STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/72

Full transcript of an interview with

JIM INGOLDBY

on 7 February 2003

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 692/72 JIM INGOLDBY

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 692/72 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

AUSTRALIAN WINE INDUSTRY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.

Interview with Jim Ingoldby on 7th February, 2003, at Walker Flat,

South Australia. Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Jim, where and when were you born?

JI: In Adelaide in the Wakefield Street Hospital on 9th December, 1923.

Who were your parents, Jim?

JI: My father was born in Australia but Granny came out from England

with her husband, and he left, and Father was left with Granny in Sydney,

and they were brought up there.

Mother was born in Adelaide. TC Walker was her father. They met after

the 1914/18 war and got married and had a son, Peter, and then me, and

then a daughter, Judith Anne.

So Jim, where were you schooled? In Adelaide?

JI: In Adelaide. I went to boarding school at the age of about seven.

That happened in those days.

And what was that? St Peter’s College?

JI: No. I went to Wickham(?) up in Belair. Hill Smith was there and all those people.

Wyndham Hill Smith?

JI: Oh, no, no. Not Windy. Mark.

Of course. Windy’s much older than you.

JI: Mark and John.

Was that a pretty interesting life at boarding school, Jim?

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JI: Yes. I mean, I didn’t know anything else. I realise now that I missed

home life and all that stuff. People think it’s extraordinary to send your

small child off to a boarding school, but what did I know? That’s what

happened.

And what was your father’s occupation, did you say?

JI: Well, Grandfather Walker bought Father and Mother a winery down at

McLaren Flat—Ryecroft. He started off there, making wine. Of course, the

market was different then. It was all sweet wine, or 99% of it was sweet

wine. It went to England of course, and Canada.

So had your father any formal training in winemaking, Jim?

JI: No, not at all. But he had a lot of friends. Salters, and people in the

industry that helped him obviously.

Right up until, and after, the Second World War the whole winery made

sweet wine for overseas.

So this would be—what?—the fortifieds?

JI: Yes. All fortifieds.

Ports and sherries as well?

JI: Yes. And as they say now, Australia’s living on export. Of course, my

schooling and my whole life depended on export because wine wasn’t

drunk in Australia then.

Jim, can you describe that little Ryecroft winery to me that you can

remember as a child, or growing up?

JI: The vineyards were run with horses. Later there was an old Fordson

tractor—ought to be the new Fordson tractor bought—but mainly horses.

The people that worked in the winery also did the vineyard—the

ploughing—and did all the winemaking during vintage. Immediately after

vintage they’d be back into the vineyard, and then back in racking all the

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wines, and then filling hogsheads, which were sent overseas. They were

taken into the railway station on horse-drawn carts—a team of horses—and

loaded into trains in McLaren Vale.

Later there was a Chev truck that was used to load with hogsheads. Roll

up skids on to the back of a truck, and up-ended, which is a real art, being

a hogshead full of wine.

And a hogshead is a very large barrel, isn’t it, Jim?

JI: Oh, yes.

It’s not a barrique, which is smaller.

JI: No. Quite large. Two people would rock it and then up-end it.

They went to Port Adelaide and then, of course, on ships over to Canada

and England.

Now, at McLaren Flat, where exactly was Ryecroft, just for those

who don’t know.

JI: Right in the heart of McLaren Flat, down Ingoldby Road—it is now.

That’s what it is now. That’s right.

JI: Well, it didn’t have a name in those days.

No, of course.

And Jim, was it in your earliest memory, open fermenters?

JI: Oh, yes. All open fermenters. Before the war there was an overhead

shaft that drove an eccentric, which was in a wooden frame that went to

the bottom of the fermenter, and there was a plunger that pumped the

wine from the bottom up over the top of the skins and(?) headboard.

Oh, okay. So that wooden frame is—what?—about a foot?

JI: Yes, would have been. About nine inches square. And had a plunger

in it with a clacker valve. Went down, valve shut up and spilled it out over

the top of the head. And they ran all night and all day.

