportunity to

stumble across classic or great wines at a reasonable price any longer,

because of the iniquitous taxing policies of the Federal Government. And

they become drawn in by wine tourism, which is a whole other discussion,

which I think is very interesting but which I think is part of the cultural

context of the wine industry.

So that’s another large change, isn’t it?

DD: Yes. Wine tourism has always existed but it’s had different guises

and different manifestations.

And certainly not the numbers.

DD: Before 1974 when retail price maintenance was outlawed, all the wine

barons would get together and they’d decide on the prices. And there was

no discounting of wine. And so if Dan Murphy didn’t sell Penfolds 389 at a

certain price, he didn’t get his allocation the next year. So he couldn’t

discount it.

But then all that went out the window in 1974, thanks to Bob Hawke. And

that was a two-edged sword. It was good in some respects and bad in

others. Before ‘74 the only way you could get cheap wine was to go to the

vineyard. And so there was a wine tourist culture prior to that time as

well. People would turn up to [the winery]—people like my father with his

30

ten gallon drum. People would turn up to Morris’ with their demijohns and

they’d fill up on Port and what have you. So there was a wine tourist

culture there.

There was a wine tourist culture in the nineteenth century as well. And

there’s a wine tourist culture now, which has taken off in a huge way. It’s

now been studied and people are writing books about it, and it’s a major

part of the industry.

Just thinking back to—quite briefly—who are some of the really significant people or characters that you have come across over the

last thirty/forty years?

DD: Well, of the people that I’ve been associated with and who I found

very influential, in the Victorian context, Roy Moorfield was quite important

because he promoted Victorian wine at a critical stage. His exhibitions of

Victorian winemakers, the first one in 1979, which I attended and wrote

about enthusiastically, were partly as a result of his prompting that I was

made the Age wine writer. He went to see Peter (couldn’t decipher name)

and said, ‘(couldn’t decipher word) to stage this exhibition. It’s a big

investment for me. It’s a big risk’. He was a Melbourne wine merchant at

the time. ‘I’d like to get some coverage in the Age, but I don’t feel that I’m

likely to get it from a competitor. Who’s your leading wine scribe?’

I think that was one of the reasons why Dan had the rug pulled under him.

A number of people had been complaining. I wrote a letter to the Age at

the time about it. I enthusiastically wrote about the first exhibition of

Victorian winemakers. And Roy became a great friend—Roy and Selena.

Roy has since been enormously influential in export circles as the wine

adviser to Cathay Pacific. Selena comes from Hong Kong. The fact that

Australian wine sells as well as it does in Hong Kong is largely due to his

influence. David Coombe will tell you the same thing. I haven’t seen quite

so much of Roy the last ten years. Might see a bit more of him now that

I’m back in the inner city. He’s a habitué of North Melbourne.

He is, indeed.

31

DD: (Laughs) Yes.

And Roy has not been given the credit he has been due in helping to push

the Victorian revival along. He has also been an enthusiastic supporter of

cool climate wines.

Dominique Portet of Taltarni, I had a fair bit to do with over the years.

Crusty individualist in some ways. I don’t think Dominique ever quite lived

up to the promise he presented with red wine, but he was a very good

businessman and he certainly got that enterprise on the map. And he was

one of the pioneers in Tasmania.

Croser, I thought, was an immense influence, and said so very early on. I

was one of the first people to write about Croser. I devoted two articles to

him in the Age. I think it was in 1980. It was almost unheard.

Had he set up Petaluma by then or was he still at Hardys?

DD: No, he’d left Hardys, and Petaluma was his own private brand, but

essentially he was Oenotec and with -

Tony Jordan.

DD: With Wagga. So he was still teaching at Wagga at that stage. I think

we grew a little bit more critical of Croser later on. He was certainly a

great innovator with white wine. He was not with red wine. And it took

him some years to really make a great red wine—the bracket of reds from

‘88 through to ‘93 Coonawarras that Brian’s philosophy and approach to

red winemaking turned the corner. And that 1990 Coonawarra Cabernet I

think is a wine for your grandchildren. (Laughs)

Croser had immense influence. And I think the danger was that that

became a bit of an orthodoxy. But in his approach to yeast and holding

juice and absolute quality of fruit, and his attitude towards compromises,

he was dead right on. In the sense, you know, you make one compromise,

you might get away with it, but if you make another and another and

another, you notice it. So you make no compromises. And the total

32

perfectionist attitude he brought to winemaking was very important. He

was a great publicist. He was a great promoter.

Evans, of course, was a huge influence. And Bulletin Place was just magic

for me. Whenever I went to Sydney, I went there for lunch, and I went as

often as I could. And those functions and the sort of circle he had around

him was just immense fun. So he was a person whose company I enjoyed

as a much younger man, whenever he came to Melbourne or whenever I

went to Sydney. He was in some respects a flawed character. Huge ego.

There was an Evans’ camp and a non Evans’ camp. You were either in it or

out of it. And I spoke to people who were definitely not in the Evans’

camp.

