STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/76

Full transcript of an interview with

ROSS JENKINS

on 3 December 2002

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 692/76 ROSS JENKINS

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 692/76 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

AUSTRALIAN WINE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.

Interview with Ross Jenkins on 3rd December, 2002.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Ross, where and when were you born?

RJ: I was born in 1925 at Tanunda in the Barossa Valley.

Who were your parents, Ross?

RJ: Edward (Ted) Jenkins, and my mother was Freda Jenkins. They

actually were born in the Kapunda area, and Dad came to Tanunda as a

result of being able to get a job at Chateau Tanunda. Strangely enough it

was the place where I started working as well. So they settled in Tanunda

early 1925, and I was born towards the end of 1925. So that’s how my

parents started.

What did your father do?

RJ: Well, he worked in the winery at Chateau Tanunda. Then a few years

after he had been there—I think he was there for about four years—my

aunt, who’d married a fellow by the name of Bill Petras at Tanunda who

had a winery -

Ross, that was down Langmeil -

RJ: Yes, that’s right.

- he took ill and died, and he was only about mid forties, or towards fifty.

And my aunt appealed to Dad to help her out and take over the running of

the business.

Now, there was a very substantial vineyard as well as a winery, and Dad

then moved into that operation and stayed there for about ten or twelve

4

years. And we lived in the Petras home at Tanunda when I was a young

boy, and so I witnessed all the growing of the grapes, the vineyard work

and the ferments, and all the winery operations, and I suppose it was

pretty much in my blood. (Laughs)

Could you just describe that time at Petras to me, Ross?

RJ: Yes. The cellar itself was a nice stone building with all the storage,

and then there was an iron building outside of that with open fermenters.

They were concrete tanks—open tanks—for fermentation, and a series of

closed tanks as well. And then there was a crusher, which received the

grapes, and a press. So it was a fairly simple operation.

Hand press?

RJ: It was a hydraulic drive press, and a cage, and all the must (or skins)

from the tanks was tipped into that and then it was pressed. So that was

the operation in its basic form, and it was quite adequate for their

purposes.

What type of grapes were being grown in the vineyard? Would you

remember that at all?

RJ: Well, there was quite a lot of Shiraz, Mataro, Sercial I remember. And

Doradillo. There wasn’t much Riesling. I think they had a little bit of

Riesling. There were Sherry—a grape called Sherry—a bit of Cabernet

Sauvignon, Mataro I think I mentioned, and Grenache. I think they were

the main varieties.

You’ve raised something interesting for me. In the Barossa that

Sherry grape they think was a Spanish grape, don’t they? Is that correct?

RJ: Yes.

I can’t remember it’s name.

RJ: I can’t either. Oh, there was Pedro as well—Pedro Ximenes—which is

also a Spanish grape I understand.

5

Were Petras actually making wine?

RJ: Yes. They were making it and marketing it. So it was a complete

operation really. Vineyard, winemaking and maturation and selling under

their label.

And fortified, was it?

RJ: Yes, nearly all fortified wine. Some dry red, Claret styles.

So a drier style?

RJ: Yes.

And did you have wine at home?

RJ: Yes. We used to drink it regularly.

Table wine as well in those years?

RJ: Yes. I think it was mainly fortified wine that we drank. Not that I

drank any at that stage because I was pretty young. (Laughter)

Yes, but your parents were.

RJ: Yes.

Now, I’m just trying to remember. On Langmeil Road where the

winery was, was the house opposite that? On the other side of the road?

RJ: No, the house and the winery building were on the same side, and on

the opposite side there was an orchard.

Yes, that’s right.

RJ: I don’t think there was any vineyard there.

Because it’s all housing there now, isn’t it?

RJ: Yes. Oh, there was a small vineyard across the road—yes, that’s

right—in the early stages but that was pulled out pretty early on.

6

So you grew up in this tradition, Ross. Was the Barossa a very

wine focused place even in those years—the 20’s and 30’s?

RJ: Yes, very much so. The wine industry was really the basic industry of

the Valley, and everybody knew about it and consumed wine. There were

quite significant consumers of wine in the Barossa, and they would buy it in

gallon and two gallon jars from the winery and take it home and drink it.

And being fortified wine, well, there was no worries about ullage1 in the

containers. It was very common to pay a visit to somebody in the Barossa

and they’d offer you a schluck, as they called it, which is a glass of fortified

wine.

