First Vintage •• ••• •• • FirstVintageText2print.indd 1 16/08/12 3:05 PM FirstVintageText2print.indd 2 16/08/12 3:05 PM Julie McIntyre First Vintage Wi n e i n c o l o n i a l N e w S o u t h Wa l e s FirstVintageText2print.indd 3 16/08/12 3:05 PM Contents a UnsW Press book Published by newsouth Publishing university of new south wales Press ltd university of new south wales sydney nsw 2052 australIa newsouthpublishing.com © Julie mcIntyre 2012 first published 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 this book is copyright. apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the copyright act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. national library of australia cataloguing-in-Publication entry author: mcIntyre, Julie. title: first vintage: wine in colonial new south wales/Julie mcIntyre. IsBn: 9781742233444 (hbk.) IsBn: 9781742241241 (epub) IsBn: 9781742246147 (epdf) subjects: wine and wine making – new south wales – history. wineries – new south wales – history. dewey number: 663.2009944 design di Quick Cover images sweetwater, later identified as the sherry grape, Palomino, was common in early colonial vineyards. George Brookshaw. The Horticultural Repository, Containing Delineations of the Best Varieties of the Different Species of English Fruits, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW; Plants framing the pathway through the subsistence garden at the first Government house, sydney, are thought to be the first grape vines planted in australia. this 1791 painting by william Bradley depicts the ‘coming in’ of local aboriginal people after the payback spearing of Governor arthur Phillip the previous year at manly, an event in which an offer of wine played a role in cross-cultural diplomacy. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW; mcwilliam’s mark View wines at Junee. McWilliam’s Wines Printer everbest, china this book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests. FirstVintageText2print.indd 4 16/08/12 3:05 PM Contents acknowledgments vii Contemporary wine regions of new south Wales ix timeline x introduction 1 1: ideas of wine on the First Fleet 10 2: British names for wine and why they mattered 25 3: grape vines on the First Fleet 32 4: First vineyards, first vintages 43 5: intelligent industry 55 6: Colonial wine to create sobriety 80 7: a new generation of wine growers 94 8: Wine, science and industrialisation 117 9: taste 152 10: the rise of regionality 175 11: a splendid bouquet ... of a similar character 197 Conclusion 217 appendixes 224 notes 228 select bibliography 239 index 244 FirstVintageText2print.indd 5 16/08/12 3:05 PM a note on style and measurements where direct quotes from historical sources have contained capitalisation, spelling errors or symbols, as long as changes have not altered the meaning of the quotes, they have been modified for greater ease of reading. measurements are usually listed in their contemporary form and the following may assist with some of the unfamiliar terms used in wine trade. measurements of wine quantity have histori- cally been unreliable. as Jan todd pointed out, the four different gallon measures in england were only standardised in 1824, after 1 at least 800 years of confusion. the most frequently used quantity measures for wine in colonial new south wales were gallons, pipes and hogsheads. change from imperial to metric measurement in australia is recent enough that only a conversion is provided on this page for the gallon, but pipe also requires explanation. according to an entry in the oxford companion to wine, the pipe originated as 2 a wine trade term from the Portuguese pipa or barrel. madeira and marsala, common Portuguese fortified wine exports, were measured in pipes but measurements varied from 534 to 630 litres, depending on use and region. the shipping measure was usually closest to 534 litres, so that is used here to understand the quantities described by colonial growers. references to land use the contemporary colonial measurement of acres but the metric conversion is supplied below. 1 gallon = 4.55 litres 26.5 gallons = 1 hectolitre 1 gallon = six bottles of wine of 750mls 2 gallons = a case of 12 bottles of wine) 1 hogshead = 63 gallons of wine, 285 litres 1 hogshead = 2 barrels 1 pipe = (approx.) 534 litres, also equal to 117 gallons 1 pipe = (approx.) 712 bottles of wine of 750 ml or almost 60 cases 1 acre = 0.405 hectares 1 mile = 1.6 kilometres FirstVintageText2print.indd 6 16/08/12 3:05 PM acknowledgments This book owes an enormous debt to the accomplished and emerging scholars who have guided my research and writing, the unfailingly polite research staff and curators at dozens of libraries, public archives and historical societies; vignerons in the New South Wales wine industry who have been more than generous with time and knowledge; and the elegantly efficient and ever patient team at NewSouth/UNSW Press. In particular, my appreciation to Richard Waterhouse, Grace Karskens, David Dunstan, John Germov, Catherine Oddie, Rebecca Mitchell, Philip Dwyer, Roger Markwick, Erik Eklund, Ivor Indyk, Carl Bridge, Frank Bongiorno, Ian Henderson, Robert Aldrich, David Roberts, Marian Quartly, Richard Broome, Penny Russell, Richard White, Kirsten McKenzie, Susie Khamis, Kate Darian-Smith, Victoria Haskins, John Tulloch, Jacqui Newling, Ian Cupit and Norrie