On the clack valves, did they? Up and down?

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JI: Yes. It was quite a sight.

So was that run off a stationary engine?

JI: Well, there were the—what were they called? They were kerosene I

think, or diesel.

A stationary engine though?

JI: Yes. A great big flywheel.

That must have been quite amazing.

JI: Yes. There was no power, of course.

So in the vineyards, what varieties of grapes would there have

been in that era?

JI: In that era there were purely Shiraz and Cabernet and Grenache—

mainly Grenache—the whole vineyard. But there was a lot of Shiraz and a

few Cabernet. The Cabernet block, of course, was planted for the dry red

era, which was prior to my father. Grandfather drank wine. My father and

family didn’t drink wine, they drank cocktails in the 20’s.

But anyway, the vineyard was planted with rows that way, but across that

way was a strip of Cabernet.

So perpendicular to the main (couldn’t decipher word).

JI: Yes. So that if you picked down that row, you picked Shiraz, and then

you came to Cabernet and then to Shiraz again, and they were all

fermented together. They reckoned that was the right proportion of

Cabernet to have with the Shiraz to make dry red.

Oh, I see.

So before your Grandfather Walker bought it, who did Ryecroft -

JI: A fellow called Wilkinson. His son was killed in the 1914/18 war, and

he gave up and then Father bought it. And then of course, Father’s son,

who was taking the winery over, was killed in the next war.

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That’s your older brother, is it?

JI: Yes.

Peter, did you say?

JI: Yes. How did you know that?

You told me that earlier. I was just trying to remember his name.

JI: So history repeating itself.

You didn’t expect to come back to the winery at all? Is that right?

JI: No, no. I went to art school.

In Adelaide?

JI: Yes, in Adelaide. (Sounds like, F. Millward Grey), out in Tynte Street,

which is no longer there.

Did you always have a bent in that direction?

JI: Yes. Luckily I had an aunt that painted water colours, and I had an art

teacher at school that took me under her wing—Mrs Eddy—and helped me.

Yes, I was always interested.

So you studied art. Did you pursue it for a while as well?

JI: Yes. I worked at (sounds like, Webb, Roberts & McClelland) in

Adelaide, an advertising agency, for a few years.

And was that interesting work, Jim?

JI: Yes. That’s a good question. Yes, I found it interesting. I liked it. I

realised at that point that really, you know, to pass up the winery and not

get into it was a bit silly. Because I went to the war and I think the war

upsets you.

What battalion did you join with?

JI: I was in the Air Force. A radio operator.

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Where were you based, Jim?

JI: North Africa.

In Tunisia as well, did you go?

JI: The North African bit was over—you know, Rommel’s bit. We were

based there and bombing Italy, and roads and the islands. And shipping.

Was that a fairly difficult time for you in those war years—

personally?

JI: I didn’t like it at all, no. (Laughs) Bombing raids, I was terrified. No,

I didn’t like it at all.

And you said your brother was killed. Was he in the Army?

JI: No, the Air Force.

Air Force as well?

JI: Yes.

So you come back and basically you’re the son to pick up the

business.

JI: Yes. But I didn’t for a while, and then I thought that it was silly to

leave it.

What was the wine industry looking like in the late 1940’s, Jim?

JI: Well, you see, it was entirely different. That was before people started

to drink wine in Australia, so Osborns, Tatachilla, Kays, Ryecroft—there

were eight wineries down there and all made wine. We made wine for Emu

Wine Company, which was English owned of course. All of it went

overseas. It was still fortified wine. Well, I(?) used to make over 100,000

worth of fortified wine, which went to Emu, for Emu.

This is in pounds we’re talking, Jim?

JI: No, gallons. I don’t know about litres. That was a lot of wine for us.

Lot of spirit and everything. That was still export.

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So in effect though, your income was from export, all those years.

JI: Yes. The whole of my life really, except towards the end where the

Wine Institute—what’s his name up in Sydney?

Len Evans.

JI: Len Evans, the new Australians as we called them then—Italians—

everybody took credit for the fact that people were starting to drink wine.