The schluck I think’s become very well known. (Laughs)

Ross, growing up with that, were you also educated at Tanunda?

RJ: Yes. I went to Tanunda Primary School and then to Nuriootpa High

School, and I had two years there. I hadn’t made any decision to leave

school at that time but I got a message sometime in December that Ian

Seppelt at Chateau Tanunda wanted to see me. He was the manager there

at the time. So I popped in to see him and he was offering me a job. And

apparently he’d gone to the Headmaster of the Tanunda School and

described to him what he wanted, and the Headmaster must have

obviously mentioned my name. So he offered this job, and the pay was £1

per week, which seemed quite adequate at that time. It’s practically

nothing now. And I started on the 2nd January, 1941, having completed

my Intermediate at High School. In some ways I’ve often regretted not

going on and studying more, but it seemed too good an opportunity to

miss, and I took the opportunity up.

This would have been age fifteen for you?

RJ: Yes.

1 Ullage or air space – part full

7

My first memories of Chateau Tanunda was that it was such an

imposing and magnificent edifice. In your days when you began,

Ross, was it still that magnificent building?

RJ: That building has been the same, I would say, since it was constructed

in 1891, and it’s still very much the same today. The internal part of the

building has changed somewhat, but the exterior is very much the same as

long as I can remember it.

Well, internally, when you first knew it, what was it like?

RJ: Well, it’s a very thick stone wall building, the back half of which was

completely underground. It was quite a deep cellar. I suppose it would

have been 20 to 25 feet deep from ground level at the back. It was into

the side of a hill, and the front of the building, of course, came out onto

ground level. But because it was underground and it was two floors—there

was another floor on the top—it was a very cool cellar, and it was

absolutely ideal for maturing dry red wine, for instance. The bottom part

of the cellar was filled with 1,000 gallon and 500 gallon vats—that’s about

4,500 litres or 2,250 litres—and they were all stored with, mainly, dry red

wine.

I can remember a barrel hall at the top level. Would that be right?

RJ: Yes, that’s right. Brandy was a long suit of the Chateau of course—

Chateau Tanunda Brandy—and quantities of that were made that were

quite large. It had a very big market share. The top part of the building

was mainly devoted to storage of brandy, which had to be matured for two

years in wooden casks, and that’s where the hogsheads, as we called

them, were stored up there. Eventually another building at the back of the

Chateau was added on, in the same architectural style as the main

building, where the growth of the market was taken up with extra storage.

So when you came into it, Seppelts owned it. Is that correct?

RJ: Yes.s They bought it in 1916.

8

That’s right. I think originally it had been a company that included

a lot of growers around the Barossa.

RJ: The Adelaide Wine Company was the name of it.

That’s right.

RJ: It was mainly formed as a cooperative type operation, but they

weren’t able to make a success of it and sold out eventually.

What was your first job there, Ross?

RJ: I was a clerk and laboratory assistant, so I did some clerical work in

the office and a lot of the laboratory testing.

Had you had any laboratory experience before?

RJ: No experience. Did a bit of science at high school, that was all.

And who were the people that you were working with there?

RJ: Well, Ian Seppelt was virtually manager and the only one in the

technical type operation there, and there was a lady, Louise Heuzenroeder,

who was a most efficient female. She was absolutely outstanding. So I

had some pretty good training in office efficiency. She didn’t do any of the

laboratory work of course, but Ian Seppelt was the man who taught me

what to do in terms of the laboratory work and gave me my initial training

in winemaking and all that sort of thing.

So with the laboratory work, what was there for brandy that was

needed at that stage?

RJ: Oh, not a lot for brandy, but we had all this red wine in storage and

we had to test for sulphur dioxide and alcohol levels and all that sort of

thing. And we took lees samples and examined them under a microscope,

and that type of work.

Did you find that interesting?

RJ: Yes. Very interesting. I really liked that part of the work.

9

And what was Ian like to work with?

RJ: Good, yes. I found him very friendly and helpful, and he taught me a

lot actually, and I’ve got him to thank for my initial learning in the wine

industry.

Were there other cellar staff there as well?

RJ: There were about 30 to 35 cellar-hands, all local people. At that time

they were working a 48 hour week, and their wages were £4.3s. (Laughs)

That eventually became a 44 hour week, and eventually 40 hours.

And would they have stopped for their morning schluck at this stage?