Doyle, Tracy Bradford, James Halliday, Stephen Guilbaud-Oulton, Stuart McGrath- Kerr, Don Seton-Wilkinson, Brian McGuigan, Phil Ryan, Jay Tulloch, Hazel Murphy, Lucy Anderson, Julie Watt, Phil Ashley-Brown, Jo Upham, Craig Munro, Phillipa McGuinness, Elspeth Menzies, Uthpala Gunethilake, Heather Cam, Di Quick, Fiona Sim, John and Edwina Macarthur-Stanham, Rebecca Barrett and Michael Anderson, Nicola Ross and Pete Allsop, Virginia Newell and Mark Burslem, Jen and Andrew Denzin, Nicola Hensel and John Tourier, Katrin Gustafson and Ben Ewald, Sidsel Grimstad, Jane Smith, Chris Battle, Katrina Gordon, Maureen Beckett, Catherine Henry, Janine Bendit, Kylie Morris and Bharat Nalluri, Justin and Helen Morey, Angela Macpherson and Graham Calder-Smith, Sally Knox and Bill Frewen and the Argiris family. vii FirstVintageText2print.indd 7 16/08/12 3:05 PM Thanks to my grandparents, Mum and my stepdad, Dad and Rose- marie Morris, my brother Joe, Aunty Margaret, Aunty Kit, Marie and Ken Muir, Heather McIntyre, my step children Kylie, Zoë, Elizabeth, Alexander (their partners and multitude of progeny) who are in the folds of this story as well as in my heart, my offspring Isaac and Benny, who are the sunshine and above all, Phillip McIntyre who is a source of scaffolding, scholarship and the soul of the entire enterprise. Substantial portions of this book were completed while I held the Rydon Fellowship at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, London in 2010 and thanks to generous funding from the Wine Industry Research Collaborative, Centre for Institutional and Organisational Studies, University of Newcastle. Sections of material in this book have previously been published in the following articles and I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to reproduce them here: McIntyre, J (2011) ‘Adam Smith and Faith in the Transformative Qualities of Wine in Colonial New South Wales, Australian Historical Studies, 42, 2, pp. 194–211, at pages 51, 65, and 84–88. McIntyre, J (2011) ‘Resisting Ages-Old Fixity as a Factor in Wine Quality: Colonial wine tours and Australia’s early wine industry’, Locale: The Australasian–Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies, 1, 1, pp. 1–19, at pages 64 and 172. McIntyre, J (2009) ‘Not Rich and Not British: Philip Schaeffer, “failed” farmer’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 11, p. 1–20, at pages 46–49. McIntyre, J (2008) ‘“Bannelong Sat Down to Dinner with Governor Phillip, and Drank His Wine and Coffee as Usual”: Aborigines and wine in early New South Wales’, History Australia, 5, 2, pp. 39.1–39.14, at pages m> 37–42. o c a. McIntyre, J (2007) ‘Camden to London and Paris: The role of the alI r t Macarthur family in the early New South Wales Wine Industry’, History us a e Compass, 5, 2, pp. 427–38, at pages 56–59 and 165. n wI w. w w < viii first vintage FirstVintageText2print.indd 8 16/08/12 3:05 PM Contemporary wine regions of new south Wales From register of Protected geographical indications, Wine australia m> o c a. lI a r t s u a e n wI w. w w < ix FirstVintageText2print.indd 9 16/08/12 3:05 PM timeline of first plantings of wine grapes in districts across new south Wales 1787 The First Fleet sailed from 1792 Governor Phillip returned 1810–20 Vine plantings Britain to establish the colony to England with souvenirs and extended throughout the of New South Wales. Wine scientific specimens from New Cumberland Plain (e.g. was purchased in the Spanish South Wales. There is some Richmond, Windsor, colony of the Canary Islands, evidence that wine made in Eastwood, Emu Plains, the Portuguese colony of Rio New South Wales may have banks of the Nepean and and the (then) Dutch colony of been among this cargo. Hawkesbury rivers). the Cape of Good Hope. Wine 1800–10 Vine plantings 1815–16 John, James and grape stock was also obtained extended to Castle Hill, St William Macarthur took a at the Cape. Marys and Campbelltown walking tour through France 1788 Australia’s first grape outside Sydney. to Switzerland and back; the vines were planted in the first deliberate fact-finding 1800 Arrival in the colony of governor’s garden at Sydney journey through European two French prisoners of war Cove and later at Norfolk wine lands. They observed the from a British gaol; the two Island. (New South Wales in its vintage at the winery of a Swiss men were singled out for their early years extended from the vigneron who had vineyards skills in wine grape growing north east of the continent to in the former British colony of and paid to try to create the south-west including Van Kentucky and collected vine successful vineyards. Diemen’s Land, later Tasmania, stock from renowned regions and coastal islands.) 1803 The first edition of the of France and, on the journey back to Sydney, from the colony’s first newspaper, the 1791 Philip Schaeffer, a retired Portuguese colony of Madeira Sydney Gazette and New Hessian (German) soldier, where some of the world’s South Wales Advertiser, was allocated 140 acres of land finest wine was produced. included translated French on the Parramatta riverfront instructions on vine growing. which he called The Vineyard 1819 Reverend Samuel Marsden and trialled grain crops, took vine cuttings from New tobacco and wine grapes. South Wales to New Zealand. x first vintage FirstVintageText2print.indd 10 16/08/12 3:05 PM