Table wine.

JI: Table wine, yes, and having it with their meals, and drinking red and

white wine. It all happened very quickly, and who caused it all and why it

happened, I don’t know.

Jim, did you drink table wine yourself at home?

JI: Yes, we did. We always made a little bit of dry red, and for us

youngsters we used to have half a glass of dry red filled up with lemonade.

And it was beautiful. (Laughter) Loved it.

Yes, I always drank but my father and mother never drank it.

So was it mainly red you drank down there?

JI: Yes.

Not white?

JI: No.

Of course, then we went through the sherry era where everybody drank

flagons of dry sherry and flor sherry. (Laughs) That was an amazing era.

And were you making flor sherries?

JI: No. But we made the material out of Pedro for Emu Wine Company,

and Emu made flor sherry—(sounds like, Driad and Manzilla).

I believe that the Emu flors were actually made in Hume concrete

pipes.

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JI: That’s right, yes. That stopped. Colin Haselgrove, who was a great

winemaker and a great bloke—I had tremendous respect for him, or his

palate—he built that flor sherry cellar and it made beautiful flor sherry.

Within a couple of years it was closed. Now, ask Len Evans, ask the wine

industry, ‘Why?’ (Laughs)

And yet I’m told that the flor sherry is probably the hardest of all to

make.

JI: Oh, yes.

And yet Haselgrove had the gift of making it superbly.

JI: Yes. We made wine for Haselgrove. I had great respect for him. You

couldn’t fault him from buying wine and tasting it. He knew, yes.

Jim, as you came into the business down there, I guess there would

have been, as you said, the Kays, the Hardys, the Haselgroves, Osborns -

JI: Tatachilla.

- the Johnstons—Lex and Digby. They would have been your

comrades in a sense.

JI: Yes. Oh, yes. And unlike the Barossa, we were all friends and used to

all go to parties and things.

d’Arry would be your era, more or less, wouldn’t he?

JI: Yes, absolutely.

Cud would have been older than you?

JI: Yes. But we’d go to Kays a lot.

And were you always talking about information in the industry and prices and what you were getting for vintage, or whatever? Was

that sort of stuff exchanged?

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JI: Oh, yes. Always a fair bit about grape prices. That used to become a

fairly hot topic at times—how much you should pay for grapes. I just can’t

believe what they’re paying for grapes now. (Laughs)

So as well as your own vineyards, you were purchasing grapes. Is

that right?

JI: Yes. We used to buy a lot of grapes. And especially towards the end

with Emu, when we were making sweet white. We’d buy grapes from the

Riverland. They’d come down from Renmark. Huge semi-trailer loads of

Gordos.

Would that be a fortified Frontignac style?

JI: No. Well, just a sweet white, a Muscat style of wine. Where all that

went, and who drank that—see, it was not drunk in Australia. None of our

product was drunk here.

I know that most of Pirramimma’s produce went to Gilbeys.

JI: Yes, that’s right.

They had about an eighty year contract with them—or contracts

spanning eighty years.

JI: Yes.

So that the Southern Vales, as it’s now known, was primarily into supplying the English market.

JI: Oh, yes. And see, Emu was English, and Stephen Smith in Tatachilla.

They were all English companies.

And yet as a district you all got on together

JI: Yes.

So, for instance, a family like the Baxendales, the local vet down

there, you would have known Alec and -

JI: Oh, yes.

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And all of you would have been together in some sense.

JI: Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, it’s hard for people to realise that the

vineyard manager and fellows that worked on the place when I was a kid

had never been to Adelaide. You know, I mean it was a gravel road and

horse-drawn vehicles. There were two cars in McLaren Flat before the war.

My father had one and Lou Townsend had the other one. You know, it was

a different era, so of course they made all their own fun.

So Jim, in terms of McLaren Flat as a society, getting out towards Blewitt Springs, there were some Italian families out there, weren’t

there?