RJ: Yes. That was quite an interesting thing really because they’d have a

drink at 10 o’clock in the morning—some of them had two drinks—and not

just little two ounce glasses. They had pony glasses, which were probably

nearer to four ounces I guess. It amazed me, the capacity of many of

those fellows. They’d have a couple of glasses at ten o’clock, and then

another couple at lunchtime, and go home for lunch, and three o’clock in

the afternoon again. So it was quite a sight really to see these fellows

drinking such a lot of wine and yet being able to work and not be affected

by it. Admittedly, they worked really hard. It was hard work in the

wineries in those days. All the vat washers had to get into the vats and

swill hot water around inside to clean them, and that was tough work.

Much of the wine and brandy that was sold was sold in hogsheads, which

had to be rolled up onto a truck and then up-ended, and all that sort of

thing. So it was fairly heavy work.

Did it have its own cooperage there?

RJ: No. We were very close to John’s cooperage, which was just across

the road from where we were, so we used to take all the casks over there

for repairs. And there was some mighty repairs required, too, because

those casks were used for transporting to interstate places and overseas.

10

Then they were sent back and, of course, they were damaged quite

extensively through handling and so on and required a lot of repairs.

So other than your laboratory work, Ross, what did your clerical

work entail at the time?

RJ: Well, I had to pay the fellows once weekly. Work out how much

they’d earned in overtime and all that sort of thing, and pay them. At that

time the means of assessing the quantities of brandy that were filled off

into casks to be stored, they were weighed empty and weighed full, and we

got the specific gravity of the brandy and worked out how much weight of

brandy there was. From that we could calculate the liquid gallons in the

container, and then we knew what the strength was and we had to

calculate the proof gallons in each cask. And all this had to be done in

conjunction with the Customs and Excise Department, who had two officers

at Chateau Tanunda, so there was a lot of work involved in all of that. So

there was a fair bit of clerical work there.

What, in keeping them happy?

RJ: No. Keeping the records up to date. (Laughter) And then, of course,

during the vintage the grapes were all weighed and we had to calculate the

value at the particular price per ton for that variety, and then we entered

that into ledgers. It was all done manually, and doing tons, cwts and

quarters in pounds, shillings and pence was a pretty complicated system.

We couldn’t decimalise it easily, so we had ready reckoners and all that

sort of thing to work it out.

I was going to ask if you had them. (Laughs)

RJ: Yes.

Oh, that would have been some type of work. Not simple.

RJ: No. And we had to keep an account for each grower, and then they

were paid usually an advance payment in—I think it was the end of March

11

and one at the end of April, and then a final payment probably by the end

of June.

Did the growers have a fairly precarious life in those days? Would

you recall?

RJ: No, I don’t think they saw it that way. They had a fairly good market

for their fruit, and fairly good relations with the winemakers, and I think

they were fairly happy. Later on, of course, it became difficult when it got

nearer to that vine-pull time in the 1980’s. Wineries were more inclined to

take all of the fruit that was available and they weren’t under any pressure

to minimise their intake because of capital availability or whatever. There

was a greater tendency just to take the fruit available within the vintage

than there was later on.

Would that have been to do with the fact that the wineries were

largely family owned, do you think?

RJ: I think so. And at that time the winemakers were able to write into

their books the value of wine at about a shilling, or one and six, per gallon,

or something like that, which was way below the cost of production. So

tax-wise it didn’t affect them too much. They were writing down the value

of their stock at the end of the period and that minimised their tax profit,

as it were. So there weren’t too many difficulties in that regard for the

winemakers.

Did you have much contact in your early years with the wider

Seppelt family, Ross?

RJ: Not a lot until about 1946 when I came back after the war.

(Tape restarted)

Talking about contacts with the other members of the Seppelt family.

I went into the Air Force in 1945. Only for a brief time, about eighteen

months, because the war was over soon after I went in. And when I came

back Ian Seppelt indicated to me that he wanted me to take more

responsibility, and I came into contact then with the other members of the

12

family, mainly because I had to go to Head Office a couple of times and

gradually met a wider number of the family members.

So Head Office was at Seppeltsfield?

RJ: No. Head Office moved to Adelaide in—I think it was 1940, or

thereabouts.

Right.

RJ: Just before I started working for the company, and the Head Office

was in Gresham Street, Adelaide.

Oh, was it?

RJ: That was the one behind King William Street. The Gresham Hotel was

-

Yes, I remember the Gresham quite well.

RJ: And the offices were there.

Yes, that was quite a dark little street there, if I remember.