I thought what happened with Peter Fox was a great tragedy. I think Len

was on the verge of doing something really remarkable. Brian Croser and

Tony Jordan had immense influence as consultants in southern Victoria, to

people like Baillieu Myer at Elgee Park on the Mornington Peninsula, and

particularly I think with Mitchelton, who became the large central winery of

Victoria. And Don Lewis learnt from Brian and Tony. And he is a fastidious

winemaker and a very careful winemaker, but he faithfully followed their

principles and has been a faithful disciple of theirs for twenty years.

And out of Mitchelton first came these wonderful white wines—wonderful

Chardonnays, wonderful Marsanne. And it was Michelton’s discovery of the

Pyrenees through Dalwhinnie that really brought them some real quality in

red wine as well.

And the philosophy and approaches that Oenotec brought into Victoria

helped set a number of the Victorian wineries up.

Then there are Ian Hickinbotham and [his son] Stephen. Stephen was

another remarkable figure whose sad and tragic death in 1986 robbed

Australia of potentially one of the country’s greatest ever winemakers. He

was already beginning to do remarkable and great things, particularly with

the cool climate wines at Anakie, near Geelong, but also on the Mornington

Peninsula. The Hickinbothams helped set up a number of vineyards on the

Mornington Peninsula, including my father’s, but also, more importantly,

33

Merricks (couldn’t decipher word). He would’ve been the winemaker there

had he lived, and Tod Dexter was only brought in when Stephen was killed.

And he was a great evangelist, too. A tremendous innovator. Some of the

things that he tried were hit and miss, like his Cab Mac experiments—

carbonic maceration in a big plastic bag. But the wines were delicious,

fresh and fruity, and they appealed. And he made some marvellous

botrytised wines, too. And he had a particular take on botrytis that was

very interesting. And about red wine as well.

Hardly anyone in southern Victoria, below the Great Dividing Range, was

capable of thinking creatively about the new winemaking regimes and

viticultural regimes that were possible, and necessary, to develop styles of

wine in this part of the world. [Stephen was]. We know so much more now

about viticulture. Richard Smart’s work on viticulture has just been

revolutionary down here—exposure of grapes to the sun. Richard Smart

and Peter Dry used to be collaborators.

I think Croser is actually quite a doctrinaire thinker. I don’t say that to

belittle him at all, but he thinks philosophically and he works on principles.

He’s a very powerful thinker, and a very powerful communicator. Never

more so I think than in the late 70’s/early 80’s when he was young and

vigorous and not part of the establishment. Again, I don’t say that to

belittle him, but necessarily if you hang around and are a major player in

the Australian wine industry for twenty years you make your peace and

become part of the establishment. But he was a radical then. He was a

Turk. You know, he was saying things that other people didn’t want to

hear, or thought were wrong, or produced awful wines.

But Stephen Hickinbotham seemed to me to have a capacity of thinking in

a very creative and fluid way about new situations. You don’t see too

much of that about. I think Kathleen (couldn’t decipher name) down on

the Mornington Peninsula is like that. And she is another remarkable

person but from another generation. And she also has a capacity, which is

fairly rare amongst winemakers, to articulate their thinking. Croser

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certainly had that. And he would’ve been a good teacher—a tremendous

teacher.

Leo Hurley, former Great Western winemaker, was another truly

remarkable person—he’s dead now—that I had the privilege to meet and

write about. Leo was Colin Preece’s head man in charge of red wines for a

long, long time. And effectively made a lot of the wines. I don’t want to

belittle Colin Preece, but I also don’t think that Leo got enough credit for

the work that he did.

And his memory! He could remember having seen Hans Irvine as a boy in

1922. And Leo was remarkable because when he retired from Seppelts at

Great Western he was still a teetotaller. Never drank. He was a product of

a totally different world. The rural depression culture. But he tasted wine,

he understood wine, and he advised a number of the new generation

vignerons at Pyrenees. Russell Branton at Warrenmang. The

Summerfields. He actually made wine for them on the condition that you

drove out and picked him up at Stawell and took him to the winery and

took him back again. And he made a number of the early Warrenmang

wines. I’ve drunk them all now but they were wonderful wines. And they

had that stamp of old Great Western quality on them.

You talk about wine styles changing. There are a number of styles that I

miss, and dearly love drinking. Good quality reds made in clean, old oak.

And the Great Western wines were like that. And also wood-matured

whites, of the old style.

In old wood.

DD: In old wood, very often, yes. Not in new oak.

A lot of these had to be early picked. A lot of them had a fair bit of sulphur

in them. A lot of them had to have bottle age to show their true worth.

The white wines, that is. They’re not economic prospects any more. But

I’m thinking in particular of old Quelltaler Semillons. And also the Buring

Rieslings—the DW Rieslings—that John Vickery made. These were

astonishing and wonderful wines with maturity on them. By and large,

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they don’t exist any longer. You might see some great Rieslings in South

Australia, but I certainly don’t see Rieslings of that Vickery style any more.

David, thank you very much for talking with me today.

DD: Pleasure.