JI: Yes. We were lucky that we got the Italians because I think they are

marvellous people. The early ones lived out there, they kept their wives in

the house. Their wives lived out there their whole lives and never learnt

English. It’s only the old fellow who learnt English. If you went to see him

and she came to the door, (sounds like, ‘con-gee) vineyard’, that’s all she

could say. That’s amazing, isn’t it? They lived there their whole lives and

never got out, never mixed. The Italians I think are marvellous people.

Honest.

So it was families. Was it the (sounds like, Fran-zuc-ini’s)?

JI: Yes. And of course our vineyard manager, Brunato—Antonio (couldn’t

decipher name). They were all Italian, yes, and they worked, worked,

worked, worked, worked.

They all worked, but as a community you were all after the same

thing in a sense, weren’t you?

JI: Yes. The mixing of the Italians and the McLaren Flat Australian, that

didn’t happen much before the war. It did after the war.

Yes.

So Jim, do you remember roughly the era when the sweet wines

gave way to the dry table wines coming in—or the table wine styles? Would that have been the late 60’s/early 70’s?

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JI: I would think forty years ago it started.

That’s the early 60’s.

JI: Yes. If you watched and looked, you could see that people were

starting to take notice of table wines.

Age has got rid of my bloody brain.

David Wynn in Melbourne, I went and saw him and said that I’d seen Dan

Murphy and Doug Crittenden, and they said, ‘Are you bottling any red?’

And I said, ‘Yes, we did’. And Walkers in Sydney—John Walker in Sydney

and the other son.

Peter, wasn’t it?

JI: Peter in Sydney and the younger(?) fellow in Melbourne, they wanted

wine. I’ve got to tell you, our bottling of wine was a puncheon—100

gallons—of Cabernet. All done by hand.

I’ve actually spoken to Doug Crittenden, and I know that he was

always interested in buying in bulk, and even bottling himself I

think.

JI: Yes, he used to, too.

At that point, in that year, you could see there was being a movement. As

I say, everybody said that they caused it, but I don’t know. Who caused

the sherry to go boom? I don’t know.

So I went to my father and said that we ought to start bottling and things,

and he said, ‘No’. I had friends, who had money, and I said, ‘Why don’t we

start up a company, McLaren Vale Wine’, which we did do, and we bottled

lots of red. Harry Brown in Sydney was our main outlet. Harry was bloody

marvellous.

He’s not still going, is he, Jim?

JI: I think he’s still alive but his son is running it now.

So Harry Brown was your main outlet.

JI: Yes.

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When you say the McLaren Vale company was set up, was that just

a bottling company for your own product?

JI: In the beginning we bought wine from all the wineries around and

marketed it under their own label. We had a McLaren Vale label but we’d

have Johnston on it—Osborn, Kay—and we marketed that. And Harry

Brown sold most of that for us. McLaren Vale Wine built up, and built up,

to 30,000 dozen red a year, which in those days was a lot of—it was more

than Hardys made.

And they were the big red makers, weren’t they, of the time?

JI: Yes.

Were you surprised by that, Jim? The growth of that market.

JI: More delighted than surprised I suppose. I mean, that’s why we

started it. We could see it happening. That’s what I really believe. My

grandfather drank red wine. He had—I’ve got his thing there—a wine

cooler. They had decanters. That stopped. In Grandfather’s day, Australia

made wines that won awards in France. And that totally stopped.

The cocktail era and the roaring 20’s—boom. And then after the war we

were all drinking flagons of sherry out of peanut butter glasses. (Laughs)

And that within two years had stopped. It’s like the brandy thing when it

went over a pound. People just stopped drinking brandy.

Some people. (Laughs)

JI: I wouldn’t tell anybody.

Then for some reason Len Evans says its him, and so on and so on. And

the Wine Board said they did. Suddenly Australians start drinking red and

white dry table wines.

Harry Palmer would have been on the Wine Board at the time,

wouldn’t he?

JI: Yes.

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My point is that things change, and they change so quickly. And I don’t

think anybody knows really why these things happen. I think it’s amazing.