RJ: Yes. And the wind used to blow up and down that street! (Laughs)

I remember that only too well. At the back of Miller Anderson there. It would rip down the lane.

RJ: And at that time the Adelaide branch of Seppelts, where they did the

bottling for the local distribution, was in that building as well, and it was

some years later that they bought the property at Flinders Street and that

became the Adelaide branch and the Head Office remained in Gresham

Street.

Yes, that was many years later, wasn’t it?

RJ: Yes.

So, Ross, you come back from your flying days in the war -

RJ: Flying days! (Laughter)

13

Flying day, then. The short time. You would have been grateful for

that I would have thought.

RJ: Yes.

And you’re given this new challenge. What form did that have over the years to come? Where did you go in the firm?

RJ: Well, he, Ian Seppelt, virtually was taking more responsibility in

Adelaide with Head Office tasks and I was left with a lot of the day to day

operating responsibilities of Chateau Tanunda. That eventually led to my

appointment as the manager there, I think in 1956.

So you were still a relatively young man then.

RJ: Yes, I was. I was only about 30/31 when I was appointed to that

position.

Did you do any further study in those years at all?

RJ: Well, I had studied accountancy soon after I went to Chateau

Tanunda. This was through Hemingway Robertson who were -

Oh, the Institute.

RJ: - correspondence teachers. I found that pretty hard work actually

because you didn’t have anybody to talk about any problems. So I did

that, and I studied as much as I could about the winemaking operations

without going to any formal schools at the time. But then later I did some

training in management at the Institute of Technology at their

management course there, and I went to an advanced management course

in Honolulu in 1971, which was a six week live-in course there. So I had

some opportunities for further managerial training anyway. At that time I

also visited wineries in California and Europe, so that was really good

experience and quite an eye-opener, too, to see the way that they did

things there. That was about the time when the wine industry was

changing rapidly to more table wine and less fortified wine.

14

What did you see there at that time, Ross? We might as well move

forward.

RJ: Well, the thing that struck me most about California I think was the

attention that they gave to temperature control there. Many of their

buildings were insulated. In the Napa Valley, for instance, it was so cool at

night that by pumping cold air into insulated buildings at night they were

able to keep a cool temperature during the day time. And of course, lots of

our wine was stored in tin sheds and all that sort of thing. It became

apparent to me that temperature control and so on was very important.

And as a company Seppelts hadn’t invested too well in equipment for the

making of table wine and the maturation of table wine. I would say that

we were probably a little bit behind the eight ball there because we were so

strong in fortified wine and brandy that that gave us our profit

opportunities at that time. So there was a need to do things a little bit

differently. That’s probably more what I learnt as a result of that trip than

anything.

Ross, Seppelts have been famed for their ports and sherries, haven’t they?

RJ: Yes.

And their very fine flor sherries.

RJ: Yes.

Did you have anything to do with that production at all?

RJ: Well, I went to Seppeltsfield eventually and was manager there for a

few years before I was appointed production manager of the company,

when I had to move to Adelaide. So I was pretty closely involved with a lot

of that for about six years. But the flor sherries at Seppeltsfield were

absolutely outstanding really, and the building in which they’re stored is a

nice building with high roof and nice temperature control, and it’s ideally

suited for the making of good flor sherry.

15

Ross, let’s just finish off the overview of your career. We’re up to—

what?—the late 60’s/early 70’s.

RJ: Yes. 1961 I went to Seppeltsfield, 1956 I was appointed manager of

Chateau Tanunda, and 1961 I was transferred to Seppeltsfield as assistant

manager, and Mel Bell was still the manager there at that time. He retired

in 1966 and I was appointed manager of Seppeltsfield.

And then in 1968 I was appointed the company’s production manager, and

I was the first non family member to have a senior position in the

company, and I was asked to transfer to Head Office. So I took up the

position there. I think the reasoning behind that was that we had a Great

Western winery, a Rutherglen winery and then the wineries in the Barossa,

and I think it was thought that it was best to have a chap in charge of all

those things stationed at a neutral position. (Laughs) Plus the fact that

the company was moving into developing a costing system for making the

wine, and we were fairly well up I think, even if I say it myself, in the

leadership position in developing that costing system, and I was very

closely involved in working that out. And we had what we called a

standard costing system. In other words, we set standards of gallons per

ton—or litres per ton—that we would expect, and what the standard cost

was then of each litre for the cost of the fruit that was used to make that

wine, and so on.

It must have been very unusual for the time -

RJ: It was.

- because that was practiced in a lot of other industry but certainly

not in winemaking.

RJ: Not in winemaking, no. And the hard part was to establish those

parameters, such as the litres per ton that you obtain, how much was lost

in the meantime by filtration and clarification, evaporation and other

wastage, and then come up with a net figure that you ended up in the

bottle to sell. So to establish those standards was quite a big operation,

and it took a lot of work to set up that formula.

16

Ross, was that to sort of have a standard type of management

accounting?

RJ: Yes, that’s right. We had consultants in during the 1960’s and they

were very keen to set the system up.

Was that PA or somebody, was it?

RJ: It was Cooper Bros.

Oh, yes.

RJ: I spent a lot of time with the fellow who was doing the study at the

time and we eventually worked something out.

And then when I went to Head Office I was appointed associate director of

the company in 1972, and as assistant general manager in 1975, and I was

appointed a director in ‘77. So that’s about the end of it, and then I retired

in 1988.

I wouldn’t have thought that it was that long ago.

RJ: I had nearly forty-eight years with the company as full time

employment, and I did some consulting work for about three years, so I

managed to clock up about fifty years of association with Seppelts over the

time.

Ross, could you tell me some of the more memorable experiences

that you might have had along the way?

RJ: Well, I suppose the most memorable are some of those things that

happened in the early days at Chateau Tanunda. I remember that—

nothing to do with winemaking—there were five fellows there who regularly

invested in Tattersalls, and they won the first prize in 1941, which

happened to be £10,000. Now that doesn’t sound a lot of money in today’s

terms but each one of those chaps was able to buy a car and a house and

still have about half his share left over. That was quite an amazing thing

for a young fellow like me, just in his first year of work, and have these

17

fellows win all this money. They bought cases of Abbot’s lager, and then

shipping it over from Melbourne, and we celebrated. (Laughs) So that was

quite a unique happening in the early times.

But I suppose some of the things that really did strike me were the

changes that took place in the industry, and the mechanisation that

occurred from unloading grapes by hand and then forking them off of a

load to eventually bins being dumped into a dump bin from transports.

That was a great development.

And then the transition from casks for moving wine to stainless steel. As I

mentioned, we shipped everything to bottling places around Australia and

to customers overseas in casks, and that wasn’t a very efficient way of

doing it because the casks would all dry out on the return journey and

they’d soak up a bit of wine themselves, and the losses were quite

substantial. Plus the fact that when they went by sea, and most of them

were transported by sea in the early days, the wharfies were renowned for

a bit of pilfering, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to lift a hoop on a cask

and drill a hole and drain out some brandy from a cask, and then put the

hoop back again. So that was a very significant development, the

changeover from wooden cask to stainless steel tankers for moving wine.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

RJ: Transition to table wine, which was of major impact to the industry.

This meant changing all of the production methods. Making fortified wine

was a very simple operation. You didn’t have to worry too much about

temperature control because you removed the juice from the skins and

fortified it while the must was still sweet, and it meant a totally new

approach to winemaking. And then the introduction of refrigeration and

other techniques in the industry, which were required.

18

And of course brandy, which was a big product line for us at Seppelts,

particularly with Chateau Tanunda brandy. We had all sorts of upsets on

the way there because of great increases in Government excise and so on.

It affected the sales and they went down on the graph at a pretty rapid

rate when the Government increased excise by a big amount. But

gradually that became less prominent as a product, and virtually faded out

you might say. Not a very significant item in the total industry today at all.

But I suppose the other significant thing was the changes in variety of

grapes that were being grown, that were necessary. This was a pretty

difficult thing because it took so long to establish a vineyard and you had to

think about three or four years in advance and make predictions of what

your requirements were.

And I know that there’s been a lot of criticism about the vine-pull but, quite

frankly, I don’t view it as being such a big error or disadvantage to the

industry as it’s made out by Phillip White, for instance, when he writes.

Because most of the varieties that were removed were unwanted varieties

at that time. Things like Doradillo and Pedro and the Sherry variety, which

we were talking about before. And Sercial. Pretty well useless for table

wine. Although there was a lot of Shiraz pulled out as well, it was only a

fairly minor portion. Well, not minor, but not terribly significant in the sum

total. And I think it was a good thing because it got rid of a lot of small

growers in the industry who didn’t bother about planting up again, and left

the inroads for people to establish bigger vineyards and do it commercially

and properly. So the industry I think in the long run gained a lot out of

that move that occurred about that time. But it was a big worry for the

growers because winemakers were not prepared to take more grapes than

they needed for their estimated future sales, and if the crop was a bit

bigger, the growers had tremendous problems in disposing of all their crop.