Since we started McLaren Vale Wine the consumption of red has gone and

gone and gone. Now, nothing goes forever. Nothing. So just wonder

what’s next.

Jim, at Ryecroft, did you have the expertise to really make those high quality reds that started to be asked for?

JI: I got a lot of help from the Wine Research Institute. Used to be able to

go and talk to them, and they’d come down and have lunch and help you.

Was that Bryce Rankine and John Fornachon?

JI: Yes. John and Bryce, they were marvellous. That’s changed now. No-

one’s allowed in there.

I mean, everybody helped. I went and worked in the lab with Peter

Lehmann for months and months, and he taught me all he knew.

This is at Saltrams, was it?

JI: No. At Yalumba.

At Yalumba?

JI: Yes.

In Rudi Kronberger’s time

JI: Rudi Kronberger. The great Rudi Kronberger was the winemaker, yes.

And Windy Hill Smith was there.

How did you find Rudi?

JI: (Laughs)

An interesting bloke.

JI: Yes. I don’t think Rudi was a great winemaker.

Lehmann and Ray Ward probably produced some things out of

there I think.

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JI: Yes. Oh, Ward was later.

He was. After Peter left.

JI: Yes. They should never have let Lehmann go, should they?

No.

JI: (Laughs) No.

He was pretty cluey.

JI: They got Peter Wall. See, Windy Hill Smith, he had to be top dog. He

couldn’t have someone more personable or greater than him. (Laughs)

Did you enjoy Windy’s style?

JI: Well, Windy was into racehorses and whisky and things. I had great

difficulty in understanding Windy when he talked. Did you ever talk to

Windy much?

Only as a boy I can remember him. When I did the Yalumba history

I found out that Windy had the ability to make people feel so at ease and think he was quite stupid. In fact, he was picking up

everything that he could pick up. He was extraordinarily intelligent

and had an outward demeanour that belied his intelligence at times.

JI: I found him very hard to understand. He used to come down and see

my father a lot. I’d go in, and there they’d be sitting there, both talking at

once, and I could never understand what Windy was talking about.

(Laughs)

I’ve spoken to Norman Hanckel who sees him as his mentor, and Norman said that he was just so far ahead in his thinking, but most

people thought he was just not even there.

JI: Yes.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

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Jim, in all those years that you were involved at Ryecroft, did you

have any particularly hard times when there were either natural adversity, or there was economic adversity, through market

change? Did you have some tough times?

JI: Oh, dear! There were always troubles with grape prices. Also if we

didn’t have big orders for wine, of course we didn’t buy grapes. That didn’t

really affect us, it affected the grower. The understanding between a

grower and a winemaker has always been fairly difficult. I mean, if you

say to a grower that you don’t want his grapes, he thinks you’re just

aiming at him. Those were difficult times. I’ve had fellows coming in and

abusing me, and saying, ‘You won’t take my grapes’. I said, ‘Well, you go

through the winery and find a tank that’s empty and I’ll buy your grapes

right now’. They didn’t understand that if you had your full quota of wine

and your winery is full, you can’t do anything about it. I hated those times

because it’s terribly hard on a person who’s growing a crop that’s going to

spoil in another month, or a week, and that’s his income, and you can’t

help him. But you can’t.

And of course now, half Australia’s grapes—you hold your breath because if

there’s a bit of a downturn in consumption of wine, the wineries are not

going to take the grapes, are they?

No.

JI: No matter what contract there is or anything. There were contracts

with Hardys, and there were contracts especially with Penfolds in those

days, when grapes were short, or this or that, and the moment the thing

changed the other way, Penfolds said, ‘Well, sue me’. How can you sue

Penfolds? (Laughs)

Were the vineyards irrigated in the region at the time?

JI: No.

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It was all dry?