And it was a big difficulty during that period of the 1980’s, and eventually

brought about that vine-pull.

Would it have been too, Ross, that some of those growers would’ve

depended on the Government money to even survive at that point.

19

RJ: They would’ve.

It was very tough, I believe.

RJ: Yes. But there were some people who abused the system and used it

as an opportunity to get out of it. They had gone into it as an investment

venture. So that was the part that was unfortunate. But I think you can’t

just think of those, you’ve got to think of the fellows who were really

suffering as a result of what was happening, and they were dependent

upon what they got from the Government at that time.

And Ross, were there other factors involved there, too? I mean, I know that by that time that certainly some of the wine companies

had become taken over by larger corporate organisations.

RJ: Yes.

Was that changing the way that they were approaching purchasing

grapes?

RJ: Yes, I think that changed the industry markedly. Of course, I think

the industry needed some change, too, because it was a very production

focused industry. The families who owned the companies were all very

production oriented because they were mainly involved in the making of

wine and they saw that end of it a bit more strongly than the marketing.

And I think the takeovers by outside companies made the wine industry

much more marketing focused. They had to look more closely at the

potential of the market, and then they were much tougher on the amount

that was going to be invested in production facilities and the grapes that

were bought and all that sort of thing. So that brought about some

enormous changes from about the early 1970’s onwards.

Did you find that working for Seppelts that you still had interaction with other wine companies in those years?

RJ: Yes, quite a lot. In the production side, particularly, there was very

good rapport between the different personnel in the industry.

20

What about memorable people, Ross? Were there some that come

to mind readily over the years?

RJ: Yes. Well, I think people like Wolf Blass, of course. He’s a memorable

person. Peter Lehmann is another one. He wanted to go his own way and

help the growers in the Barossa, and he did a very good job in that regard.

And he’s highly respected because of that. I’ll have to scratch my head to

think who were the memorable people at the time.

There were a lot of characters in the industry right through, and of course

there was some pretty heavy infighting that went on, too, in the

winemakers’ associations. Everybody tended to try and make things go

that would suit their own company and there wasn’t quite the cooperation

that there ought to have been, I don’t think, from a total industry

perspective.

This is—what?—in the 50’s and the 60’s?

RJ: Oh, no. I suppose it was occurring then but I wasn’t so intimately

involved as I was from about 1970 onwards. There were some quite

horrific differences of opinion.

I remember there was a move at one time when brandy was slipping that

we should reduce the age requirement for brandy from two years to one

year, or some lesser time, to lessen the capital investment required. And

of course, Tom Angove was bitterly opposed to that, and he fought good

and hard. He was genuine, too, in his belief that that maturation period

was necessary. But others thought that, well, the consumer should have

the right to choose whether he wanted his brandy to be matured for two

years, or whether at one year it was more suitable and he could get a

slightly cheaper product that way. That was one thing that I remember in

regard to industry type activities.

I was on the Standard Bottle Committee of the industry for quite a long

time, and was Chairman of that committee for quite a number of years.

We had some immense problems to undertake when we metricated the

system, and then we changed the bottle sizes slightly. For instance, we

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tried to standardise the heights of the bottles, and we had long-necked

Hock bottles and had to reduce that size. I remember at one time I think

we had five different Riesling bottles in existence that were being

transformed from something that was to something that we wanted in the

future. So that was a very long and complicated operation to get through

all of that.

And I think metrication and the technical committee had some heavy work

to do, too, in implementing new laws for winemaking.

Now, along the way in all those industry wide events that you were

involved with, Ross, did you have strong social interaction, say,

with people like Tom Angove? Did you meet those people?

RJ: Oh, yes. Quite often had social activities. And of course, there was

the old Wine Week that used to be held that was very much a social

occasion. I wasn’t too much involved with that at that time, but there were

technical conferences and other conferences of the industry where we used

to meet for a period of four days perhaps, and a lot of interaction occurred

at those times. They were very useful occasions, both to enjoy and also to

learn something.

And Ross, you’ve mentioned already the change from fortified wine styles to the table wine styles. Did that involve a new generation

of winemakers coming in with that as well?

RJ: Yes. Well, of course, young winemakers were coming on all the time,

and you had fellows like John Vickery who became world renowned as a

Riesling winemaker, and still is. And found quite a lot of new winemakers

who specialised in areas, and they built a reputation for themselves.

And I think individuality became more prominent then because you could

make wines from different areas, where the grapes were grown, and they

would be very different wine styles. And determining what was the best

style, whether it would be Coonawarra or Eden Valley or Clare, was always

a great talking point and opportunity for people to prove their ability to

make something better by picking a better vineyard. And individual

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vineyard wines became prominent, too, which was never heard of in the

early days.

And did Seppelts go down that path as well? Of the individual

vineyard wine.

RJ: To some extent, yes, because we had vineyards at Drumborg and

Padthaway, and we pioneered virtually both of those areas. Karl Seppelt

was the man responsible for that. We certainly were able to make some

very individual wines from, particularly, the Drumborg area. And Great

Western was also a fairly unique area in that sense because there weren’t

too many other vineyards in that area at the time.

Actually you were also one of the pioneers in cold climate

winemaking in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

RJ: Yes.

You bought Partalunga I remember.

RJ: That’s right. I remember buying that vineyard, and it took us a while

to develop it but it proved to be a very valuable vineyard.

Magnificent.

RJ: Yes.

Does that mean that firms like Seppelts were pretty much on the cutting edge, Ross? Did you find that in your experience?

RJ: Yes, pretty much. I think Orlando were the pioneers in a lot of the

work because they started back in the 1950’s. In 1953 I think they bought

their first pressure fermented Riesling out, and then of course their

embarking on the Barossa Pearl bandwagon. And I still think that that was

the thing that turned a lot of people to table wine. Sweet lolly water it

might have been, but that’s what the people liked and they bought it, and

as a result of drinking that they gradually acquired a taste for drier wines

and appreciated the quality and flavours in various dry wine table wine

styles.

23

Despite its sweetness it was still heavily fruit driven, wasn’t it?

RJ: Yes.

Very fruity.

RJ: Yes.

Yes, I think we owe Colin and Günter and some of the others a

great deal of thanks.

RJ: Yes, I think so. I think anybody who is not prepared to acknowledge

that is not really facing up to the facts.

It’s remarkable to me that in your lifetime, Ross, so many technical

changes have happened. When you talked about going to the

laboratory at Chateau Tanunda, my guess is, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, it would have been pretty much standard laboratory

equipment -

RJ: It sure was, yes.

- but by the time you retired you would have been faced with all

sorts of massive changes.

RJ: Yes. Well, I didn’t work in the laboratory in my later years, but some

of the equipment like spectrophotometry and so on was quite fantastic, and

now of course it’s all computer controlled. And the Australian Wine

Research Institute did a lot of valuable work in assisting the industry to

develop better laboratory techniques as well.

Did you find that the quality, particularly of table wine, improved over time?

RJ: Yes. Most definitely. Our red wines, you might remember that we

had a big downturn, mainly because somebody used the word histamines

in relation to red wine and it tended to turn people off a little bit. That was

in the 1970’s. And we had a mini boom early 1970’s and then it lost its

weight later in the 70’s. But by the 1980’s, winemakers were making more

fruit driven red wine, and it had more character and liveliness, and it was

enjoyable to drink young, whereas previously the wines were fairly heavy

24

and were not so good as young wines and needed more maturation. That’s

the way that I saw it anyway. From the early 1980’s onward I think there

was some massive improvements made in the styles of red wine, and white

too. And of course, we had the introduction of Chardonnay, which was

barely planted in 1970. There was very little Chardonnay in Australia, and

by the late 1970’s there became a very significant volume of it, and

Chardonnay was developing into a winner as far as the market was

concerned.

Actually there wouldn’t have been huge amounts of Cabernet

Sauvignon in 1970 either.

RJ: No, there weren’t.

By 1980 that would’ve been beginning to take off.

RJ: Yes.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Ross, did you have much to do with the boom in export?

RJ: Not much. When I retired I think exports were selling about ten

million litres. They are now well over the two hundred million. And that

was an amazing transformation that occurred. It had started about the

time of my retirement. And of course the industry was cutting its throat in

discounting and so on in the mid 1980’s. We had all sorts of problems

because it was barely profitable—the industry—because of this discounting

that was going on, and that was because there were too many grapes and

people were obviously trying to quit their wine. But then the development

of the export market was absolutely unbelievable, and the growth that

occurred. And of course the industry was able to invest more because they

were able to get a more steady price for their product. They didn’t have to

discount or go out and offer deals to sell it and so on. So it really has

transformed the industry throughout the 1990’s.