JI: I can’t think of an irrigated vineyard. That came in post-war, but it

was only in later years that people irrigated. About the time I left the

industry, which is twenty years ago, they were starting irrigation. The only

irrigation we had was to pump water down the row. It was a terrible waste

of money. (Laughs)

Anyway, if you want to make dry red, you have to be sure that the grapes

aren’t over-watered, which a lot of early irrigators did. They’d bring around

a sample of grapes that were a huge bunch, but wouldn’t be any good at

all. But I understand now people know more about irrigation, and about

quality and all those things.

So Jim, you became caught up with the production of very fine dry red table wines in a region that’s now renowned worldwide for its

fine red wine, and was at the time. Even when you were there it

was renowned.

JI: Yes.

Did you find it an easy thing to move over to the dry red style? Because you’d been drinking it yourself you said. Was it a pleasure

that more people came to—hang on! You wouldn’t have had cellar

door in the beginning, would you?

JI: No. Cellar door came later.

The first thing that happened, the Bacchus Club and the Beefsteak and

Burgundy Clubs, they used to buy hogsheads of wine and take it home and

bottle it themselves. Bottle some of it I understand. (Laughter)

I think one of the interesting things is, as I’ve said, that we made Ports for

England and Canada. Mostly Grenache. When the style changed and we

knew that we could sell dry red table wine, of course we turned the

Grenache into dry red. But it’s a bit like the cork story. We had told the

public that you have to make a decent red wine out of Shiraz, or Cabernet,

and not Grenache. So we called it all Shiraz. (Laughs) The only person

who was totally and utterly honest, and always sold a Grenache wine, was

d’Arry Osborn. He actually put it on the label, and good on him! He helped

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people understand that you can make a red out of Grenache. But we

always lied—lied in our teeth about it.

In fact, it makes a beautiful red.

JI: Yes, of course it does. But it was our fault that we weren’t, in the

beginning like d’Arry did, honest with people. We used to sell Shiraz to

Murray Tyrrell, to a lot of wineries up in the north, and in the Barossa, and

it was all Shiraz on the label.

On the label.

JI: But it was actually Grenache.

So this was for Murray Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley wine, was it?

JI: Yes. (Laughter) It was well known about Booth’s transport.

I’ve heard the story about Frank Sheppard’s man up there.

JI: Oh, Sheppards, yes.

It was Frank’s man I think, wasn’t it?

JI: Yes.

Getting shown the door.

JI: Yes. (Laughs)

And Frank lost the contract to Booth I think. Yes, I’ve heard that

story.

JI: Murray Tyrrell’s story of someone ringing and saying, ‘Have you got

any more of that Shiraz(?)’, and he saying, ‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t’. And

a truck drove in and he said, ‘Just a minute, just a minute’. (Laughter) A

truck had driven in—a tanker.

See what we’ve got.

JI: Yes.

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Talking about Murray Tyrrell, Jim, did you meet quite a few

personalities in the industry over time?

JI: Oh, yes. I can’t think of their names, but I mean Murray Tyrrell would

have been one of the most fascinating fellows. He’s dead, isn’t he?

Yes, he is.

JI: I remember flying to Perth to a wine show, and Murray Tyrrell was

about four seats in front of me—it was a propeller-driven aeroplane I

suppose—and he could talk to me without any trouble. I could hear every

word he said. He had the most tremendous voice. (Laughter)

Well, Colin Haselgrove, George Fairbrother.

George Fairbrother was Melbourne, wasn’t he?

JI: No. Adelaide.

Oh, he was the senior judge at the wine show.

JI: The Redman boys—Don and Owen Redman. One of the white men

was Cud Kay, wasn’t he?

Yes, he was. He was a fabulous man.

JI: A real white man.

Bob Hagley at McLaren Vale, who no-one liked, but I liked Bob.

This is at Hardys?

JI: Yes. He made beautiful Ports. The best Ports that I’ve ever had in my

life.

Oh, I don’t know. I can’t think of the names of the people from Perth.

Did you have much to do with the likes of the Hardy’s people? Dick

Heath and those people.

JI: Dick Heath, yes. As you say, Hardy’s people, because there were no

Hardys in the McLaren Vale winery at all. It was run by Bob Hagley and

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various people there. When Sir James says that he enjoyed the McLaren

Vale winery and all that, he never went down there. (Laughs)

Did you find it a great industry to work in, Jim, all those years?

JI: Oh, yes. Marvellous people. Especially down south. I found that

some wineries in the Barossa spoke to some, and some didn’t talk to

others, but in McLaren Vale everybody talked to everybody, from Bleasdale

through to Reynella. They were all friends, and all helped. It was a great

place.

Jim, when you told me that you worked at Yalumba for six months

in the lab, was that at your own instigation that you did that? To learn more?

JI: Oh, yes. I mean, I had permission from my father, but of course my

father was Windy Hill Smith’s friend, so there wasn’t any problem there.

And I stayed at Mark’s place of course.

I was just thinking, Mark and Margie would have been married by

then, wouldn’t they?

JI: Yes.

And they were living in that bungalow next door to the chateau

basically, weren’t they? Is that right?

JI: That was Christie’s house.

That’s right. Oh, sorry, I was thinking of Christie’s house. No, they

were in the other one.

JI: You know, Windy was on the one in the drive in, and Christie’s was

over around behind the still.

Correct. I’m with it now.

JI: And the smell of the still, they lived with, with the dams down the

bottom. Did you ever go there?

Oh, yes.

22

JI: Did you ever get that smell of the -

Oh, yes.

JI: (Laughs) They lived with that.

Off the ponds.

JI: Didn’t notice it.

It was terrible. As a child I actually remember going up there with

my uncle frequently, and it was just terrible.

JI: Yes, but they got used to it and didn’t notice it. I understand that

because at vintage people would walk into the winery and say, ‘Oh, gosh,

the smell!’ And I didn’t smell anything. I was brought up with it.

Can you tell me, Jim, what brought you to the point of wanting to

give it away twenty years ago?

JI: Well, I always say the two big disasters in my life were World War 2

and Gough Whitlam.

Not necessarily in that order?

JI: Yes. (Laughter) In that order.

We had a bottling department where we employed about thirty girls, and

Whitlam got in and changed all that, and we had to pay them more and

more and more, which was a great pity—I think. You looked at a girl and

said that, well, we’ve got to pay her 2,000 a year, I can buy an automatic

corking machine for that. Paid for in a year. So we turned the whole thing

into automatic. You know, he altered the whole thing.

Then they brought in licence forever, except Christmas Day and something.

Only two days. So you had to be there forever and ever and ever at cellar

door and all that stuff, which I think was a pity.

Who altered that? But anyway, Whitlam altered the whole set-up as far as

wages and everything went, and costs, and running costs. I’m glad I’m not

in that now. People tell me about it, with the GST, and the this and the

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that, and everything. It was marvellous in my day. You could bottle 1,000

gallons, which would be 500 dozen, but you always got a bit over.

(Laughs)

I understand.

JI: You can’t do that any more. And you could go and have lunch every

day and put it down to the company, but you can’t do that any more. I

don’t think there’s any fun in it at all. (Laughter)

You might be right, Jim, too. You might be right.

You were bought out by whom at the first stage?

JI: Reed Consolidated Industries. I think it’s a pity that it’s happening to

Hardys now. They’re going to be taken over by non winery people, and I

think that’s bad. I don’t mind wineries taking wineries because they

understand the whole workings of it, but non winery people don’t. They

didn’t understand anything at all. They were a total disaster. They led us

up garden paths. They were not honest. I remember them saying to me—

for some reason Wayne Thomas entered in a 500 gallon Cabernet in the

Show and it won a gold medal, and they wanted to know what I’d done

with that wine. I said, ‘Well, 500 gallons, there’s not any point in it. I

blended it out’. They were furious. They said to me, before that, when I

said that it’s only 500 gallons, ‘Well, blend it with something else and make

it more’. I said, ‘I’m not going to do that’. They said, ‘No-one will know’. I

said, ‘The whole of the staff in the winery will know’. They will know that

I’m dishonest. I’m not doing that’. I don’t think they understand. They

would do that. Peter Lehmann wouldn’t do that.