I’m just thinking, prior to the discounting, a lot of the product markets would have been tied to interstate breweries and

wholesalers, wouldn’t it?

25

RJ: Yes.

And I think Seppelts became involved in their own distribution

networks, too, about that time, didn’t they? I’m just trying to -

RJ: Not in a major way. I think we were reliant upon the big distributors,

but the deals that were being done were unbelievable. You know, what

would be offered to buy a pallet or a truckload lot to liquor dealers bore no

resemblance to what the average liquor outlet might have to pay. It was

just unbelievable, the discounts that were being offered at that time.

I thought you were into management accounting. (Laughter)

That must have been pretty hard really.

RJ: It was. Very difficult to make ends meet. I remember when we were

taken over by the brewing company following massive attacks by Mr

Spalvins and Adelaide Steam that we really found it hard to make a

reasonable profit because we were very heavily committed to champagne

at that time. Champagne was being sold for 3.99 a bottle for about ten

years I reckon, and costs were going up all the time. So it was quite

obvious that the margin was being lessened over that period of time.

That must have been very hard for you at Seppelts with that great

tradition at Great Western -

RJ: Yes.

- of very fine sparkling making.

RJ: Yes. The wines were improving all the time. They were getting

better, and that was being done at some cost anyway, and yet we couldn’t

get any more for the finished product.

Ross, without being overly voyeuristic about this, were there problems with a family company in those years of tight market

profits? What I mean is, I guess in old family firms you have

people looking for their cut of the surplus at the end of the year,

and wine being such a capital intensive industry, it must have been quite difficult at times.

26

RJ: It was very difficult indeed. I remember in the 70’s, when I saw the

need for some investment in better equipment and so on to enable us to do

a better job to make table wine, because we needed to make more of it, it

was just near on impossible to get enough funds to do it. A family

company wasn’t prepared to borrow too much. They couldn’t afford to

borrow too much either. And of course their shareholders were expanding

within the family as the families grew, and many of them if they couldn’t

see a reasonable outcome would be selling their shares. That’s what

happened to Seppelts eventually, that the outside of family shareholders

grew to a greater proportion than the family shareholding, and that’s why

we got under a share market attack. So it was an enormous problem to try

and fund the sort of developments that were necessary to meet the

developing market changes.

That would have been a terribly frustrating era, I’m sure.

RJ: It was. Very difficult.

Did you come to feel very, very close to the company in those

years?

RJ: Oh, yes. I think when you grow up in a company, and advance in that

company, you get very close to it.

But hopefully you didn’t have to bear the family tensions as well too much.

RJ: Well, in some respects one did, and there were quite a lot of tensions,

but I suppose that’s only natural that you do so when you get to a senior

level and are a director of the company—become close to that.

They may have been of long standing, anyway, for all I know.

RJ: Yes. Well, I think they were, from what I hear. (Laughter)

I don’t know.

So just looking back over your career, Ross, what would have been the greatest changes over time? You’ve mentioned the changes in

drinking styles. Was there anything else?

27

RJ: Really the changes in drinking styles that caused the need for different

equipment and development of processes, and then that in turn caused

changes at the vineyard end.

The tying together of all the forecasts was a fascinating thing for me. I

was very much involved in forecasting for the future. To be able to make

the prediction of where we should be in five years time—because it took

the best part of five years to get a vineyard into production—and where we

were going to get the raw material from on an ongoing basis, was a

fascinating thing, and one couldn’t help but to be engrossed by it

throughout the whole of your activities.

So in a sense you rolled with the punches of the changes -

RJ: Yes.

- but the changes in themselves made changes, from what you’re

saying.

RJ: That’s right, yes. It was a fascinating industry in that regard I think.

I always have said that the wine industry is one of the most fascinating

industries that you could hope to be in because of the enormity of changes

and the time cycles that are necessary to be observed in meeting those

changes.

Ross, I guess it would be true to say that as a young lad of fifteen

starting at Chateau Tanunda with your background at Petras, and

at Chateau Tanunda as well, you would never have dreamt of

seeing the industry where it is today.

RJ: No, never. Never.

Well, thank you so much for talking with me, Ross. It’s been a real

pleasure.