No.

So Reeds didn’t last that long, from memory, did they?

JI: No. It all disappears in a haze of—you know, changes that went on

were immense. Mainly we sold to Reeds because of the Government. The

Labor Party came down and said to me, ‘Why are you selling?’ And I said,

‘Are you standing in front of me asking that?’ They said, ‘Yes’. I said,

24

‘Well, it’s you. You. (Laughs) You’ve ruined it financially. My father and

mother own the whole property, and if they hit a stobie pole tomorrow

morning, I’d lose it because the death duties and the things you’d want out

of it, it would be gone. So it’s not worth us keeping it. It’s your fault’.

(Laughs) They went away.

Have you found looking at the corporate side of the industry today just so different from what you knew?

JI: Oh, yes. I wouldn’t want to be in it now.

So it’s gone away from the family side -

JI: Oh, yes.

- where you all knew each other, you cooperated, and there was a

community mind.

JI: And helped each other. I mean, if you didn’t have a so and so, you

went over to Osborn, he’d have one. Someone around would.

Well, Jim, say in the your day when you were starting to bottle your

own reds, how would you go about doing packaging and that sort of thing? Would you design your own with your background, or

what would you do?

JI: Yes, I did of course. Yes, I did. I did the first label, Ryecroft up there,

and the drawing on the second one. And I used to deal with Wytt Morro

because I could talk to Wytt. Anybody could talk to Wytt. He’s a beaut

bloke, and he’d do what you wanted.

The first label up there, I did that one. That’s this end.

On the Burgundy bottle.

JI: And the next one, I did the drawing for that, and Wytt Morro did the

lettering. Yes, we did our own.

And did you find that the cellar door was an enjoyable side of the

work that you hadn’t had so much before, where people would

come in, or was it pretty hard work?

25

JI: No, I didn’t enjoy cellar door. You either get people who are just there

to drink, or you get someone who thinks they know more than you do.

(Laughs) No, I didn’t enjoy cellar door ever.

Did it help the business at all, or was it just an added cost in one

sense?

JI: Oh, no. The main income were the trucks going out with pallet loads

of wine on. The amount that you’d sell at cellar door—well, before Mr

Whitlam, at cellar door, if you wanted to go own to the shop you took $5

out of the till(?) and took it down. Now you can’t. It was handy from a

cash point of view because the wine that you were selling there didn’t show

on the books anyway.

Jim, looking back over all those years in the industry—I’m just trying to wind this up now—what would be the larger changes that

you can recall? We’ve talked about some. The change from

fortified to the table wines.

JI: That was the largest, yes. They’re the ones that startled me because

you don’t really know why. I don’t know why the sherry boom ended. I

don’t know why the brandy thing folded so quickly. I don’t know why our

next door neighbour, who goes to the races, is drinking wine, when five

years ago he’d never tasted it. But you’ve got to have a black four-wheel

drive, a Labrador dog and red wine—I mean, it’s just fashion, isn’t it—with

a thingamy house. What do you call it?

A very flash house.

JI: Tuscan.

Tuscan villa?

JI: A Tuscan villa, a black four-wheel drive, a Labrador dog and red wine.

Who told him all that? It just happens. They’re changes that I find

amazing. And everybody—and I think we all do, and I think Grandfather

did—thinks that when you’re living in an era, that’s it. It will always be like

that. But my experience is, and looking back, and then from Grandfather

26

through to me, it’s changed so dramatically. I think it’s amazing—

absolutely amazing. I mean, you couldn’t have possibly foretold any of

those things.

Well, in fifty years it’s gone from being 80% fortified/20% table

wine to the complete reverse. More than the reverse. And from

Australia being predominantly a population of beer drinkers, to

wine drinkers.

JI: Yes.

That’s in—what?—nearly three generations.

JI: Yes, you couldn’t imagine it, could you?

No.

Well, Jim, thank you so much for talking with me today.

JI: A pleasure.

It’s been most enjoyable.